“I will answer any and every question you have for me,” he said, “soon, but I want to give you my full attention as I’m certain your questions will require it, and right now I’m too preoccupied with getting your body back to normal.”
“Who’s John?” I asked, chancing a quick look at his face to see if I was pressing my luck. It remained unchanged.
“I suppose you could call him a kind of godfather,” he replied carefully.
This wasn’t the answer I’d been expecting. “The religious kind or Francis Ford Coppola kind?”
He grinned, keeping his eyes straight ahead. “Both.”
“Why does he want you to come back, to wherever that is . . .”
“Of all the off-limit questions you’re trying to sneak in tonight,”—he looked at me in a knowing way—“you’re asking all the wrong ones.”
“What are the right ones? Since you’re the expert apparently.”
“Why did they come after you?” he said, trying to keep his voice level. “Why did they . . . hurt you?” he said tightly, looking up at the starless night sky.
My eyes turned upward, although it wasn’t the sky I was gazing at. “Bad luck, destiny, fate,” I answered, not wanting to question why yet another tragedy had befallen me. No matter what the reason was, bad found me. Like a noxious weed, the world had been trying to pluck me from its soil from the beginning. “Take your pick.”
He shook his head. “Wrong,” he said as if he’d never been more sure of anything in his life. “They sought you out because of me. Because they knew you were close to me.”
“No, this happened to me because of them,” I said with more conviction than I’d intended. “I would have been this”—I went limp as a fish and stuck my tongue out the side of my mouth dramatically—“if not for you.”
“You are in this position,” he pointed his eyes at my head in explanation. “because of me. I should have foreseen this happening.”
“Foreseen?” I quoted. “Do you read crystal balls now? Or maybe palms? What can you tell me about my future?” I teased, turning up my hand at him.
He stared at my hand with so much intent, I was almost convinced he could see what life held in store for me and what it had already doled out. I snapped it shut.
“Really, you can’t take the credit for my uncanny ability to find bad luck around every corner,” I said, laughing a few notes. “I was overdue for a near-death run-in, so now I can scratch that off my To-Do list. I should be good to go for another month or so.”
His lips were pressed shut, and his pace had quickened in that stewing sort of way.
“Are we going to fester now?” I asked lightly, forming my mouth into an exaggerated frown.
“If this is your idea of lightening my mood,” he said, “you’re doing a lousy job.”
“You didn’t even give me a chance to get warmed up,” I said. “But since you’re not being very receptive to my mood-lightening attempts . . . who were those guys and how do you know them?” I asked casually, and before he opened his mouth, I knew my question wasn’t going to be answered.
“No more questions. For tonight,” he said.
“But—” I protested, ready to break into my rebuttal.
“Trust me,” he said, the undertone of a plea in his voice.
I exhaled. “I don’t want to.”
“Ah, but you do,” he said, sounding elated. “That’s the thing about trust, it’s like love. You can’t help who you trust or love sometimes—you just do—you can’t turn it on and off when you want to.”
“My brains are practically spilling out of my head,” I said dramatically. “Could we keep the psycho-analytics to a minimum? It’s giving me a headache.”
“Touchy,” he said under his breath. “I must have hit pretty close to the mark, but what mark—the trust or love?”
He eyed me mischievously from above.
“Headache status updated to migraine,” I groaned.
“This should help,” he said softly, sliding one hand up to my outside temple. His thumb massaged the area first—I closed my eyes so he wouldn’t see them rolling in the back of my head—before applying a growing pressure that literally jolted every nerve within me like a live wire, before they all dulled into the most relaxed, glowing stupor. If this was a drug, I’d just become a hardcore junkie.
I shifted my eyes to the side, wondering if I could combust from staring at him for too long. When I did, I let out an audible gasp. I clasped my hands over my mouth. “How did you know?” I whispered through the tangle of fingers while I eyed the penitentiary-inspired building before me. Never during any of our conversations had simple dialogue come up, things like hometowns, favorite colors, or which dorm I lived in . . .
I felt his body stiffen, before he let out a long breath. “You know how you said you hadn’t seen me this week?”
He didn’t wait for me to respond. “Well I saw you. A lot.”
I took a second before replying, attempting to sound stern, “Is this bordering on stalker status?”
“If you’re going to label me, I prefer the term scientist.”
“Scientist?” I repeated, not understanding what he was getting at, but not caring either. Was he saying what I thought he was? I hadn’t seen him once, but he’d seen me . . . a lot without me even realizing it. Something wasn’t factoring out right, but there wasn’t enough time to work it all out in my head.
“Yes, someone who studies something, trying to figure out what makes it work, makes it tick,” he said, looking like he was lost in the recesses of his thoughts. “So they can best manipulate it to achieve a desired outcome.”
“Are we still talking about science here?”
His mouth softened in the corners. “My favorite kind,” he said, staring down at me. “Chemistry.”
I didn’t look away, despite the color I could feel rushing into my cheeks. I should have, I knew that, but somewhere in between being bloodied to the present moment, we’d crossed a line. Unlike other lines, there was no retreating back to the other side now. Whatever fate, destiny . . . or my bad luck had in store for us.
“So this is the reason you didn’t wait for me?” A voice that was familiar, and incredulous, sounded from behind us.
William’s arms tightened around me.
Paul came up beside us, screeching to a stop. He crossed his arms, his narrowed eyes rotating between William and me. After a few repeats, they narrowed in on my head.
“What the heck happened?” he hollered.
“Nothing,” I said instantly.
“It doesn’t look like nothing,” he said, walking towards me.
“Okay, someone decided to toss me against a brick wall,” I said, glaring at him. “Happy now?”
“You were attacked?” Paul shouted, his voice cracking.
“Paul, it’s been a really long, crazy night”—that was an understatement—“I’ll explain later. Right now I need some alone time.”
“Does alone time involve him?” he said, waving his head at William.
“That,” I warned him, “is none of your business.” He wasn’t my dad, brother, or boyfriend—that line of questioning was in off-limits territory.
He cocked his head back. “It kind-of is since we were suppose to go out tonight.”
I felt another flush burning its way to my cheeks, although this time it was from my anger igniting it. “Really?” I asked incredulously, forming my expression into a you really don’t want to go there one.
“Really.” He looked me straight in the eyes, not backing down.
I shifted, trying to get out of William’s arms so I could give Paul a piece of my mind standing up . . . the palm of my hand leading.
“Why don’t you make yourself helpful,” William burst in, thwarting my escape by pressing me harder against him. “Since making her upset isn’t helping anyone.”
Paul’s mouth curled on one side, and turned his focus on William. He opened his mouth, looking like something would spill out so filthy it would take a bar of soap to clean it out, right as William tossed a set of keys at his chest.
Paul snagged them before they fell to the ground, looking like he was ready to torpedo them right back.
“I’ve got a first aid kit in the back of my car,” William said calmly. “Think you could retrieve it and bring it back to us?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I’m going to get her inside.”
Paul’s fist closed around the keys, all the answer William needed.
“Good,” he said, stepping around Paul and striding towards the entrance. “It’s the navy blue Bronco three rows back,” he hollered over his shoulder.
I rose a brow at him as he headed for the front entrance. “Parked car right outside living quarters, not too close to be conspicuous, not too far so as not to be able to make a quick escape,” I listed off. “Classic stalker behavior.”
He laughed a couple notes. The kind of laugh that made me wish I could bottle it so I could put it on a shelf and save it for a later time. “I suppose you’re right. It is borderline stalker behavior.”
I heard Paul making his way back into the parking lot, grumbling to himself, but just loud enough for us to hear.
“Anyone ever tell you you’re too nice?” I asked, trying to speak up to drown out Paul’s continued tirade.
He looked puzzled. “No. Never. Why do you say that?”
“Because I could barely contain slapping him straight across the face,” I said.
“Oh,” he said. “Under any other circumstances I probably wouldn’t have remained so calm.”
“Other circumstances?”
“I wouldn’t want you to witness two idiots brawling for your attention,” he said. “And despite what you want to think, Paul is just concerned because he cares for you.” His face was unconvincingly flat. He pulled the door open with one hand, managing to keep me firmly rooted where I was.
“I think you’re giving him way too much credit,” I said, taking an internal sigh as the warmed air blanketed around me.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he allowed, steering into the empty common’s area. Every other night it was bursting at the seams with students, but tonight, following a basketball game, there were more parties taking place than students enrolled. “But I would have had to let you down to teach him a lesson, and I wasn’t ready for that yet.”
He cleared his throat, distracting his attention to the square room that screamed utilitarian . . . seventies-era style. Table lamps that were tall, ugly, and topped by even taller and uglier lampshades, orange and mustard yellow was dosed over everything that would hold still, and olive-colored carpet that had at one time been shag before several decades of passage had smashed it into a bad looking toupee. Curling his nose, he looked between the two threadbare, stain-ridden couches as if trying to decide between the lesser of two evils.