“I told you I was in a lot of pain, but some part of me must have remembered.” He didn’t look at me as he picked up another big piece of cardboard. “It’s why I didn’t ask you to contact anyone for me. I knew I was supposed to be there.”
The hair on the back of my neck rose. “When? Did she show you that, I mean?”
“A few years ago. That’s when I learned about you,” he answered easily.
Goose bumps rose on my arms too, but I wanted to tell myself it was because my pants were soaked through and I was cold. But that wasn’t the case. I swallowed hard. “If your grandma is so powerful, why didn’t you call for her?” I asked him. “When we were in the cell?”
It took him a second to answer. “I almost did. Your heart rate got real slow there, and I thought about it once or twice, but the situation never got bad enough. You don’t mow down a whole field when you can pluck a single weed. And I’m positive she’s the reason there was an incident with the cartel that made them stay away.”
I thought about that, coming up with a dozen more questions while I did. I settled for the most annoying one. “Why, Alex? Why did your grandma want you to find me so bad that she would have hurt you like that? You said that stuff about being Atraxian too, but some of you have made these comments… and I feel like there’s more you aren’t telling me.”
All he said was “Yeah.”
“Yeah what?”
“There’s more.”
This motherfucker. “Are you going to tell me what that other stuff is, or are you just going to tease me with it?” He was just going to tease me with it; I didn’t know why I was asking.
His answering huff said it all. I had a feeling…
“What else did she show you?” I croaked. Did I have to sound like I was dreading his answer?
He smirked.
Son of a bitch.
I didn’t want to tell him.
I really didn’t want to tell him.
He would laugh. Or roll his eyes. Or shut down again. Maybe worse.
I wasn’t even sure how I felt about it.
My neck started to itch.
“You’re going to tell me eventually,” he egged me on with that smart-ass expression, dragging me away from the knowledge he’d just dropped on me.
“Why would I do that?”
“Because we don’t have secrets.”
“Since when? I’m pretty sure we’ve got like twenty between us, and nineteen of those are yours.”
Those big shoulders rose and fell in a too casual shrug. “It’s only about sixteen now.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Best friends number 10 don’t lie to each other.”
Why had he moved me up on the list?
“What did she show you?” he asked again, all calm and cool. Daring me. He was fucking daring me.
My heart started to beat faster, and I wasn’t sure whether this was a fun game or torture.
“What did she show you?”
Someone was fucking relentless.
And I didn’t like him pushing me like this.
Did he think I wouldn’t tell him? Or was it reverse psychology? I wouldn’t hold it against him.
I mean, he’d seen my house. His grandmother had dropped him with me on purpose. And if he really was going to get bent out of shape, it was going to happen now or six months from now. Six years from now. I had my phone, and all I needed was my new credit card. As far as bad positions went, this wasn’t the worst one to be in. I’d already been through that.
And I was still here.
I’d lived just about my whole life pretending to be meek and keeping to myself and always tiptoeing, and where the hell had that landed me?
“You,” I made myself admit in a rush before I could talk myself out of it.
He slowly turned to look at me over his broad shoulder. His face was even, smooth. His body way too relaxed.
I lifted my chin. “You were holding a baby.” I shrugged a shoulder. “You asked. What else did you see?”
“You,” he answered.
Alex stared at me, and I stared right back.
My heart started beating even faster, and I knew he could hear it. There was no hiding it. My face went warm. “Me how?” I asked as loudly as I could. “You said no secrets,” I reminded him.
His eyebrows went a little up, pink suddenly tinting his ears.
For a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to say shit.
But this was a man who went into burning buildings without blinking an eye, and now I knew he would have done it even if he wasn’t invincible.
“You were on your hands and knees,” he said.
What the hell did that mean? What was I doing on my hands and knees?
My face went even warmer. Hotter. So hot.
“Come on,” he said suddenly, holding up an even bigger cardboard box.
What the hell had I been doing in his vision?
I couldn’t ask. I couldn’t fucking ask. And why wasn’t he questioning the baby in my vision?
I kept my eyes down, ignoring the beating pattern my heart had decided to skip along to with this between us, and followed him out of the garage and down the driveway we’d waddled through, heading toward the downward slope part of it on the other side of the house. I kept my eyes on his wide frame. I thought about the vision I’d seen.
Him holding a dark-haired baby with my eyes, smiling. Alex’s hair was longer than it was now. There had been something different about his face though. He’d looked a little older? Or maybe just… less grumpy? More… happy?
We made it to the top of the gentle hill, and I stood beside him.
“You go first,” I said, trying to act cool when I felt everything but.
Those purple eyes flicked toward me. “Me?”
“Or we can go together?” I suggested. “You can be my Atraxian shield. Make sure I don’t break an arm.”
He bumped his arm against mine. “Let’s go down together. No arm breaking.”
I smirked and laid down the cardboard I’d been carrying, pushing it into the snow. I took a seat as forward as I could get without falling off, legs straight out in front of me.
To my surprise, he climbed on behind me, his long legs bracketing mine between his. I had expected him to make me be the big spoon. He pressed his chest to my back, settling his chin over the top of my head. “Ready?” he asked, his voice soft and almost mellow. Different.
I nodded tightly, and he slipped his arm around my waist. I grabbed the sides of the cardboard, feeling his free hand grab on to one of the sides too. And with our feet dangling over the front, we pushed ourselves forward and took off.
I laughed. He chuckled. Wind whipped us in the face. And when our makeshift sled stopped halfway down the bumpy hill that didn’t have enough snow, Alex held out his hand and picked up the broken-down cardboard box with the other. We climbed back up the hill and went down again, me between his legs, his arm around my waist, and we got even farther.
We did it again and again, and I laughed and heard his laugh low beside my ear. We molded the snow with our forearms and made a longer racetrack, then gave each other a push for momentum, trading back and forth going down before going down it together again. We got soaked, and I got light-headed from hiking back up the hill so many times.