Sheltered (2 page)

When she’d thought,
This is the guy I want to share the most secret part of myself with.
After a two-minute conversation about the criminal activities he indulges in on a daily basis.

“I have to go now,” she said. The words came out robotic and insane sounding, and she wasn’t the least bit surprised. Her face was burning. Her heart had started beating in her throat. She was only shocked that she managed to get out any sounds at all.

“Hey, no—wait,” he said, then put his hands on the gate as though he was actually going to open it.

She couldn’t allow that.

“No. No. It’s fine. I have to go.”

“Take it easy,” he said, but it was only after she’d caught her heel on something that she realized he wasn’t telling her to calm down. He was telling her not to back into her mother’s latest gardening project, about a second too late.

She tangled with it briefly—a hose, some trellis work, a pot filled with earth—before going over completely. Arms pinwheeling in an obviously embarrassing fashion. Nothing between her and the ground, suddenly, but air.

And then lights out.

* * * * *

She didn’t want to open her eyes. Mostly because she knew she’d just fallen over gardening equipment like a blundering idiot. But also because every part of her was aware of his presence. He hadn’t fled the moment he’d seen her sprawled over the porch, unconscious. Instead he had, apparently, opened the gate between her good, safe house and the Ryerson’s house of ill-repute, walked into her garden, and then somehow gotten them both
inside
.

He was inside her house. She could tell, even with her eyes closed. It was definitely the Italian silk print couch she was lying on, because she could smell the lavender stuff her mother pushed into the cushions. And he was definitely next to her on the couch, because it was sagging down precariously, just to her right—as though a ten-ton weight had settled on it.

It was more than that, however. More than the physical sense of him. There was a strange, bristling awareness of his presence running through her, as though he existed on a slightly different plane of reality and it was jarring against her own.

He came from the X Dimension. And in the X Dimension, strange men got cloths filled with ice and pressed them to your head while you were sleeping.

She could feel said cloth, sharply cold and nudging gently against her temple. Just the material, nothing more, but she knew with every little tingling part of her that his fingers and his hands and his arms were really, really close by.

He’d come into her garden, and then walked into her house, and finally sat on her mother’s good couch in order to place a cloth filled with ice against the side of her head.

All of which was bad enough on its own, before she even realized she’d left a step out. She’d missed the part about how she’d gotten into the house. Because of course
he’d
been able to walk on his two massive and completely conscious legs.

But she hadn’t. She’d been out for the duration, which meant only one thing—he’d
carried
her. He’d carried her! Unless he’d used some sort of contraption, of course—like a small trolley or a wheelbarrow.

Lord, she prayed for a wheelbarrow.

But when she finally dared open her eyes, she couldn’t make one out in the immediate vicinity. All she could see was the cream shag carpeting and the glossy mahogany coffee table and everything normal normal normal until she got to him.

He’d squeezed himself into the absolute smallest space he could have, considering. Right on the edge of the couch, massive legs just about folded in two. His knees like immense jutting bollards, barring her way.

Though she felt certain he hadn’t intended the effect. He almost definitely wasn’t trying to block her in, in some terrifying sort of fashion. But even so she couldn’t stop looking once she’d started, because not only were the knees massive, they were also covered in tight, black jeans that had holes in them.

Actual and real holes.

She didn’t know what to make of that. She’d never sat close to anyone who had holes in their clothes, though when she really considered she had no idea why the holes were the things she was focusing on. There were so many other parts of him that needed intense observation, like maybe the shoes on his feet that he seemed to have
scribbled
on.

They looked amazing, but for a moment all she could think about was how long she’d desired a pair of gray Converse sneakers just like them. And he had the damn things, but what had he done?
Drawn on them
.

She wanted to tell him, immediately, that her own Mary Janes came from a place called Shoe Barn, and that said place didn’t even have a name for them. They just called the type her mother bought her “regular”, and had done with it.

But that just seemed like a symptom of her earlier problem. Telling him too much, without meaning to.

“Hey, you’re not dead,” he said. She felt sure he’d intended to sound flippant, but she recognized the real tone underneath almost immediately. Not because it was familiar—it wasn’t. And it certainly didn’t sound familiar from him, in his cool too-deep voice with his edgy clothes and his punk hair.

But it was, nonetheless.
Relief.
He was relieved she wasn’t dead, even though he didn’t know her from Adam and she’d just cussed him out about occasionally buying something that was probably just one step up from cigarettes.

She turned her head slowly—it had to be slowly, because he actually almost touched her when she moved, and said something that probably should have sounded comforting, like
go easy
—and looked up at him. Then wished she hadn’t.

His reality-bending presence didn’t get any easier, up close and in her face. In fact, she felt almost certain he was burning a dark hole through the fabric of her mother’s beige living room as they spoke.

“I’m alive.”

Yeah, but for how much longer? That black hole he’s burning is bound to suck you in. Any second, now. Any second…

“When will your parents be home?”

She wished he hadn’t asked that. She wished she didn’t know what he meant, either. He could have meant it in all sorts of ways, really—bad ways. Even possibly sexual ways. But she understood he didn’t.

He
knew
. He really knew what would happen if they caught a boy in here with her. Not even a boy, really—he was all the way a man. He had stubble on his cheeks—rough, course stuff—and hair curling out of the top of his t-shirt and the big hand close to her face was worn-looking and all knuckle. As if he’d spent his life scouring dishes or maybe clawing his way up Mount Doom.

However, she couldn’t help noticing the soft roundedness of his cheeks, and now that she wasn’t challenging him the mean line he’d set his upper lip into had relaxed. In fact his mouth looked almost…she didn’t even know. She wanted to say like a woman’s, but the rest of him—all jagged and bullish—contrasted too sharply with those soft curves. And then there was the haircut and the tattoos…up this close she could actually make out one on his
neck
, for God’s sake.

What sort of person had a tattoo on their neck? She’d thought the inside of the wrist and the webbing between thumb and forefinger were tender places. The neck seemed like tissue paper to her. As if he’d blasted a confetti tower with a flamethrower.

“If you’re having trouble speaking you should probably let me know somehow,” he said, because oh God she’d taken a thousand years to respond to him. He’d asked a question and she’d answered by staring and staring at him like a maniac.

“Eleven. It’s always eleven on a Wednesday. Bridge with the Pattersons,” she managed to get out, though once she had, that familiar, brittle little voice at the back of her mind whispered,
Yeah, but what if they change their minds tonight? What if, what if
?

It wouldn’t even be the belt, for a creature like this in the house with her. It’d be a hole dug in the garden and her in it.

“Thought about taking you to the hospital, but call me crazy—didn’t think that would go down so well.”

This
whole thing
wouldn’t go down so well
, she thought in response, but of course didn’t say. He’d already exposed too much of her. Any more and she’d be naked in front of him, probably shivering and even more embarrassed than she currently felt.

“Thank you,” she said, because those were nice, safe, expected words. He didn’t look as though he had expected them, however. His thick, dark brows raised, and she noticed yet another thing about him.

He’d had a piercing in one of them. There was a mark there, a little strip of missing hair, where it had been.

“No problem. Even scumbag drug addicts can do the right thing sometimes.”

She felt her face heat.

“I don’t think you’re a scumbag. Or a drug addict. I just—”

“What?”

Don’t jostle me
, she thought, but it was too late for that. He’d started jostling her all the way back by the fence. She could feel him, creeping under her skin and shaking her all around.

“Look, I’m not an idiot, okay? I know pot isn’t Satan’s weed, or whatever.”

He flicked his gaze to hers, so steady and dark and too intense.

“When did I say you were an idiot?” he asked, and she tried to remember. She really tried. Unfortunately, all she could come up with were vague impressions of him.

“You didn’t. You just implied it. With your…earrings and your haircut.”

He didn’t laugh, exactly. In fact, most of his reactions and his expressions seemed curtailed, somehow. Reined in. It only made it more obvious when he did smile, however. When he smuggled his laugh into a cough, behind his fisted hand.

“My earrings and my haircut make you an idiot? That’s a new one. Usually my earrings and my haircut just make other people back away. Kind of like you did in the garden.”

It struck her harder than she expected it to, him saying something like that. She didn’t mean it to or want it to, but it was there all the same. Like a small fist, direct to the chest.

“I didn’t back away because of how you look. You look…”
Fine? Fine just leads to handsome, then gorgeous, then other impossible things, and you don’t want to go down that route, do you, Evie? That route is barred to you, for all sorts of reasons. He’s cool. You’re not. He’s attractive. You’re not. He’s free. You’re not.
“You don’t look threatening, or anything. I just… Did the Ryerson kid say anything about me to you?”

She couldn’t think why the kid would have, but the fact remained—the punk seemed to understand way too much about her situation.

“What sort of things do you think he would have said? He told me your name, and that’s about it.”

She checked his face for a hint of mockery, but there was nothing there.

“Just my name?”

“We don’t exactly talk, me and Mickey Ryerson. It’s not like we have a ton in common—I mean, look at this neighborhood. These houses.”

He gazed around at his surroundings with a kind of wonder in his expression. Just a hint of it.

“Yeah, they’re really amazing.”

“Exactly.”

“And beautiful.”

“Definitely.”

“And worth a lot of money.”

It was as far as she could go. He didn’t look away during the whole of the exchange, and she could hear it in his voice. That he knew what she really meant by amazing and beautiful and worth a lot of money.

But the lovely part of it was—he didn’t say. He just started in on something else instead.

“My apartment overlooks an alley where they slaughter chickens for the Chinese restaurant across the way.”

She thought of feathers. Lots of feathers, fluttering in a dark, narrow space.

“Do you ever see them do it?”

“Sure. They don’t mess around—no wringing necks. A cleaver, straight through.”

“They’re not supposed to be doing it though, right? They’re not allowed.”

“A lot of people aren’t allowed to do a lot of things.”

God, there were thorns around this conversation. She could feel them rising up, every time they got to something that seemed like stable ground. It made her want to close her eyes, but doing so didn’t seem like a good idea.

Instead, she pulled her legs up to her chest. Bought herself time while she tried to think of a good subject change. Unfortunately, the only words that came were the ones that had been whirling around in her stupid head since she’d opened her eyes.

“Did you draw on your shoes?”

Of course she kicked herself immediately. She should have gone with
I
like
the drawings on your shoes
instead—and knew it. One sounded like an accusation, and the other sounded like she’d become a nice, normal person during the last ten minutes, instead of this accusatory asshole she was somehow being.

He even looked at her that way. As though he couldn’t believe she was behaving like such a jerk after he’d carried her fat ass inside and put ice to her head.

“I…yeah.”