Ignited (22 page)

I propped up on my elbow, facing him. “Who are they?”

He pointed to the two top rows. 
BMM 5/3/99
and
RCJ 11/20/99
. “These two were my best friends, Brent and Ryan. We went through development together, trained together, did everything together.” There was a glint of mischief in his eyes when he lifted them to mine. “We got into a lot of trouble.”

I tried to imagine a young rebellious Nathan. The guy I knew was tightly wound and almost always serious. It wasn’t easy to picture him with an ornery side. 

“They were both killed our first year,” he continued and pointed to the next row.
AJY 4/12/00
. “This was my brother, Andrew.”  He chuckled softly when my mouth gaped open.

“You had a brother?”

“I had two brothers,” he said and pointed to the fourth row.
STY 1/22/01
. “This was my oldest brother, Shawn.”

I fought back tears as I stared at the dates. He had lost both less than a year apart, and a year after he lost his two best friends. No wonder he was wound tight. The poor guy lost everyone he loved. I wondered about the remaining set of initials. Was it another sibling? A parent? It was obviously someone special to him. I was afraid to ask.

“Was it just the three of you?”

“Pretty much,” he said with a slow nod. “Our dad was a Kala. He was killed when I was five. I don’t remember much about him.”

“What about your mom?”

“She took off shortly after I was born. She was human. I think knowing what we were freaked her out.” He looked sorrier for me, at my reaction to his life story, than for himself. “We lived with Gran until we reached development.”

Again, my jaw dropped. “Gran raised you?”

His eyes lit with memory. “In fact, your room was the one we all fought over. Shawn got it because he was the oldest. When he left, Drew got it, and then I finally got it.” He stopped to look at me knowingly. “I know all the tricks to sneaking out of there.”

I grinned, wondering if he knew about the times I had snuck out. That would mean he had been there, in my life, checking up on me a lot more than I had known. More than he had admitted to. I narrowed my eyes at him suspiciously and he stared back, giving nothing away.

I decided not to pursue it. Not now. I didn’t want to halt his candid demeanor. Learning that he had been raised by Gran made me feel closer to him. I bathed in the tide of intimacy that swelled between us and didn’t want it to end.

LMF 5/18/06
. The remaining initials were like a beacon on his arm, and I was unable to avoid them any longer. Nathan’s gaze followed mine and he brushed a finger over the letters.    

“This one’s a little different,” he said. 

“What do those symbols mean?”

“It’s Hebrew. It means forever in my heart.”

I suspected why this one was special and had the sense I was close to trespassing on a part of Nathan’s heart no one had been in a long time. At least not since 2006. 

“This was my girlfriend,” he continued softly, “Lillian.”

I was aware of the sound of my own ragged breathing and nothing else. Silence smothered us as I stared at the letters on his arm. I felt his eyes on me, but I didn’t know what reaction he was expecting. 

I was stunned. I was saddened. My heart ached for him.

Of all the times for my smart wit to abandon me, it would be now and so, for no good reason other than it was the first thought that popped in my head, I said, “It was her clothes in the cabin, wasn’t it?”

With the trace of a smile on his face, he nodded.

“I thought you said...”

“I said I didn’t have a girlfriend, meaning currently. I didn’t say I never had one.” He hooked a mischievous eyebrow. “I’m not a saint.”

“Technicality,” I chided with a teasing tone.

“I didn’t want to talk about it.” A silent ‘then’ hung in the air between us.

I shifted and placed my chin in my hand. “Do you want to talk about it now?”

He studied me for a few heavy seconds. “What do you want to know?”

I picked at a loose string on the bedspread between us and thought of an easy question to get him started. “How did you meet?”

“We started development around the same time and were in a lot of the same classes.”

I rolled my eyes at the vague response. I wasn’t expecting graphic details, but geez, that was the bare minimum. Maybe he wanted to keep some memories for himself?   

“How long were you together?”

“About six years.”

Wow, that was an eternity. He must have really loved her.

“What happened?” The question was out before I could stop it. I held my breath, wanting to take it back, afraid he might not want to open that old wound, but he merely shrugged. 

“Nobody really knows. She got sent on a mission to Chile. I was in South Africa when word started coming in about a failed mission. I didn’t know it was her team until I got back. By then, a recovery unit had already returned empty handed. Her whole team was gone.”

Gone, as in dissipated. Vaporized, as in no bodies to bring back. He must have been devastated. 

“It was a long time ago,” he added unnecessarily.

Seven years. Long time or not, I didn’t think losing someone you loved was something anyone ever truly got over. He was being indifferent to portray toughness. Why did guys think they had to do that?

Instead of digging for the emotions I knew he was suppressing, I put on a teasing grin. “How about girlfriends since then? You did inform me you weren’t a saint.”

He looked like he already regretted telling me that and raised his eyes to the ceiling, either to count the number of girls in his life or to question why him. I hoped it wasn’t the first.

Not that I cared.

“Nothing serious,” he said carefully.

I had always suspected that expression was guy code for nothing more than one night stands. Seeing as how Nathan was avoiding eye contact, I was more sure now than ever. Sometimes I hated being so perceptive. 

In an attempt to hide the crimson I knew was on my cheeks, I dropped my head to focus on the loose string in the bedspread. After a moment, I felt Nathan’s eyes on me. I glanced up and, if only for a second, saw a look on his face I had seen once before—the one where I was a puzzle he was trying to solve. Before I could ask him about it, he shifted, and I was distracted in a major way.

He pushed up, his arms straight under him, his rigid forearms in my face, and peered at the clock on the night stand behind me. His shirt drifted, permitting me a peek of bare skin between his navel and the waistband of his track pants, which were hung appealingly low on his hips. It was so hot I had a brief daydream of running a hand along his enticing happy trail.

“Six-fifteen.” He flopped to the mattress and buried his face in the pillow with a groan. “You
never
get up this early.”

What could I say? Waking from that dream to find him sleeping beside me had jump-started my reflexes. I hadn’t made it thirty seconds without touching him.

“We have a big day ahead of us,” I offered as explanation.

“If only I knew what to do.” With a good deal of reluctance, he rolled out of bed. Collecting his watch from the nightstand, he said, “I’ll go get us something to eat and find a phone to call Travis.”

I sat up and crossed my legs in front of me. “Why don’t you call from here?”

“I’d rather not, in case we end up staying here another night. Wherever I call from, I don’t plan on returning to.”

I tried to appear indifferent at the thought of spending another night here, in the same bed, with Nathan. Fortunately, only I knew the real reason for my flushed skin. Thank God mind reading wasn’t a specialty he possessed.

“What can I do?” I asked.

He sat at the foot of the bed to put his shoes on and glanced over his shoulder. “You stay here. I won’t be long.”

He was gone for a long twenty minutes, during which I changed clothes, brushed my teeth, fixed my hair, repacked the bag, and looked through the peephole no less than a dozen times. There was nothing I hated more than being separated from Nathan. The last time we were separated, a body double tried to kill me. The time before that, someone tried to kill me. There was a definite pattern there, and I didn’t like it.

I tried taking my mind off demigods, and hybrids, and Skotadi, and everyone wanting me dead by staring at the television. After flipping through all the channels three times, and not remembering one thing I saw, I got up to spy through the peephole again, just in time to see a dark shadow pass by. A second later, a knock vibrated the door, and I jumped back with a squeal. I clamped my hands over my mouth and waited for the door to be kicked in. Or explode.

“Kris?”

My knees nearly buckled at the sound of Nathan’s voice on the other side. Still cautious, I cracked the door open, with the chain lock in place.

Nathan stared at me curiously. “Can you let me in? It’s a little cold out here.”

“We should have established a password before you left.”

“Are you kidding me?”

I shook my head.

He made a face. “You’re a pain in my ass. You know that?”

Sounded like Nathan. The last body double had acted...off. This one glared at me like I expected. But, after the last time, I needed better proof than that.

With a forced smile, he lifted the Dunkin Donuts bag in his hand. “I got chocolate, with sprinkles. Only the real me would know that’s your favorite, right?”

Donuts were my weakness, and somehow he knew it. And he was right. Only
Nathan
would know that, though I wasn’t sure how exactly he did. My stomach was growling at the sight of the donuts, so I didn’t bother pressing for the how’s and why’s. I let him in and he tossed me the bag.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah. You just startled me.” I grabbed a donut and one of the two cups of coffee, and perched on the edge of the bed. “You know, after the last time.”

His gaze drifted to my neck, where the bruises had faded, but remained a reminder of my latest brush with death. “Maybe next time we’ll come up with a password first.”

“Maybe
donuts
should be our password,” I offered around the heaven, in the form of chocolate, in my mouth.

Nathan leaned against the table across from me as he drank his coffee. “I got ahold of Travis.”

“What’s the plan?”

“He gave me the address to a safe house nearby. He’s sending a team to meet us, and they’ll escort you to the base from there.”

I nodded along with the plan up until the last part. Something about the wording didn’t sound right. The fact that he was dodging eye contact confirmed my suspicion.

“You said
you
, as in
me
. You’re not coming?” Until then, I had never considered the possibility that Nathan and I would part ways. The thought both surprised and terrified me.

He shrugged noncommittally. “I don’t know. I haven’t been to the base in years. I’ve had my own place.”

“But the Skotadi found us there. It’s not safe anymore.”

He nodded like that was only a minor obstacle. He could simply sell it and move.

I shouldn’t expect him to put off getting his life back in order to hold my hand through all of this. Except that was exactly what he has been doing. 

“Chances are I’ll end up going anyway,” he said, cutting into my thoughts. “They’ll probably want to debrief me.” He paused and stared into his coffee. “But I won’t be staying.”

I nodded numbly as I gazed at my feet to avoid his eyes. By the time I put on a face of indifference and finally managed to look at him, he was already staring at me, waiting. There was a look in his eyes I didn’t recognize. Anxiety? Regret? Whatever it was, it didn’t fit with him, or his words.

Probably just afraid I’m going to lose it and finally go bat crazy on him.
“When do you want to leave?” Aside from a slight quiver in my voice, I thought I managed to sound uncaring enough. Too bad Nathan didn’t buy it.

“After we eat and pack, I suppose,” he said softly. 

“I already packed.” And I had lost my appetite. “I’m ready when you are.”

Even as I said the words, I retreated to the bathroom to hide the tears that threatened to deceive me. In case he didn’t already know I wasn’t thrilled about the plan, I slammed the door shut behind me.

That should have given him the message loud and clear.

After a stop at the city library in Jackson, Tennessee to get directions, we learned that by
nearby
, Travis meant seven hours. That didn’t help my sour mood. Another cold day on the motorcycle was the last thing I wanted. I also didn’t have a choice. At least, on the bike, I could be alone with my thoughts and make good on my silent vow to not speak to Nathan.