by Su Williams
Nick passed the puppy into my waiting arms and I held him out to her. “Eddyson. He’s my new, vicious guard dog.” I caught Nick’s smirk out of the corner of my eye and I shot him a playfully glare. Molly stroked the pup’s warm head and soft floppy ears.
“He’s adorable.”
“Yeah. Totally vicious.”
Molly laughed, her off-duty laugh, not so serious. She stepped closer, and whispered conspiratorially. “Wow! So Nick?” I knew what she was getting at. He was absolutely, undeniably gorgeous.
“We’re friends, I guess.”
“Friends?” she eyed me. “Since when?”
“Slightly longer than you and me,” I smiled, and reached out to squeeze her hand, hoping she would understand the fondness I’d developed for her in this short time.
She stepped back, an off-duty grin stretched on her lips. “That was really nice of you to say.”
I smiled back at her. “You’ve been a great help, Molly. I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me.” She returned the pressure on my hand. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure. Whatever you like.”
“You’re brave. I could ask you anything.” She laughed and I continued. “Um, how old are you, anyway?”
“I’ll be twenty-three on Christmas. Why?”
“I was just curious. I didn’t think you were much older than me,” I explained.
Molly and I continued to chat, and I discovered she graduated from Shadle Park High School. Nick wandered around the house, and picked up the mail scattered like fall leaves across the living room. He stopped, completely immobile occasionally to examine an envelope or piece of paper.
“So, you’re sure everything’s okay?” Molly asked, after she received a radio call to an accident.
“Yeah. It’s all good. Nick’s gonna hang with me tonight.” I didn’t think her smile could get any bigger, but it did.
“All right, then. You still have my number if you need anything, right?” She slid effortlessly back into cop mode.
“Yeah. Like I said, it’s all good.”
“All right. Take care. Nice to meet you, Nick,” she called over my shoulder and Nick drifted back to my side.
“Nice to meet you, Molly. Thanks again for checking in on Em,” he smiled. As he shook her hand again, he lingered longer than normal. When he finally released her she blinked dazedly, but smiled, then turned on her heel with a final ‘goodbye’ and left.
“What did you just do?” I accused the moment Molly was out of earshot. Nick shrugged and smiled sheepishly. I glared at him.
“Okay. I just wanted to be sure she was who she said she was, that’s all,” he fibbed.
“Spit the rest of it, mister. You did something else. I could tell.”
“I just made sure she believed that everything was okay…”
Nick’s voice distorted and warbled in my head. His face and eyes turned dark and sinister. He stepped toward me, and crushed my arms in his grip. “And I certainly want her to believe everything is okay,” he said, his voice villainous and foreboding. The words didn’t compute as Nick’s in my brain. I was suddenly very frightened of my new friend and protector.
“Em? Emari? Are you all right?” Nick’s voice overflowed with familiar gentleness and concern. His hands braced me as if I might crumple to the floor at any moment. My vision blurred and refocused on his worry-filled eyes. “Are you okay?”
I pushed away from him. “I…” I shook my head to clear the cobwebs. Part of me wanted to run screaming from his presence, and part of me knew that it was only my fear. Fear that, somehow, something would eventually take him from me. “It’s nothing. I’m just tired. It’s been a long day.”
“Emi,” he whispered. He pulled me to his chest and wrapped me in the strength and warmth of his arms. “Everything will be okay. I promise. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
Anyone? “Even you?” The words slipped out before I could stop them. Nick and I both caught our breath at the same moment. “I’m sorry. That was a horrible thing to say.” He was frozen. I grimaced at the wild thrashing of his heart against my cheek. I was so consumed with the fear of him hurting me, I ended up hurting him. I had hurt him so badly my own heart throbbed with self-inflicted wounds. “I’m sorry.” My tears soaked his shirt and I balled the fabric up in my fists, clung to him in case I’d managed to chase him away.
He slid away from me and cupped my face in his hands, his face hard with pain. “Emi,” he whispered again. I liked this new endearment. “Did I…”
“No. No. It’s just me. I just saw—you were—different—in my head—like a dream—for a moment. I just…” I stuttered and stammered trying to explain but couldn’t.
“May I?” he asked. I nodded silently under his fingertips and closed my eyes. I felt the growing familiarity of his presence in my head. Then, his body went rigid like every muscle was on high alert. I felt him shift as though he was searching the room. His arms drew me close again, his heart still crashed against my cheek. His muscles quivered with tension.
“See? It’s just me,” I reassured us both. Nick nodded and smiled, but remained silent, except for the thunderous gallop of his heart.
*
Nick stayed with me the remainder of the evening, helped me clean up the rest of the mess. He was reticent and tense, and often glanced out the windows to scan the darkness. Just as often, I found him gazing inward, deep in thought.
I couldn’t bring myself to put on the pajamas from my disheveled drawer, not knowing whose hands had been on them. By my own admission, it was a little psychotic. Even so, I was grateful to find my laughing skull fuzzies in the dryer.
Nick watched TV while I showered. When I was done, I blew dry my hair into spiky wisps, but when I turned off the blow dryer Nick’s voice boomed from the other room, loud and hostile. He was arguing adamantly with someone, perhaps his friend Sabre.
“What makes you think it’s her they’re after?”
“I’m sure!” he seethed. “I did a memoryprint. The signature’s all wrong, what tiny fragment he didn’t wipe.”
“I’m staying here. One way or the other, I’m not leaving her alone.”
When I opened the bathroom door, Nick quickly ended his call and snapped his phone shut. “Sabre?” I asked.
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah.”
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” He caught himself answering too quickly. “Yeah,” he began again with a strained smile. “He can just be a pain, sometimes.”
“So? You’re staying?” I didn’t really want him to go. Just being here calmed my frazzled nerves. And then there were the dreams.
Nick’s cheeks reddened. “Emari, it’s just…I’m sorry. I shouldn’t assume. I thought…whoever was here; you’d be safer if I was with you. Is it okay? If I stay? I’d feel better. I could help you sleep.”
I stared at him perplexed. Only last night I had stunned him nearly to death. But that seemed like days ago now. Already addicted to his drug of peace, I wanted him to stay, to bind the night terrors from my sleep.
“Can I sleep with my stun gun under my pillow?”
“No.”
I laughed. “Okay, fine. You can stay. No stun gun.”
Nick hardly said a word the rest of the evening. Maybe I wasn’t as forgiven as I hoped. Maybe I hurt him more than I knew—and more than he would admit. Maybe he was tired of me being such a basket case and just didn’t want to hurt my feelings. Maybe whoever had been in my house was far more dangerous than he was letting on. He’d given me his word I was safe, and I trusted him, or wanted to with every fiber of my being.
When I yawned for the third time, he insisted it was my bedtime. He playfully tugged me off the couch and dragged me, whining in protest, to my room where he held up the covers for me to slide under, then tucked them around me like a child. He placed Eddy next to me, then kicked off his shoes and sat down by my side, leaning on the pillows. I put my head on his chest and closed my eyes
. I felt his warm breath on the top of my head, as he nuzzled my hair. “Mmm. You smell good.”
“Thanks. It’s my cheap knock-off shampoo.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed,” and he rubbed his cheek and nose into my hair, with an incredibly purr-like groan.
“Nick?”
“Hmm?”
“What’s a memoryprint?”
“Hush. I’ll tell you tomorrow. Sleep.”
I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow. I wanted to know now, but perhaps he had good reasons not to explain now.
“Okay, then tell me this. You have to be in physical contact with a person to, uh, transmit a memory, right?” I was remembering his awkward hand movement toward Molly.
“Unfortunately, yes. Sabre and I have discussed trying to learn how to do it from a distance. But we haven’t had anyone to test it on except each other and that kind of doesn’t count.”
“Oh. Well, I would do it for you,” I offered innocently.
“I don’t want to use you like that,” he said haltingly, surprised by my offer.
“I wouldn’t feel used. I want to help.”
“We’ll see.” That sounded like a parental brush off, like he meant ‘no’ but didn’t want to discuss it.
We were silent for several minutes. “Nick?”
“Hmm?
“Did I wake you?”
“No. I don’t really sleep very much.”
“Very much?”
He shrugged, “Depends how much energy I use. Normally, an hour a week is sufficient; I nap a few minutes here and there. If I spend a lot of time weaving or…well, using my abilities, I might need another hour.”
His answer was obviously edited. Did he not trust me? After what I said earlier, about protecting myself from him, how could he not feel distrust? Or was this information he feared would only frighten me more? “Will you sleep tonight?” I felt like a child again, bombarding my father with a million questions to keep myself awake and him talking.
“No. Not tonight.”
I puzzled in silence for a few moments. Something in his demeanor the last few hours left me feeling like, maybe, there was something more than loneliness and bad dreams I needed to fear. “Nick?”
His chest rumbled with laughter. “Yes?”
“Thank you, for staying, for protecting me.”
“Sure, Em. For you? Anything.”
My throat tightened and tears seeped from my eyes dampening his shirt. His body tensed beside me. “You can’t possibly know how much that means to me.”
“I think I have a pretty good idea.” He squeezed me and pressed his lips to my forehead.
“Goodnight, Nick.”
“Goodnight, Emari. Sleep tight. I’ll be here.”
I closed my still-leaking eyes, and counted the motions of his chest the way an insomniac counts sheep, as his breath rose and fell in relaxed rhythm. I ravenously absorbed the warmth that radiated from him in so many different ways; not only his body pressed vigilantly against mine, but from his heart that long ago learned the worth of compassion and understanding.
I made a conscious effort to relax, forced my muscles to soften, my breathing and heart rate to slow. I continued counting his breaths, matched my own to his. Mentally scanning my body, I systematically shut down each tense and aching muscle until only the familiar and incessant pain of my broken heart remained. That pain that never died, never dulled, only shifted in levels of constant ache.
Nick lay so silent and still I’d have believed he was asleep if I he hadn’t given his word that he would watch over me all night. I couldn’t feel him in my head, but somehow I knew he was there, sharing my memories, conjuring a dream.
I shifted against him, nuzzled into his warm chest, ran my fingers along the sinewy muscles of his bicep. Tiny tremors rippled through his body and he melted beneath my touch. It was cathartic, the sensation of his skin under my fingertips, the glide of my fingernails, polished in glossy black, across his smooth skin. My mind and body grew heavy with sleep, my fingers slowed and stilled as I drifted into the nothingness of sleep. Every hardness evaporated. Every ache seeped from the confines of my broken heart, as Nick anointed it with more of his healing salve.
Chapter 12 Lost in the Shadows
My world was motionless all night, but for the intrinsic revolution into the next day and the rhythm of Nick’s breath in sync with mine. All else was still. I awoke, still within the protection of his strong arms, still laying with my head on the solidness of his chest. I couldn’t remember a time that I’d slept so soundly that my body found no need to move the whole night long.
We dragged ourselves from the warmth of the bed, and Nick watched me as I puttered around the kitchen making my breakfast. His silence hung heavily, an ache between us that found a tiny undamaged piece of my heart to shatter. In the quiet of the morning, as I got ready for the day, I apologized again for hurting him. He crossed the room to me and his hands and eyes found mine.
“Emi…”
Yes. I definitely liked how he said my name like that. Like no one else ever had.
“I forgive you,” he whispered, as if anything louder would break me. “I’m not angry with you. Or hurt,” he amended to forestall my next argument.
“You’re so quiet,” I protested.
Nick took my face in his hands, caressed my cheeks with his thumbs, careful of my still-healing wounds. A tiny smile played wistfully on his lips. “Emari, how long have you known me?” I rolled my eyes at the obvious and squirmed under his touch. “I’m thinking. That’s all. Not angry, not hurt. Okay?”
I searched his eyes as though I could read them and I thought, maybe sometimes I could, to a small degree. “Okay.”
After eating breakfast, putting on my face and fixing my hair, Nick and I drove into town to Cash’s to look for my missing bracelet. My heart, captured in white gold, engraved with the one message my parents lived by: Follow Your Dreams. Their love etched eternally as a declaration written in stone. I hoped it was there, sharing a space in a corner with the dust bunnies, and not in the greasy hands of the attacker. My stomach clenched at the thought.
The store felt alien, a hostile planet; no longer a place of safety. I wondered if I really would ever be able to return to work within these walls. It seemed as if places held memories as well as the human brain.
My muscles hardened and locked as we entered the children’s department.
Nick pulled me aside. “You don’t have to do this,” he whispered.
I laughed mirthlessly. “Yeah. I do.”
“You don’t,” he protested.
“It’s okay.” I placed my hand on his chest and searched the depths of those incredible eyes. His heart was transparent through those eyes, revealing his desperation to protect me—even from myself. “I can do this,” I reassured us both.
Nick gave a frustrated huff. I drew myself up, squared my shoulders and took in a deep, cleansing breath. I sucked in confidence, and released a controlled sigh, and with it my tight-wound nerves. After shooting a quick glance at his face to measure his attitude, I forced a smile on my own, and nodded, “I can do this.” I took Nick’s hand and towed him into the department.
Ivy’s piercing squeal rang across the store when she spied us walking down the aisle toward the quad. Her hug nearly bowled me over when she launched herself at me in a shower of tears. She gasped self-consciously then lurched away, her hands fluttering around me, afraid she’d damaged me. I’d been the walking dead the last time she saw me.
“I’m okay. See?” I held my arms out so she could scope me out.
Once the initial squeals, hugs and chick drama were over, she wasted no time in completing a thorough body scan of Nick. Her eyes paused significantly at his hand wrapped firmly around mine. She leaned in on the pretense of another hug. “Damn girl! Who’s the hottie?” Ivy whispered.
Nick averted his eyes and flushed a charming shade of crimson. His lips curled with a self-conscious smile as he pretended no
t to have heard. I giggled and introduced him as a friend from the neighborhood.
Ivy shook his hand in both of hers, and unabashedly, gave him the once over again from head to toe. I could hear the squeaky wheel in her brain rattle and spin as she noted our proximity and our joined hands. “Well, if you’ve got any more ‘friends from the ‘hood’ that are available, just give me a call,” Ivy teased.
“I was gonna check the—uh, stockroom. See if we could find my bracelet,” I told her.
“Em. No. Not a good idea,” Ivy protested.
“I’m good.” I feigned bravery.
She actually snorted. “Fine. Let’s go.”
The three of us headed for the stockroom. As the door came into sight, my blood turned to ice in my veins and I wobbled on my feet. And your little amiga will be next. Nick turned to me in time to see the color drain from my face, and felt my body grow rigid as we approached the ominous door. My stomach clenched in response to a phantom punch.
Nick pulled me to a stop. “It’s okay, Em. I’ll do it. Ivy will help me look.”
No, not Ivy.
“Sure, Sweets. We got it covered,” Ivy chimed in, and squeezed one of my hands.
I nodded gratefully, and choked down the lump in my throat that threatened to suffocate me.
Nick pulled a pen light out of his jacket pocket and gave it a click, while Ivy led the way into the stockroom. I waited just outside the door, leaning against the wall for support. Bent almost in half with my hands on my knees, I inhaled slowly to cool the revolt burning in my stomach, and exhaled the riot that wouldn’t be calmed. I silently willed my taut muscles to relax, and wished Nick had left me some happy puppy memories to distract me. Guess I couldn’t do it after all.
Nick and Ivy searched the stockroom and in the furnace room. I worried what they were talking about. No doubt Ivy would embarrass me with legends of junior high, geek parties and movie nights.
I lurched away from the wall as they exited the room, hope trilled inside me. But one look at Nick’s hard, ashy countenance told me the answer. His hands were shaking when he took both of mine. Maybe this had been too much for him, as well. “Sorry, Em. No luck,” he whispered hoarsely in my ear. His body shuddered violently as he pulled me into his arms and buried his face in my hair. “I’m so sorry, Em.”