Authors: L.L. Muir
She pulled back, but he didn’t let her move far. He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her tight against him. They probably resembled a couple of trees that had been planted too close together and now grew as one.
She looked toward the crowd. The flames had died down after the first flare and people had moved closer to the fire. No one was looking their way. People at a distance were looking at the fire, not the white and black shapes smashed together at the back of the pack.
“You have my scarf.”
“Yes, I do. And I’m not ready to give it up just yet.”
“Why not?”
“I’ll explain later.”
“Are you making a little voodoo doll of me?”
He looked at her sharply, then smiled. “Something like that. Only this doll will do whatever I want.”
“Please don’t tell me it’s lifesize.”
He choked on a laugh, but said nothing.
He looked at the fire, sniffed, then grinned. A wicked light gleamed in his eyes and her first impressions of a devil hit her again.
“What are you up to, Jamison Shaw? You look guilty as sin.”
There was that sharp look again, and then the smile. She’d never noticed that about him before. It was as if she was standing there with a different guy and she was suddenly uncomfortable. She pushed on his chest. He resisted, but finally let her pull back.
“Answer me. What are you up to?”
His smile broke into a grin.
“It’s the wood. I brought some of it...from
Granddad
’
s
pile
.” He raised his eyebrows. Twice.
“Not the pig shed!”
“Oh, yes. The pig shed.”
“Oh, Jamison, you didn’t.”
“Actually, I didn’t think about the smell. Granddad did. I wonder if they’ll even notice.”
They both turned toward the flames. The orange light danced, illuminating grinning teenagers who had less attention for the fire than they had for each other. Old couples stood silently together with bored faces. Newer couples grinned and chattered like they were on stage being interviewed; the only thing missing was a microphone.
The burning pile shifted. A shower of ash burned itself up into the air, and faces stopped grinning, mouths stopped chattering. Noses started curling.
“Nope, Granddad, it didn’t rain enough,” Jamison murmured in her ear.
People started backing away from the fire. Someone mentioned a stink bomb.
“
Nope, smells like a pig farm.”
“
Someone put pig manure on the fire?”
“
We’re all going to smell like pig shit tomorrow!”
“
Our field will stink!”
“
What a shitty bonfire.”
“Come on, let’s go.” Jamison took her hand and pulled her toward the road. “Let’s walk. I didn’t drive.”
“We can take mine.”
“Nah. Let’s walk back to my place. I can bring you back for your car later. Afraid of a little walk, Skye? I thought Miss Somerled wasn’t afraid of anything.”
“Very funny. And what about you, Mr. E? What are you afraid of?”
“Why, I’m afraid someone will steal my phone and read my text messages.” Jamison laughed when his voice cracked.
She laughed too, but poor Mr. E.—he was in for a tough time. No doubt Jamison had guessed the English teacher’s real fear, and when the rest of the town found out, he’d be lucky to avoid a lynching. She wondered if Jonathan would be asked to handle that. He had a great gift for problems of the heart...at least the romantic kind.
“I’m afraid it will take a while for that smell to get out of my nose.” Jamison sniffed his collar, then smiled. “I think we got out of there in the nick of time.”
“I’m sure.” Actually, she had no idea what a pig shed, or pig
shite
—as Kenneth called it—smelled like. She only knew to follow Jamison’s cue and turn up her nose. That was one sense she didn’t covet at the moment.
The walk took longer than she expected, but she didn’t complain. Heaven forbid he should call her a coward.
The word ‘coward’ pinged in her head, reminding her of the conversation in English class. Why did Jamison believe himself a coward? And there was no doubt about it, the guy believed it as if God himself had given him a scarlet ‘C’ to wear on his chest.
She pried at his memories but couldn’t reach them. She couldn’t touch Texas. How much had Lucas cleaned? Or was it just a clear patch in his mind she couldn’t get past, like a stretch of wet ice she couldn’t cross?
Skye resolved to let it go for the moment. Maybe she’d get Jonathan to take a stab at him. If she could help Jamison, even a little bit, before she was gone, she’d feel better about going.
The stars got brighter as they started down Route 4, leaving streetlights behind. Jamison hadn’t let go of her gloved hand since they’d left the fire and she wondered how many people in the passing cars had noticed. Enough that no one offered them a ride, that was for sure.
She didn’t mind walking. It wasn’t as if she would tire, and she wasn’t worried about Jamison wearing himself out. She just wanted to keep the hand-holding a private matter.
She didn’t have to remember to breathe. In fact, breathing in sync with someone was quite an interesting thing. It was as if Jamison tuned his breathing to hers, or she to his. And it made for intriguing music in her ears. Every swallow, every irregularity in his cadence was like a change in key.
Something caught on her boot and she nearly fell, but his hand squeezed tight and he refused to let her go down.
That silly shiver went through her, as if she had bones and the shiver rolled through the marrow.
She stopped. She had no bones. It had to be her soul that was shivering. But why?
He held fast and stopped with her. “What’s the matter? Do you need to rest?”
“Yes. I guess I do. Just for a minute.”
He led her over to a fence and released her hand so she could climb up and sit on the top rail. The bottom rail had crescents gnawed into it. Some horse had taken a liking to the flavor of the wood, apparently, and had eaten off the softer edges of the planks. Maybe he’d not been fed well. Very sad.
“Are you cold?” He reached up and rubbed the front of her thighs.
“Why? Are you going to offer me my scarf now?”
He grinned. “Not yet. I don’t have it on me.”
“Oh. Well, I’m not cold anyway.”
“You shivered.”
“I have no idea why. Maybe you’re scaring me tonight.”
He froze, but a split second later he was all smiles. She doubted a mortal would have caught the original reaction. But to a being for whom time didn’t move in a straight line, it was plain to see he was hiding something.
Suddenly her wariness was very real. If Mr. Evans were there he’d say “Ah hah! Do you see, Mr. Shaw, how she trembles?”
A mathematical equation written on an English teacher’s blackboard flashed in her mind.
“
If
fear,
then
hide
.”
Skye changed her mind. Back by the road, completely visible to anyone driving by, was where she wanted to be.
She jumped off the fence and Jamison was instantly in front of her, pinning her against the chewed up lower rung.
“Careful,” he said, holding her waist like he was trying to support her.
But was he?
She tried to read his expression, but found him focused solely on her. She poked once again at his memories, going back just a little while, back to the bonfire an hour ago. She got nothing. The blank wall that dropped in front of her made her think of all kinds of freaky, alien scenarios, but they were silly.
It didn't make sense.
Were they defenses? Why would she find defenses in his mind? Why would Jamison be on guard? Unless Lucas had slipped up and Jamison remembered his earlier suspicions, that she and her people were murderers, Jamison had no reason to be...
Did
he
remember
?
She searched his face for a split second, but it was hard to look at a guy when his eyes were closed and his lips were pressed against your own.
He sucked on her lips, her face, buried his nose in the hair behind her ear and breathed her in, as if he were suffocating and she was the air he needed. She imagined tingles spreading beneath her hair.
He pressed his body against her, like he couldn't get near enough, like he was unaware of anything in the world but her.
Holy cow. Was that it? Was she finding it so hard to locate a path into his memories because his mind was completely occupied with her?
If she had an ego, it would inflate and explode.
She smiled over his shoulder as he kissed her neck, pulling her close. It was a lucky thing she had no sensation of what he was doing. She had a good guess of the chemical reaction a mortal girl would be suffering in the same situation, a chemical road Skye could never go down.
Suffering? Of course it would be best to think of it that way. It made it easier not to wish for it. Like some girls pretended chocolate was poison—Skye was on a sensation diet.
Except for the prickling along her skin.
Apparently the blushing camouflage was a package deal, probably to help her know when to react like a mortal should; when her skin felt covered in tiny stars it was time for good girls to blush and step away.
Jamison growled in her ear and she laughed.
“It's not funny, Skye. I want to be alone with you. Just to hold you without thinking someone might pull up at any minute and interrupt.”
Skye stopped smiling. She'd heard such lines before, but they'd never been said to her; she'd been eavesdropping. There went that imaginary ego again, insisting the guy be rewarded for making her feel special. But that, too, was a road she could never go down.
She knew he wanted some physical satisfaction, but she would never be the one to give it to him. However, if kisses could make him happy, she could give him that.
Giddy with relief, sure that Jamison had only been trying to hide his attraction to her, she grinned up at him. He grinned back and took her hand, pulling her back to the road. She had no time to make promises, or exact any. No time to tell him where the lines would be drawn, but she'd make sure he knew that a simple smile carried no promises.
The road churned beneath their feet as they made their way home. He wasn't sharing any plans with her, but she could tell by his speed he had something in mind. He'd probably take her somewhere in his car or into the cornfield where they wouldn't be easily found.
Poor Jamison. She earnestly hoped he wouldn't be too disappointed when she turned out to be different from most girls. But what could he honestly expect from a Somerled chick who probably wasn't even supposed to date anyone but a distant cousin?
Oh, brother, how she hated that assumption. “A bunch of in-breds” couldn't be further from the truth.
At last they passed the Latimer place—dark, deserted, waiting for a new generation of farmer to bring it out of the fifties. Maybe when Kenneth was gone, Lucas would expand, gobble up everything but Jamison and Lori's house, and probably that, too, if the pair moved away again. It should matter little to Skye what would happen then. Her time was near; she'd never know what would become of any of these farms, or the people who owned them.
They passed the fire hydrant. Next would be the canal and Kenneth's driveway entrance.
Jamison slowed and turned down the drive, but he led her between it and the canal, where the grasses silenced their footsteps. They passed the small granary, the spot where the pig shed used to stand, devoid now of the boards that had been piled there for over a year. His shoes crunched a bit on the gravel as they worked their way across the back of the yard, nearing the corral with the loading chute.
The top of the chute came to Jamison’s chest, and as they passed it, something screamed out of the darkness at him. His fast reflexes kept him from getting side-swiped by Geraldo, Kenneth's mean-spirited cat, but still he held on to Skye's hand, as if his life depended on it.
He raised her hand and kissed it, then pulled her around the corner, down past the spent garden planted smack dab between the two large corrals. There were no cars parked this far back, but they could get to the cornfields, out past the windbreak trees.
Skye was a little surprised. As bundled up as Jamison always seemed to be, she would have thought him too cold to want to remain outside, but then she remembered how hot people seemed to get when they were...holding each other. Maybe he hoped to get warm that way.
Maybe he'd be taking her back to her car a lot sooner than he expected.
A breeze nudged the wind chimes on Kenneth's back porch and Skye paused, looking back at the unusually dark yard. She caught sight of Kenneth's pick-up parked under the awning of the west shed. Jamison’s car was parked just beyond that, west of the house. His mom's car was gone.
“Jamison?” She didn't know why she whispered. No one seemed to be around.
“What?”
“How did you get to the school tonight?”
“I got a ride.”
“Why?” What was she missing?
“Long story. I'll tell you later.”
He started pulling her along. When she resisted a little, hoping he would slow down enough to let her think, he turned back to her, his eyes dark and intense. He stepped close and bent his head, to kiss her again, but she covered his lips with her gloved fingers.
“Who gave you a ride?” She moved her hand so he could answer.
“Miss Rachel Phillips.” He grinned. “Jealous?”
She frowned. “Of course not. I was just curious. She doesn't live out here, does she?”
“I don't know. I wasn't interested enough to ask. Then I thought if I hitched a ride in, I could beg a ride back from you.”
That sounded good. She'd buy that.
“Then I decided a nice walk might cool me off. But it didn't.”
He bent and kissed her then, and she imagined the temperature of his lips would be much higher than 98.6. Before she opened her eyes, she was being dragged away again.
They stopped under the tree house where Jamison finally released her hand. He collected the ends of ropes dangling from branches high above their heads.