by Sarra Cannon
“Please, Hallie, just take the paperwork,” he said, tucking it into the front pocket of her bag as she passed him on her way out. She didn’t care; she would never need it.
Alone. That was the only thought on her mind as she stumbled into the street a few moments later, the title to the Westie clutched in her hand. People jostled her as she stood on the sidewalk—the town square always grew more crowded this late in the day—but they felt distant, far away, distorted by the lonely, toxic bell jar that was her life. She grew lightheaded, attempting to suck in as much breath as possible. She could taste the sweet-scented flowers in the planter beside her, but the fragrant air wouldn’t reach her lungs. Everything was too bright, moving too fast for her. She groped for the brick wall, attempting to follow it to the alley that she knew lined the donut shop. She was almost there, was stumbling blindly, trying to breathe, when a pair of hands captured her wrist and the small of her back and ushered her into the alley.
“Breathe,” said a voice she recognized, and when she looked up, it was the panicked gasp at the sight of Matthew that finally cut through to her lungs. He stood beside her, holding one of her hands in his and rubbing circles on her back with his palm. She held his gaze desperately, clinging to the sight of those cornflower blue eyes, his tanned face shadowed with stubble, the kind creases around his eyes, and the flecks of gold in his brown hair. “Look at me,” he repeated, like a mantra. “Breathe with me.”
And she did. Slowly, her chest opened up and air flowed through her, to her lungs and blood and brain, leaving the ache in her chest that reminded her she was alive.
Chapter 5
Hallie leaned her head back against the grimy alley wall, and Matthew shifted to face her, sliding his hand to the small of her back where it lingered, like her palm in his, as she tried to calm her heartbeat.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” Hallie murmured hoarsely.
Matthew made a noise low in his throat, nodding. “True. But for whatever it’s worth, I don’t mind.”
“Well, I definitely do. You probably think I’m a basket case, on the verge of a psychotic break.”
He tapped her temple. “A very tough basket case, maybe. Too tough for a psychotic break.” He rubbed his thumb against her cheek, his gaze searching hers uncertainly. His touch was instantly soothing, grounding. She closed her eyes, leaning into him as he slid his fingers into her hair and cradled her head, the rough pad of his thumb still grazing her cheek. The tenderness of his hands melted her, calling shivery warm pleasure up from somewhere deep inside her chest. Now, in the light of day, she recognized this calm as the kind he’d given her that night, too, as they knelt in the ice. The deep feeling of peace and familiarity that had calmed her nerves then and now.
After a moment, he sighed and trailed his fingers down the slope of her neck, pulling away just slightly, so that he no longer touched her but his strong, solid frame still invaded her space, pressing her close to the cold brick. He smelled clean, like freshly cut grass with a hint of spice, and she breathed deeply, savoring the way the scent of him wrapped around her and filled her chest.
“I’m not going to ask if you’re all right,” he said.
Hallie’s stomach twinged as she remembered her earlier speech, her demand that he back off. Her face was still tingly and warm where he’d touched her, and in that moment, she wondered what on earth could have possessed her to push him away.
“What I am going to ask is what the hell happened, and how can I help?”
Hallie gave a short laugh and sagged against the wall. “How much time do you have?”
She felt his gaze sweep over her, eyes still searching. “For you… more than you probably realize.” He moved closer and she felt the deep thrum of his voice against her own chest. She shivered.
Then he straightened, took her hand and slung her bag over his shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go sit somewhere. Let’s have ice cream.”
“It’s fifty degrees.”
He shrugged as they stepped out onto the sidewalk and glanced down at her. “So?”
“And I haven’t had dinner yet.”
“Hmm. Do you approach all of your dessert in such a utilitarian way?”
She opened her mouth to argue, but before she could, he tugged her into the crowd, and Hallie felt a bittersweet pang in her chest. By some apparent twist of fate, she’d met a boy—a man, really—who seemed interested in her. He didn’t pity her, or look at her like she was crazy. He was kind and steady and sexy as hell. And he felt… more, somehow, to her. More than anyone she’d ever met. This was just the sort of thing, not so long ago, that she could and would have told Dani.
But Dani was gone, and Hallie needed to move on, away from the lies and abandonment and deception. So she followed Matthew, with his strong arms and gentle smile and penetrating gaze, chasing him down the sidewalk instead.
— —
Matthew’s favorite local ice cream came from Cherrie’s, which was part 50s-style diner, part ice cream shop, and part arcade, so that’s where he took her, figuring it would be innocent enough—not to mention just weird enough—to take her mind off some of her problems.
By the time they made their way through the ice cream line, Matthew with a double scoop cone of cookie dough and chocolate and Hallie with vanilla and pistachio, the place was packed. They squeezed into a booth near the back, unable to escape the rowdy co-eds that had filled the place in preparation for a Friday night out. As they sat down, the jukebox started playing Elvis’ “Hound Dog” for the third time in the row, and the whole restaurant groaned while a table of frat guys near the front high-fived. Matthew rolled his eyes and Hallie laughed softly. Sixty years later, and that song was still annoying young people in diners.
Instead of biting or licking it, Hallie poked at her ice cream cone with a spoon, a small crease in her brow, and he resisted the urge to tease her. Somehow, everything about her tough, wry, focused facade was endearing to him. He marveled at how familiar she seemed, despite being this entirely new person… so unlike Emmaline or Isabella, the two who had come before. He longed to unwind her, to make her laugh and smile, to feel her soften under his touch and gaze. That moment in the alley had been just enough to wreak havoc on his senses, his control… the urge to kiss her, to taste her, even just for an instant, had been unbearable.
He kicked himself. Not a chance, Roanoke. He was here to gain her trust, not to get attached. Even if he wanted to, there was no point to it. Someday, she would die, and he wouldn’t. And anyway, there was no telling if they could manage to have a happy life together, being constantly on edge, constantly on the run. She deserved more than that, better than what he could ever give her.
Yes. She was lovely and of course he would care for her, be friendly and kind to her… but she was temporary. A means to an end, for him. He couldn’t forget that his heart was still chained, still caged, still bound to a poor dead girl—and it wasn’t a part of this.
He definitely wasn’t the person to unwind someone else, anyway, being so wound himself.
“Thank you for this,” Hallie blurted suddenly. Her cheeks were flushed and she kept her eyes fixed on her ice cream as she excavated pistachios with her spoon.
Matthew licked into his own ice cream and nibbled at a big chunk of creamy chewy cookie dough.
“For today,” she continued, “and for that night. That’s twice you’ve kept your head when I was losing it, so I’m lucky we crossed paths like that.”
“Lucky,” he agreed, though the word always made him uneasy. “It was nothing. I’m no stranger to PTSD. Worked for the VA for a bit as a peer counselor… so no one knows better than me that sometimes you’ve just got to ride it out.”
She looked up at him and bit her lip, frowning. She had a sharp gaze, as though she could see past his physical features to something more fundamental, and he shifted in his booth, straightening up, feeling exposed.
“You don’t seem old enough to have been in and out of the arm
y,” she said.
He laughed and tried to keep his voice steady. “I’ll take that as a compliment.” He fingered the paper-wrapped silverware in front of him and took a big bite of his ice cream, which made his teeth ache.
He swallowed hard. “So tell me what happened today.”
He expected resistance, but she simply sighed. “It’s a stupid story. I basically just found out that my entire childhood, which—believe me—wasn’t that great to begin with, was a big fat lie. Dani and her mom, Louisa, have been lying to me about basically everything.”
“Ouch.”
The song on the jukebox switched to Frankie Valli’s “Sherry,” and the four men scooping ice cream behind the counter broke into song. The worry around Hallie’s eyes softened a little.
“Dani is your friend from the accident, right?” Matthew said.
“Right. She and I grew up together, and her mom was basically mine, too. I didn’t have—” She stumbled. “My mom died when I was little, and my dad… he sort of gave up. And then I met Dani and Louisa and they took me in.”
As she spoke, a painful weight had begun to settle in his chest.
“What do you mean, your dad gave up?”
Hallie was quiet. The A/C blasted right above them, rustling the hair on her forehead. She looked over at the table next to them, where a group of girls were huddled around someone’s smartphone and laughing. She opened her mouth uncertainly, as if she wanted to respond but didn’t know what to say.
“He just… couldn’t take care of me anymore. So then Louisa took me.”
He still didn’t quite understand, but he let it pass.
“And Louisa lied to you? About what?”
She took a deep breath. The vanilla ice cream had started to drip down her cone and over her fingers, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“When we were fifteen, we’d stopped for the night at a hotel in Texas. We usually slept in the Westie—that’s the van you saw, the pink one.”
“Right, we - people had them all the time in the sixties.”
“There weren’t any good RV camps on that stretch of highway, so we’d stopped. It was late and we were tired. Louisa left us in the room, and told us she was going to the Walmart for some makeup and supplies for the camper.”
Somehow, immediately, he knew where this was headed. “Please tell me she came back.”
Someone across the restaurant shrieked and Hallie broke off, then gave him a sad smile.
“At first, we thought she’d gotten sidetracked. It wouldn’t have been that strange, so we just stayed in the room and ate from the vending machine and the cooler we traveled with. But then a couple of days passed, and we started to wonder if something had happened to her. We didn’t want to call the police. Neither of us were in school, I didn’t even legally belong to them, and we didn’t want to get separated. And then, the second night, Dani went outside and realized that the van was still in the parking lot, and that Louisa had left the keys in Dani’s coat pocket.
“She left us a note,” Hallie said. “Just left it there on the little fold-out table in the van. She said she loved us, but it was time for us to make it on our own. She’d left us a wad of cash… several thousand dollars. I stretched it thin, made it last. We settled here in Abingford, and we got our GEDs.”
She seemed to realize that her ice cream was melting on her hand, so she tugged a handful of napkins out of the dispenser.
“The thing is,” she said, dabbing her fingers clean, “I’d always thought that Dani and I were on the same page. We were different, really different, but we were honest with each other. No one else grew up like we did. But today, I found out that Louisa’s been in contact with Dani for almost as long as she’s been gone. Louisa comes from money and she’s been sending it to Dani for years, and all along…” Her voice trailed off, and Matthew noticed her hand had begun to tremble. He fought the urge to reach out and steady it.
“Now that Dani’s sick, Louisa wants to give me money too. I don’t know why. It’s a lot of money… more than I’ve ever imagined. But I’m supposed to go find her in order to get it. And I can’t do that, can I? I can’t just go chasing after someone who clearly never wanted me in the first—”
She stopped herself, then dug her spoon feverishly into her ice cream and scooped it into her mouth.
“No,” Matthew agreed, pushing aside the fresh fury that had sprouted in his chest at the knowledge that she’d been hurt so deeply and suffered so much. “No, you can’t.”
She was alone, he realized. Really alone. He knew what it was to be alone, to know so completely that in the whole wide world, you had no one left but yourself. In listening to her, he felt the centuries fall away, and suddenly he was really twenty-five again, restless, rootless and alone, mourning for his best friend and wishing for the slightest sign that that life could be joyful again.
In that moment, he allowed himself to wish with all his heart that he had found her sooner.
The jukebox had paused, so that the din of the coeds was all that remained, but it seemed distant, insignificant, compared to the quiet force of her resilience and the connection he felt flowing between them. Every part of his body longed to reach for her, to gather her up in his arms and show her that they weren’t alone—not anymore, not really. Not as long as they were together.
Another part of him, though, deep down in the rational corner of his mind, reminded him that his plan was to leave her more alone than ever before. It was what he had to do. He just hadn’t been prepared to feel that old protectiveness rise in him again, as though he had something—someone—to fight for, to defend.
Someone had picked a new song. Elvis, again.
“Wise men say,” Hallie quoted softly. “Only fools rush in.”
Matthew slid the glass ketchup bottle to the center of the table, rolling it between his hands. “He really knew what he was talking about, huh?”
All the things he wanted to say, like I’m sorry and I’m here for you and You’re lovely and Let me care for you seemed either too much or not enough.
A waitress with a curly blonde wig, bright red lipstick, and a rumpled poodle skirt appeared next to their table. Matthew tried not to laugh. Sometimes, the collective memory of this country astounded him.
“Sorry for the delay,” she said, adjusting her wig, “it’s a mad house in here. Can I get you two lovebirds anything to eat?”
“We just had ice cream, actually,” Hallie replied politely.
“You don’t want a burger and fries to go with that?”
Matthew shook his head. “No, no, my colleague here never eats dessert first.” He grinned at Hallie, whose half-glare, half- smile betrayed reluctant amusement. “I, however, could definitely go for two cheeseburgers and two fries,” he told the waitress, who jotted it down and hurried off.
“What?” he said to Hallie, who had raised her eyebrows. “I’m hungry.”
But when the waitress brought his burgers and fries, he slid one plate over to her and she hummed appreciatively. He watched her douse her fries in ketchup and hot sauce.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Did you want some fries with that ketchup?”
She reached over and squirted a huge dollop of ketchup right in the middle of his fries. “Did you?”
Laughing, he poked the puddle of ketchup with an extra long fry. “Touché.”
As they ate, she chatted about the classes she was taking and the classwork she was trying to make up. He told her about Carla, the curly-haired brain-with-glasses leading the Belleyre project with Dr. Signer, and about Leslie and Jake, the other two grad students on the project, who were only there because it was a part of their academic funding package.
“Why are you there?” she asked him. When she wasn’t anxious or sad, her eyes shone bright and curious.
“Me? Interest, I suppose. It’s an interesting story, don’t you think? Mysterious writer buries her work and disappears? It would be great if we could find out what happened to her. And great
for Dr. Signer, too. She’s built her career on answering this question.”
“She’s a good professor, isn’t she?”
“One of the best,” he agreed.
Just then, the door to the diner rang and Caleb and Derek, his only two friends, entered. He supposed they were friends, though the name didn’t quite ring true, since they didn’t know the truth about him. But Caleb, who had the gift of Sight, had brought them all together, insisting that they were meant to be friends. Matthew the Immortal and Derek the Empath.
Derek and Caleb, Matthew had realized, were gifted humans… the kind the Guard had come to value. And Matthew liked having them on his side, for once. It made staying off the Guard’s radar a little easier.
Broad shouldered and handsome, Derek spotted them first and nudged Caleb, who rubbed at his beard. It had finally started to fill out; Matthew made a mental note to tease him about it. But as they neared, he felt the sudden the urge to shield Hallie from view. He wasn’t ready, yet, for them to know about her. He didn’t want to have to explain why a sworn, cursed bachelor (that was all they knew about him, that he was “cursed”) was hanging around with a young woman whose life had clearly gone off the rails. They would be suspicious of his motives… and he could only imagine the shame he’d feel at their angry, disappointed looks, if he tried to tell them the truth. But keeping the truth from someone as intuitive as Caleb wouldn’t be easy.
“Hey, man,” Derek said as they approached their table. “We’ve been looking all over for you. Don’t you ever check your phone?” He grinned at Hallie. “I’m Derek.”
Hallie bit her lip and shifted in her seat, and Matthew knew their arrival had disoriented her. “I’m Hallie,” she said. She bumped her water glass as she reached for her napkin, then took a drink instead as Derek settled in beside her.