Nowhere But Here

The strain of the past few hours weighs Olivia down as she accepts. Together, they leave the room. Emily can’t get out of here fast enough, in my opinion. Olivia will use the strength she needs to defeat the cancer in order to maintain appearances for Emily.

When the door to Olivia’s bedroom shuts, I appraise Cyrus as I shift the chess pieces in my head. The board in front of me is complicated and I don’t have many pieces to begin with. “What do you need me to do?”

“Entertain Emily.” Cyrus reaches behind the recliner and brings out his double-gauge shotgun. “Didn’t think I should keep it in sight with her ready to jump out of her skin.”

I chuckle. “Good call. How long has she been in the bathroom?”

“Long enough that someone she trusts should check to see if she slit her wrists.”

My head falls back. Screw me for asking. Cyrus focuses on the television, and keeps his gun in his lap. Suddenly the knife hanging on my hip develops an inferiority complex.

“Remember that she’s scared,” he says.

I flip Cyrus off as I head to check on Emily. Cyrus flips it back. The moment I have a cut on my back, I’m going to have to watch myself with the board members, especially being a prospect. But for now, Cyrus isn’t the president of the club to me—he’s the man who took care of me for the first few years of my life.

My mother’s voice is muffled on the other side of Olivia’s door. Not a good sign. Olivia has to be weaker than I thought to let my mother help her into bed. My neck tightens. Emily’s going to kill Olivia if she stays much longer.

I tap on the bathroom door and when there’s no response, I knock again. Still nothing. Damn, she probably has slit her wrists.

The voices from the other side of Olivia’s door go quiet. The last thing I want is Olivia barging out of her bedroom and taking over again. She needs sleep, not to be babysitting Emily. I brought this trouble into her home and I can handle it for a few more hours.

I try the knob and it doesn’t budge. Grabbing the skeleton key we store on top of the door frame in case Olivia passes out in the bathroom, I wiggle it around in the small hole until I hear the click of the lock giving. I’m slow opening the door, in case Emily is lost in her thoughts on the toilet.

Each push of the door is methodic and gradual. Empty floor. Closed toilet. Curtains blowing in the breeze and a wide-open window. My fingers curl until they form a fist. I’m going to wring Emily’s tiny, delicate, hot little neck.

Emily (#ulink_3069577b-7edf-5eb1-a3ed-c44f587f2eb3)

WITH MY KNEES pulled to my chest, I sit on a wooden bench that rests below a darkened window of the house. According to Olivia, the room belonged to me, which doesn’t make sense on multiple levels. The impulse is to peer into the room to see if the answers I’m searching for are in there, but I don’t. I keep my back to the house and my eyes locked on the approaching sunrise.

I’ve been awake for over twenty-four hours and my brain has disconnected from my emotions. I feel stretched and numb. Cold and hot. Wired and exhausted. I sort of welcome it. I’m officially too tired for fear.

Oz was right earlier. I definitely was sucked into a storm and I’m desperately trying to grab on to anything solid to prevent myself from plummeting into the vortex of the tornado.

There’s a moan in the wooden window frame a few feet down and out pops a jean-clad leg. It’s the same black boot that monopolized my space at the funeral home. Oz slides out of the house with more elegance than me. I ended up on my butt. He lands on both feet. Even with all that muscle, he’s graceful like a cat. Goody for him.

His eyes dart around and he does a double take when he spots me on the bench. He scans the yard and thick surrounding woods, then he strides over as if climbing out a bathroom window is normal. “And they say people from Kentucky are backward. We have a front door and one in the kitchen, or do you think you’re too good for either one?”

“Would they have let me out?”

“Onto the porch.”

“Sure they would have—with an armed guard.”

“Not armed guard—escort,” he corrects as he stands in front of me. “And if you had made a break for it, I would have had to tackle you and then we’d be in all sorts of trouble. Could you imagine me putting my hands on your body?”

He winks.

Winks.

Heat rushes up my neck and my earlobes burn.

“I...” Clear my throat so I can at least pretend that comment didn’t slip under my skin. “I have no idea what you’re suggesting.”

“Yeah, you do. Since you arrived at the funeral home, I’ve been looking at you and you’ve been looking at me. Too bad you didn’t go out the front door. Would have been fun, don’t you think? Me tackling you. Us rolling around. Tell me, Emily, are you the type of girl that doesn’t mind a good time?”

His strong body over mine. My hands messing through his hair. His hands touching my face. Holy hell, my nerve endings tingle.

The right side of his mouth tips up as if he can read my thoughts and his eyes wash over me like a lingering waterfall. That’s when it hits me, he’s playing a game with me. “You’re full of yourself.”

“Might be, but I’m not wrong, plus for thirty seconds you weren’t having a pity party. So what happened with your escape plans? Did your momma tell you that you can’t cross the street without holding her hand?”

I throw him a mock smirk, but oh how I wish there was a road to cross and that was my problem. Instead, there’s woods. Lots of woods plus lots of darkness. Woods and darkness terrify me. Bad things live in the woods. Evil things exist in the dark. The inside of that cabin didn’t feel any safer so I opted for the bench with the glow of the lights from the utility pole near the house.

For some, hell might be being buried alive in a coffin. For others, hell would be being covered to their heads in a tank full of spiders. For me, it’s this. Encircled and enshrouded by claustrophobic darkness and foreboding woods. Dead things lie in wait in that black void.

In that house, a woman is battling death and also promising to tear apart the foundation on which I stand. Inside isn’t an option. Neither is out. I’m here on this bench because I didn’t know where else to go.

Oz assesses me. The same way my parents used to for weeks after they found me in that hole at eight. “You suck at running away. I found you in less than ten seconds.”

“Are you going to continue to rub it in that I failed?”

“I was going to, but that question stole my thunder.” Oz eases beside me and I curl into a ball toward the corner. Even with that move, the heat from his thighs wiggles past my jean shorts and caresses my skin. I rub my hand along my cold arms. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I crave to crawl up next to him and live in that heat for rest of my life.

He sprawls the massive wingspan of his arms along the back of the bench then extends his long legs, kicking one booted foot on top of the other. His fingers “accidently” swipe across my bare shoulder and it causes a tickle in my bloodstream.

Oz commands awareness like no one I have ever met before. There’s no denying his presence. No denying that his body is close to perfect. No denying that since I laid eyes on him I’ve wondered what he looks like with his shirt off.

Completely impervious to how his nearness affects me, he stares straight ahead and watches the sunrise. “Ever seen one of these before?”

According to Olivia, yes, but I shake my head no. I’ve been up before dawn, but I’ve never sat and admired how the stars are chased away by the sun rising on the horizon.

“Me neither,” he says. “Mind if I watch it with you?”

“If I say no, will you leave?”

“No.” At least he’s honest. “But I’m trying to at least make you feel like you have a choice.”

“But I don’t.”

“But you don’t,” he repeats. “Just a few more hours, Emily, and you can go back to your life and I can go back to mine. We can both pretend we never met.”

That’s all I want. “You don’t like me, do you?”

“You make the people in my life sad and in the brief few hours I’ve known you, you keep racking up points in the heartache category. So, no, I’m not your biggest fan.”

I bite the inside of my lip and focus on my knees. It shouldn’t bother me what a punked-out moron thinks of me, but it does.

“Don’t look like that,” he pushes. “You could have killed me with some of the glares you’ve sent my way. Are you going to say you like me?”