The Love That Split the World(56)

“I think I just saw a horse die.”

He pulls back and ducks his head to look into my eyes, a smile tweaking the corner of his mouth. “Are you serious?”

“Why are you laughing?” I say, angry.

“I’m relieved.”

“Relieved?”

“Hell, Natalie. You showed up at my house in the middle of the night in a panic. What was I supposed to think?”

“Sorry.”

“Come inside.”

I glance back to the barn on the hill beyond the cornfield. “My dad’s back there with Mr. Kincaid,” I say. “I shouldn’t be gone too long.”

“No, not too long,” he says, scooping me up in his arms. I’m still tingling with shock, but I’m laughing as he kicks the screen door open.

“If you carry me in like this, we’re technically married,” I tell him.

“That so?” he says, lids heavy, smile wide, as he takes me inside. “I can live with that.”

He sets me down on my feet, the floorboards creaking in the dark space, and he walks me up against the wall to kiss me.

A deep snore shakes the wall. “So nice you finally got to meet my brother, Natalie Cleary,” Beau says, smiling.

“Real nahs. I wish he weren’t so uptight and formal, though. How will I ever feel comfortable here?”

“Yeah,” Beau says, tightening his arms around my waist and lifting me up, squeezing a squeal and a laugh out of me. “It’s sorta like living in the White House.” He carries me like that, laughing, down the hall to a partially open doorway and into his tiny room, setting me down onto his single mattress on the floor and lying down beside me.

I’ve never seen a room that managed to be both so bare and so messy. His blue flannel sheets are rumpled, his clothes all over the floor. Crumpled water bottles spill over the trash can, and the outdated lamp sitting on the floor beside the mattress sprays yellow light across the wood laminate walls. There’s one thing, though, that’s completely out of place. Along the far wall there’s a long smooth credenza made of bright reddish-gold walnut, its natural finish showing a slice of blond curving through the center and a darker grain on either side, thin stainless steel spindles holding it up a few inches off the floor. It looks like it was made from the most beautiful tree in a Japanese forest. It’s the kind of thing that begs to be touched. Beau’s eyes follow mine to the lone piece of artwork. “That actually belongs in the White House,” I tell him. “During Jackie’s reign, of course.”

“Right, President Jackie,” he says, then after a pause adds, “I made that.”

“You did not.”

“What, you think I couldn’t make a pretty thing, Natalie Cleary?”

“I’ve heard you play; I know you can make pretty things,” I say. “I guess I didn’t expect them to be quite as pretty without a piano.”

“No piano,” he says. “That used to be a beat-up armoire the Kincaids threw out. I used the inside of the doors for the front.” A strand of hair falls across Beau’s cheek to the corner of his mouth, making me think about riding in his truck that first night we spent together, when the wind trailed his hair across his face and I wanted so badly to move it.

“I should go,” I say.

He kisses me, sliding a hand down my thigh and lifting it over his hip. “You should stay.”

“My dad might be waiting for me.” I’m dizzy with his closeness, pulsing with warmth everywhere he touches me. I shift my leg off him, and he sits up, but I don’t move.

He’s silent for a long moment. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

“Nothing, why?”

“You wanna go to Derek’s party with me?”

I groan as I remember the mass text invitation. “My version or yours?”

“Whichever,” he says with a shrug.

“Whichever I want or whichever we can get to?”

“Either.”

Thinking it over gives me a little thrill. This is a chance to meet the Others, to be around people without any of the pressure. It’s a chance to practice moving between the worlds too, which might bring me closer to finding Grandmother. “Okay,” I say. “Let’s go. To your version.” He nods, but then something occurs to me. “What if I slip? What if I can’t stay in your world?”

“Then I’ll come find you,” he says.

“What if you can’t?”

He cups the side of my neck. “I’ll find you, Natalie. I promise.”

Maybe it shouldn’t be enough, but it is.

Beau walks me to the front door and kisses me goodbye. When I look back at the house, he’s gone, the windows broken and yard overgrown. I’m slipping back and forth between the two worlds and I don’t even know how. I walk back to the barn and find Dad sitting in his car, staring at the steering wheel.

“Dad?” I say, getting in across from him.

“Foal made it,” he says quietly then starts the car. “Foal made it.”

I touch his elbow. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s life,” he says. “It’s all right, sugar. It’s all right.”

We start to crackle over the driveway. I’m thinking about Grandmother and her warning, about Megan being so far away, about my blowout fight with Matt, and everything else there is to fear in the world. I can get swept away in those things, drown in them for hours, fixate on something like the death of a horse until standing up feels like climbing a volcano I know is about to erupt. “Sometimes the whole world feels like that horse to me,” I say aloud. “Does that make sense? Like everyone’s just groaning and screaming through the pain, hoping something better comes out.”