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Shaking her head, Ali rubbed her arm more intensely.
“What’s wrong with your arm?” Cornell asked, furrowing his brow. He went to stop the rigorous movement, and Ali jumped, startling him. Cornell held his breath, watching her face intensely. Ali’s gaze was forward, and there was the smallest tremble of her lips. He turned so his knees pressed against her leg. “God dammit, Ali. You’re freaking me out here.”
Her voice was so soft that if Cornell didn’t see her lips move, he wouldn’t have been sure Ali was even speaking. “I was running away. When I hit the pole, I was trying to get away.”
Cornell swallowed over the lump in his throat. “What were you running away from?” An unease gripped Cornell, working its way up his body. “Ali?”
She said nothing, and Cornell felt like the bottom fell out from beneath him, his heart and spirit sinking.
No. No, no. Don’t say it.
But Cornell needed to hear it.
“Who,” he cracked, correcting himself, “who were you running away from?”
Ali closed her eyes. “I couldn’t remember before,” she spoke meekly, almost as if she needed to convince herself. “He pulled me out of the car.”
Cornell’s eyes flew down to Ali’s arm, where she had pulled up the sleeve. And there it was, the bruise he noticed the night of the accident, now lighter, healing into mixed yellow hues. Cornell blinked and opened his eyes, the mark looking as angry as when he first saw it—when he thought he was crazy for thinking it looked like the imprint of a hand wrapped around Ali’s arm.
He fucking…
In the exact spot Cornell had stroked, Graham had grabbed, pulled, yanked. It had been there, in black and blue, when Cornell had been trying to erase what Graham did without even knowing the worst of it.
No sack he had ever taken as a quarterback could have ever prepared Cornell for the painful blow that struck his chest. It hit him like a train. An overwhelming sensation crushed Cornell, telling him to do all the things at once—wrap Ali up, comfort and protect her. It told him to flee, to search every mile between there and Houston, find Graham and break his neck.
No. No. No.
But Cornell sat paralyzed inside and out by what should be an unthinkable kind of hurtful anger. Because these kinds of things didn’t happen in Hopperville—small, sleepy Hopperville—where police still gave tickets for jay-walking because there wasn’t much else to penalize.
He looked at her arm again, picturing Graham’s large hand wrapped around it, and more anger grew, boiled. It should be unimaginable, never to be actually felt. These kinds of things didn’t happen to Ali—his Ali. But the anger wasn’t something hardly imaginable as he sat beside her.
It was painfully palpable.
“He tried,” Ali said, and her swallow was so heavy and loud as she tried to find her voice that Cornell could hear it. “He tried, but I got away.”
In Cornell’s head, he denied it, not just Ali’s words but the entirety of the week. He hadn’t gone to the Cowboys’ game, his father didn’t drive him to the hospital, Ali didn’t lay tied up in a hospital bed like a captured animal screaming his name.
His heart tightened strongly, recalling the moment and how awful it had been to see her in that state. But Cornell now knew, after the accident Ali hadn’t just been confused about where she was and all the strangers poking and prodding her—she had been terrified.
And she wanted me.
Cornell needed to remind himself to breathe when the room began to spin. “Ali—”
“Please,” she turned to face him. “I need a little more time alone.”
Her words would’ve stung under different circumstances. But Cornell couldn’t feel anything apart from the heat of his blood, the twitch of his fingers against his leg, at a loss of where to go, who to touch, who to hurt. For the first time since the accident, Cornell recognized the blankness in Ali’s usually warm and lively expression. It wasn’t confusion—it was soul-stirring pain. And it stunned him back to silence.
She took a deep, shaky breath and looked away. “I wish you weren’t looking at me like that.”
Like what? Cornell wanted to ask, but he still couldn’t find his voice. Ali had shut her eyes but not before tears managed to escape, each one a painful symbol of everything she had bottled back up. Cornell’s hand instinctively rose, but a hard thought hit him, and the realization was excruciating—he didn’t know how to touch her even in the smallest way, in the most comforting way.
He didn’t know if he should touch her at all.
“Go home. I’ll see you in a few days.” Ali rose slowly from the bench, and Cornell’s hand fell back to his side as she walked into the kitchen.
He wanted to fight, to tell Ali that he loved her—endlessly, madly, wholeheartedly. Cornell wanted to tell her that it wasn’t her fault, that nothing changed. But instead of fighting, Cornell fled. He rose quickly and was soon back out the side door and in his Jeep. John came running behind him.
“Are you okay to drive?”
