by P. G. Forte
“I what? Aw, come on, babe. That was supposed to be a joke.” She felt him drop kisses in her hair, on her forehead, her nose, her cheek. “A really lousy joke. And I’m sorry. Please don’t cry.” He pushed her away enough to look into her eyes. “Are you kidding me? You can’t possibly have thought I meant it? Jeez. You must be even drunker than I thought. I knew it was a bad idea letting you have all that wine.”
“I am not drunk!”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Not much, you’re not. Come on, you have to know I’d never think anything like that. Right?”
She stared at him in silence.
“Oh, hell,” he said again as he pulled her close. “Jen, you gotta know what a turn-on it is when you get this hot for me.”
Scout tried to turn away but his hand tightened on the back of her head. His lips moved deliberately over her neck, her throat, up behind her ear.
Her eyes slid closed as shivers ran through her and she felt her hands clutching at his shirt once more. “Nick….”
“That’s more like it.” His voice was a low, compelling rumble of a whisper in her ear. “I love that you’re not all cold and untouchable. I love how you shiver when I kiss you. The way you close your eyes when I touch you like this. Do you really think I’d ever be interested in the kind of girl who won’t let anybody close to them? Believe me, the last thing I’m looking to get involved with is some uptight little virgin.”
The sudden introduction of a new fear sobered her for an instant. She pulled away with another half-strangled sob, and stared at him wide-eyed. And then the world began to spin again.
“Oh, shit. Not drunk, huh?” he chuckled. “Damn. We’d better get some coffee into you pretty quick. It’s gotta be better to take you home a little late than like this.”
The lights were too bright. The sounds too overwhelmingly loud and confusing. A jukebox was playing and the sound of silverware banging against thick, china plates echoed in her head. There were voices talking, laughing, arguing. The cash register was ringing. Irregular pinging sounds she couldn’t identify were coming from somewhere close at hand... .
She closed her eyes against the intensity and gulped scalding hot coffee as though it were ice tea and her mouth was a desert. Not caring at all that her tongue screamed with pain. Welcoming the clarity it brought.
“Jesus. We are so fucked,” she heard Nick mutter.
Scout’s eyes sprang open and she gazed at him warily.
“You feeling any better yet?” he asked her.
“I’m fine,” she mumbled as she felt her cheeks flame again. He thought she was drunk. He thought she was a stupid, drunk schoolgirl. A virgin. A slut. Too young. Shit, she didn’t know what he thought. “I have to go home.”
“No kidding! But not like this, you’re not.”
He sounded amused. Maybe a little worried. But not scornful. Not angry or cold.
She clung to that idea. He didn’t hate her. Not yet.
“Here, have some more coffee.”
“Okay.”
It was hot and bitter, and completely wonderful. It exploded within her stomach, magically clearing the fog from her head. She drank it down and pushed her cup away. “Really, I’m fine now. Can we go?”
“Not yet. We need to talk.”
“No, I need to go home!” She didn’t want to talk. What did they have to talk about, anyway? Everything she had ever told him was a lie. Almost everything. And everything he believed he knew about her was based on those lies. She could not believe she’d been so stupid. Only now did she realize how truly disastrous that could be.
“I’ll take you home in a minute.” Nick grabbed her hand and held it. His eyes glittered. She felt her breath go as his eyes locked on hers and held them. “Look, I’m sorry about before. But you have to know how much I want you, right?”
She felt her cheeks grow hot again, and dropped her eyes before she nodded.
“And you want me, too. Don’t you?”
She nodded again.
“Okay, then.”
She heard him exhale. He sounded relieved. She sneaked a look at his face. He was smiling, but his eyes still glittered with that look that made her feel as if everything inside her had liquefied. She quickly glanced away again.
“Look at me,” he ordered quietly.
She swallowed hard and forced herself to look him straight in the face. “What?”
His eyes drilled into hers. “I love that you don’t play games with me. I don’t want to play games, either. You don’t know this about me, but normally I’d have had you in bed long before now. Or I’d have been gone. I’m not real patient. And I’m definitely not into wasting my time with some girl who can’t decide if she wants to be with me. All this stuff we’ve been doing – sneaking around like this, not being able to pick you up at home, or even call you, or spend any kind of real time with you – this is not stuff I do. Not ever, Jen.”
She must have looked like she was about to say something, or maybe he read the fear in her eyes, because his grip on her hand tightened almost to the point of pain.
“Hey, let me finish. I know we have to do things this way right now, because of your parents and all. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I don’t like it, but I understand. And I can handle it. For a while, anyway. Like I said, I don’t have a lot of patience normally, but this is different. You’re different. But you have to understand that the only thing getting me through this is knowing that you’re not stringing me along. You’re not just playing games with me, right? You want this, too. Don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, then.” He reached for the carafe. “More coffee?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
He filled her cup, and then set the carafe down again. “But then we really gotta get you home.”
“I know.” She drank greedily, relieved to have an excuse to look away.
“You’re not upset anymore?”
“I’m not upset.”
“’Cause you look like maybe you still don’t believe me.”
She shook her head, but she didn’t trust herself to speak, or to meet his eyes.
“Aw, come on, Jen. Don’t be like that. You gotta know how much I care for you. If I was just looking to get laid, don’t you think we’d already’ve done it? We could be doing it right now. Sure, you’d get home late, and who knows if I’d be able to see you again, but what the hell, right? If that’s all I was after? But you know it’s not. You know I want to keep seeing you. And if that means we have to take things a lot slower than either of us wants to, then I guess that’s just the way it’s gotta be.” He studied her face in silence for a couple of moments. “So, please Jen, are we really okay?”
“Yes.” She nodded, blinking back the tears that still insisted on coming. “We’re fine.”
But they weren’t. Not really.
Oh, she was still determined to keep seeing him too, of course. And it thrilled her to hear him talk about how much he cared for her, how much he wanted her. Not that she hadn’t already known that. Young and inexperienced she might be, but she wasn’t an idiot.
But up until now, she hadn’t realized how easily she could lose him. Now she did. And she knew something else, too, and wished she didn’t. He couldn’t be her first. She couldn’t ever let him find out how young and inexperienced she really was.
There wasn’t anything she could do about her age, but experience was another matter entirely. Before they got back in the car, she was already plotting ways to lose her virginity. Without him.
So lost was Scout in her memories, she hadn’t noticed the vehicle that had been following her since she left the park. She didn’t notice when it pulled into the lane beside her, or as it sped up until it had come almost abreast of her. She didn’t notice anything at all out of the ordinary.
Until she heard Lisa’s voice, loud and angry, clear as a bell. “Hit the brakes, Scout! Now!”
She did as she was told.
She heard the to
rtured squealing of the brakes, felt the blast of speed and color as something large and dark veered suddenly into her lane with enough force that, just clipping the edge of her front fender, it caused her car to spin out of control. For several excruciating minutes the entire world spun around her. She fought the skidding tires without thinking, turning the wheel this way and that, relying on instincts she hadn’t even known she had. A part of her watched with total detachment as she finally wrestled the car away from the edge of the cliff. But not without sending it veering too far the other way. Sending it into a shuddering, bone-jarring, glass breaking crash against the jagged wall of rock on the other side of the road.
By the time she thought to look for it, the other vehicle was gone. The dog whined softly and licked at her face, and she grabbed it and held it with arms that trembled violently.
If she hadn’t slowed down just when she did, the impact would have been dead-on into the side of her car.
It would have sent her flying out over the cliff and down into the canyon below.
She would have been dead. Just like her father. Or like... Lisa?
A wave of nausea washed through her then, and she barely got the car door open in time. As the sickness subsided, it left an icy panic in its wake. This time she couldn’t pretend it had been the wind, or the innocent creaking of an old house. She hadn’t been in Oberon for one week and already she was hearing voices. If she stayed here much longer, what were the chances she’d be able to get out with her mind in one piece?
She crawled out of the battered car, shivering violently with a chill that was only distantly related to temperature. What to do? There was an unnatural silence in the canyon. Not a birdcall, not a rustle, even the wind seemed shocked into stasis.
What to do? What to do?
The question echoed in her head, but found no answer. She didn’t want to stay in Oberon another minute, but she had not accomplished anything she’d come here for. And, God help her, she’d more than heard a disembodied voice, she’d recognized it. It was Lisa’s voice. And something more. Her presence.
Scout rotated slowly, looking all around her, in the darkening canyon, searching for something that would explain what had just happened to her. Half-expecting Lisa to jump out from behind a rock, laughing at the fright she’d given her. But the canyon remained quiet and empty and she remained alone.
What to do? Well, that was obvious, wasn’t it? She should leave. Because if Lisa wasn’t dead, and if she had –somehow – managed to engineer what had happened, then she was clearly determined to drive Scout crazy.
A stray bubble of amusement burst out in a giggle. Drive her crazy? Drive her off a cliff, more likely! Except... she didn’t think she’d be driving anywhere for a while. Not if the way her car looked was any indication of how it would handle. But all puns aside, the idea might not be as far-fetched as all that. It sounded a little like a Hitchcock film, which would have been right up Lisa’s alley. Except ... that presence in the car, just now... .
She didn’t see how anyone could fake something like that. While it had only been for an instant and it certainly hadn’t felt malicious, it had been real enough to trigger a surprising response. The dogged, balls-to-the-wall competitive streak that Lisa had always been able to bring out in her – and that she’d thought she’d seen the last of years ago – was back, full force.
She was damned if she was going to be chased out of town by a, a ghost! If that was what Lisa had become, then she could just go haunt someone else, is all. Because, ghost or no ghost, Scout would leave Oberon when she was good and ready. When she’d finished what she’d come here to do. And not one friggin’ moment sooner.
But she sure wouldn’t mind getting the hell out of this damn canyon.
She returned to the car and dug her cell phone out of the bag. She’d call information, that’s what she’d do. She’d get the number of a tow company. Or maybe she’d call 911. But she couldn’t even get a signal.
She stared stupidly at the phone for several minutes. Stared at the little symbol that continued to read no signal, and refused to change into something more amenable. Anger seethed along her shaky nerves as she got back out of the car to try again. Maybe away from the car, reception would be better? Or over here, as far from the canyon wall as she could get? But it was still no good.
Goddamn it! What was the point of having this stupid piece of crap if it didn’t work when you needed it to? In a fury, she hurled the phone over the cliff, stormed back to the car and turned the key in the ignition. If it started, she’d just drive herself off the damn mountain. Hadn’t she learned a good long time ago that she couldn’t count on anyone else to save her?
Damn straight, she had.
She’d hauled her own bacon out of every friggin’ fire she’d ever gotten it into. And, if she had to, she could do it again.
The car started easily enough, but turning it proved a bit more difficult. Something seemed to be amiss with the front wheels. And there were strange sounds and vibrations that she was at a loss to account for, until she remembered that she’d just been in an accident. A fact that seemed to keep slipping from her mind.
The dog sat quietly, only occasionally giving vent to a soft anxious sigh, while Scout cursed and coaxed the car down from the canyon and back into town. She could have stopped when she got back to the highway, but by then her mind was focused too firmly on getting herself home, and she didn’t even think of it.
By the time she got back to the house, reaction had set in for real. She felt sore in a dozen different places and was so distracted she barely remembered to let the dog out of the car before she limped to the house.
Robyn stared, open-mouthed, as she came into the kitchen. “Wow! What happened to you?”
Scout’s teeth were chattering so hard, she couldn’t speak. She had a vague sense that she might be in shock, and she remembered having heard, somewhere along the line, that brandy was what you gave to people who were in shock. Did she have brandy? Did she like brandy? Did that matter?
She seemed to remember that Caroline had always kept a bottle of the stuff in one of the kitchen cabinets. Apricot brandy. It was a key ingredient in a favorite, but seldom made, dessert. If she could find that... .
“Were you out at the festival all this time?” Robyn pressed, while Scout searched clumsily for the bottle. “I saw you there yesterday. Did you stay up all night? Scout you look terrible. Maybe you should sit down. Are you sick or something? What are you looking for, anyway?”
Finally, she found the bottle and got it open. Tilting it up, she took a long, long drink. The sweet, fiery liquid burned through her system and cleared her head.
“Car crash.” She got the words out at last, then took another swig.
“Car crash?” Robyn looked puzzled.
Scout nodded, gulping for air.
“Oh, you mean, like an accident?”
She nodded, again. And drank some more.
“You were in an accident? Just now?”
Another sip. Another nod.
“Omigod!” Robyn’s eyes got even wider. She stared at Scout with an expression of dawning horror on her face. “Omigod! Omigod, Scout! Are you all right?”
The alcohol hit her stomach and the absurdity of the question hit her brain at the exact same instant. The only reaction Scout could manage, the only reaction that made any sense, was to fall helplessly into a fit of hysterical laughter. A fit from which she would not be able to recover until long after she had frightened Robyn into locking herself in her bedroom for the night.
Back to Top
* * * *
Chapter Eleven
* * * *
Marsha had never been a morning person. And the bus station at five a.m. had never been her idea of a good time. But here she was anyway, with Jasmine, her bike, and what still seemed like a truly excessive amount of gear.
She didn’t understand why a three-week bike trip needed to begin at five in the morning. And she didn’t know
if she would ever get used to saying good-bye to any of her children. Just thinking about how she was going to feel in September when Jasmine went off to college – well, it was almost enough to make her decide to go back to bed, and stay there for a week.
At least a week.
But she couldn’t do that, could she? She had too many people to take care of, too much to think about, too much to do. Like get to work, open the store, and go over the receipts from the weekend. Like find a way to stop obsessing over how much she was already missing Jasmine, and how long it had been since she’d heard from her boys. And taking care of Scout while placating Lucy. And now, on top of everything else, she had this thing with Robyn and Celeste to deal with.
The day had only just begun, but so far, it wasn’t looking too good.
* * *
Monday did not start out well for Robyn Smith, either. After spending most of the previous afternoon watching horror films, she’d found Scout’s behavior and appearance yesterday evening disturbingly similar to that of the killers in several of the movies. As a result, she’d lain awake most of the night with one eye trained on her bedroom door, half-convinced that Scout might break it down and come after her with an axe, a hook, a very large knife, or some other implement of destruction.
It had taken several days for the idea that there might be something wrong with Scout to take hold in her mind. Now that it had, she couldn’t shake it loose.
She thought about it when she got up late and rushed off without breakfast. She thought about it as she rode her bike to work. And while she was at work, she thought about it so much that she was quiet and distracted and so unlike her usual ebullient self, that Lucy, who routinely spent Mondays working with her at the nursery, couldn’t help but notice.
“Okay, Robyn.” Lucy put a steadying hand on the younger woman’s arm. “What gives? Is everything all right? You seem kind of out of it today.”
