"It's okay, Nick." I grab his hand and squeeze it. "It's not your job to save the world."
"But I have to." He lets out this man growl that sounds like a professional wrestler gone bad. All the veins in his neck bulge and pop. "I'm trying, okay. I am really trying."
"Why? Why are you trying so hard?"
He keeps holding my hand. His eyes meet my eyes. "Why are you?"
Anger rushes out of me from somewhere inside. And I'm surprised, because I had no idea it was there.
"Because I couldn't save my dad. There. I said it. Okay? You happy?"
I try to pull my hand away but he won't let me. He pulls over and stops the car.
"No. Not happy. I'm honored that you told me, though." His jaw is so straight and his eyes are so deep, like a tree where the bark is all textured.
"I'm sorry. I don't know why I was so mad."
"It's okay." His thumb drags across the skin of my hand, the one that's not scraped up.
He unbuckles his seat belt and turns his body so he faces me, blocking out the entire window of the driver's side door. God, he's huge. He rests one arm on the steering wheel. The other lays across the back of the seats. His solid fingers thrum against the upholstery. I turn to face him.
"How's your hand?" he asks, like everything is all normal.
"Fine."
"And your head?"
"Fine," I say. I want answers. "You're changing the subject."
He smiles. "I know. Most girls around here would take the opportunity to tell me all about their injury, then they'd tell me about their clothes and shopping, and the way their parents mistreat them."
"I'm not most girls."
"That's true."
"I'm not into pity parties."
He raises his eyebrows and I turn my hand up so I can see my scrape from last night. It isn't too bad at all, just a bunch of lines.
Nick grabs my wrist. I shiver. Nick gentles his hold.
"Do you know what these lines look like?" he asks.
I shake my head.
"The rune for protection," he says, not touching the lines, but tracing the air above them.
"You know about runes?" I'm ridiculously shocked. He looks like all he knows about is working out and sports. But he does have Edward Abbey in his car. Who exactly is this guy?
"Do you?"
Sorrow hits me hard. I remember my mom trying to read my fortune, tossing the bone-colored rune stones on our coffee table, teasing me about all the boyfriends I would have someday. Then my dad trying to read the future of the world.
I swallow.
"My mom liked them. And my dad, my dad was really into them. My stepdad."
"Betty's son?"
"Yeah."
I take my hand away and settle it into my lap. Then I realize he's doing it again. "You're still trying to distract me."
He shrugs and doesn't look contrite or anything.
"That's not fair," I say.
"You expect me to play fair?"
"Heroes are supposed to play fair."
"Heroes?"
"Isn't that what you're trying to be? Mr. Rescue Man?"
I reach out to fidget with the dial that shifts the air into the cab of the MINI.I open and close the heating vents. I run a finger along the dust on the dashboard.
"Okay. Ask away," Mr. Rescue Man finally says.
"Really?"
There are a million questions I could ask him. What happened to Devyn? Why is Maine so damn cold?
How can we find Jay Dahlberg or the Beardsley boy? Why does he have such a hero complex?
But I don't ask any of those. I ask the silliest question of all, the shallow question. It just comes off my tongue. l am not proud of it.
My finger draws a line in the dashboard. It starts to curve like a heart. I stop it and then I just ask him my question.
"Do you like me? You know,like me like me?"
I cringe the moment I ask and cover my face with my hands. The smell of blood and trail dirt wafts into my nose. Something sinks inside me. What is it? Oh, I know, any dignity I could possibly have left.
"Can I take that back?" I ask softly from behind my hands.
Nick's voice is low and warm "No."
I peek between my fingers. "No, I can't take it back or no, you don't like me?"
His fingers wrap around my fingers and he pulls my hands from my face so he can look at me, I guess, or else so I can look at him.
"No, you can't take it back. That's your question," he says in a voice so deep and warm and full of things that I can't get mad anymore. This has to be what people mean when they say they "melted." I feel all wiggly.
"Oh," I say. "Okay."
I swallow. His eyes are deep and brown and… How can a man's eyes be so ridiculously beautiful and gorgeous, so full of things that I want to know?
"So, what's your answer?" I whisper, afraid I might still screw it all up.
Those eyes of his widen a little bit.
I hold my breath.
"I like you, Zara," he says.
I breathe out. Something like joy surges up inside me. I remember leaning against him on the couch. I remember the feel of his chest beneath my head. It had felt so good and safe. Had I really not been just hallucinating? Maybe my concussion hadn't thrown me all out of whack? Maybe what I was hoping for was something that was actually possible?
The wind blows some old leaves across the driveway.
"You like me?" I repeat, because, well, I want to be really, really sure that I heard him right. This is not the sort of tiling you want to get wrong.
He nods and says, "Very much."
"You like mevery much?"
He lets go of my hands and touches my check. "Too much."
"Too much?" Trying to keep my voice calm, I say, "No such tiling."
"If you only knew…"
"Tell me then."
He leans closer. One inch, another, oh God, oh okay. Yep. I think he's going to kiss me. Okay. Okay.
Another inch. Obviously not a pixie, right?
And then he jolts up straight, rigid, like he's been shocked. His eyes glaze over. I swear his nostrils flare, like he's repulsed by the smell of my hair or something, and then his words rush out, "Get in the house now. I have to go."
"Go? Go where?"
What? What had just happened? Wasn't he going to kiss me? Had I imagined that? My heart thuds and falls silent. I am not sure if it is beating at all. It's a great big hole there. He doesn't like me at all… does he?
I want to clutch at his arm, to make him stay, but I don't. I won't. I am not that pathetic. "Where are you going?"
"The woods. I'll be right back."
He leaps out of the MINI and rushes off toward the forest, not even shutting the door. I bound out after him, shutting my door and running to his side of the car.
"Nick? What is it?"
He tosses the words over his shoulder but doesn't slow his pace. God, he's fast, faster than at crosscountry or in gym, almost superhuman fast. I think he's even faster than Ian. "Go in the house. Don't let anyone in except me and Betty. I'll be right back."
Everything inside of me just crashes, all my internal organs fall, but it's not the hollowed-out pain that I'm used to these last few months. No. It's the same kind of pain that I felt right when my dad died: sharp, piercing, all over.
"I'll be back," he yells and then he is gone, rushing into the trees, swallowed up by the density of the forest, by the darkness.
I shut his door and shiver. The sun has started to set.
"Go in the house, Zara!" he yells one more time. I can't see him, but his voice comes to me, faint and far away. "Go in the house."
So I do.
I know I should try to spend the next hour inside Betty's house doing chores and not worring about things, but it doesn't work out. Dread makes its home in my sternum. Just kind of nestles there. What if Nick goes missing, like Jay Dahlberg or the Beardsley boy?