A Matter of Heart (20 page)

I
'm having one of those out-of-body moments. I'm walking with Connor, and I'm watching myself walk with Connor. It makes me feel like I'm in a 3-D movie. If it is a movie, we're about to get to the good part.

The driveway is packed and we have to walk sideways in places, our fingers still laced together. Tanya's cul-de-sac is short and narrow, so most kids have parked around the corner in a dirt lot next to the desert preserve. The whole neighborhood is built around South Mountain Park—and there are trails leading into the desert that run for miles and miles.

Connor's car is in the lot, just near the road. I watch myself slide into the backseat and see him follow, closing the door behind him. The feel of soft leather is familiar on my skin, the smell of Connor's cologne, the creak of old springs as he lowers
his weight to the seat. It's a movie scene that I've been in before. But never quite like this.

I watch while I pull him down and kiss him. From above, I see his wide shoulders and strong back, his one leg on the floor, his other pressing between mine. My head is tilted in the space between seat and window. My fingers work the Velcro of his shirt while his hand slides down the bare skin of my stomach to the low snap of my pants.

Suddenly I'm back in the car, all of me. It's hot and my brain is fuzzy but I know one thing. This is it. This is really going to happen. My pulse thrums as if it's the last 25 yards of a race.

He pulls back and studies me. His eyes have that sleepy look, but I know it's not sleep that's made the pupils wide and dark. “You're breathing so hard.”

“I know,” I say. “Because we're going to do this.”

“But—”

“I'm saying
yes
, Connor.” I pull him back down. Lead his hand to the silk of my black bra. To what lies beneath. He kisses me again, and I groan.

Then, as if the movie suddenly ends, his mouth is gone. His hands. His body.

I sit up. He's backed away to the far edge of the seat.

“What?” I say.

He wipes a hand over his mouth. His fingers shake. “We can't.”

“Yeah, we can.” I reach for him.

“Abby, no.” He holds me back.

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing. I'm just worried. What if something happens?”

“You have protection, right? You said you were prepared.”

He looks away, his face tensed in some kind of misery. “That's not what I mean.”

“Then what?”

“Your heart.” His eyes flash to mine. “Listen to your breathing.”

“You sound the same way.”

“Yeah, but I don't have a heart condition.”

I suddenly feel the urge to be sick. His words twist inside me like something rotten. “Jeez, Connor,” I say, faking a short laugh. “You've been trying to get in my pants for weeks.”

“Because I thought you were fine.” There's actual grief in his voice, but it's layered under something that sounds an awful lot like an accusation. “I don't get how this could happen,” he says. “I mean, look at you. You don't look sick.”

“Is that it?” Disbelief fills my head like a fog. “You think you've been tricked?” I smack his chest with the edge of my fist, and it feels so good, I hit him again. Anger tears through me like a flash fire. It's good to fight back—to fight
something
. Half punching and half pushing, I flail at him until he grabs my arms and holds them still.

“Abby, stop!”

“You're acting like this because of Jen, aren't you?” I shout. “She told you about the call.”

His eyes widen. “You got the second opinion?” His surprise is unmistakable.

I yank my hands free, but the fire is gone. I sag back on the seat. It's all I can do not to cry. I'm on a roller coaster and I just want
off
.

“Jen didn't tell me anything,” he says. “I didn't know. I swear.”
He shakes his head as if it's sinking in. “So it's for sure? You have that…thing? What the first doctor said?” He doesn't wait for an answer. He shrugs his shirt closed and seals up the Velcro. “Damn, Abby. I'm so sorry. It's…Damn.”

“It doesn't have to change things with us,” I say. “Not like that.”

“But if you start breathing hard…”

“I'm on medicine. Nothing can happen.”

He's quiet for a long minute while I try not to breathe loudly, afraid I'll lose him because I've already lost so much and how can I survive losing one more thing?

His Adam's apple rises and falls. “We're just supposed to be having fun, you know? It's my senior year. It's supposed to be all good.”

Tears burn at the corners of my eyes. A broken girlfriend was obviously not on the to-do list. “Even Darwin is wrong sometimes, I guess.” My words are laced with sarcasm but even I can hear the plea beneath.
Please tell me Darwin isn't wrong
.

He meets my eyes. “Look, I just need to let it soak in, you know? I mean, now that you know it's really…”

He can't even say it. A part of me wonders what happened to my fight, but how do you fight the unspeakable? “Did you cheat at the swim meet in September?” I suddenly ask.

He blinks, confused. “What?”

I wish I could believe that he really doesn't know. “Did you take drugs to help you recover faster?”

“No.” His voice rises and his chest thrusts forward. “What the hell, Abby?”

I wrap my hair into a thick rope and hold on to it like an
anchor. I don't know if I believe him or not. “Would you tell me if you had?”

“I'm not going to answer that.”

“Because you did?” My eyes search his but I can't read anything. Did he? Didn't he? My gut tells me maybe. Maybe. That's more than I would have said a few weeks ago, but it's not enough to be sure.

“You've been listening to Mendoza,” Connor accuses. “He's a loser, Abby. Plain and simple.”

“But it isn't simple,” I say. “You did have an amazing comeback. And you know what?” I add. “Nothing is simple about losing when it's happening to you.”

He deflates a little with that, and for a minute I feel better. No one is immune to fear.

My head is throbbing. Is this my first hangover? Or is this just a nightmare I can't seem to escape? Breathing deeply, I clear a path through the tears clogging my throat. “Forget it,” I say. “Just go. I'll see you back at the party.”

“Abby—”

“It's okay, Connor. It wasn't going to work anyway.” And just like that, he's off the hook. He gets out of the car and so do I. He seems relieved, but he stands there a few seconds longer, probably calculating just how much he has to do to maintain his rep as a “good guy.”

“I'm fine,” I say. “I just need to catch my breath.”

The pointed words strike home and he nods. He heads toward the party and I start walking too, but in the opposite direction. Moving deeper into the dirt lot, I stride past another row of cars. I reach down and yank off my heels, barely feeling the
rocks beneath my feet as I start again, moving faster and faster so I'm jogging by the time I pass the last few cars and hit the open desert. Then I'm running.

I'm running through the dark, into nothing, and it's exactly where it feels like my life is going. Tears stream unchecked and I push harder with my legs, pump my arms, the sound of my sobs like an echo that follows me. Prickly bushes catch and rip at my pants and a loose branch flies up and scrapes my arm. It feels good, the pain. Pain layered on pain, and I want to burn it all up on this trail. I want to go so fast I leave it all behind. I want to leave
me
behind and I want to fly to where the pain can't reach me at all.

T
he mountains call my name.

My side aches as my legs keep turning, climbing over the uneven ground. I can't feel my feet anymore. I don't feel anything but my breath and the wind and the wetness on my cheeks. My head pounds, my thoughts too slippery to hold, but there it is again. My name carried on the air. As if it's calling me back to myself, but I won't go. I won't—

A branch swings out from the dark and connects with my shoulder. “Ah!” I shriek. Before I can jerk my arm forward, I feel it again, grabbing for my shirt, and my muddled brain realizes it's not a branch. It's a hand reaching out for me. I stumble, yanking hard to free myself as the familiar sound of my name echoes around me again in the curve of night.

“Abby!”

It's not the wind or the mountain. It's him.

What is he doing here?

He grabs me again, and I spin and lose my balance. I fall and he's there, curling around me, protecting me as I tumble, as we both fall to the dirt of the packed trail, the air exploding from my lungs at impact. My neck snaps back; my head thuds against solid bone.

And for a second, I lie there. Dead, but not dead. Spent and broken like one of the twigs by my elbow. I'm scraped and battered and emptied out and every inch feels bruised and broken.

Except for my heart. My heart is beating steady and strong.

And the harsh breathing that sounds pained and labored isn't mine. It's Alec's.

“Y
ou can let go,” I say. My voice sounds raw, as though I've scraped it along with my arms and back.

“I don't know.” I hear him gulping in air. “Can I? Are you going to run again?”

I work to catch my own breath. “Just get your hands off me, okay?”

His arms drop away, but his deep breaths thrum with anger. “What the hell were you doing? Jesus, Abby. Sprinting off like that. Alone. In the dark.”

“It's none of your business.”

“You're drunk,” he says.

“That's the good news.” I wipe at the wetness beneath my nose. “Go away, Alec.” I shift away from him, crawling backward like a crab, not sure I have the energy to stand just yet.
My feet are throbbing now, and I brush away pebbles that are embedded in my soles.

“Abby?” The anger is gone from his voice.

I run my hands along my pants and feel rips in the fabric of both knees. Good thing sexy serial killers don't wear miniskirts or I'd really be torn up.

“What happened?” he asks.

I finally look at him. It's dark but the full moon seems closer at the peak of the hills and I see he's taken the worst of it. His shirt is torn and dirty, and there's a rip in his jeans and a bloody scrape on the side of his hand. Well, no one asked him to chase me down.

“What are you doing here?”

“I was leaving the party. I saw you get out of Connor's car and then he went back to Tanya's house and you didn't. You walked right by my car, and it was like you were in a trance. I didn't know if something happened. If Moore…” His voice shakes with new emotion.

“What?” I say. “Took advantage of me?”

“Did he?”

I laugh. Okay, so it's a slightly demented laugh, and I can tell from Alec's tensing shoulders that he thinks I've lost my mind. Maybe I have. “You got that backward,” I say. “I tried to take advantage of Connor.” A few tears spring to my eyes, surprising me. I wipe my face with the back of my hand, then give a sharp “Ow!”

Alec is suddenly by my side. “What?”

“Nothing,” I say. “I just wiped dirt in my eye.” I try wiping again but it's useless. My hands are coated in trail dust.

“Here.” Alec pulls off his shirt, yanking it over his head and throwing it over a bush. He's got a white undershirt on and he pulls the bottom edge loose from the waist of his jeans and slides in close enough to wipe my face with the material. It's warm from his skin and smells like sweat and soap. He rests one hand on my shoulder and gently brushes the dirt from my eye. His stomach is close enough for me to shove him hard—or kiss his hot skin. I do nothing but let him clear my eye. I don't even shrug off his hand. When he's done, he sits back, leaving the undershirt loose.

I shiver, as if something has changed in the air. But it's me that feels changed. What he's doing is a reaction. Thoughtless, but thoughtful. Something a friend would do. Is that what we are now? Friends?

Then he shifts away and clears his throat as if he suddenly realizes how intimate it is, what he just did. And the air is not just changed—it's charged.

I have to get out of here.

Except…I have nowhere to go but home to a worried mother and a father with an empty trophy shelf and a chart of broken dreams.

I don't move.

Neither does Alec.