Derek was silent for several seconds as he examined the charm. He surprised me when he whirled around and stomped toward me, covering the space in three huge steps. The look on his face was indescribably hostile.
“Where did you get this, Carson? Be specific.” This was the way I’d perceived Derek when I’d first met him: dangerous. His tone, his body language, his expression, it all reeked of what pain he could inflict upon me if I didn’t tell him what he wanted to know. And even though I knew he wouldn’t hurt me—or at least I didn’t think he would—it still gave me pause to see him like this.
“I was visited tonight by one of the people that I saw in the garage that night.”
“And?”
“And he attacked me.”
“He attacked you?”
It felt a little better to have that deadly cold anger focused on someone other than me, but something about it struck me as odd. There was something else in his eyes, in his voice, something I couldn’t quite discern.
“Yes.”
“And then what?”
I gave Derek a detailed accounting of the whole ordeal.
“What did he look like?”
“It’s hard to say. He’d been badly burned and one side of his face is almost gone.”
Before I could even finish my sentence, Derek had turned and stalked from the room. I followed quickly.
“Where are you going? What’s wrong?”
He didn’t answer, just kept walking. When he opened the front door, he finally turned to me. “There’s something I’ve got to do,” he said mysteriously.
“What?”
“I need to find out some things before I involve you.”
My temper rose immediately to the surface. I bit my lip, trying to control it before it ran away with me. I was too volatile today to lose control.
I looked away from him, simply nodding, not trusting myself to speak.
I heard him sigh. “Do you want me to come back tonight?”
When I looked up, his eyes were on mine. They were a fathomless, stormy gray that I felt penetrating my very soul.
The stubborn, proud female in me wanted to say “no”, but the practical, insecure pragmatist wanted me to say “yes”. That internal debate must’ve raged on a little too long because, with an impatient hiss, Derek turned around and walked out the door.
I watched as he mounted his bike, started the engine, turned around and sped down the driveway. I wanted to stop him, to ask him to stay. I also wanted him to leave and never come back. I wanted to yell at him, tell him I hated him. I also wanted to kiss him and tell him I loved him. Nothing in my life made sense anymore.
After I shut the door, I tried to do normal things, tried to relax into the peace and quiet, but I just couldn’t. I found myself listening to every passing motor for the sound of Derek’s bike.
I turned on the television, hoping it might provide an adequate distraction. After a while it worked—by putting me to sleep. I don’t know how long I’d been asleep when I heard the rattling of the doorknob.
I sat up, immediately alarmed yet still a little disoriented from being awakened in such a way. I listened closely. The jiggling continued, but I never heard the scrape of a key in the lock, which meant it wasn’t Derek.
Though I was very much afraid, I drew some small comfort from the pools of light that spilled onto the floors in every room of the house. It seemed the people from the shadows couldn’t tolerate the light at all, therefore I surrounded myself with it. As long as it wasn’t one of them attacking me, I felt pretty sure I could handle myself and anybody else from this world. I’d trained so much with Derek and, before that, with my father, I knew I could at least hold my own with a run-of-the-mill intruder.
I watched the door until the noise ceased. I listened, but heard no other sound. After several minutes, just when I was about to relax again, I heard the garage door rattle as if someone were testing whether or not it was locked.
I dropped off the couch and crawled to the window, where I could see out onto the driveway. Slowly I pulled back one corner of the curtain to peek out. I nearly swallowed my tongue when I saw Derek’s face right there at the glass.
Relief drowned the scream that was stuck in my throat. I exhaled slowly and let the curtain fall back down then got up and walked to the door.
“What are you doing? You scared me to death,” I hissed as Derek strode past me into the living room.
“I left the house key in the car today,” he said casually. “Did I wake you?”
“I was watching TV,” I said, which I had been—before I fell asleep. “Where have you been?” I tried to sound as nonchalant as I could, not wanting to get into another argument. I was happier than I would’ve imagined that he’d come back; I didn’t want to ruin it if I could help it.
“Out.”
“Just out?” I asked mildly.
“Yep,” he said. Avoiding my eyes, Derek walked into the kitchen. He tossed over his shoulder, “I’ve got to get my bike into the garage.”
I sat back down on the couch and waited, listening to the sounds of the garage door opening and closing. When I heard the kitchen door open and close then the lock slide into place, I expected Derek to come back into the living room, but he didn’t. Instead, he stayed in the kitchen.
I heard the refrigerator and a cabinet door open and close as he puttered around, then the tinkling of silverware and the clack of the microwave door followed by its low hum.
The smell of leftover lasagna wafted into the living room, but still no Derek. I rose on a sigh, bracing myself for it to get ugly; evidently Derek wasn’t going to just volunteer anything.
“So,” I began, rounding the corner into the kitchen. He was just sitting down with a hot plate of food and didn’t even look up when I spoke. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on or are we getting ready to part ways?”
His head shot up. “I told you I’d tell you, but that there were some things I needed to find out first.”
“Well, I’m already involved so tell me now. I don’t like being kept in the dark,” I said calmly, certain that there were no truer words ever spoken.
“Carson—” he started, but I interrupted.
“Don’t ‘Carson’ me. Tell me Derek. We are supposed to be in this together, right?”
“We are, but—”
“No buts, Derek. Please.”
His dark brows squeezed together and dropped down low in a deep frown. His lips thinned into a hard, straight line. Those were clear indications of a storm on the horizon. His temper was on a short fuse, too. “The medal, I recognized it,” he said tightly.