Hidden Realms

by Unknown

  Nathan’s jerk-like behavior wouldn’t have irritated me so much if I didn’t know he was capable of kindness. I had witnessed it. I knew he could do it. He chose not to. Because of that, the admiration I had developed for him had morphed into hatred. Again. At least not liking him made it easier to ignore how pleasant he was to look at.

  I eyed him from a distance. Okay, it still wasn’t that easy. I reminded myself that he was off limits. Taken. Or so I assumed. He had never actually said so himself...

  No. I shook my head rapidly to push the thought out of my head. I wasn’t an eleven year old girl anymore. I absolutely could not crush on him. I wouldn’t.

  I looked at him again, with a scowl this time as I remembered the brutality of the past few days. That did it. Attraction…gone. Momentarily blinded by disgust, it took me a moment to realize he was watching me.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he called across the field.

  I smiled wickedly. “Just thinking about how much I hate you.”

  He nodded like that was the answer he had expected. His expression grew more amused with each step as he approached me. “I think you need a break, before you start plotting to kill me in my sleep.”

  “I planned that a long time ago, Nathan. I’m just waiting for my chance.” I raised the knife in my hand for emphasis.

  He stunned me with a playful grin. “Want to take out your aggression over there?” He nodded toward the spot that had become our fighting ring, marked by the trampled grass and patches of bare earth.

  I nodded enthusiastically. “That sounds so much better than stabbing corn.”

  It was a lot better. I even managed to land a couple of blows. They rattled me more than they did him, but I got pleasure from making contact nonetheless. I think he enjoyed it too, even if he didn’t fight as hard as I knew he could. The longer we scrapped, and the better I got, the more he upped his effort in response and, after about an hour of steady fighting, both of us were panting, sweaty, and gross.

  I was on a bit of a roll, had connected a few good hits, and had kept Nathan on his toes to my satisfaction. We were in the middle of a sparring exercise when I pulled off the best leg sweep of all time, and sent him crashing to the ground.

  My hands shot in the air. “Ha! I did it!” I grinned down at him. “I actually—”

  One moment I was boasting my achievement, and the next I was doing a face plant into the dirt beside him. I heard Nathan chuckle as I pushed myself up. When I looked at him, he laughed outright, and my frown lifted into a reluctant smile.

  “You could’ve let me have that one,” I said as I wiped the dirt off my face.

  “I couldn’t resist.” He stood and extended a hand to help me up. “Next time, don’t celebrate too early.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I dusted my clothes off. “I still got you.”

  He turned toward the cabin with a carefree shrug and I trotted up beside him.

  “That was a good move I pulled off, huh?” One compliment. That was all I wanted.

  “Not bad.”

  I rolled my eyes. I guessed that was the best I would get.

  He glanced down at me. “You are advancing a little faster than I expected you to.”

  I beamed. “Really?”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “You might have fighting blood in you.”

  Like he did? Oh no. Maybe we were related. I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to risk sounding like an idiot. Besides, another thought distressed me more.

  “I don’t want to have fighter blood,” I complained.

  “Why not?”

  “To be a fighter, you have to have strength and muscles.” I forced myself to not look at Nathan’s. On him, they looked amazing. On women, muscles like that looked hideous. “I don’t want to get all big, and bulky, and ugly like those women boxers and body builders.”

  He chuckled again. “That’s what you’re worried about?”

  Boy, he was in a good mood today. While I wanted to enjoy the rare occasion, I was stressing way too much. I didn’t consider myself beautiful, by no means, but I did take pride in my appearance. Fighting all the time would surely take its toll.

  “Yes, I’m worried,” I whined. “You can’t tell now, but I used to take care of myself. All this sweating is doing terrible things to my hair and skin. I can’t imagine how much worse it could get if I had to do this all the time.”

  His eyes brushed over me, and I would have liked to think he was really checking me out, but I knew better. To him, it was merely an indifferent observation of my appearance. Then again, that was probably a good thing, considering I looked like a gross sweaty bum.

  Why did I care anyway?

  “I think you’ll be fine,” he said dismissively.

  “Whatever. You’re a guy.”

  “That kind of makes my opinion valuable, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe,” I admitted like I didn’t care. Truth was I couldn’t help wondering what his opinion was. “But ‘I think you’ll be fine’ isn’t very encouraging. It’s a typical guy response.”

  He sighed and shook his head at the ground. When we reached the porch, he bounded up the steps ahead of me, opened the door, and stood aside to wait for me. He looked more annoyed than anything as I took my time sulking up the steps.

  “It won’t happen,” he said quietly as I passed by him.

  “What?” I asked, pausing in the doorway.

  He gave me a lopsided smile. “You won’t turn big and ugly.” He made a face like he wasn’t satisfied with his wording. “I mean…” He seemed to be searching for the right words, but eventually shrugged, defeated. “I don’t really know what I mean, but I know that what you’re afraid of won’t happen. It’s not possible. I mean, you’re too…”

  I raised my eyebrows as his words trailed off. Did he think I was pretty? Had he almost said that?

  I had to admit, I got a kick out of watching him squirm. Turned out he had a vulnerability after all. Odd that it was girls. Guys that looked like him were usually full of themselves. Not Nathan. Girls made him nervous.

  Or was it just me?

  Either way, I decided to throw him a bone. “Well, thank you. I think.”

  He shrugged, still looking puzzled, and I didn’t hide the smile on my face as I waltzed inside ahead of him.

  CHAPTER 17

  Did he think I was pretty?

  Seriously, was it possible? What else could he have been about to say?

  You’re too...

  I spent the duration of my shower obsessing over the possibilities, but I kept coming back to pretty as the most likely option. Or beautiful. Or hot. It didn’t matter. They all meant the same thing.

  Nathan thought I was pretty.

  Reaching that conclusion on the heels of physically dominating him, even if it was a short-lived victory, made my day. By the time I finished in the shower and wrapped myself up in a towel, I was floating on clouds.

  That only made the fall that much harder.

  I wiped my hand over the steamy mirror to study my reflection, and maybe find a way to do something with my hair that didn’t involve a ponytail. Instead, I could only stare in horror at what I saw.

  Or didn’t see, rather.

  I brushed my damp hair to the side, clearing it from my forehead in a frenzy, though it was pointless. It wasn’t hidden. It wasn’t misplaced. I hadn’t forgotten where it was. It was gone. The hideous, repulsive scar was completely gone. I traced a finger over the course I knew it had followed. Nothing was left. Not a dimple. Not a faint line. Nothing.

  I knew I should have been happy to be rid of the ugly thing, but I wasn’t.

  My fist shot out, connected with the mirror, and shattered it. A chunk of glass fell to the counter and exploded into hundreds of tiny shards. I didn’t feel the pain in my hand until I saw the blood run down my arm. Even then, it wasn’t that, but the ache in my chest that dropped me to my knees as I sobbed their names over and over.

  Lauren and Megan. Their memories w
ere like daggers floating around loosely in my chest. Every now and then, one would strike my heart—and the pain was excruciating.

  It wasn’t fair. Why they died, why I lived, why I had to go on, pretending the events of that night had not darkened my soul forever. Sometimes, I thought it would have been easier to die alongside them, than to face their loss day after day.

  Why did he have to save me?

  And then he was there, scooping me up off the floor. Though I thrashed in his arms, he easily carried me to the bed, where he dropped me with an unforgiving thud. He left me to return to the bathroom, only to hurry back with another towel. I winced as he wrapped it around my hand in an effort to stop the bleeding.

  As an afterthought, I wished he had thought to bring another one. I felt rather exposed, sprawled on the bed in nothing but a thin towel that insisted on creeping up my thighs to the point of indecency. Good thing I was too upset to really care about how much skin was exposed. Even better that Nathan’s focus was on my hand, and not that.

  “What happened?”

  I shrugged. “I punched the mirror.”

  “I can see that. Why?” He looked at me, and he saw the answer with his own eyes. His hand rose, and stopped just before his fingers brushed against my forehead. He lowered it again without touching me. “I didn’t even notice. That was fast.”

  My lip trembled. With the loss of the one thing that connected me to them, I felt as if I were losing them all over again. My life was falling apart, again, and that was all he had to say?

  “I’ve never seen a scar heal that fast,” he added, more to himself than to me.

  “I didn’t want it to heal,” I wailed.

  He blinked in confusion. Of course he didn’t understand. It was my connection to them. Not his. I tried to push past him. Where to, I didn’t know yet. I just wanted to get away, to be alone with my misery, but I couldn’t even do that. He gripped me by the shoulders and forced me back on the bed.

  “Stay down,” he ordered between clenched teeth.

  I swatted at his arms that pinned me down. “Let me go!”

  “You lost too much blood already. Let me get the glass out of your hand, stop the bleeding and I’ll let you go. Until then...” He shoved my shoulders into the mattress forcefully, and held me there. “Stay still.”

  “I don’t want your help!”

  He looked at me like I was a stranger to him. “What’s wrong with you?”

  I didn’t answer his question, because I didn’t really know what was wrong with me, aside from temporary insanity. Instead, I spit out questions of my own in a fit of rage. “Why didn’t you save them? Huh? Why did you let them die?”

  “Kris—”

  “Why?” I shoved him in the chest with enough force that he rocked back and his weight lifted off my shoulders. I finally sat up, and came face to face with him. “Why did they have to die?” My voice cracked on the last word, and the sound shattered my resolve.

  After watching my world crumble around me little by little, I had reached the point of breaking. As an onslaught of emotion shook my body, Nathan gripped my shoulders to support me. Even though I was mad at him for his role in my collapse, I let him because he was also all I had left in my pathetic mess of a life. As the tears came, I leaned forward, unable to support my own head, and rested it against his chest.

  After a brief hesitation, his hands slid up and down my arms in a comforting motion and, despite the simplicity of the gesture, it helped. The tears slowed, my breathing steadied, and I leaned back. The anger lifted, leaving me with nothing but grief.

  And the knowledge that there was very little covering my body, and Nathan was still touching me. He must have realized it at the same time, because he abruptly dropped his hands and stood. His eyes avoided mine as he retrieved the blanket from the couch and wrapped it around my shoulders.

  His hands slid down to grip my forearms tentatively. “Kris?” He sounded genuinely concerned.

  I hugged the blanket around me, and kept my eyes downturned to avoid his. “Why didn’t you save my friends, Nathan?”

  “I couldn’t.”

  I looked up, unable to hide the disbelief, or the resurgence of anger, on my face. “Really couldn’t? Or couldn’t so that your existence would remain a secret?”

  There was a flash of something in his eyes. Something I didn’t recognize. Anger I knew. This was different; almost like...hurt.

  I knew it was unfair of me to accuse him of something that callous, but I was hurting. Maybe I wanted him to know how much I hurt, and how that day had ripped me apart, and I hadn’t found a way to be whole again. Maybe I wanted him to hurt too.

  “No, Kris. I couldn’t.”

  “Did you even try?” He reacted with that poker-faced non-reaction of his I had grown to hate. “Did you know that Lauren drowned? She was alive when you pulled me out of the car. Did you know that?”

  He shook his head slowly, and the haunted look in his eyes told me he was telling the truth. Actually, he looked down right devastated.

  Good. I could use some company.

  “Lauren,” he repeated softly. “What was the other girl’s name?”

  I folded my arms over my chest, refusing to stop being upset with him just because he seemed to be taking this news hard. “Megan.”

  “And she...”

  “She died on impact. Steering wheel to the chest, they said.”

  I had heard her screams, and the way they had abruptly stopped, long before the car flipped into the water. For her, it had been quick. For a long time, I envied her.

  Nathan stared at the floor as he digested what I told him. Part of me wanted to reach out and touch him, tell him I was sorry for blaming him, that I didn’t mean it. Not really. The other part of me—the louder, more stubborn part—stuck my ground. I still wanted answers from him. I still wanted to know why.

  “I didn’t want for your friends to die, Kris,” Nathan muttered as he finally looked up at me again. “If I could have done anything, I would have. I hope you know that.”

  “Then why didn’t you?”

  “I told you I couldn’t.”

  “That’s a bullshit answer and we both know it.” He was hiding something. I was at a loss as to what. Or why.

  “I know you don’t understand, and you probably never will...”

  “Make me understand,” I pleaded.

  “It won’t help anything.”

  “How can you say that? It has to help. Nothing could be worse than what I’m already going through.”

  His expression told me he didn’t have the same opinion, though I couldn’t imagine why. He saved me, not them. It was the worst kind of guilt. Nothing could make that any worse. Why couldn’t he give me some explanation? Tell me he did try. Tell me he failed. Tell me something.

  Help me heal.

  “Please, Nathan?”

  “You’re not going to understand,” he said with a warning tone.

  “Try me.”

  His face twisted into a grimace, and he sighed heavily. “Lay down, let me dig the glass out of your hand, and I’ll tell you what happened.”

  Wordlessly, I laid back on the bed and raised my hand in the air in surrender. He looked both surprised and relieved, but instead of immediately digging into it, he ran out the door with an, “I’ll be right back.”

  He returned with one of the weapons from the shed. It looked like one of those multifunctional knives, with a ton of other gadgets. He produced a set of tweezers from out of nowhere.

  I snatched my hand away before he could touch it. “Not diamond coated, right?”

  He grabbed my wrist and, with his head bent down as he studied the cuts, all I could see of his smile was the dimple in his cheek. “Not diamond coated. I promise.”

  I grimaced as he withdrew a shard of glass. Really, what had I been thinking? Sometimes I didn’t think things through. Punching a mirror probably topped the list of stupid things I have done.

  Yet again, Nathan was
here to bail me out of trouble.

  He has never let me down. Not even that night. Now that I had calmed down, I was able to appreciate what he had done. I would never get over the loss of my friends, but I was wrong in blaming Nathan.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled.

  He removed another glass fragment and set it on the bed beside me. His eyes skimmed over mine on their way back to my hand.

  “I don’t blame you,” I added.

  He was concentrating on my hand, but I detected a slight nod of his head. I counted it as a silent acceptance of my apology.

  “It was our fault,” I continued. “We never should have gone out. We never should have gone to that party.”

  “You changed your plans,” Nathan said quietly, never taking his focus off my hand. He hesitated, like he was debating on how much, or simply how, to tell me. “The prophet called me, said she saw you in an accident with three other girls, told me where it happened, all the details, all the places you were going to be that night. I worked out a plan to intercept you—all of you—before you ever got into the car, but something changed. You never showed up where I was waiting. I barely made it to the crash site in time.”

  “What changed?” A second after I asked, I knew. Callie was supposed to have been the third other girl. Because she wasn’t with us, we never went to Josh’s house before the party, like she had wanted us to. Our plans had changed the moment Callie was caught sneaking out of her window.

  Nathan shrugged. “Whatever it was, it was enough to throw a ripple through the whole night, and change it enough that I couldn’t stop the accident from happening. I wanted to. I tried. I’m sorry I couldn’t.”

  I felt as if I were a balloon being slowly deflated. He was right. Learning the truth hadn’t helped. If anything, my heart clenched tighter at discovering how close he had come to saving them. So many should-haves, could-haves, and what-ifs; so many alternate outcomes; so close to the one that wouldn’t have ruined all of our lives...

  He had tried.

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  He hooked an eyebrow and glanced at me.