“So you’ve had these panic attacks before?”
What? My hands clenched the wheel in surprise as I took a left at the end of the street.
“A couple of times.” Half a dozen, at least. I couldn’t purge suspicion from my voice. My “issues” should have driven him screaming into the night, and instead he wanted details? Why?
“Do your parents know?”
I shifted in my seat, as if a new position might make me more comfortable with the question. But it would take much more than that. “My mom died when I was little, and my dad couldn’t handle me on his own. He moved to Ireland, and I’ve been with my aunt and uncle ever since.”
Nash blinked and nodded for me to go on. He gave me none of the awkward sympathy or compulsive, I’m-not-sure-what-to-say throat-clearing I usually got when people found out I’d been half-orphaned, then wholly abandoned. I liked him for that, even if I didn’t like where his questions were heading.
“So your aunt and uncle know?”
Yeah. They think I’m one egg shy of a dozen. But the truth hurt too much to say out loud.
I turned to see him watching me closely, and my suspicion flared again, settling to burn deep in my gut. Why did he care what my family knew about my not-so-private misery? Unless he was planning to laugh with his friends later about what a freak I was.
But his interest didn’t seem malicious. Especially considering what he’d done for me at Taboo. So maybe his curiosity was feigned, and he was after something else to tell his friends about. Something girls rarely denied him, if the rumors were true.
If he didn’t get it, would he tell the entire school my darkest, most painful secret?
No. My stomach pitched at the thought, and I hit the brake too hard as we came to a stop sign.
My foot still wedged against the brake, I glanced in the rearview mirror at the empty street behind me, then shifted into Park and turned to face Nash, steeling my nerve for the question to come. “What do you want from me?” I spat it out before I could change my mind.
Nash’s eyes widened in surprise, and he sat back hard against the passenger’s side door, as if I’d shoved him. “I just. Nothing.”
“You want nothing?” I wanted to see the deep greens and browns of his irises, but the beam from the nearest streetlight didn’t reach my car, so only the dim light from my dashboard shone on him, and it wasn’t enough to illuminate his face. To let me truly read his expression. “I can count the number of times we’ve really spoken before tonight on one hand.” I held that hand up for emphasis. “Then you come out of nowhere and play white knight to my distressed damsel, and I’m supposed to believe you want nothing in return? Nothing to tell your friends about on Monday?”
He tried to laugh, but the sound was stilted, and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I wouldn’t—”
“Save it. Rumor has it you’ve conquered more territory than Genghis Khan.”
A single dark brow rose in the shadows, challenging me. “You believe everything you hear?”
My eyebrow shot up to mirror his. “You denyin’ it?”
Instead of answering, he laughed for real and propped one elbow on the door handle. “Are you always this mean to guys who sing to you in dark alleys?”
My next retort died on my lips, so surprised was I by the reminder. He had sung to me, and somehow talked me down from a brutal panic attack. He’d saved me from public humiliation. But there had to be a reason, and I wasn’t that great of a conquest.
“I don’t trust you,” I said finally, my hands limp and worthless on my lap.
“Right now I don’t trust you either.” He grinned in the dark, flashing pale teeth and a single shadowed dimple, and his open-armed gesture took in the stopped car. “Are you kicking me out, or do I get door-to-door service?”
That’s the only service you get. But I shifted into Drive and faced the road again, then turned right into his subdivision, which was definitely more than a couple of minutes from my neighborhood. Would he really have walked if I’d let him drive me home?
Would he have taken me straight home?
“Take this left, then the next right. It’s the one on the corner.”
His directions led me to a small frame house in an older section of the development. I pulled into the driveway behind a dusty, dented sedan. The driver’s side door stood open, spilling light from the interior to illuminate a lopsided square of dry grass to the left of the pavement.
“You left your car door open,” I said, shifting into Park, glad for something to focus on other than Nash, though that’s where my gaze really wanted to be.
Nash sighed. “It’s my mom’s. She’s gone through three batteries in six months.”
I stifled a smile as her car light flickered. “Make that four.”
He groaned, but when I glanced at him, I found him watching me rather than the car. “So … do I get a chance to earn your trust?”
My pulse jumped. Was he serious?
I should’ve said no. I should have thanked him for helping me at Taboo, then left with him staring after me from his front yard. But I wasn’t strong enough to resist those dimples. Even knowing how many other girls had probably failed that same task.
I blame my weakness on the recent panic attack.
“How?” I asked finally, then flushed when he grinned. He’d known I’d give in.
“Come over tomorrow night?”
To his house? No way. I was weak-willed, not stupid. Not that I could make it anyway… “I work till nine on Sundays.”
“At the Ciné?”
He knows where I work. Surprise warmed me from the inside out, and I frowned in question.
“I’ve seen you there.”
“Oh.” Of course he’d seen me there. Probably on a date. “Yeah, I’ll be in the ticket booth from two on.”
“Lunch, then?”
Lunch. How much could I possibly be tempted into in a public restaurant? “Fine. But I still don’t trust you.”
He grinned and opened his door, and the overhead light flared to life. His pupils shrank to pinpoints in the sudden glare, and as my heart raced, he leaned forward like he would kiss me. Instead, his cheek brushed mine and his warm breath skimmed my ear as he whispered, “That’s half the fun.”
My breath hitched in my throat, but before I could speak, the car bobbed beneath his shifting weight and suddenly the passenger seat was empty. He closed the car door, then jogged up the driveway to slam his mother’s.
I backed away from his house in a daze, and when I parked in front of my own, I couldn’t remember a moment of the drive home.
“GOOD MORNING, KAYLEE.” Aunt Val stood at the kitchen counter, bathed in late-morning sunlight, holding a steaming mug of coffee nearly as big as her head. She wore a satin robe the exact shade of blue as her eyes, and her sleek brown waves were still tousled from sleep. But they were tousled the way hair always looks in the movies, when the star wakes up in full makeup, wearing miraculously unwrinkled pajamas.
I couldn’t pull my own fingers through my hair first thing in the morning.
My aunt’s robe and the size of her coffee cup were the only signs that she and