Chapter 50: Seeing Her
We walked away from the school, and I was still holding her hand. My palm felt hot and clumsy, I didn’t know if I was supposed to squeeze back or just let my fingers be limp. I had no idea how to do this.
I just focused on the cracks in the sidewalk, counting them as we walked. One, two, three. The silence felt loud, but the warmth of her hand was louder.
She was the one who was supposed to be the pillar, but I was the one who had just grabbed her and pulled her away. I didn’t know where that came from.
"Hey," I said finally, because the silence was getting to be too much. My voice sounded a little rough.
She looked over at me, but her eyes weren’t on my face. They were on our hands, linked together between us.
"Are you okay?"
She was quiet for another block. I thought maybe she was angry that I’d just grabbed her, that I’d made a scene.
"He looked afraid of you," she said, her voice soft and full of a weird kind of wonder.
I just shrugged, because I didn’t know what to say to that. "He’s not as tough as he looks."
"No," she said, stopping and turning to face me. "That wasn’t it. He was really, truly afraid of you, Kofi. What did you do?"
I looked down at our hands. I couldn’t tell her about the blackmail. It would just drag her into something ugly, something she didn’t need to know about.