Ask Me (22 page)

My world was reduced to the rough bark of the tree behind my shoulders and the warmth of Will in front of me. He was so close I could feel the rise and fall of his chest.

“I think I’m already soaked,” I whispered, suddenly very conscious of how my thin dress clung to me and how
my hair was plastered to my head. As if he could hear my thoughts, he took his hands and brushed the wet hair away from my forehead. He tucked it behind my ears on either side.

“Just a little,” he said. His voice had gone a little raspy.

I blinked in the rain—at his eyes, then away from his eyes.

He shifted back and took my hands, lacing his fingers with mine and then pulled our entwined hands together into the small of my back. The bark scratched my wrist a little, but it was the last thing on my mind. Nothing was on my mind, nothing but how this felt, to be this close to him. I shivered.

“Are you cold?” he asked.

“I’m not cold,” I whispered back.

He bent his head towards me, so close I couldn’t really see his eyes anymore. “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said, drawing each word out. “Do you want me to kiss you?”

“Kisses sweeter than wine,” I whispered. Was that from a song? He wasn’t fighting fair, two questions in a row. I hadn’t really answered, but now my heart was rattling. What meaning would he draw from that?

“Is that a yes or a no?” he asked, whispering so close to my skin I felt each word as it came out, a tiny puff of air caressing my cheek. Somewhere we’d taken a turn into uncharted territory.

“I don’t know,” I said and for once, the answer was mine on every level. The thought of him kissing me terrified me. The thought of him
not
kissing me terrified me.

“No more questions,” he said.

He leaned into me, and at the last second, I turned my head. His lips caught the corner of mine, hovering there until I gave up.

I’d never kissed a boy before. Never thought about how it would feel, hot and wet and hungry, like liquid and fire at the same time. He drew me closer to him, my arms trapped in his, his hands squeezing mine. And then his lips moved on, tracing a damp burning line from my mouth up to my temple. I didn’t know when, but I’d closed my eyes and he paused there, placing butterfly kisses on my eyelids.

A bright flash in that perfect darkness, and he stepped away.

“Maybe we should make a run for the car,” he said, his voice a husky rumble. If he weren’t so near, I wouldn’t have heard him at all. “Before it gets worse.” As if to agree, the thunder boomed around us. The lightening strike had been close.

I didn’t want to go, didn’t think I could walk at all. My whole body felt like rainwater, like I was melting. If he let me go, there might not be anything left. I would dissolve into the storm. But I managed to nod. It only made sense. It wasn’t safe to stay here. I’d lived in Florida long enough to know that, and this was, by far, the least safe I had ever felt out in the wild. I was lost.

He let go of my hands and stepped away. I thought that was it and then abruptly he was back, his mouth on mine, harder this time. His hands were tangled in my hair, his body pressing me into the tree. I grabbed onto his shirt, not sure whether I wanted to push him away or pull him even closer. Not sure I had a choice.

Then he was gone for real, running through the trees toward the car. Cut loose and unmoored, I stumbled forward a step. The rain had turned vicious, and without him to shield me, the drops stung. I gasped for air, a fish out of water while surrounded by it, and then ran after him to the car.

Will was deathly quiet on the way out of Laurel Creek, his brow furrowed in concentration as he tried to keep the car on the road in the driving rain.

I didn’t trust myself to say anything that wasn’t stupid. I shivered silently in the air-conditioning, goosebumps all over me. It had taken me five minutes of sitting and breathing to slow my heartbeat, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t from the mad dash to the car. My lips still tingled.

He seemed to relax a little as we emerged onto paved roads again. The rain continued to beat an insistent staccato pattern on the roof, turning the car into the inside of a drum. I rolled my shoulder back a little. I winced at the pain, even though this morning seemed impossibly far away now, a past I hardly remembered living through. Being pinned against the tree hadn’t helped, but it wasn’t Will’s fault. He didn’t even know I’d hurt it.

He cleared his throat. “Do you mind if I take a little detour on the way back?”

“No,” I said. I had nowhere else I needed to be. Nowhere else I wanted to be.

He didn’t say anything else, just turned the stereo up. Did he regret kissing me? Had things gotten weird between us now? I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. I’d never been here before.

Though I had been on the road we were headed onto. “Where are we going?” I asked, afraid I knew the answer.

“I want to do a drive-by of Alex’s house and see if the police have picked him up already or not after … after Shelley.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“Probably not.” He turned, a sad smile on his face. Then he slowed as he really took a good look at me, his eyes sweeping me from head to toe. “You look … cold.” He turned the air-conditioning off.

I crossed my arms over my chest. Maybe that wasn’t what he’d meant, but I blushed anyway.

“Just a little,” I said. “You know, you don’t have to drive all the way out to Alex’s house. You could just ask.”

“Oh,” he said, giving a little laugh. “Didn’t even think of that.” Lightning cracked again, and he was quiet for a moment as we both waited for the thunder to follow. “Okay, Aria, have the police arrested Alex?”

“No,” I said. Short and to the point. Direct but not useful.

Will pulled off to the side of the road. “Maybe they haven’t questioned him yet. Have they?”

“Yes,” I said, “So many questions, so many answers.”

“Did they believe his alibi?”

“Two for, two against, the jury is out, but the verdict is in.” I groaned. “I’m sorry, this isn’t helping.” I wished I hadn’t offered now.

He managed another smile and shook his head. “No, it’s okay. It’s not your fault.” He drummed on the steering wheel in tune with the rain. “You know what? We just need to get them to go dig up Alex’s rag.”

“How do we do that?”

“We have to be careful,” he said, his voice faraway.

I wondered if he was thinking of Jade. And I had to admit: I didn’t like that I was wondering that.

“I suppose I could leave a message from the pay phone again … telling them something like I told Delilah before, that I overheard Alex talking to himself or something.” It sounded lame, but it had worked before, more or less.

His eyes brightened. “Perfect.” He started up the car again, and we screeched back into the road with a sudden lurch. He drove fast, faster than I would have liked with the way the rain was still pouring down in solid sheets. I held onto the door handle with one hand the whole way.

“Are you sure we need to call
now
?
”
I gasped. Maybe we could wait until it wasn’t pouring rain?

He stared at me, his brow furrowed. “Aria, the police need to get on top of this as soon as possible, don’t you think?”

“They need all the help they can get,” I said. Ugh.

He was right to ask. Even if he still had feelings for Jade, that wasn’t just understandable, it was
human
. Besides, I
needed closure, too. The questions would never end so long as Alex was free. Of course it was more important to get the information to them. It’s not like I wasn’t already wet anyway. I was being a baby.

Luckily I still had the slip of torn newspaper with the number. I read it over a few times to fix it in my head, grabbed some coins, and got out of the car. The rain had gotten so much worse. I was drenched through to the skin in seconds, my dress clinging to my body and twisting around my legs.

I dialed, wondering if the phone would even work in the rain or if they’d be able to hear me over the dull roar of it. As the line connected, I had a brief worry that an actual person would answer, but after a few rings it went to the automated message. I rushed through “Alex Walker” and “blue-and-white bandanna,” hoping it didn’t sound too incoherent and secretly wishing that maybe they wouldn’t even be able to recognize my voice as the one who had called before. Then I hung up and dashed back in Will’s car, dripping all over his seat.

“You did the right thing,” he said somberly. He drove off as I was putting my seatbelt on. I was ridiculously wet. I wiped my hand over my face trying to get some of the water off. “I hope so,” I said.

“We’d better get you warm and dry,” he added. “I can lend you some clothes if you want. You know, before you get your car back.”

I hoped his mom wouldn’t come home soon. I’d only seen her once or twice, but based on her décor, I didn’t think she’d appreciate my beat-up Colt in her driveway, not to mention my dripping all over their hardwood floors. We entered in through the laundry room, and he handed me a towel from a stack on top of the dryer, then took one for himself. He was still damp, too, though nothing compared to the sopping wet state I was in. The towel worked okay for my hair and arms, but patting at my dress did almost nothing. It was plastered to me. I felt exposed.

I took one more swipe at my face and then pulled the towel down to see Will staring at me intently.

“I don’t think that’s going to do it,” he said. He reached out and plucked at the sleeve of my dress where it clung to my arm. “We should stick your clothes in the dryer. Why don’t you take them off?”

“Do I dare disturb the universe?” I responded, my inner
oracle seemingly as dismayed by the idea as I was, though it
would
have to manifest as a bit of poetry. At least I knew what it was from:
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
, Alex’s favorite poem. “What about your parents?”

He sighed. “Dad’s never home if he can help it, and Mom’s in Fort Lauderdale for some art and antiques show or something. She left last night.”

“Even after you got hurt?” I couldn’t see Gran or Granddad leaving me home alone if I’d been beaten up and had a black eye the size of Miami.

He shrugged the question off. “I’m fine. Besides, she never misses it. She goes every year and buys a bunch of crap and fills up the house with it. As far as I can tell, that’s what she thinks her job is.” He grinned at me, but it was a bitter grin. “Go ahead and take your clothes off, and I’ll go find something for you to wear.”

He left, and I set the towel down on the washing machine and looked down at my dress. He was right. I couldn’t walk around like this. I sighed and reached behind my back to unzip it, but it wouldn’t budge. The cloth was too wet. I tugged at it, which only made my shoulder hurt.

“Having trouble?” Will was back already, some clothes in his hand.

He’d changed out of his own wet clothes and into a dry pair of shorts but had neglected to put on a new shirt. His chest was tan and mostly smooth, muscular without being too muscular and entirely too naked. I tried not to look at it, with little success.

I tugged at the zipper again and blew out my breath. “It’s stuck.” Why couldn’t Gran buy me normal clothes? If
I were wearing a T-shirt and jeans, this wouldn’t be happening.

“Let me,” he said. “I’m good with zippers.”

He probably hadn’t intended it, but that made me blush for the millionth time. At least I had a reason to turn my back. A few short, sharp tugs and the zipper finally began to move, stuttering down for the longest unzipping of my life. When he hit the end I made to move forward and grab the clothes he’d brought, but he peeled back my dress from my shoulder and I stopped.

“Aria,” he said in a tone I didn’t recognize. “Your shoulder … what happened?”

“Shelley tripped me, trippingly so, I fell, oh, I fell, oh woe.” I twisted around a little and then stopped short as he used both his hands to pull my dress the rest of the way down over my shoulders. It fell to my waist with a big squelch, held up only by my hips, admittedly not much up to the job. I froze there with my back to him. My bra was some cheap white polyester thing. It was soaking wet and, at this point, practically see-through. I crossed my arms over my chest.