Prophecy (8 page)

“Are you okay?” Liam squatted instantly before me when he saw me sitting on the floor. He extended his hand and pulled me up with him. To my utter disbelief, he tucked me against his side.

“Yeah. I’m okay.” My heart pounded. What the hell had happened here? My head spun with the implications of two guys fighting over me. In school. With an audience.

“No PDA.” Kirk motioned to me at Liam’s side.

The librarian harrumphed. Maybe she’d seen Kirk dry humping Hannah in the hallway between classes, too. I fought the urge to stick out my tongue and focused instead on the vibration starting in my hands and chest. Adrenaline kicked my heart into double time. Holy crap! What happened?

Liam’s gaze drifted over me, checking for injury, I assumed. The top of my head leveled below his shoulder. I did some mental math as the principal appeared, lectured on school policy, and insisted we follow him to his office. If I was five foot four and Liam’s head and neck were a foot tall… Wait, how tall was a person’s head?

Principal Mansfield led our group, with Kirk at his side, pleading his case. Detention would interfere with football practice and that wouldn’t serve anyone. I rolled my eyes. Liam walked behind them by a step. I followed on Liam’s heels.

He glanced at me. “I apologize if I offended you back there. I’m not good with words. And my social filter isn’t one of the best.”

I smiled. Stupidly. He hadn’t intended to be harsh. “Apology accepted. This time,” I warned. “I don’t mean to respond to Kirk the way I do. I know it’s stupid, but he hounds me until I want to choke him.” A tiny laugh bubbled in my chest. “I’m a struggling pacifist.”

He sniffed out a silent laugh. “Very well. I imagine pacifism isn’t easy.” A wicked gleam lit his eye as if I’d somehow missed an inside joke.

“How tall are you?” I whispered.

“Six four.”

Justin was six one and that was tall. “Will you be in much trouble for this?” I had no idea what his parents were like. Would they go berserk like Allison’s or shrug it off like my mom would? My gut twisted at the thought I’d caused him more trouble in a school already scrutinizing his every move.

“What’s the policy?” he asked.

I moved to his side, matching my pace with his. “A week’s detention, probably, but I meant will your parents be very mad?”

He shook his head and walked in silence the rest of the way to the principal’s office, leaving me cast aside once more.

Principal Mansfield interviewed us separately before calling our parents. Fighting was grounds for a three-day suspension, but we lived in football country and Kirk had taken our team to state since freshman year. There was a sharp curve on acceptable player behavior several months a year. He’d never be suspended during football season. Detention was doubtful, too. If detention kept Kirk from practice, there’d be hell to pay in the form of a football-dad mob and raging protests from the boosters. Parents ran small-town high schools with their wallets.

Kirk strode out of Principal Mansfield’s office first with a look of smug satisfaction. Liam went in next and left with his usual mask of complacency and annoyance, as if high school was too trivial to bother with and attending was a punishment. I went in last, explaining the situation as well as I could without giving away my bias or revealing Kirk’s hurtful words.

Principal Mansfield dialed my home and handed me the phone. The call woke Mom. She slept while I was at school. It took effort to convince her I was serious about being in trouble for a fight in the library between two guys. When I finished “explaining myself” as Principal Mansfield instructed, he spoke with her. I got detention, but Principal Mansfield got an earful from my mom. Her voice carried through the receiver, unintelligible to me, but audible. Mom was like that. Sensible. I’d had nothing to do with them attacking each other. Though, Liam had tried to defend me. Baffling. Maybe it wasn’t about me. Maybe he
really
didn’t like being called chap.

My newfound personality disorder carried me to detention with hope. It was hard to be too upset about three days of camaraderie with Liam. Detention was held in the largest room on the second floor, though this time of year it was missing the usual inhabitants: the football team. The room was quiet and nearly empty. Of the two dozen desks, less than half were occupied. Liam sat near the back of the room. I took the seat beside his. He didn’t look up from the open book on his desk.

The woodshop teacher sat up front, using his pocketknife to slice chunks off an apple. He sliced a piece loose, skewered it with the tip of his blade, and stuck it in his mouth, repeating the process with utter disinterest, until the apple was nothing but a core. I frowned. Outside of rural Ohio, metal detectors probably kept teachers from carrying knives, let alone brandishing them as cutlery. Snack gone, he used the knife to clean under his fingernails. I gagged.

I leaned across my desk toward Liam. “Can you believe Kirk got out of this?”

He turned a page in his notebook, making swift marks with his pen. One long arm lay over the desk between my eyes and his paper.

“Were your parents mad?”

His pen crawled to a stop. “No.” His solemn expression turned to frustration. He sat motionless for a long beat.

I waited with rapt attention as he chose the right words for whatever was on his mind. When he started writing again, I huffed.

I pulled
Haunted Ohio
from my bag and opened to the table of contents.

“Was your mom mad?” he asked.

Surprise jolted through me. I steadied my nerves a moment before I responded. Being near Liam put me on edge in a strangely exciting way.

“A little.”

“I didn’t mean to get you in trouble,” he mumbled.

“You didn’t. She’s mad Principal Mansfield punished me. She’s big on taking responsibility for our actions, and she’s a dedicated feminist. Fighting over a girl is a hot button. Blaming the girl is like throwing gas on a fire.” I stopped. “Not that you were fighting over me.” I looked away, wishing for a rewind button.

“It was nice to be someone’s protector for a change.”

I didn’t look up when he spoke. He had been fighting over me. He’d admitted it, but what did he mean about being a protector for a change? As opposed to what? He seemed awfully, er large, to need a defender.

Liam’s voice was soft, almost inaudible. “I meant what I said about being friends.”

I struggled to put the syllables together. Friends? “I’d like that.” Very much. Too much. I smiled, looking his way again.

“You probably haven’t noticed, but I’m not always very sociable.” Liam squinted as he spoke, giving his chiseled face an awkward edge.

I mocked shock, shaping a little “o” with my lips and placing a palm over my chest. “No.”

His cheek lifted slightly into a perfect crooked smile. “It’s true.”

“Brand new information.” I gasped, drawing the shop teacher’s eyebrows into a warning frown. I leaned over my desk and pretended to read. When the teacher went back to cleaning his nails, I lowered my voice and turned to Liam.

“Where’d you learn to hit like that?”

He smiled, slowly turning his eyes on me. “I’m a boxer and I fence. Long arms come in handy, given the right occupation.”

I remembered his long, steady strokes in the pool and checked the clock. Twenty more minutes until we were back in the water. I wanted Liam’s friendship almost as much as I wanted to be his friend. Swimming posed a great opportunity for both.

Images of his strong arms wrapping me in an embrace replaced images of his fierce freestyle. I shut my eyes, thankful he couldn’t know my thoughts. What was going on with me? When I dared a look in his direction, he glanced away. He read for the rest of our detention and I laid my head on the desk, redirecting my thoughts. Liam was an enigma and I was hooked on the intrigue. One minute he built a wall around himself, warning people away, and the next he wanted a friend. Why me?

When detention ended, he didn’t move.

I arranged things unnecessarily in my book bag, stalling for time. “Are you swimming today?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. See ya.” I smiled, satisfied, and hurried to change.

The thrill of anticipation grew to combustion levels when I entered the pool area. I spoke with Coach, explaining about detention, then dove in and swam four laps before my mind got the best of me. My senses were on high alert. The smallest sound broke my concentration. My head popped up a dozen times, expecting Liam’s arrival.

An hour later, disappointment flattened me. Time to go home.

Coach didn’t bother telling me how bad my times were, and I didn’t ask. My head wasn’t in it. I’d fumbled every turn, missing the firm plant of my feet against the pool wall, shoving awkwardly and gliding slowly into each lap.

He clapped my shoulder as I toweled off. “Shake it off, Ingram. Everyone has a crap day sometime.”

On the equally slow walk home, I evaluated an endless list of reasons Liam would lie about swimming. I didn’t like any of my ideas because they all involved dodging me. His giant frame came into view the moment I turned onto our street. He sat on his front steps, flipping through envelopes. I was still thirty feet away when he saw me. My breath hitched and my feet moved more quickly over the crumbling sidewalk, stupidly in a hurry to talk with him.

His hair was darker, wet. His eyes were brilliant in the waning sunlight.

“Hey.” He stood as I approached. An easy smile spread over his lips.

“Where were you?” The words rushed over my tongue with more force than necessary. He didn’t owe me any explanation, but curiosity pushed me ahead. “You said you were swimming today.”

He ran a large hand over his tousled hair. “I did.”

“No,” I argued. “I did. You didn’t.”

His smile widened. Unless he had invisibility working for him, I’d have seen him in the pool.

“I swam here.” He turned at the waist, looked at his house, and then back at me.

“You don’t have a pool.”

“Inside.”

“You have an indoor pool?” My jaw dropped. I could swim three hundred and sixty-five days a year if I lived there. My gaze ran past him to the enormous manor at his back and goose flesh rose on my arms. “That’s what the semi-truck brought last week. I didn’t see it. I assumed a moving truck, not a water truck.”

“Twelve thousand gallons of salt water. Do you want to see the pool?” He wet his lips, a sudden look of unease lined his forehead.

My heart stopped. No. I didn’t want to go inside Hale Manor. Ever. Not even to see a pool. I blinked hard to erase images of his great-grandmother swinging from a rope over a grand staircase.

“Uhm.” I stalled.

Palpable tension built between us.

I didn’t want to decline his invitation, but I wasn’t ready to walk away. “Are you joining the swim team next month?”

“No.”

“No? Why not?” I moved closer, drawn in for no good reason.

He tapped the envelopes against his open palm, looking conflicted.

“I planned to swim while Oliver attended football practice. It seems he doesn’t need me for a ride home, so there’s no need for me to stay after school. Plus, I prefer salt water to chlorinated.”

“Oh.” I’d never swam in a salt water pool. My thoughts dove back to Liam on deck at my pool. “What does the symbol on your chest mean? How did it get there?” I pressed my lips together, barricading a deluge of questions.
One at a time, Callie
.

Shock crossed Liam’s face so briskly I almost missed it. He settled on his signature frown. “What do you mean?”

I huffed. It was bad enough I wanted to know. Worse that my traitorous mouth asked. Now I had to explain? Yes, I’d haunted his family’s cemetery and ogled his bare chest. I was a crazy person. Obviously.

“They look like scars, but aren’t. I recognize them from the…cemetery.” Gah! The final word stuck in my throat. Who spent time in cemeteries?

His cool green eyes searched my face. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Really? That was his plan? Pretend two dozen headstones didn’t exist? Never remove his shirt again? The last one was sad.

“Is it a family crest or something? Why’d you choose white ink? Is that a thing in Iceland?”

His frown deepened. “It’s not ink.”

“Is it a scar?” My voice hitched. Was I wrong? “Did someone do that to you? Did you do that to yourself?” I squinted. Was Liam a cutter? Abused? Part of a cult? Was it more painful to cut a scar into your body than go the traditional route? Was India ink in short supply where he was from? “Why are you glaring at me?”

His expression went flat. “I’m not glaring. I’m thinking.”

“Well, it looks mean.”

“I am mean, Callie.”

I shook my head and rerouted my questions. “Fine.
What
are you thinking?”

“I don’t understand how you saw the marks.” Curiosity replaced his “thinking face.”

“At the pool.” Heat climbed my cheeks to my hairline. “I noticed them when you got out of the water.” My gaze went to his shirt, locking on the section of fabric over the scars.

“Runes.”

“What?” I tore my focus away from his shirt.

“It’s Norse.” The cutting edge of his voice said he didn’t want to talk about it.

The tenacity in my core said I now had enough information to ask Google what I’d wanted to know for a decade.

I examined the sidewalk, noting tiny gravel at my feet and Liam’s excruciating nearness. Definitely time to take my leave and hit the Internet. His shadow covered me, blocking out the setting sun at his back. He inched closer.

“Callie?” He dropped the mail onto the step where he’d been when I found him.

I pulled in a breath and met his gaze with interest. The seriousness on his face intimidated me, but not enough to look away. Every moment spent with Liam stung with the possibility he’d turn to vapor and disappear. As if he somehow wasn’t
real
. I suppressed an urge to poke his chest with my finger.

His lips parted and I wanted him to kiss me so much my ears rang. Something was definitely wrong with me. I blinked and shook my head hard. I knew better than to get attached to pretty faces, strangers, and brooding guys who live in haunted manors. Three strikes for Liam.