Reborn (Altered) (19 page)

Aggie had left early to run some errands, even after working half the night at the hospital, so I had the kitchen all to myself. I decided I’d make French toast for Nick and me, using Aggie’s special recipe. I never made it as good as she did, but I could get close enough.

I grabbed my iPod, picked a pop music playlist, and stuck in my earbuds. I loved cooking while listening to music. It took less than five minutes to grab all my dishes and ingredients, save for the eggs. Aggie tended to bury the carton in the bottom of the fridge. I rummaged around inside, found the eggs, and grabbed four, coddling them in my arm.

As I straightened, a fast-paced song blaring in my ears, someone tapped my shoulder, and I yelped. The eggs dropped to the floor and splattered across my bare feet, globs of the whites squishing between my toes.

“Sorry,” Nick said when I pulled out the earbuds. “I knocked, but…”

My heart hammered in my throat, and I was having a hard time catching my breath. I shoved the refrigerator door shut and collapsed against it, bringing my hand up to my forehead, shielding my eyes.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I didn’t hear you, is all.” I held up the earbuds by way of explanation. “I just need a second.”

He went to the end of the peninsula and leaned into it, arms folded across his chest as he waited.

I kept telling myself not to freak out.
Do not freak out.

When my hand fluttered at my mouth as if to quiet the ragged gasps coming out of my throat, I inhaled and caught the scent of my Hope oil mix. I’d dabbed it on my wrists this morning after my shower, and the smell reminded me of my normal life, the life I was desperately trying to have.

It reminded me of Nick, too, and that Nick was here, and I was in my own home, and I was safe.

Nervous chills made my shoulders shake, but my breathing slowed and my heartbeat returned to normal. Another panic attack diverted. Dr. Sedwick would be proud.

“Are you good?” Nick asked, his voice even and husky, but his eyes pinched with concern—an expression I hadn’t seen on him before.

I nodded. “I’m good.” I grabbed a towel from the cupboard and wetted it as Nick cleaned up the broken eggshells, scooping up as much of the guts as he could. I knelt on the floor next to him.

“I thought you were going to sleep in.”

“I was.”

“But?”

“But… I couldn’t sleep.”

I started to ask if something was wrong, but his jaw tensed and he said, so hoarsely I’d have sworn he had a cold, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay.”

We finished cleaning up the eggs in silence and stood at the kitchen sink together, washing our hands. The daylight pouring through the window accentuated Nick’s blue eyes and the shadows spreading beneath them.

“I was going to make French toast,” I said. “We can eat here in the house, instead of the carriage house, if you want.”

He nodded. “Would you like me to help?”

I thought about it, about cooking with him next to me, watching him crack open an egg, pour in the milk. Seeing him perform such domestic tasks might be amusing. After all, his hands looked more used to making fists than cracking eggs. But I got the feeling he was only asking to be polite.

“I can manage on my own. You can just hang out and relax.”

A lock of hair fell across his forehead as he nodded again and settled in at the table.

We ate in silence. The more I got to know Nick, the more I realized the
real
him, the Nick he didn’t show often, was the quiet one. I liked silence, too, and it was a rare quality to find in other people. Most can’t stand the empty pauses, as if they can’t bear to be alone with their own thoughts.

I’d spent six months locked in a single room, but really I’d spent those months locked in my own head. Silence was familiar, like an old friend.

When we finished eating, I cleared our dishes, but decided to put them in the dishwasher later so I could follow Nick into the living room. He took his time circling the room, examining the things on the wall, the pictures on the mantel. He paused at a picture of my mother hanging above one of Aggie’s old sideboards.

“Who is that?” he asked. He frowned at the picture, as if he were
trying to figure out the identity of the woman without the benefit of my explanation.

“That’s my mom.”

I wondered if he saw the similarities between us. The dark wavy hair. The big green eyes. The nose that seemed too small for its face.

We were so similar in appearance, but so different on all other levels. My mom was smart, the kind of smart that won awards and titles and memberships in special clubs. She was one of the top doctors at Cosmell Medical Center. She was determined in everything and ambitious, too.

My favorite thing about her, though, was her spontaneity, the way she’d come up with something and act on it moments later, damn the consequences. When I was little, she was always pulling me from one thing to another. Out of ballet, into gymnastics, out of school, to the ice cream shop.

One night, after it’d been raining for two full days, she crept into my room at midnight, shook me awake, and handed me a raincoat and rubber boots that looked like ladybugs.

“Come on,” she whispered in the dark, pressing a finger to her lips. “This is our little secret.”

It was always like that, secrets between us, adventures kept from my father, the man who was the opposite of spontaneity, devoted as he was to his schedule.

I dressed quickly. I couldn’t help but be swept up in her excitement when she was like that, as if we were always on some grand mission.

Mom took my hand and hurried me down the hallway, out the back door, and into the backyard. The night was dark, the stars and moon blotted out by the rain clouds. There was one lone light in the yard—a battery-powered lantern that Mom had hung from the big cherry tree. It cast golden light that glittered on the puddles that had gathered in furrows.

Mom squeezed my hand tighter and twirled me around like a ceramic ballerina in a jewelry box. The rain was warm and slow, as if it wanted to take its time disappearing into the soil beneath our feet. It clung to Mom’s hair in fat droplets and ran down her cheeks like sweat.

I giggled in the dark, and Mom pressed her finger to her lips again and said, “Shh. We don’t want to wake Daddy! This is only for us, remember?”

I nodded and smiled and clamped my mouth shut.

Only for us.

Rain still felt like that, like a secret.

But now, when I looked at pictures of her, all I saw was the terror in her eyes when her life had been threatened to gain my cooperation. I would have done anything they asked of me if it meant protecting her.

“What’s her name?” Nick asked, dragging me from the memories.

“Moira. Moira Creed.”

He turned away from the picture and toward me. “Were your parents still together when you went missing?”

I shook my head quickly. “They split up a long time ago. My mom wanted us to have the same last name, so she never changed hers back. Just made things easier, I guess.”

He didn’t say anything in response and left the living room for the parlor. Aggie and I hardly ever set foot inside it. It was done in the traditional Victorian style, with rose-red wallpaper and dark woodwork. The windows were draped in heavy curtains, and the hardwood floor was covered in threadbare rugs.

The furniture was traditional as well, and Aggie had a complete matching set. There were four chairs and one settee. The wood frames were hand-carved mahogany, and the upholstery rose-colored damask. I respected that they were old, and that someone had taken a lot of time to make the set, but it was ridiculously uncomfortable.

Nick stopped just over the threshold and stared at the baby grand piano in the corner of the room. “Do you play?” he asked me.

“No. Do you?”

His eyes narrowed as he thought. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know if you can play the piano?”

He went over to it and pulled out the bench. I followed and sat beside him, our legs pressed together. With his index finger, he reached out and touched a key, then gave it a tap. The note vibrated through the room. It’d been forever since I’d heard anyone play. Aggie didn’t either. It was her daughter’s piano, and Aggie hadn’t had the heart to get rid of it after her daughter died.

Nick stretched out his fingers, one after the other, testing the keys
beneath, as if the ivory suddenly felt familiar. He pressed a key, then another, and then suddenly he was playing, his fingers running over the keys with quick, decisive precision.

I slid off the bench, stunned, in awe, wanting to see the whole picture, see it from afar.

The more notes he strung together, the more his body loosened, as if whatever strings held him permanently taut had been severed.

The music turned darker, deeper, the rich notes hitting me in the chest until there was nothing but the music and me, until it filled every corner of the room, every hollow of my senses.

I closed my eyes as Nick hit a few higher notes, striking them softly as the deeper ones played beneath with a steady
thrum
and
drum
. The song reminded me of so many things. Of rain and thunder, of bare feet on cool sand, of pomegranate seeds bursting open between your teeth.

And then suddenly the music was gone and Nick’s hands—the same hands that had just created something so real that I felt it in my soul—shook me and I opened my eyes.

“You okay?” he asked, and without thinking, without doubting, without waiting, I reached up on tiptoes and kissed him.

He stiffened immediately, and I could almost hear his uncertainty.

But then he was kissing me, too, pressing back until I rammed into the wall and rattled the picture frames. He didn’t stop. I didn’t stop. He placed one hand at the small of my back, driving me closer. The other he ran behind me, to my neck, and my skull vibrated at his touch.

I felt his tongue graze my lips, and I answered, parting, letting him in. My breath came quickly, my insides quaking.

And then, just as quickly as it began, it ended and Nick pulled away. “Elizabeth,” he said, hoarse and wavering, “this can’t happen.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not one of the good guys.”

The side door banged open and I jumped. Aggie’s voice carried through the house. She was talking to someone, but I couldn’t tell if she was on the phone, or if someone was with her. Curious, I stepped through the doorway into the living room and caught a glimpse of Dr. Sedwick following Aggie down the hall toward the den.

I turned back to Nick, to say something,
anything
, but he was already gone.

27

NICK

I STUMBLED INTO THE APARTMENT ABOVE the garage, my fingers clenched into fists. When the door slammed shut behind me, I slumped against it and scrubbed at my face.

What the hell just happened?

The piano.

Elizabeth.

Her mouth on mine.

I needed to move. I needed to do something. I needed to get out of here.

I threw the door back open and thundered down the stairs, down the driveway. I wasn’t wearing running clothes, but I didn’t care. I could run in a snowsuit if I had to.

On the street, I turned left, heading away from town. With my legs moving beneath me, arms at my sides, shoulders loose, lungs pumping, I started to feel more like myself.

I’d hardly ever pushed a girl away. If someone offered a hookup, I almost always took it. And the fact that I’d stopped Elizabeth, even though she was clearly up for it, left me feeling detached from myself—the immoral version of myself I’d grown accustomed to. It was screwed up that I was freaking out over the fact that I’d actually done something right for once, but no one ever said I was a perfect picture of stability.

Add to this whole fucked-up situation the fact that I apparently played the piano, and I felt like I’d just body swapped with someone.

The piano.

The thought pulled me to a stop. Suddenly, as if the memory had never been gone, I knew how I’d learned to play.

Connor. The head of the Altered program. He’d made me take lessons.

“You have no discipline,” he’d said. “And you lack focus.”

“And learning how to play the piano is supposed to teach me those things?”

Although I seriously wanted to know the answer to that question, my voice had been laced with a heavy dose of sarcasm.

But instead of an explanation, all I’d gotten was a yes.

I didn’t admit to it, but I actually liked playing the piano. And I was good at it.

Now that the memory had returned, I couldn’t wait to play again. And an irritating voice in the back of my head said,
You can’t wait to kiss Elizabeth again, either
.

I told that voice to shut it. I couldn’t get close to Elizabeth like that. No matter what.

28

ELIZABETH

THROUGH THE PARLOR WINDOW, I WATCHED Nick take off. I thought about calling after him but decided against it. He’d pushed me away. And in truth, he was right, to some degree. He wasn’t one of the good guys, in the sense that he wasn’t a normal guy who went to high school and played basketball with his friends in the afternoon and hung out at the lake at night.