After a minute of silence, he finally cleared his throat. “Hey. You okay?”
His voice was even deeper than usual, gruff with some emotion I couldn’t label. Whatever it was, it worked across my nerve endings like a hand caressing my hair, trying to take away my anger.
“Did you mean it, what you just said to your grandma?” Though I was mad enough to want to shout the words at him, I fought to keep my voice low so I wouldn’t wake up anyone in the neighboring rooms.
He slowly scrubbed his wet hair with a towel, and my stomach knotted still further. “Uh, which part?”
“About how I should go home.”
“Yeah, I meant it. You should go home.”
So it was true. He did want to get rid of me. “Well, I’m not going to.”
“I know. Which is why I never tried to convince you to.”
“Oh, but you could tell your grandma how desperate you are to get rid of me.” I was shaking, I was so mad. But worse was how my eyes had begun to sting and my vision blur. Oh no, I refused to cry. Not now, not in front of him. He did not get to see how much his words hurt.
“That’s not what I meant. Obviously you left before hearing the end of the conversation or else you’d know that. I told her I don’t want to get rid of you. I just want you to be safe. But I can’t protect you as long as you’re with this group.”
My hands ached from clenching the comforter. I forced the muscles in my fingers to relax so I could drag my hands into my lap instead. “It’s sweet of you to want to protect me, but I’m not a little kid anymore, Hayden. It’s my decision to be here. It’s not your job to keep me safe. And just because you helped us out of that camp doesn’t mean you’re responsible for protecting these people, either. I respect your grandmother for taking us all in, but she’s got some seriously warped expectations of you.”
Silence as he stood there for a long moment then turned away to hang up his damp towel in the bathroom. When he returned, he stopped so close before me that his legs almost touched my knees. “She has a point, though. When you save someone, a certain amount of responsibility does come with the territory—”
“That’s crap and you know it. You think firefighters and cops spend the rest of their lives taking care of every person they rescue on the job? You’re still free, Hayden, no matter what she says. These people will be just fine on their own now. You got them here and that’s enough. Grandma Letty can keep them safe while she helps them figure out a new game plan that has nothing to do with you. If she’s so proud of that Shepherd legacy of leadership, then let her fulfill it. You can leave here tomorrow and go anywhere and do anything you want.”
Frowning, he crossed his arms over his chest and rocked back on his heels, staring down at me, his gaze slowly moving over my face. “What about you? Are you really going to stick around and see what happens next?”
I nodded. “I need to know the ending to their story before I can write it.”
“And then what? Once they’ve all moved on, what will you do then?”
“I don’t know. Find my parents, I guess.” My stomach knotted at the thought. “Or maybe see if I can join Jeremy overseas.” But the knot remained in my stomach. “Or maybe I’ll follow one of the outcast families and see what the life of a Clann family in hiding is like. Could be a good follow up story. What I do next isn’t the point, though, so quit worrying about it. The point of this conversation is you and helping you see that you’re not tied down to anyone else’s plans for you.”
“You’re one to talk. Who was it that ended our friendship because your mother demanded it?”
“Exactly! I learned this lesson the hard way. I gave up everything that mattered the most to me because of what somebody else wanted. I don’t want to see you make the same mistake. That’s why you’ve got to learn that it’s okay for you to be selfish now and think about what you want, not what your dad or mom or even your grandma wants. Live your life, not the one they want for you, so you don’t have to look back at your life with regret.”
One corner of his mouth tightened. “What if I want some of that responsibility? What if I want to be tied down to someone?”
He called me stubborn, when he was the one holding on to some stupid family legacy of leadership? “Then I guess that’s your choice, isn’t it?”
“Not just mine.”
Unbelievable. I turned my head, so frustrated I couldn’t even look at him.
Blowing out a noisy sigh, he walked away. I glanced in his direction in time to see him drop down onto his knees before the loveseat and begin to make his pallet on the floor from the stack of blankets and sheets I’d left for him.
Slowly I stood up, watching the movements of his broad shoulders and back as he spread out a comforter for a makeshift mattress, then added a second layer of blankets for warmth. I wished I could reach out to him, physically or with the right words, and somehow make him see.
“Why is it so hard for you to say what you want, Hayden?”
He stopped moving, staring at something I couldn’t see. “I…don’t know. I guess because it’s never been about what I want. It’s always been about sticking to their plans for me.”
He sat back on his heels and looked at me, and the vulnerability on his face seemed to reach out and steal the air from my lungs.
I walked over to him, stopping before him, hesitating. He was so tall that even on his knees his face was level with my stomach. “I’m sorry I got you involved in all of this. I never should have made you follow that truck of prisoners to the camp. And I definitely shouldn’t have asked for your help with the prison break. I should’ve found another way to pull it off—”
“Then I would have ended up going to some college my father picked out and eventually becoming a politician just like him. I still would have ended up leading people, but I never would have learned the truth. My grandma’s right. I’m a Shepherd. It’s pretty damn clear I can’t escape that destiny no matter what I do.”
“I don’t believe in destiny. We choose our own futures. The families we’re born into are nothing more than an accident. Their choices have nothing to do with ours unless we let them.”
His eyebrows pinched together. “How do you know that? How do you know I’m not supposed to lead others, when that’s exactly what I’ve been trained all my life to do and it’s all fate seems to keep pushing me towards?”