by Cole Gibsen
He rolled his eyes and waved his hand dismissively. The Mini veered toward a tow truck until he brought his hand back to the wheel and steadied the car in its lane. “Please. I’m the only one on the road who knows how to drive. You should thank me for keeping you alive.”
“You better hope you do, because if you kill me, I’m totally haunting your ass.”
He laughed. “You know what your problem is, Ri-Ri?”
“My best friend is a reincarnated stunt-car driver?”
“No. You’re too stressed out.”
I settled back against my seat. “Understatement of the year.”
“You should try meditating.” Quentin flipped on his blinker a nanosecond before turning onto the off ramp. “It’s been proven that people who meditate can actually move brain waves from the stress-housing right frontal cortex to the calmer left frontal cortex.”
“Uh-huh.” I was glad Quentin couldn’t see me roll my eyes under the dark shades. “For your information, I tried meditating after school today. It just … didn’t go so well.” I thought about the memories I’d resurfaced and how they left me anything but relaxed. “Anyway, I can see you’re enjoying your birthday present.”
He nodded. “Yes, thank you.”
For Quentin’s birthday I’d renewed his subscription to Psychology Today. I supported his dream of becoming the world’s next great psychologist. That was, when he wasn’t trying to psychoanalyze me.
Quentin whipped the car around a corner at breakneck speed, forcing me to close my eyes. I didn’t open them again until I heard gravel crunching under the tires, signaling our arrival at the Waterloo Community Park.
In the Midwest, we only have four months out of the year when the outdoors isn’t covered in ice or hot enough to melt the mascara off my lashes. October is one of those months, so Kim decided we should take advantage of the cooler temperatures and train outside.
Quentin parked his Mini next to Kim’s silver Trans Am and my pulse jumped into my throat, like it did every time he was near. It’d been that way between us since the moment we first laid eyes on each other in Lord Toyotomi’s courtyard. Five hundred years later and my skin still tingled from the familiar pull that drew me to him like a wave to the shore.
I hesitated before unbuckling my seatbelt, noticing that Quentin had turned off the ignition but made no move to leave. Instead, his fingers thrummed nervously against his legs. “Um, are you okay?”
He nodded but didn’t say anything. I followed his gaze to where Kim and the others were stretching under the shade of a large oak tree.
I placed my hand over his drumming fingers, which froze under my touch. “You don’t have to be nervous, you know. It’s not like this is your first time training with us. You’re a total natural, and you’re getting better all the time.”
“Who said I was nervous about training?” he snapped. His head swiveled and his eyes met mine. “Maybe I was just scouting the scene for fire hazards.” He pointed to his eyebrows. “Can’t be too careful, after all.”
I recoiled against the seat like I’d been slapped. It wasn’t like I didn’t deserve what he’d said to me—it was just that Quentin had never spoken to me like that before. His eyes remained fixed on me, with something so much more than anger burning through them. “Q, I … ” But I couldn’t think of the words that would make things better.
But just as quickly as he turned on me, his face softened. “Rileigh, oh my God, I didn’t mean it.” He pressed a hand to his temple. “I have this killer headache, and it’s making me a little crazy. I swear, I don’t know what got into me. Can you forgive me?”
My lungs tightened, refusing to move air. I thought I’d choke on my words before I forced them off my tongue. “Forgive you? After what I did?” I twisted toward the window so he wouldn’t see how much trouble I had trying to breathe. If Q was angry with me, I could handle that—I could make it right. But if it was something worse? What if he was afraid of me? “Q, I promise you that I’m going to do whatever it takes to get this ki thing under control.” And then, after a pause, I added, “We’re cool, aren’t we?”
“Totally.” He gave me a strained smile and shrugged. “Why would you even ask?”
Oh, I don’t know, I thought. Because some invisible wedge has been driven between us. Because, even though we’re sitting in the same car, I feel like you’re miles away. But with the words unwilling to fall from my tongue, all I could do was shrug.
“Dork.” He reached over and ruffled my hair, a familiar gesture that made me feel a smidge better. He opened his mouth but before the words came out, someone tapped against my window.
Startled, I looked over my shoulder to find Kim smiling at me. Instantly a slow flame burned through me, starting at my toes and ending at my fingertips. You’d think that some of the intensity would wear off after time, but it never did. My breath still caught in my throat, my fingers still curled into fists to resist the urge to reach for him, and I had trouble blinking for fear of having him out of my sight for even a millisecond.
A seatbelt unclicked beside me. “See you on the field,” Quentin said. “It looks like we’re holding things up.”
Way to go, Rileigh. I scrambled to release my own seatbelt. I couldn’t afford to go all starry-eyed at the same moment I was trying to repair my friendship with Quentin. Besides, I knew Kim wouldn’t mind if I spent less time with him and more time with Q. Kim and I were soul mates, after all.
Now that we were together, there was nothing that could come between us.
11
Quentin got out of the car without so much as a glance in my direction and made his way over to Drew, the oldest member of our group at twenty-one. Drew stood up from his runner’s stretch and shrugged his braid over his shoulder. Even from the car I could see the frown form on his face. He said something to Quentin, who nodded and pointed to his missing eyebrows. Both guys turned and looked in my direction, their expressions unreadable from where they stood.
I sank deeper into the seat. Just when I thought I couldn’t feel any worse.
Kim opened the door and the scent of sandalwood enveloped me like a familiar blanket. His mouth twitched, as if he were fighting off a frown. “What is this face you are wearing? I do not like it.”
I stuck my tongue out at him. “Is this one better?”
The corners of his lips folded under into my favorite upside-down smile. “Some would speculate that death would break a strong spirit.”
I smiled back at him. “They obviously haven’t met me.”
“Obviously.” He reached for my hand and pulled me out of the car into his arms. He leaned down and pressed his lips against mine, igniting a fire inside of me that threatened to burn me out of my body. When he pulled away, it took me several moments before I could remember how to be human—how to open my eyes, how to swallow, how to breathe. “How was school?” he asked.
If blood could simultaneously turn to ice and catch on fire, that’s exactly what his breath, warm against my neck, did to me. “Oh, you know … school’s school.”
“Uh-huh. Want to tell me what’s wrong?”
I huffed and fell limp against him, pressing my lips against his T-shirt so that my words muffled into cotton. “Not really.” The sooner I could start punching things the sooner I could ignore what felt like acid eating a hole in my stomach. “Can we just get on with training?”
“Senshi.”
Ribbons of silk unraveled beneath my skin. I leaned back and gave him my best nice try—using my past-life name in a super sexy voice will not get me to swoon look. At the same time I fought off the shivers licking the length of my spine. “Yoshido,” I answered in what I hoped was an equally sexy, breathy voice.
His lip twitched, as if he was having trouble keeping a straight face. “You had another episode today, didn’t you?”
I turned away from him and
pretended to study a hangnail.
“Rileigh.” Kim sighed. “I just want to help. Why does everything with you have to be a fight?”
Did it? I hugged my arms to my chest. Even if he was right, what could he expect? I was a samurai. Fighting was what I was trained to do—it was all I knew how to do.
In the distance, Michelle and Braden competed at sit-ups. As Michelle lifted her torso from the ground, Braden leaned over and surprised her with a kiss. She laughed before shoving him away. A pang of jealously dug into my side. It boiled down to this: Michelle loved Braden, Braden loved Michelle, and she hadn’t burned anybody’s eyebrows off recently. Her life seemed uncomplicated, while mine had always been anything but.
A tingling along the back of my arm pulled me from my thoughts. I spun away from Kim’s outstretched hand in time to see his fingers close on air. “Seriously?” I tsked. “That was just sad.”
Despite shaking his head, he couldn’t hide the humor in his eyes. “I wasn’t trying to surprise you. I just wanted to get your attention.”
“Well, you got it.” I placed my hands on my hips and smirked. “Sure you can handle it?”
Something flashed through his eyes and I fought the urge to squirm underneath his gaze. I knew this look. It meant things were about to get interesting. I tossed back my shoulders, dipped my chin, and narrowed my eyes … right before I punched his face. Or at least I tried to, but he dropped into a crouch seconds before my swinging fist would have connected with his chin.
He laughed as he stood. “You’d really rather fight than talk about what happened?” Before I could answer, he settled his weight on his back foot and lashed out a front kick with his other.
The hair that stood out from my ponytail tickled my scalp as his foot brushed past. “Talking is overrated.” I ducked low and swept my leg behind Kim’s legs, knocking his feet out from under him.
Rather than land on his back, he lifted his arms over his shoulders, touched down on his hands, and used the momentum to swing back to his feet.
“Hey!” Michelle called from across the field. She ran toward us, stuffing her red curls inside a rubber band. “No fair starting without us!”
“Who’s starting?” I asked. “Kim and I were just having a friendly discussion.”
“Riiiight,” Braden said, jogging to Michelle’s side. “Nothing says How have you been? like a punch in the face.” He pushed a stray lock of auburn hair beneath a bandana.
“Which reminds me.” I held my hands up in a fight stance and motioned him closer with my fingers. “I haven’t had a chance to say hello to you yet, Braden.”
“Funny.” He rolled his eyes but didn’t move.
“So how are we going to do this?” Michelle bounced from foot to foot. “Teams?”
“Great idea,” Braden told her. “I’ll be on a team with you and Rileigh. We should do shirts versus skins, and as an official representative for our team, I call dibs on skins.” He whipped his shirt off and tossed it to the ground and flashed us an innocent look. “What are you waiting for?”
Both Michelle and I groaned.
“Wait for us!” Drew yelled from his spot in the shade. He and Quentin trotted over and took their positions on either side of Kim.
At Kim’s signal we met in the middle in a whirlwind of fists and kicks. To an onlooker it might have looked like we were actually trying to kick each others’ teeth in. In reality, each calculated move was softened in the event of impact. Each punch carried with it an opportunity to learn, each kick a chance to reinforce what was already known.
And that was why, despite refusing the past for so long, sparring with the other samurai was one of the few occasions my skin seemed to fit my body. Most of the time I felt trapped inside myself—buried beneath layers of blood, bone, and tissue. Suffocated. But when I fought, I could hear the thrum of my heartbeat, taste the sweetness of adrenaline, and feel the pulse of my blood as it buzzed through my muscles like a jolt of electricity. As someone who could remember the tight, hollow feeling of her dying breath, I craved my living moments like a starving girl sinking her teeth into an apple.
“I’m out!” Braden stumbled away from the group to a nearby tree, which he used to lower himself to the ground. He draped an arm over his face, his chest heaving sporadically. “Holy hell, I’m gonna be sore tomorrow.”
Quentin flopped on the ground beside him. “I’m so with you.”
Drew propped an arm against the tree and used the edge of his T-shirt to wipe the streams of sweat along his temples. “Me too.”
Michelle hunched over with her hands braced on her knees. “Me three.” There was a hint of a wheeze between her words. “How long have we been going at it? Twenty minutes? It feels like twenty hours.”
I had no idea. I only knew that my body hummed in excited waves, a feeling I wanted to cling to for as long as I could before the exhaustion set in. “Go ahead, you guys. I’m not done with Kim yet.”
Braden made annoying kissing noises while Michelle giggled.
“Fine with me,” Kim said. He pulled his shirt over his head and threw it to the ground. Sweat glistened on the tight muscles of his chest. Standing under the orange glow of the setting sun, he looked like a golden statue brought to life.
“That’s not fair.” I struggled to swallow past the sudden dryness of my tongue. “That’s distracting.”
He flashed me a grin that ignited a fire low inside me. “That would be the point. Call it a tactical move.”
Braden used the tree to pull himself up. “Well, boys and girls, I think it’s time we moved along. This fight is about to lose its PG-13 rating.”
Michelle nudged him in the side. “I think it’s cute.”
Something prickled on the back of my neck and I turned to find Quentin staring at me with a look somewhere between confusion and pain. As I tried to decipher its meaning, Kim used that moment to snatch my wrist and twist it behind my back. He pulled me in, pinning me against his chest, and lowered his head to place a kiss just below my ear.
“I may need to take notes.” Braden pretended to open an invisible notebook. “So, what do you call this martial arts style, Kim? Kung fu-ling around? How about jujits-you-some?”
Michelle shook her head and tugged on his arm. “Leave them alone, Braden. You guys up for Sonic?”
“Sounds good.” Quentin’s face looked relaxed and normal. He pulled his bandana lower on his head to keep the bare skin that used to be his eyebrows from showing. “Wanna ride with me, Drew?”
“Sure,” Drew answered.
Quentin smiled and waited for Drew to catch up. Had I just imagined his strange, angry look? I detected no trace of weirdness about him now as he and Drew walked to his car.
“Go on ahead,” Kim said. “Rileigh and I will meet you there in a few.”
Michelle waved. “See you there.”
We stretched and shook our muscles as they climbed into their cars. After they pulled away, Kim turned to me. “You want to save yourself the trouble and just admit defeat now?”
I snorted and lashed out at him with a hook he ducked and an uppercut he dodged.
Kim spun back and kicked. I grabbed his foot, absorbing the shock by taking a step back. Before I could act
further, he pushed off the ground and twisted his foot free from my grasp. After he landed, he brought his hands up into a defensive stance. “At the rate we’re going, we could be here all night.”
I lifted my arm and used the crook of my elbow to wipe the sweat off of my eyes. “I could think of a worse fate than spending all night alone with you.”
He dropped his hands. His mouth opened but something froze the words on his tongue. It took him several tries before the word escaped his mouth. “Ninja!”
I choked on my heart, which sat thick and heavy on the back of my tongue. Spinning on my heels, I scanned the edges of the pa
rk. How could the ninja be here now? And more importantly, how could I not have sensed the danger? I studied the shadowed curtain that lay beyond the trees, waiting for something to move. “I don’t see anything,” I whispered.
Kim didn’t answer. I glanced over my shoulder just in time to watch him sweep my legs out from underneath me. My arms swung wildly and I braced myself for impact with the hard earth. It never came. Instead, his arms wrapped around my waist and lowered me onto the grass.
Kim grinned as he climbed on top of me. “I can’t believe you fell for the oldest trick in the book.” Before I could react, he pinned my wrists to the ground. “Looks like I win.”
Already the parts of my body he touched had begun to tingle like a hand held too close to a fire. How much closer until it burned? My voice, when it decided to work, came out a pitch too high. “You totally cheated! Are you really comfortable with that kind of victory?”
He shrugged. “I think I’ll find a way to live with myself.” He lowered his face, the touch of his lips like a brush of satin against my own. My heart sped up, struggling to cool the boiling blood that burned my fingers and pounded in my head. I closed my eyes. Even though I was drowning in fire, I wove my arms behind his back and pressed him closer. Sometimes I would wake in the middle of the night convinced this was all a dream. That my Yoshido was nothing more than dust in a 500-year-old grave. I pulled him tighter, pressing my fingers into his skin to assure myself that the arms I clung to wouldn’t dissolve when I opened my eyes.
Kim pulled away and stared at me. The sinking sun reflected golden flecks within his brown eyes. He sucked in a breath and turned away.
“Kim?”
He didn’t immediately look at me but when he did, a thousand emotions passed through his eyes at a speed too fast for me to grab on to a single one. “I just wish I had a lead on the ninja. Every day I think about that night in the alley. I thought … ” He swallowed and tried again. “I thought I’d lost you … again. It was the closest I’d ever stood to hell.”
