Here

by Ella James

  I searched for Ashlyn’s body, but she wasn’t there. A boy was.

  2

  He lay just beside the water, curled over on his side with his arms around himself and his knees drawn to his chest. From my perch up on the bridge, I could see he had hair the color of burnt rust and looked about my age.

  When I thought about it a little later, I figured I must have been seriously freaking out, because as I stared down at him, the world seemed to stretch and rip—a kaleidoscope twisting in furious fingers. The air crackled like a huge branch snapping, the sky’s hue shifted like a tie-dyed shirt, and the pressure of the air squeezed my eardrums, announcing the End of both our lives and the Beginning of something unimaginably new.

  The really awful thing is: all I could think about was Twilight.

  I’d become book critic enough to know the story’s flaws, but when I’d gotten the series for Christmas in the seventh grade, I’d liked the vampire-werewolf fantasy better than I would ever dare admit. Which meant animals who occasionally turned human seemed real enough to me.

  Staring down at the felled boy, my mind spun like a Ferris wheel. Had I accidentally hit Aiden instead of Ashlyn? Were my mule dears really mule guys and mule girls?

  A violent breeze swept through the woods, shaking the bridge, and reality returned in a burst of sickening fright.

  “Holy freaking baktag! Holy shit!”

  I’d shot a person!

  My legs jolted into motion before I was ready; I bumped into the bridge’s rope handrails and shrieked, then shot off toward the stairs, practically fell down them.

  “Hey!” I sprinted to him, dropping to the damp sand. “HEY! Are you okay?!?”

  I shook his shoulder. His head lolled back, bright copper curls pressed into the sand. His eyes were shut, his chiseled lips parted.

  “Oh, God! Wake up! Wake up!”

  I rocked back, cradling my head. Could a dart dose calibrated for a small fawn kill a guy my age? I didn’t know. I didn’t know much about the dart gun. I wasn’t even supposed to be using it!

  My breath came in frantic tugs, like I was breathing for him and me. I looked down at him and felt the ground below me tilt.

  The boy’s curls looked afire against the dull wool of his tux. His tux? I followed the crisp lines of fabric down to his abs, where—oh, God—the dart’s tail stuck out of a swatch of inky fabric.

  My hand hovered over it.

  “Oh, God. Oh God. Oh God.”

  I’d done a few bad things, but never anything like this. What if he never woke up? Should I be calling 9-1-1? I fumbled in my pants pocket for my phone— But wait! I didn’t have service here!

  Jerky as a wind-up doll, I leaned over his body and splayed my palm across his cheek. It was creamy—not pale or flushed—and to me it looked unnaturally perfect. He didn’t have a single blemish. Not even a freckle. I wiggled my fingers, tap-tapping on his cheek below his eye. “Hey… c’mon. Talk to me!”

  My hands were shaking too much to check his pulse at the wrist, but I was able to press my fingers against his jugular, digging in to find the heartbeat at his throat.

  Slow but steady.

  “Okay.” I huffed. “Okay.” I sucked air through my nose, let it out slowly through my mouth. A shrink had taught me this. Dr. Sam, the guy my mom sent me to after Dad died and I had my— well, my issues. “Okay.”

  I needed to practice what Dr. Sam had called positive projection.

  This guy will wake up soon. This guy will wake up soon. And when he does he will be fine. When he does he will be fine.

  His neck was warm and firm, with a muscular quality that reminded me a little of an animal. The dart was only supposed to put a mule deer out for three minutes, so it couldn’t take too much longer for a human. Could it?

  No, Milo. Of course it can’t.

  The mental tricks did their job. I was able to calm down enough to think, and the first thing I thought was that I needed to examine him more closely. I stared down at him, noticing minute things, like the poet-or-surfer curliness of his brilliant, bronzey hair. How thick and soft it looked, like a thousand loosely curving ocean waves. His shoulders seemed unusually wide, but maybe that was the tux.

  Wait—

  Why the heck was he wearing a tuxedo? I glanced around, half expecting Bond-like reinforcements, but all I saw were leaves and branches. Our land was isolated. Fenced. So where on Earth had he come from?

  I looked back at his face: his parted lips, the sharp line of his jaw, the gentle plane of his nose, the way his lashes fanned against his cheek.

  A pristine white hanky poked out of his breast pocket, folded so harshly it looked fake. My gaze swept down his long legs before I realized I was—oh, no—gawking, and forced my attention back up to his face.

  Coloring: good. Eyelids: unmoving. Mouth: not frothing or bleeding or bruised. In the last three years, I’d become an expert on vital signs, and my throat flattened a sob as I realized how familiar this routine felt.

  I grabbed his hand and squeezed my eyes shut. He’s not dead, Milo. I’d felt his pulse. Now I simply had to wake him up.

  Pressing his warm hand between both of mine, I leaned down and spoke loudly near his ear. “Okay, now. It’s time to GET UP.”

  I held my breath, gritted my teeth, and willed his eyes to open.

  I’ve never been the sort of person who had luck, but this time, the universe was smiling on me.

  My sleeping beau awoke. No fluttering lashes or painful squints or groans. He simply opened his eyes and blinked, just like an owl.

  His eyes were deep brown. Wide and slightly glazed, they held mine like a magnet. Then he rolled onto his back, kicked out one long leg, and grimaced as he pulled the dart from his chest and held it up into the sunlight.

  Words fell from my mouth like gushing water. “I’m sorry! Are you okay? I was trying to shoot a deer and you just—” what? He’d just appeared.

  Except—okay—that clearly wasn’t what actually happened.

  The boy’s rust-smudge brows clenched.

  “I shot you!” I blurted. “That’s a dart!”

  He turned the tiny pink dart over in his hand. His mouth tightened, and I felt sure he was going to say something along the lines of, My father the Congressman will be sure you spend lots of time in prison.

  Instead, the corners of his mouth curved slowly. He sat up fully, leaning back on one arm, and in a rich, black-coffee kind of voice, he said, “You shot me?”

  He was grinning and, a second later, laughing. His shoulders shook, his head lolled back. The sound of it was uproarious. Wonderful. As was his dark gaze, affixed to mine. “You shot me?” The words puffed out on hoots of laughter. “And you were aiming for a deer?”

  He laughed so long I felt my cheeks color.

  “You might consider wearing orange in the woods,” I advised, wiping my hair back. “Anything with some color. Your hair’s not that red, and black and white don’t really say ‘I’m human.’”

  “What do they say?” His grinning face was lit up like a Christmas tree.

  “I don’t know…” Against my will, I felt my own lips twitch. I glanced over his tux. “Nick Carraway?”

  He considered that for a second. “The Great Gatsby?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s human. Or would be if he was real.” Still smiling that brilliant smile, he raked a hand back through his hair, trailing down over his face and over his jacket. Slowly, the smile faded. He looked down at himself for so long I forgot to breathe.

  “Um… Hey,” I said. “Are you okay?”

  He looked up at me like he’d forgotten I was there. His mouth was pinched tight now, his brown eyes flat.

  “Do you feel bad?” I asked; my voice quivered.

  Worry squealed to life inside my chest, filling me with thick, cold dread. In the moment it took him to answer, I envisioned myself in a striped jumpsuit, frowning on the front page of The Denver Post.

  GIRL HUNTS, KILLS VISITING PRI
NCE

  My victim shook his head. “No.” His mouth moved slowly, as if testing out the word. “I don’t feel…bad.”

  “Are you sure?” I was leaning forward now, hands clenched in my lap.

  “I don’t know.” The words were mumbled, like he’d just woken up…which he kind of had.

  The guy stared blankly at his legs, and I felt the chilly air condense. “Do you feel confused?” I tried. “Like, dizzy?”

  His eyes lifted. They were darker and more guarded than before.

  “It’s okay,” I told him. “Tell me what’s wrong. I’m pretty good at medical stuff and—”

  He shook his head. Like I was a fly buzzing, distraction. Then, without warning, he lumbered up.

  He’d seemed tall all sprawled out, but at his full height, my victim looked even taller: easily above six feet. There was something about him that brought to mind James Dean—all swarthy and mussed, like he’d just rolled out of bed and was spoiling for a fight.

  I jumped up, too. One minute, I was racking my brain for what to do. The next, he was walking—well, weaving—along the creek.

  “Hey, wait! Hold on a second!”

  But my victim wasn’t holding on for anybody. He jabbed his hands into his pockets and shouldered through the firs, moving with surprising coordination for someone who’d just been sedated. Then again, the dart was meant for Ashlyn, who was small.

  It felt like forever that I chased him, his big, dark form the center of my world. If I couldn’t catch him, what would I do? What had I done?

  A few strides later it didn’t matter. He sighted the pancake rock and froze mid-step. Then he turned a slow circle, his face a mask of baffled disbelief. He raised his arms, turning his palms out, toward me.

  “Where am I,” he asked flatly, “and what am I doing here?”

  3

  I wanted to believe his question was rhetorical. Philosophical. Where am I metaphorically and what am I doing with my life.

  But his brown eyes flashed with barely restrained panic.

  “What are you doing here,” I repeated, to his frozen face. “You mean…like…how did you get here?”

  I prayed he’d beam me one of those thousand-watt smiles. Then he would turn another circle in the field, fix his eyes on the Simpsons’ house, a small white dot in the distance, and say, “Okay! I remember now. I was leaving my aunt and uncle’s house— You know them, right? The Simpsons— And I’m on my way to the Saturday Morning Prom. I had to walk to that road out there—” which would be Mitchell Road— “to meet my friend Paul. He’s picking me up, and then we’re going to get our dates for brunch.”

  I prayed that he’d fess up to some strange psychological problem that regularly left him confused and wandering in men’s formalwear.

  I prayed simply that his face would lose that just-slapped look.

  Instead he whirled around, his back to me, and I watched his shoulders rise and fall; I could hear his fast and shallow breaths.

  Oh, no.

  I had stun-gunned some impeccably dressed guy and now his brain was scrambled. What was I going to tell my mom? What would I tell the Golden Police?

  The thought of the cops made me cold with fear. I’d been in fourth period last November when our school had been the target of a drug bust, and I could still remember the police whistles, the snarling German Shepherds that looked like they wanted to chew off my fingers.

  If the police found out what I had done…

  If the people at my school found out…

  Oh, no. No one was finding out. I could handle this. I’d handled lots of other things, hadn’t I? Many of them were things I didn’t want to think about, but still, I’d handled them. You’re too old for your age, my dear. Isn’t that what my Grandma Lisa had said just a few months ago?

  My brain switched to fast-forward mode. I stared at my victim, feeling an awful swell of regret that I quashed with my resolve. I could fix this. I could fix him. I felt my body moving forward, heard the crunching of dry grass under my boots. I saw my arm swing up, felt my hand close over his thick, woolen shoulder.

  There was a moment of quiet where he looked pale and unsteady, and I longed to brush those half-curls off his forehead.

  Despite my shaking hands and pounding heart, I forced my voice to come out strong and soothing. “We’re outside Golden, in Colorado. This is my family’s land. See those?” I turned and pointed to the turbines: enormous things like malevolent pin-wheels with three knife arms, perched on the edge of the Front Range. Strangely, they didn’t seem to be spinning and I couldn’t hear their usual faint hum.

  “Those are our turbines,” I told him calmly. “It’s called Mitchell Windfarms.”

  I watched his stark face. His eyes slid to the turbines, back to me.

  “I’m sorry. So sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you. I don't know how I did.” The state of things was fairly clear, but in my shock I needed clarification. “You’re saying you don’t remember…anything?”

  His gaze cut left, then right, canvassing the land like a deer about to bolt. I waited half a breath, and when he didn’t move I shifted forward, standing close enough to see the throbbing of his heart beat at his throat. “Hey... Come with me to my house. We’ll figure it out. I can get you something to eat. I can look at the gun’s manual, and we can figure out what to do to help you—” Help him what? “To help you remember what’s the what,” I finished lamely.

  We had friendship cake at home. Friendship cake and hot chocolate. My mom’s friendship cake could bring anyone to their senses. It had to.

  “Come on.” I held my hand out and nodded down the flat field that stood between us and my house; from this distance it was a brown smudge beside a cluster of firs.

  He nodded, slow and small, and stuffed his hands back into his slacks pockets. He hunched his shoulders and blew out a thick, cloudy breath.

  “Are you cold? You want my coat?”

  He shook his head. His throat worked silently, and I wondered if he was going to be sick.

  “Are you okay?” Stupid Milo. My eyes flew up and down his body; his curved shoulders, tucked chin, pinched lips made him look lost. Which he was. “I’m so sorry. I've never done anything like that before. I took a hunting class—you know, the one you need to get a license—and I'm usually so careful.” I realized how self-centered I was being and my cheeks flushed, warm in the cool air. “You’ll remember everything soon, I’m sure you will. The stuff in the gun was a sedative, for deer. It was only enough for a small fawn, but still…I'm sure that's what's making you feel weird.”

  I started walking, eager to be home, where I could do something. He followed half a step behind.

  “You’ll probably like what you remember,” I continued. “That’s a nice suit you’ve got on and— Hey, your suit. Take off your jacket!” I flung my arm around, like that would help him understand. “Check your pocket! There might be a wallet in there.”

  He blinked once—he still looked a little dazed—and shrugged out of his coat, revealing a starched white dress shirt and a soft-looking cummerbund, which he removed and tossed over one of those lineman’s shoulders. He fished into both side pockets, frowned, then checked the breast pocket, and came up with… a whistle?

  Yep. My victim held up a small, red whistle. It looked almost like a child’s party favor, except that it was metal. I rubbed my head. “Maybe the coat tag will have a name…”

  He was still staring at the whistle.

  Staring, like…staring.

  My stomach lurched. “Do you remember something?”

  He shook his head, but this time he tucked the thing into the coat’s interior pocket. I watched in silence as he checked the tag of his coat. Brioni. That was all.

  “Maybe you’re the next James Bond. He wears Brioni suits, you know.”

  A second passed, a second where his face was deadpan flat and I felt like an idiot for being so flippant. Then he gave me a small, crooked smile; it was almost smug. “You think
I’m a secret agent.”

  I laughed, an awkward giggle. “Umm. It's possible. I hope not, though. Cause if you are, that would probably get me in big trouble.”

  As soon as the words were out, I realized my faux pas. “I guess I’m already in big trouble…”

  He looked down at his shoes—leather dress shoes that must have been shined today—shifting his shoulders so he could massage one of them. I tried desperately to lengthen my strides. He followed, moving at a pace that seemed leisurely for him.