Crap. If I didn’t get to him first, Uncle Brendon would make Nash come in and submit to questioning.
I pulled the plug on the flatiron, raced back to my room for my phone, keys and wallet then sprinted down the hall and out the front door, shouting “good morning” and “goodbye” to my astonished uncle all in the same breath.
“It’s early for lunch. How ’bout pancakes?” Nash asked as I slid into the passenger seat of his mother’s car and closed the door.
“Um…sure.” Though with death on my conscience and Nash in my sight, food was pretty much the last thing on my mind.
The car smelled like coffee, and Nash smelled like soap, toothpaste, and something indescribably, tantalizingly yummy. I wanted to inhale him whole, and I couldn’t stop staring at his chin, smooth this morning where it had been deliciously rough the night before. I remembered the texture of his cheek against mine, and had to close my eyes and concentrate to banish the dangerous memory.
I’m not a conquest, no matter how good he smells. Or how good he tastes. And the sudden, overwhelming need to know what his lips would feel like made me shiver all over, and scramble for something safe to say. Something casual, that wouldn’t hint at the dangerous direction my thoughts had taken.
“I guess the car started,” I said, pulling the seat belt across my torso. Then cursed myself silently for such a stupid opening line. Of course the car had started.
His brief gaze seemed to burn through me. “I have unreasonably good luck.”
I could only nod and clench the door grip while I forced my thoughts back to Heidi Anderson to keep them off Nash and…thoughts I shouldn’t have been thinking.
When he glanced my way again, his focus slid down my throat to the neckline of my tee before jerking back to the road as he clenched his jaw. I counted my exhalations to keep them even.
We wound up at a booth in Jimmy’s Omelet, a locally owned chain that served breakfast until three in the afternoon. Nash sat across from me, his arms resting on the table, his sleeves pushed up halfway to his elbows.
Once the waitress had taken our orders and moved on, Nash leaned forward and met my gaze boldly, intimately, as if we’d shared much more than a rhyme in a dark alley and an almost-kiss. But the teasing and flirtation were gone; he looked more serious than I’d ever seen him. Somber. Almost worried.
“Okay…” He spoke softly, in concession to the crowd talking, chewing, and clanking silverware around us. “So last night you predicted this girl’s death, and this morning she showed up on the news, dead.”
I nodded, swallowing thickly. Hearing it like that—so matter-of-fact—made it sound both crazy and terrifying. And I wasn’t sure which was worse.
“You said you’ve had these premonitions before?”
“Just a few times.”
“Have any of them ever come true?”
I shook my head, then shrugged and picked up a napkin-wrapped bundle of silverware to have something to do with my hands. “Not that I know of.”
“But you only know about this one because it was on the news, right?” I nodded without looking up, and he continued. “So the others could have come true too, and you might never have known about it.”
“I guess.” But if that were the case, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know about it.
When I drew my focus from the napkin I’d half peeled from the knife and fork, I found him watching me intently, as if my every word might mean something important. His lips were pressed firmly together, his forehead wrinkled in concentration.
I shifted on the vinyl-padded bench, uneasy under such scrutiny. Now he probably really thought I was a freak. A girl who thinks she knows when someone’s going to die—that might be interesting in certain circles; it definitely presented a certain morbid cachet.
But a girl who really could predict death? That was just scary.
Nash frowned, and his focus shifted back and forth between my eyes, like he was looking for something specific. “Kaylee, do you know why this is happening? What it means?”
My heart thumped painfully, and I clutched the shredded napkin. “How do you know it means anything?”
“I…don’t.” He sighed and leaned back in the booth, dropping his gaze to the table as he picked up a mini-jar of strawberry preserves from the jelly carousel. “But don’t you think it should mean something? I mean, we’re not talking about lottery numbers and horse-race winners. Don’t you want to know why you can do this? Or what the limits are? Or—”
“No.” I looked up sharply, irritated by the familiar, sick dread settling into my stomach, killing what little appetite I’d managed to hold on to. “I don’t want to know why or how. All I want to know is how to make it stop.”
Nash leaned forward again, pinning me with a gaze so intense, so thoroughly invasive, that I caught my breath. “What if you can’t?”
My mood darkened at the very thought. I shook my head, denying the possibility.
He glanced down at the jelly again, spinning it on the table, and when he looked back up, his gaze had gone soft. Sympathetic. “Kaylee, you need help with this.”
My eyes narrowed and a spike of anger and betrayal shot through me. “You think I need counseling?” Each breath came faster than the last as I fought off memories of brightly colored scrubs, and needles and padded wrist restraints. “I’m not crazy.” I stood and dropped the knife on the table, but when I tried to march past him, his hand wrapped firmly around my wrist and he twisted to look up at me.
“Kaylee, wait, that’s not what I—”
“Let go.” I wanted to tug my arm free, but I was afraid that if he didn’t let go, I’d lose it. Four-point restraints or an unyielding hand, it was all the same if I couldn’t get free. Panic clawed slowly up from my gut as I struggled not to pull against his grip. My chest constricted, and I went stiff in my desperation to stay calm.
“People are looking…” he whispered urgently.
“Then let me go.” Each breath came short and fast now, and sweat gathered in the crooks of my elbows. “Please.”
He let go.
I exhaled, and my eyes closed as sluggish relief sifted through me. But I couldn’t make myself move. Not yet. Not without running.
When I realized I was rubbing my wrist, I clenched my hands into fists until my nails cut into my palms. Distantly, I noticed that the restaurant had gone quiet around us.
“Kaylee, please sit down. That’s not what I meant.” His voice was soft. Soothing.
My hands began to relax, and I inhaled deeply.
“Please,” he repeated, and it took every bit of self-control I had to make myself back up and sink onto the padded bench.
With my hands in my lap.
We sat in silence until conversation picked up around us, me staring at the table, him staring at me, if I had to guess.
“Are you okay?” he asked finally, as the waitress set food on the table behind me, and I felt the tension in my shoulders ease as I leaned against the wooden back of the booth.
“I don’t need a doctor.” I made myself look up, ready to stand firm against his argument to the contrary. But it never came.
He sighed, a sound heavy with reluctance. “I know. You need to tell your aunt and uncle.”
“Nash…”
“They might be able to help you, Kaylee. You have to tell someone—”
“They know, okay?” I glanced at the table to find that my fingers were tearing the shredded napkin into even smaller pieces. Shoving them to the side, I met Nash’s gaze, suddenly, recklessly determined to tell him the truth. How much worse could he possibly think of me?
“Last time this happened, I freaked out and started screaming. And I couldn’t stop. They put me in the hospital, and strapped me to a bed, and shot me full of drugs, and didn’t let me out until we all agreed that I’d gotten over my ‘delusions and hysteria’ and wouldn’t need to talk about them anymore. Okay? So I don’t think telling them is going to do much good, unless I want to spend fall break in the mental-health unit.”