Article 5 (Article 5 #1)(64)

“He was a little preoccupied.” Chase closed the window delicately, a line furrowed between his brows. He transferred his weight from foot to foot.

“What do we do?” I asked. “I don’t want to wait until the morning.”

“They’ve got a van in the front of the house, and there’s the bike, but we can’t risk the roads after curfew.” His tone was heavy. “We’ll hike out after they go to sleep.”

Which meant we were prisoners until the family went to bed.

*



WHILE Chase washed up, I tiptoed through the hallway, curious when I didn’t hear Mary Jane or Ronnie. Bedtime reading, I guessed. That seemed like a normal thing to do. In fact Patrick, who was still in the living room, was doing the same. His feet were up, and he was wearing glasses now. I swallowed some resentment, remembering home, and how my mother and I used to read on the couch after curfew.

My heart rate slowed. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Not that I could tell.

When I slipped back into the guest room I found Chase sitting on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, face in his hands. He was so still, I thought he might be asleep.

I watched him just for a moment, unable to draw my eyes away.

He seemed to have become distracted in the midst of changing. He still wore his jeans and his boots, but his clean shirt lay untouched beside him on the bed. The lights worked on account of the generator, but he’d lit a candle to combat the shadows instead, and the hard lines of his jaw and neck were accentuated in the flickering flame. From this angle, I now noticed several raised scars on his back that I hadn’t seen in the house on Rudy Lane. They angered me, those scars, cut at a diagonal like the swipe of a claw. I wanted to know who had hurt him like that. I wanted to protect him. If such a thing was even possible. I felt sort of powerful thinking it might be.

Still, his scars, combined with the serpentine wound now visible without the bandage covering his shoulder, made him all the more dangerous.

He was, to me, terrifyingly beautiful.

All the nerves that had been crackling inside of me seemed to transform and redirect toward Chase. My body trembled with anticipation. What energy remained sparked in the air between us like electricity.

I wanted to move to him, but my feet were nailed to the ground. I opened my mouth to speak, but there were no words. I thought of the letters that he’d kept, of what they could mean if he let me in, and was confused again.

He remained as still as I was, then sighed softly, and my heart clenched. Something was wrong. That had been a noise of pain, not of exhaustion.

“Does your arm hurt a lot?” I asked. He jumped up, not having heard me approach. I’d forgotten that I’d been tiptoeing so as not to disturb Patrick.

He shoved on his shirt, a little too forcefully, I thought. I eased the door shut behind me.

“It’s just … that kid. He’s just a child. He could have been shot.” The shame was so thick in his tone that it nearly choked him, and I sagged back against the wall, staggered by how much it affected me. “I didn’t even think about him. He’s what, six? Seven? I almost walked away and let him die.”

I could feel my brows draw together. A shiver went down my spine when I thought of Chase walking out into that field.

“But you didn’t.”

“Because of you.” He looked up then, eyes black and filled with pain. “That guy was swinging a pistol toward a kid, and all I could think of was you. That he was going to hurt you. That I couldn’t let him. Those guys, those stupid guys in Hagerstown. And that highway patrol … I could have … What’s wrong with me?”

I swallowed, but it was hard because my throat was so tight. His stare returned to his hands. They didn’t look like a fighter’s hands now. They looked big and callused and empty.

That same knot twisted inside of me. If I had told him to forget the MM, to stay with me when he’d been drafted, he would not be broken now.

“You look out for people, you always have—” I began, but he shook his head, dismissing my modesty.

“You’re the only thing that’s tying me down.”

“Well, I’m sorry I’m ruining all your fun,” I said, appalled.

“Fun?” he said weakly. “You think … Ember, you’re the only piece of me I have left. Everything else—my family, my home, my soul—they’re all gone. I don’t know who the hell I am anymore. If it weren’t for you … I don’t know.”

His voice went thick again and he stared at the floor, bewildered and ashamed. Though my mouth was open, I had no idea what to say. I wished that I could reassure him that he was still Chase, and reassure myself, too, but what if he was right?

“Come here.” It was my voice. My request. But it surprised us both.

Nothing happened for several long seconds, but then some magnetic force took over, drawing us slowly to each other. His face was speculative, confused. I could tell he did not want to come closer, that he couldn’t understand why he was already so near.

He tore away from my eyes and, to my shock, tentatively nuzzled his face into my hair. I could feel his breath warm my shoulder. He smelled of the woods and faintly of soap. My whole body tingled.

I moved my cheek to brush against his neck, and the feel of his skin sent aching waves through me. No one made me feel the way Chase did. He was my anchor in the hurricane, yet at the same time, the hurricane itself, so that I nearly always felt safe and afraid simultaneously. There was nothing in the world as confusing and powerful as being close to him. Could he feel it? Did he know?