Ignited (19 page)

“To be a fighter, you have to have strength and muscles.” I forced myself to not look at Nathan’s. On him, they looked amazing. On women, muscles like that looked hideous. “I don’t want to get all big, and bulky, and ugly like those women boxers and body builders.”

He chuckled again. “That’s what you’re worried about?”

Boy, he was in a good mood today. While I wanted to enjoy the rare occasion, I was stressing way too much. I didn’t consider myself beautiful, by no means, but I did take pride in my appearance. Fighting all the time would surely take its toll.

“Yes, I’m worried,” I whined. “You can’t tell now, but I used to take care of myself. All this sweating is doing terrible things to my hair and skin. I can’t imagine how much worse it could get if I had to do this all the time.”

His eyes brushed over me, and I would have liked to think he was really checking me out, but I knew better. To him, it was merely an indifferent observation of my appearance. Then again, that was probably a good thing, considering I looked like a gross sweaty bum.

Why did I care anyway?

“I think you’ll be fine,” he said dismissively.

“Whatever. You’re a guy.”

“That kind of makes my opinion valuable, don’t you think?”

“Maybe,” I admitted like I didn’t care. Truth was I couldn’t help wondering what his opinion was. “But ‘I think you’ll be fine’ isn’t very encouraging. It’s a typical guy response.”

He sighed and shook his head at the ground. When we reached the porch, he bounded up the steps ahead of me, opened the door, and stood aside, waiting for me. He looked more annoyed than anything as I took my time sulking up the steps. 

“It won’t happen,” he said quietly, reluctantly, as I passed by him.

“What?” I asked, pausing in the doorway.

He gave me a lopsided smile. “You won’t turn big and ugly.” He made a face like he wasn’t satisfied with his wording. “I mean…” He seemed to be searching for the right words, but eventually shrugged, defeated. “I don’t really know what I mean, but I know that what you’re afraid of won’t happen. It’s not possible. I mean, you’re…” 

I raised my eyebrows as his words trailed off. Did he think I was pretty? Had he almost said that?

I had to admit, I was getting a kick out of watching him squirm. Turned out he had a vulnerability after all. Odd that it would be girls. Guys that looked like him were usually full of themselves. Not Nathan. Girls made him nervous. Or was it just me?

Either way, I decided to throw him a bone. “Well, thank you. I think.”

He shrugged, still looking puzzled, and I didn’t hide the smile on my face as I waltzed inside ahead of him.

Did he think I was pretty?

Seriously, was it possible? What else could he have been trying to say?

You’re too...

I spent the duration of my shower obsessing over the possibilities, but I kept coming back to pretty as the most likely option. Or beautiful. Or hot. It didn’t matter. They all meant the same thing.

Nathan thought I was pretty
.

Reaching that conclusion on the heels of physically dominating him, even if it was a short-lived victory, made my day. By the time I finished in the shower and wrapped myself up in a towel, I was floating on clouds.

That only made the fall that much harder. 

I wiped my hand over the steamy mirror to study my reflection, and maybe find a way to do something with my hair that didn’t involve a ponytail. Instead, I could only stare in horror at what I saw.

Or didn’t see, rather.

I brushed my damp hair to the side, clearing it from my forehead in a frenzy, though it was pointless. It wasn’t hidden. It wasn’t misplaced. I hadn’t forgotten where it was. It was gone. The hideous, repulsive scar was completely gone. I traced a finger over the course I knew it had followed. Nothing was left. Not a dimple. Not a faint line. Nothing.

I knew I should be happy to be rid of the ugly thing, but I wasn’t.

My fist shot out and connected with the mirror, shattering it. A chunk of glass fell to the counter and exploded into hundreds of tiny shards. I didn’t feel the pain in my hand until I saw the blood run down my arm. Even then, it wasn’t that, but the ache in my chest that dropped me to my knees as I sobbed their names over and over.

Lauren and Megan. Their memories were like daggers floating around loosely in my chest. Every now and then, one would strike my heart—and the pain was excruciating.

It wasn’t fair. Why they died, why I lived, why I had to go on, pretending the events of that night had not darkened my soul forever. Sometimes, I thought it would have been easier to die alongside them, than to face their loss day after day.

Why did he have to save me? 

And then he was there, scooping me up off the floor. Despite me thrashing in his arms, he easily carried me to the bed, where I was dropped with an unforgiving thud. He left me to return to the bathroom, only to hurry back with another towel. I winced as he wrapped it around my hand in an effort to stop the bleeding.

As an afterthought, I wished he had thought to bring another one. I was feeling rather exposed, sprawled on the bed in nothing but a thin towel that insisted on creeping up my thighs to the point of indecency. Good thing I was too upset to really care about how much skin was exposed. Even better that Nathan’s focus was on my hand, and not that.

“What happened?”

I shrugged. “I punched the mirror.”

“I can see that. Why?” He looked at me, and he saw the answer with his own eyes. His hand rose, and stopped just before his fingers brushed against my forehead. He lowered it again without touching me. “I didn’t even notice. That was fast.”

My lip trembled. With the loss of the one thing that connected me to them, I felt as if I were losing them all over again. My life was falling apart, again, and that was all he had to say?

“I’ve never seen a scar heal that fast,” he added, more to himself than to me.

“I didn’t want it to heal,” I wailed.

He blinked, looking confused. Of course he didn’t understand. It was
my
connection to them. Not his. I tried to push past him. Where to, I didn’t know yet. I just wanted to get away, to be alone with my misery, but I couldn’t even do that. He gripped me by the shoulders and forced me back on the bed.

“Stay down,” he ordered between clenched teeth.

I swatted at his arms that were pinning me down. “Let me go!”

“You lost too much blood already. Let me get the glass out of your hand, stop the bleeding and I’ll let you go. Until then...” He shoved my shoulders into the mattress forcefully, and held me there. “Stay still.”

“I don’t want your help!”

He looked at me like I was a stranger to him. “What’s wrong with you?”

I didn’t answer his question, because I didn’t really know what was wrong with me, aside from temporary insanity. Instead, I spit out questions of my own in a fit of rage. “Why didn’t you save them? Huh? Why did you let them die?”

“Kris—”

“
Why
?” I shoved him in the chest with enough force that he rocked back and his weight lifted off my shoulders. I finally sat up, coming face to face with him. “Why did they have to die?” My voice cracked on the last word, and the sound shattered my resolve.

After watching my world crumble around me little by little, I had reached the point of breaking. After trying to be so strong for so long, I finally gave in.

As the onslaught of emotion shook my body, Nathan gripped ahold of my shoulders to support me. Even though I was mad at him for his role in my collapse, I let him. He was also all I had left in my pathetic mess of a life. As the tears came, I leaned forward, unable to support my own heavy head, and rested it against his chest.

After a brief hesitation, his hands slid up and down my bare arms in a comforting motion and, despite the simplicity of the gesture, it did help. The tears slowed, my breathing steadied, and I leaned back. The anger lifted, leaving me with nothing but grief.

And the knowledge that there was very little covering my body, and parts of it were touching Nathan’s. He must have realized the same thing, because he abruptly pulled away and stood. His eyes avoided mine as he retrieved the blanket from the couch and wrapped it around my shoulders.

His hands slid down to grip my forearms, and only then did he look at me. “Kris?” He sounded genuinely concerned.

I hugged the blanket around me, kept my eyes downturned to avoid his. “Why didn’t you save my friends, Nathan?”

“I couldn’t.”

I looked up, unable to hide the disbelief, or the resurgence of anger, on my face. “Really couldn’t? Or couldn’t so that your existence would remain a secret?”

There was a flash of something in his eyes. Something I didn’t recognize. Anger I knew. This was different; almost like...hurt.

I knew it was unfair of me to accuse him of something that callous, but I was hurting, and maybe I wanted him to know how much I was, and how that day had ripped me apart, and I hadn’t found a way to be whole again. Maybe I wanted him to hurt too.

“No, Kris. I
couldn’t
.”

“Did you even try?” He reacted with that poker-faced non-reaction of his I had grown to hate. “Did you know that Lauren drowned? She was alive when you pulled me out of the car. Did you know that?”

He shook his head slowly, and the haunted look in his eyes told me he was telling the truth. Actually, he looked down right devastated.

Good. I could use some company.

“Lauren,” he repeated softly. “What was the other one’s name?”

I folded my arms over my chest, refusing to stop being upset with him just because he seemed to be taking this news hard. “Megan.”

“And she...”

“She died on impact. Steering wheel to the chest, they said.”

I had heard her screams, and the way they had abruptly stopped, long before the car flipped into the water. For her, it had been quick. For a long time, I envied her.

Nathan stared at our feet as he digested what I told him. Part of me wanted to reach out and touch his arm, tell him I was sorry for blaming him, that I didn’t mean it. Not really. The other part of me—the louder, more stubborn part—stuck my ground. I still wanted answers from him. I still wanted to know
why
. 

“I didn’t want for your friends to die, Kris,” Nathan muttered as he finally looked up at me again. “If I could have done anything, I would have. I hope you know that.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“I told you I couldn’t.”

“That’s a bullshit answer and we both know it.” He was hiding something. I was at a loss as to what. Or why.

“I know you don’t understand, and you probably never will...”

“Make me understand,” I pleaded.

“It won’t help anything.”

“How can you say that? It has to help. Nothing could be worse than what I’m already going through.”

His expression told me he didn’t have the same opinion, though I couldn’t imagine how. He saved me, not them. It was the worst kind of guilt. Nothing could make that any worse. Why couldn’t he give me some explanation? Tell me he did try. Tell me he failed. Tell me something.

Help me to heal.

“Please, Nathan?”

“You’re not going to understand,” he said with a warning tone.

“Try me.”

His face twisted into a grimace, and he sighed heavily. “Lie down, let me dig the glass out of your hand, and I’ll tell you what happened.”

Wordlessly, I lie back on the bed and raised my hand in the air, surrendering it to him. He looked both surprised and relieved, but instead of immediately digging into it, he ran out the door with an, “I’ll be right back.”

He returned with one of the weapons from the shed. It looked like one of those multifunctional knives, with a ton of gadgets. He produced a set of tweezers from out of nowhere.   

I snatched my hand away before he could touch it. “Not diamond coated, right?”

He grabbed my wrist and, with his head bent down as he studied the cuts, all I could see of his smile was the dimple in his cheek. “Not diamond coated. I promise.”

I grimaced as he withdrew a shard of glass. Really, what had I been thinking? Sometimes I didn’t think things through. Punching a mirror probably topped the list in terms of stupidity.

Yet again, Nathan was here to bail me out.

He has never let me down. Not even that night. Now that I had calmed down, I was able to appreciate what he had done for me. I would never get over the loss of my friends, but I was wrong in blaming Nathan.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled.

He removed another glass fragment and set it on the bed beside me. His eyes skimmed over mine on their way back to my hand.

“I don’t blame you,” I added.

He was concentrating on my hand, but I detected the slight nod of his head. I counted it as a silent acceptance of my apology.