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But over the past few months, all of that had dropped away. She was lonelier than she had ever been. She had thought, maybe, with Charlie, she might be building something like a relationship. But now that was gone as well. 

She reminded herself that she hadn’t done anything to earn his trust—the opposite, in fact. Trust was something she had abused with every lie she told, and now she couldn’t be surprised that she had used up her supply. But the fact that he had jumped to conclusions, hadn’t even given her a chance to explain, said more about his trustworthiness than it did hers. 

He really was just like all the other boys. He would say anything to get his hands on her body, but when it came down to it he didn’t have her back.

If only she could lie to herself. Then she would be able to deny how much she had wanted him to be different.

Above her head, something ticked against the window. She looked up, then down to the street below.

Charlie was standing in her driveway.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered indignantly.

“Come down,” he replied.

“Absolutely not,” she said, swinging her legs inside the window.

“Please?”

She paused. She wasn’t sure she had ever heard Charlie plead for anything. “What do you want?”

“I need to talk to you.”

He looked so handsome, standing in her driveway with the moonlight in his hair. Her treacherous heart yearned. 

“No,” she said, to herself as much as him. “Come back tomorrow.”

She started to close the window when another pebble hit the side of the house. “Stop that!”

“I need to talk to you now,” he clarified.

“You’ll wake my aunt,” Briar hissed.

“So come down,” he said. When she hesitated, he held out his open palm. “I’ve got a fist full of pebbles and I’m not afraid to use them.”

Briar rolled her eyes. “Fine. Give me a second.”

Her black and white saddle shoes were near the end of the bed. She jammed her feet into them but didn’t bother with the laces. She was angry at him, she reminded herself. That’s why her heart was pounding in her chest.

She went back to the window and climbed out on the sloping roof that covered the garage. Norine’s bedroom was next to hers, and Briar peeped in before she darted past. 

Norine was on her side, drooling, her hair twisted up in curling rags. Briar couldn’t say why the image touched her, but it did. All those years of sleeping in each other’s rooms, sharing clothes and makeup. It was so distant now, like memories from another life. 

Norine had been the one to teach her the “green way” out of their bedrooms. The tall oak that stood between her property and Charlie’s was only a few feet from the edge of the flat roof over the garage. There was a broad branch, large enough to hold her weight, but she had to jump for it. 

The second she did, she regretted not tying her shoes. She struggled for balance as the hard soles of her shoes slid on the branch. She pinwheeled her arms for a moment, and only kept herself upright with a desperate grab for the trunk. 

The leaves of the tree rattled, and she held still for a moment, suppressing a nervous giggle. Had Charlie seen that? For some reason, him seeing her being less than graceful was more disturbing than the fear of tumbling to the ground. Carefully now, she lowered herself from branch to branch until she dropped to the ground. 

“I had no idea you were such an expert escape artist,” he said, meeting her in the deep shadows under the tree.

“Shh,” she whispered, glancing back at her house. “Aunt Patrice probably wouldn’t be so happy to find me out here right now.”

“I just need a minute,” he said, then hesitated. “Did you cut yourself?”

She tipped over her hand, lifted it for inspection. “Just a scrape.”

“Dammit,” he said, pulling a kerchief from his pocket and pulling her toward him to dab at the wound. “You’ve got sap all over your hands.”

“You’re the one who told me to come out.”

“I didn’t mean for you to climb down the tree. You could have broken your neck.”

“I didn’t.” He was scowling down at her, her small hand wrapped in both of his, as he fashioned the kerchief into a bandage. 

His face was angry, but his hands were gentle. Even this simple touch reverberated through her.

She stepped back, shivering as the shawl dropped off her shoulders. 

Charlie’s eyes narrowed. “What are you wearing?”

“A … a nightgown,” she stuttered, feeling a flare inside her in response to the heat of his gaze. 

In defense, she wrapped her shawl tighter and took another step back. “Did you have something to say to me?”

Charlie shook himself slightly. “Yes. I need to apologize.”

“Okay.” She waited. “So ….”

“I shouldn’t have said those things to you today. I lost my cool when I saw my name on that flyer, and I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“That’s an excuse, not an apology,” she pointed out. 

He sighed, tapping his cane on the ground. “I’m sorry, okay? I made assumptions I shouldn’t have made and lost my temper.”

She stared at him with an eyebrow raised.

“What?”

“Are you going to do it again?” 

“Lose my temper? Probably.” His rueful grin was just a flash of teeth in the moonlight.

“Are you going to trust me?”

He hesitated, and that was enough answer for her. 

“Never mind,” Briar said. “You’ve apologized. I’m going back inside.” 

“What else do you want from me?” he asked, stepping closer. 

“Nothing,” she said, and tried to stifle a cry as a shock wave of pain wracked her brain. 

“Whoa,” he said, stepping forward to steady her with his hand on her arm. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, though there were tears pricking at her eyes. “That’s what happens when I lie.”

As the implication of her statement sank in, he stepped closer and laid a hand on her cheek. “Briar. What do you want from me?”

She looked up at him. His face was somber in the dim light, eyes searching. In that moment, Briar couldn’t deny the truth inside herself. 

“Everything,” she whispered, then pressed her mouth to his. 

Instantly his hands were on her, hot and insistent against the cool satin. Her shawl was gone, knocked aside by his seeking hands, and she didn’t care because heat was spreading inside her. She wanted him. Even with all his flaws—his irascible nature, his indiscriminate temper, his hesitancy to trust her—she wanted every moment she could get with this man.

It would be her choice, this time. Her choice to take what she wanted, instead of trading her body for scraps of attention and affection. And if she fell for him—on some level, she knew, she had already fallen for him—then she would deal with those emotions. At least she knew what she felt was real. 

She pressed up to her toes, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him with all the desperation inside her. 

“Wait, wait,” he said, stepping back and leaning a hand on the trunk of the tree. “I have things I have to tell you. There’s things you should know before …,” he looked at her in her satin nightgown and swallowed hard. “What’s your blood type?”

Briar, who had been swaying toward him, pulled up short. “What?”

“Do you know your blood type? It’s important.”

“O-negative. I give every month at the blood drive.”

“And that would be in your records at the doctor’s office?”

“I guess. Charlie, what’s this about?”

He filled her in about the connection between her blood type, the mysterious extra blood cell, and the army’s interest in the people who had been sick after the fog. 

“So you’re saying that they know about me?” she said, panic spurting inside her. 

“No,” he said, laying a steadying hand on her shoulder. “They haven’t sniffed you out yet, because you didn’t get treatment after the fog.” 

“But it’s only a matter of time before they start testing everyone with the right kind of blood,” she said, trying and failing to get a breath. 

The idea of being tested by the army, interrogated about her powers, took her right back to being a terrified child with no one left to protect her. 

“I have to get out of here. I have to get away before they find me.”

“Hey,” he said, rubbing her arms. “It’s not that bad.”

“You don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head violently. Hot and cold flashes were rushing over her skin as memories assaulted her. “I won’t let them take me. I won’t let them use me up and drive me insane. I won’t end up like my father.”

“Okay, okay,” said Charlie, pulling her close to him. “Don’t panic. Come here, sit down.”

He led her to a glider swing in his front yard, forcing her to sit. He disappeared for a moment, then came back with her old shawl.

As soon as he wrapped it around her shoulders, she felt comforted. She pulled her knees up so she could hug them into her chest as Charlie settled next to her. “I know this is a shock. But you don’t need to worry. I told them I didn’t have a power and they seemed to buy it.”

“Oh, yeah, right,” she said, bitterness thick in her voice. “You just saw what happens when I try to lie. I couldn’t deny it without writhing on the floor.”

“Maybe if you practiced—”

“Believe me, I’ve tried. The more I lie, the worse it gets.”

“Okay, okay.” He thought for a long moment. “There’s got to be a way around this.”

She shook her head again. “They’ll find out. They’ll know.”

He ran a hand over her hair. “Why are you so afraid?”

She tilted her head into his tender hand. She yearned to tell him the truth. If she told him about her past, would it ruin any chance they had at a future?

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Charlie

She simply shook her head, pressing her lips together.

It ripped Charlie’s heart out to see her so afraid. It made him want to protect her, but from what?

“I want to help you,” he said, taking care to keep his voice calm.

“I don’t want to tell you. I don’t want anyone to know.”

The fear in her eyes made his hackles rise. “Did someone hurt you?”

She shook her head. “No. Not me.”

When she remained silent, he scooted closer and put his arm around her. “I’m not going to ask again. If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to. I don’t want to force you into telling me the truth.”

“Oh, Charlie,” she said, turning to him. She nuzzled into him, seeming to draw strength from his touch.

The glider rocked back and forth in the quiet night. 

“You can trust me,” he said softly.

“Can I?” she asked.

Guilt was like a fist in his chest. “Look, I screwed up. I know it. Give me a chance to make it up to you.”

He could hear her breathing as she considered. He wanted to push her, but the choice had to be hers. 

“I was born in West Texas,” she finally began, keeping her face turned in to his chest. “My father worked on oil rigs, and we moved around a lot chasing the newest strike. It seemed like we never stayed more than six months in one place. We were a close family. I suppose that’s to be expected, since all we had was each other. My brother Arthur was my best friend.”

“You’re still close, right? I mean, you go to visit him.”

She stiffened in his arms. Too late, he realized—she had been lying about more than clothes shopping on those trips to Denver. “Ah. So where do you go?”

“I’m getting to that.”

“Take your time,” he said, though he didn’t mean it. He wanted the whole truth from her, wanted to understand this piece of her puzzle.

She sniffed. He wondered if she could hear his impatience. 

“After Pearl Harbor,” she continued, “Everything changed. Dad went off to fight in Europe. Mom went to work in a factory making parachutes. We didn’t have much money, and Mom was always tired, but for the first time Arthur and I could go to a regular school, make friends, plant roots.”

“But the war ended.”

“Sort of. I mean, yes, it ended for the country, but it didn’t end for my father.”

He waited until she was ready to continue.

After a moment, she took a deep breath. “The thing you have to understand about my father is that he wasn’t a bad man. Before the war, when I was young, he was a good dad. He loved my mother, loved us.”

“Okay.”

“But something happened to him while he was away. When he came back from the war he was … different.” 

Charlie nodded. “I thought the same thing, when my dad came back from the war. He was more cautious, less cheerful. I used to hear him talking to my mom late at night.”

“With my dad, it was more than that. When I was a little kid, he was sweet. I mean, he was an oilman, so he was a bit rough, but he laughed a lot and always seemed happy to see us. But when he came home from the war ….”

She shuddered, and he pulled her closer. 

“He had been promoted to Master Sergeant after the Battle of the Bulge, but he would never talk about how he earned his rank. Before that, he used to write my mom long letters, but after …. We barely heard from him until he was offered a position at an army post outside of Denver. My mother was so excited to see him, so excited for a fresh start. But when we got here, he had changed.”

“What was different?”

“He had a big scar on his head, for one thing. He had been too close to a land mine when it went off. And he seemed bigger somehow, harder. More distant. He always wore his uniform, always. He would give us orders and expect us to obey instantly. All of us, even my mother, were expected to follow his command. He shouted all the time. But even shouting was better than the times he would get quiet.”

Charlie squeezed her hand supportively and waited. 

Briar shifted in his arms so she could look off into the darkness of the yard. “He brought back these Nazi knives, wicked things with black hilts and blades shaped like lightning bolts. He would sit at the table and sharpen them, staring into space, like he was remembering. Or imagining.”

“Jesus.” 

“He was drinking too much. He had nightmares. My mother knew things weren’t right. One night, when she suggested that he see a doctor, he just stood up from the table and slapped her across the face.”