I gasped. “Erica!”
Dr. Green gripped my shoulders and massaged my muscles. “She’s fine. She locked herself into the bathroom and he left before the boys got there. He never got close to her. Somehow he rerouted into the woods and ended up at your house.”
“He said he saw you guys leaving my house,” I said.
He nodded. “Figured as much. He didn’t know where you lived before. He was on a rampage looking for you. He found your clothes. He got to Erica because he thought Nathan might be at Kota’s.”
Out of reaction, I checked the closet, but everything appeared to be in place, so if Mr. Griffin had been in here, they must have cleaned it up. I wiped at my forehead. I needed to collect myself before I thought about this anymore. “I need a bath.”
“That’s fine. You should use the other bathroom though.”
“Why?”
“Mr. Griffin broke a lot of things in this house. Nathan’s bathroom is messed up. Toilet is busted. The shower got ripped apart. We haven’t had a chance to fix it yet.”
I nodded and then looked around, checking myself out again. “Am I good?” I asked. “Is the stuff out of me?”
“I think so,” he said. “We found the sample you had in your book bag. We’ve managed to figure out the sequence so we can compare it. Your blood work was normal. I think you slept for so long because you’ve been weak for a while. You took it really hard.” He backed up, heading to Nathan’s low dresser. He picked up two bottles. He shook both in his hands. “You should eat, but here. I want you to try these.”
“What are they?”
He twisted the cap off of one bottle, and then shook out two gummy fruits into his palm. He handed them to me.
“Candy?” I asked.
He laughed. “Try it.”
I did, chewing on them both. They were sweet strawberry flavored. I swallowed them down.
He followed up with two orange tablets. I chewed those, expecting orange, and got a papaya flavor. They were really sugary, like PEZ candy.
“Vitamins,” he said. He shook the bottle again of the gummy pieces. Then he shook the other one with the orange tablets. “And papaya enzyme. That should help with the stomach aches.”
“Sugar,” I said. “Mr. Blackbourne approved it?”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m a doctor,” he said, pointing to himself with his thumb. “If I prescribe you something, you have to take it.” He went back to put them on the dresser and then combed his fingers through his hair. Then he smiled at me and walked over. He planted a kiss on my forehead. “Welcome back to the land of the living, by the way.”
I sighed and smiled at the same time. I raked my fingers through my hair, trying to comb out the snarls. “I really need a bath.”
Dr. Green smiled again and was going to say something but was interrupted by a hard knock at the door.
We both turned. The door opened and Nathan appeared. He spotted Dr. Green first and then his eyes landed on me.
His lips went taut. He stared for the longest time. His reddish brown hair was mussed all over. He wore dark blue jeans and a red T-shirt. He was barefoot.
No school? For either of them? Were they faking being sick, too?
He looked back at Dr. Green and narrowed his eyes at him. “I need to talk to her. Get out.”
“Nathan,” Dr. Green said. “She doesn’t—“
“I really need to talk to her,” Nathan said, cutting him off. “Please.” His tone was even, deep. He was asking, but he really wasn’t.
Dr. Green looked at me. “You ready for this?”
I wasn’t sure what I was ready for. I nodded anyway. Nathan needed to say something to me. My heart was in my throat wondering what he had to say that Dr. Green couldn’t hear.
Dr. Green squeezed my hand gently, reassuring me.
Nathan held open the door for Dr. Green as he left. He closed it behind him and then snapped the lock. Nathan leaned against the door for a moment. He stared quietly at me.
“Nathan?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
“You okay?” he asked, though his voice was different. Deeper.
I nodded. “I’m better. I feel kind of gross.” I said this while wiping at my skin. It was cool to the touch, but I still felt the film of sweat and from not bathing for a couple of days. It was like I really had been sick with the flu and was getting over the fever.
Nathan moved away from the door. His eyes were firm on my face. His jaw clenched. I’d seen this before, when he approached others ready for a fight.
I startled at his swiftness, backing up half a step. My hands went up protectively, not understanding. I trusted him, but I didn’t understand what he wanted from me. “Nathan?”
He grabbed my hips and backed me up further. I followed his lead, putting my hands on his chest to stop myself from falling over.
My back met with the wall. A karate poster behind me crackled as my head rolled against it.
Nathan zeroed in on my mouth.
His lips enclosed around mine. They parted and he took up every available space. His palm at my hip released me and then pressed against my cheek. The other joined it on my other cheek. He held me by my face, tilting slightly one way and then the other. His lips followed everywhere he turned me.
I gasped against his mouth. My eyes closed. I gripped at his T-shirt, hanging on to it, and when it didn’t have enough support, I hung on to his shoulders.
He shoved himself against me and my arms went around his neck. His face rasped against my cheeks as he kissed me. He hadn’t shaved again.
I welcomed it. I don’t know what had gotten into him but I needed his touch. Was all the craziness really over? I’d been so stupid on those drugs and I barely remembered it, but the pieces I did remember, I was an idiot blurting things out. He forgave me?
His hands lowered again and he gripped my hips. He scooped me under the thighs and lifted me.
He guided me to circle my legs around his waist, hanging on to me. My hip bone met his. I gripped him with my legs.
He pulled me away from the wall, never breaking the kiss. He consumed my lips and carried me.
My back met the bed. He released my hips and lowered himself against me.
I sucked air hard through my nose, finding it hard to breathe. He was overwhelming. When my mind started to work again after the initial shock, I tried to back my head up to catch a breath. He chased me. I’d get a pocket of air and he’d clamp his mouth down against me again. I was dying for air. He was dying for me.
He needed me that much – that he couldn’t let go.
He kissed me long and hard once more before he finally released my mouth, but his lips never left my skin. He trailed along my cheek, wetting my face with his lips. He suckled at the apple of my cheek. He found my ear and nipped it. He kissed along my jaw, avoiding my neck.
“Nathan” I breathed out when I finally managed to get some air. “You...”
“Been wanting to do that for so long,” he whispered against my skin. He closed in on my ear. His lips clamped down around my lobe. He kissed it and then nipped it with his teeth.
“There was a rule,” I said. I didn’t really want to say it but I thought someone should.
“Fuck the goddamn rule.” He grunted and then pulled back. He locked his lips against mine again, harder now. Nearly bruising. He backed up just enough to whisper, “You’re more important.”
I opened my mouth, thinking I should say something, but he crushed a kiss against my lips and never gave me a chance.
I gave up. I didn’t have much of an argument. My heart was spinning. Everything was happening so fast. He was kissing everywhere and I was trying to keep up. When his lips closed at the end of the kiss and he inched his head back, I tried to mimic and he dove in again ahead of me.
He shifted above me. His broad chest muscles mashed against my breasts. He curled an arm under my neck, cradling me. His elbow on his other arm held him up as his fingers ran through my
hair.
After another minute, he tore his lips from mine. He breathed heavily enough his chest was squashing my breasts.
He licked his lips and swallowed. He kissed my nose. “You and me, Sang,” he said. “I told you I’d take care of you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“This wasn’t your fault.”
“No,” I said. I didn’t know where to start because I needed to say so many things to him. “I mean, I’m sorry about ... I told Marie I’d try to move out. I told her we wouldn’t stay there anymore.”
He nodded and then kissed my nose again. “I know.”
“I don’t know where...”
“You’re staying here with me,” he said.
I jolted under him, getting up on my elbows. He backed up enough, rolling onto his side and holding himself up.
He had to be kidding. Stay here? “But your dad!”
“He’s gone, Sang,” he said. “He’s at rehab.”
“He’ll come back.”
“No, sweetie.” He sighed. He reached out, brushing stray strands of hair from my face and sweeping them away. “He’s going through detox. He’ll be there until he sobers up, and then there’s a job waiting for him in Singapore.”
The news was so out of place, that for a moment, I forgot where Singapore was. Then, when I recalled that it was on the other side of the world, it seemed like a fantasy. So far away. “What? How?”
“He’s got a job offer. Double the money. He’ll be so far away, he won’t come back. Not without us knowing.” He continued brushing his fingertips against my face even without any hair left to move away. “He went after Erica. He went after you. That won’t happen again. He had his chance to recover on his own. I don’t know what caused his breakdown this time...”
“Breakdown?”
He pursed his lips, let out a slow breath. “When the Academy took us in, they took care of him last time. They sobered him up, updated his training and got him a job flying around New York. He’d been doing it, but occasionally he has a relapse and he breaks down. He’ll come home, drink anything he can get his hands on. Usually he gets over it in a weekend. I’d disappear for that time and when I got back, the house was a wreck, but he was gone. Back to what he was.”
“He didn’t do it this time,” I said.
“No,” he said. “I think he was tired of it and wanted to quit. But now he’ll be on the other half of the globe and monitored. If he isn’t working, he finds something to drink. They’ll make sure he doesn’t.”
“But Singapore? So far away?”
He nodded and got up, sitting cross-legged on the bed. “Yeah,” he said. “He’s moving out. You’re moving in.”
My heart thundered. “Really?”
“Mr. Blackbourne tells me this was the plan from the start.” He grinned and shook his head. “You know, I respect him a lot, but he’s such an ass sometimes. He was waiting to tell us. He didn’t want to tell you.”
“Why not?”
“He was going to tell you over dinner since you were still grounded. You were supposed to be staying with Dr. Green until they could figure out what to do with my dad. He knew. When we told him how things went before and after the party, he was already thinking of what it would take to move you out of there.”
“But my dad,” I said. “He asked me to stay.”
“Marie said she’d lie and tell him you’re still around. If he ever comes around, you’ll go say hello and Marie will pretend everything is fine. We even told her if she gave us a warning, we’d go back and help her clean up and make everything look normal.” He shrugged. “But I don’t know if he’ll come back. He hasn’t so far.”
“Oh,” I said. It still stung that he didn’t.
But I didn’t blame Marie to agreeing to all this so easily just to get me out of the house. I’d had boys over. I’d kept secrets. They were for her own good, but if I’d been in her shoes, maybe I’d have been very uncomfortable with me, too. I wasn’t able to tell her why things were the way they were. Secrets made things worse.
“That is if you want to move in. If you’re okay with it,” Nathan said. The glint in his eye faded and his face darkened. “I’m serious. If you don’t like it, we’ll figure something else out.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “You’re okay with it?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Been okay with it. You practically moved in already. First your clothes. Now you.”
I smiled a little. “Didn’t mean to.”
“You totally did. That’s what girls do. They move a toothbrush in and next thing you know, they take over.”
“What about Gabriel? He said...”
“Don’t worry about Gabriel,” he said, and smirked. “He wouldn’t leave Pam right now anyway. But he’ll probably stay the night more though. But most of the time, it’ll be just us.”
I raised my hand, brushing my fingertips across my lip. It wasn’t like before, where I held and pinched. I was feeling his kiss again. I wanted to think about what it would be like here. Moving out? At sixteen? Maybe this was how Nathan felt moving in with me. I felt oddly out of place. I was so dependent on them. They shouldn’t have to put up with me like this.
He caught my wrist and tugged at me, drawing me toward him. I fumbled as I got up. He wrapped an arm around my waist, and pulled me in until I was chest to chest with him. My knees met with either side of his hips. The jeans he wore scratched at the inside of my thighs.
When he had me where he wanted me, he brushed his fingers across my cheek. He kissed me quickly on the lips and then pulled back.
“Nathan?”
“Give me that hand,” he said. He snagged it before I could offer it up. He brought it over to his chest and pushed my palm against his ribs, over his heart. “You feel this?”
My palm met with the thudding of his heart. My own seemed to be beating just as fast. “Your heart?” I asked.
He nodded. “This is yours,” he said.
I took air in, breathing in deeply, and held it. My lips moved but no words came out. Was he really saying this?
He clamped his hand down over mine, locking my fingers with his, keeping my hand on his chest. “It’s been yours for a while. I just never told you.”
My eyes widened. “Nathan,” I whispered to him. But I didn’t know how to respond. I wanted to tell him so many things. All my thoughts jumbled. “You...”
“You’ve had it since I met you,” he said. “The tree gave you up. So I caught you and end of story. This didn’t belong to me anymore.”
A thrill, a whirlwind swept through me, sending my heart spinning. Since we met? It seemed like eons ago, when it was maybe just a couple of months. But I felt a stirring inside me. I didn’t know how to express it.
He released my hand and then tapped two fingers in the same spot against my own chest, just above my breast. “But I want this.”
“I—” I wanted to say yes, okay. Anything. I’d give him anything he wanted. All the emotions inside of me were threatening to explode. His serious blue eyes, that concerned face. I was dying to please him.
His fingers lifted and planted against my lips, silencing me. “But I haven’t earned it yet.”
“Nathan,” I said against his fingers. I wanted to deny that. I was desperate to. It felt wrong.
“No,” he said firmly. “Don’t say anything. Not yet. Not until I’ve earned it. But I’m not going another day holding out on you. We’re going to do everything I said. We’ll go to the movies. I’ll take you out to dinner. We’ll date like normal people do. I’ll give you promise rings, and letterman jackets, and whatever the hell else girlfriends get.” He grinned then and my nervous, spinning heart set me off in a few giggles of my own at his ludicrousness.
I didn’t even know where to start with that. Was he calling me his girlfriend? “What’s a promise ring?”
“I don’t know, but you’re getting one.” He shifted his legs and I bounced in his lap once quickly. I gripped at him to ha
ng on and he smiled wide. “And we’re going to do all that stupid shit together and go to homecoming and prom. And then one day you’re going to give me your heart and we’ll bolt right on out of here.”
My spinning heart came to a stop. “What?”
“Just you and me, Sang,” he said. The grin disappeared and there was only that serious expression. “One day though. Not now.”
I didn’t understand his meaning. Just us. I got that part. But bolting? Where? And why?
“Until then,” he said. He leaned in, kissed my lips quickly and then pulled back. “My heart still belongs to you, but I’ll be waiting for yours.”
He kissed me again and I couldn’t reply. He pulled me to him, pressing against me.
But my mind couldn’t stop wondering; I was soaring and crashing at the same time.
The questions threatened to drown me.
Especially the biggest one: What about the others?
~ A ~
Earlier
Nathan sat on a sofa, monitoring Victor working on a laptop next to him. They were at a Goose Creek hospital, where Erica worked. They were on her floor, but no one knew them and Erica was at home, getting some well-deserved rest after several back-to-back shifts and mental torture from the new manager. A few other nurses on this floor would take today off, too, while some that had been almost fired would be brought back in to cover until schedules got back to normal.
Nathan leaned over Victor, checking his progress. Not that he could understand half of what Victor did when he worked. Victor was tapping into administration files, that’s all Nathan knew.
“Are you in a hurry?” Victor asked, tapping at the keyboard. “Is that why you’re hovering?”
“Sang’s still asleep,” Nathan said. He repositioned himself on the waiting room couch. The good thing about hospitals is that you could blend in easy. Sit in a waiting room, and no one asked questions. He was accompanying Victor as a scout and for protection in case things didn’t go well.
“She’s okay,” Victor said. “Trust me, if she needed a hospital, I would have insisted on it, too.”
Nathan frowned and nodded slightly, but didn’t respond. He stared at a wall, rubbing at his eyes. Lately, everything had been hell. He didn’t want to trust anything.