Read Online On the Run by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online Page B

me. A nest-builder or something. So for over two and a half years I’ve had to live with the realization that I can’t afford roots. In the first year I made a couple of very close and very warm contacts with decent human beings. But I had to fake a history for them. And I had to leave without warning. And it hurt. It hurt like hell. Like tearing out little bits of yourself. From the moment you walked into the shack yesterday, I felt that warmth in you, and I felt my own response to it. You seemed to be a symbol of the kind of thing, the kind of relationship I can’t have. And as I felt us getting closer … I don’t know whether you felt it or not … I had to slam the door. I had to do something to make it impossible. I remember part of a college psychology course, about insecure children breaking favorite toys to punish themselves. Okay. I broke any chances we had the first time I had a chance. I know how it made you feel, I think. Cheap and humiliated. I got you heated up when you didn’t want to be heated up. The funny thing about it, I knew I could do it. I didn’t have any question in my mind. I would have looked like an idiot if I couldn’t. Ithink I was able to because, by then, we were already carrying on a second conversation, aside from the one we were saying to each other. I guess I spoiled things, but perhaps that was the smartest thing to do. I wasn’t tracking right. From the moment you showed me that jade box, the whole day was unreal. I can put on an act. Hard and cynical and so on. Probably I’ve made you believe it. But look. I don’t think you were humiliated, and I was the only one there to see it. You’re a healthy woman, but if there hadn’t been something starting between us, it wouldn’t have happened. I couldn’t have made it happen. I thought of taking you. Maybe I could have. I don’t know. You asked me why I quit. You meant it as a bitter question. I think I quit for the same reason I started, that I sensed a strong attraction and I wanted to knock it off before it got a fair start. I have to protect myself and you, because there’s no offer I can make. Okay. Now we have to be together for a time. And I don’t want it to be lousy for you. I want you to have a better idea of me, a better opinion of me than what you’ve got right now. I was an insecure kid breaking toys. And having that jade box appear out of nowhere, I felt as if I’d been turned inside out. I felt raw and scared. I’m still scared. I’d built a pretty good wall and it started to crumble. I don’t want the kind of a truce we have right now. I want you to feel better. And I guess the only way you can is if you try to understand why it happened. I’ve been trying to be honest with you. But nobody knows the whole truth about himself, I guess. All I can do is give you some clues. But now suppose you just keep still and think about it for a few minutes, and then say what you think. I … I want you to have a better time than you’re having. I think you deserve it.”
    There was no change in her. She kept the speedometer motionless at seventy. He watched her. She bit into her underlip and began to frown. Suddenly she hit the brakes too hard. He was thrown forward. The car fishtailed, tires screaming. She fought the wheel, straightened it out, pumped the brakes again, then went over onto the shoulder in a rumbling of gravel and cloud of dust, and the big car rocked to a stop, stalling the engine.
    She slid over toward him, turned to half face him, put her hands flat against his cheeks and looked into his eyes.She took the sunglasses off, took his off, stared thoughtfully at him. “Not one full hour of sleep,” she said in a husky voice. “Not one. Laying awake there and trying to hang onto the feeling you had dirtied me and you were an evil bastard. Trying to hate you. But I couldn’t hang onto it. And I figured it out my way. And came up with the same thing you’ve said. It was another act of running.