My Soul to Take

3

I SHOWERED IN RECORD time, and twenty-four minutes after I hung up the phone, I was clean, dry, clothed, and wearing just enough makeup to hide the shock. But I was still straightening my hair when I heard a car pull into the driveway.

Crap. If I didn’t get to him first, Uncle Brendon would make Nash come in and submit to questioning.

I pulled the plug on the flatiron, raced back to my room for my phone, keys and wallet then sprinted down the hall and out the front door, shouting “good morning” and “goodbye” to my astonished uncle all in the same breath.

“It’s early for lunch. How ‘bout pancakes?” Nash asked as I slid into the passenger seat of his mother’s car and closed the door.

“Um … sure.” Though with death on my conscience and Nash in my sight, food was pretty much the last thing on my mind.

The car smelled like coffee, and Nash smelled like soap, toothpaste, and something indescribably, tantalizingly yummy. I wanted to inhale him whole, and I couldn’t stop staring at his chin, smooth this morning where it had been deliciously rough the night before. I remembered the texture of his cheek against mine, and had to close my eyes and concentrate to banish the dangerous memory.

I’m not a conquest, no matter how good he smells. Or how good he tastes. And the sudden, overwhelming need to know what his lips would feel like made me shiver all over, and scramble for something safe to say. Something casual, that wouldn’t hint at the dangerous direction my thoughts had taken.

“I guess the car started,” I said, pulling the seat belt across my torso. Then cursed myself silently for such a stupid opening line. Of course the car had started.

His brief gaze seemed to burn through me. “I have unreasonably good luck.”

I could only nod and clench the door grip while I forced my thoughts back to Heidi Anderson to keep them off Nash and … thoughts I shouldn’t have been thinking.

When he glanced my way again, his focus slid down my throat to the neckline of my tee before jerking back to the road as he clenched his jaw. I counted my exhalations to keep them even.

We wound up at a booth in Jimmy’s Omelet, a locally owned chain that served breakfast until three in the afternoon. Nash sat across from me, his arms resting on the table, his sleeves pushed up halfway to his elbows.

Once the waitress had taken our orders and moved on, Nash leaned forward and met my gaze boldly, intimately, as if we’d shared much more than a rhyme in a dark alley and an almost-kiss. But the teasing and flirtation were gone; he looked more serious than I’d ever seen him. Somber. Almost worried.

“Okay… ” He spoke softly, in concession to the crowd talking, chewing, and clanking silverware around us. “So last night you predicted this girl’s death, and this morning she showed up on the news, dead.”

I nodded, swallowing thickly. Hearing it like that—so matter-of-fact—made it sound both crazy and terrifying. And I wasn’t sure which was worse.

“You said you’ve had these premonitions before?”

“Just a few times.”

“Have any of them ever come true?”

I shook my head, then shrugged and picked up a napkin-wrapped bundle of silverware to have something to do with my hands. “Not that I know of.”

“But you only know about this one because it was on the news, right?” I nodded without looking up, and he continued. “So the others could have come true too, and you might never have known about it.”

“I guess.” But if that were the case, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know about it.

When I drew my focus from the napkin I’d half peeled from the knife and fork, I found him watching me intently, as if my every word might mean something important. His lips were pressed firmly together, his forehead wrinkled in concentration.

I shifted on the vinyl-padded bench, uneasy under such scrutiny. Now he probably really thought I was a freak. A girl who thinks she knows when someone’s going to die—that might be interesting in certain circles; it definitely presented a certain morbid cachet.

But a girl who really could predict death? That was just scary.

Nash frowned, and his focus shifted back and forth between my eyes, like he was looking for something specific. “Kaylee, do you know why this is happening? What it means?”

My heart thumped painfully, and I clutched the shredded napkin. “How do you know it means anything?”

“I.don’t.” He sighed and leaned back in the booth, dropping his gaze to the table as he picked up a mini-jar of strawberry preserves from the jelly carousel. “But don’t you think it should mean something? I mean, we’re not talking about lottery numbers and horse-race winners. Don’t you want to know why you can do this? Or what the limits are? Or—”

“No.” I looked up sharply, irritated by the familiar, sick dread settling into my stomach, killing what little appetite I’d managed to hold on to. “I don’t want to know why or how. All I want to know is how to make it stop.”

Nash leaned forward again, pinning me with a gaze so intense, so thoroughly invasive, that I caught my breath.

“What if you can’t?”

My mood darkened at the very thought. I shook my head, denying the possibility.

He glanced down at the jelly again, spinning it on the table, and when he looked back up, his gaze had gone soft. Sympathetic. “Kaylee, you need help with this.”

My eyes narrowed and a spike of anger and betrayal shot through me. “You think I need counseling?” Each breath came faster than the last as I fought off memories of brightly colored scrubs, and needles and padded wrist restraints. “I’m not crazy.” I stood and dropped the knife on the table, but when I tried to march past him, his hand wrapped firmly around my wrist and he twisted to look up at me.

“Kaylee, wait, that’s not what I—”

“Let go.” I wanted to tug my arm free, but I was afraid that if he didn’t let go, I’d lose it. Four-point restraints or an unyielding hand, it was all the same if I couldn’t get free. Panic clawed slowly up from my gut as I struggled not to pull against his grip. My chest constricted, and I went stiff in my desperation to stay calm.

“People are looking.” he whispered urgently.

“Then let me go.” Each breath came short and fast now, and sweat gathered in the crooks of my elbows.

“Please.”

He let go.

I exhaled, and my eyes closed as sluggish relief sifted through me. But I couldn’t make myself move. Not yet. Not without running.

When I realized I was rubbing my wrist, I clenched my hands into fists until my nails cut into my palms. Distantly, I noticed that the restaurant had gone quiet around us.

“Kaylee, please sit down. That’s not what I meant.” His voice was soft. Soothing.

My hands began to relax, and I inhaled deeply.

“Please,” he repeated, and it took every bit of self-control I had to make myself back up and sink onto the padded bench. With my hands in my lap.

We sat in silence until conversation picked up around us, me staring at the table, him staring at me, if I had to guess.

“Are you okay?” he asked finally, as the waitress set food on the table behind me, and I felt the tension in my shoulders ease as I leaned against the wooden back of the booth.

“I don’t need a doctor.” I made myself look up, ready to stand firm against his argument to the contrary. But it never came.

He sighed, a sound heavy with reluctance. “I know. You need to tell your aunt and uncle.”

“Nash …”

“They might be able to help you, Kaylee. You have to tell someone—”

“They know, okay?” I glanced at the table to find that my fingers were tearing the shredded napkin into even smaller pieces. Shoving them to the side, I met Nash’s gaze, suddenly, recklessly determined to tell him the truth. How much worse could he possibly think of me?

“Last time this happened, I freaked out and started screaming. And I couldn’t stop. They put me in the hospital, and strapped me to a bed, and shot me full of drugs, and didn’t let me out until we all agreed that I’d gotten over my ‘delusions and hysteria’ and wouldn’t need to talk about them anymore. Okay? So I don’t think telling them is going to do much good, unless I want to spend fall break in the mental-health unit.”

Nash blinked, and in the span of a single second, his expression cycled through disbelief, disgust, and outrage before finally settling on fury, his brows low, arms bulging, like he wanted to hit something.

It took me a moment to understand that none of that was directed at me. That he wasn’t angry and embarrassed to be seen out with the school psycho. Probably because no one else knew. No one but Sophie, and her parents had threatened her with social ostracism—total house arrest—if she ever let the family secret out of the proverbial bag.

“How long?” Nash asked, his gaze boring into mine so deeply I wondered if he could see right through my eyes and into my brain.

I sighed and picked at the label on a small bottle of sugar-free syrup. “After a week, I said all the right things, and my uncle took me out against doctor’s orders. They told the school I had the flu.” I was a sophomore then, and nearly a year away from meeting Nash, when Emma started dating a series of his teammates.

Nash closed his eyes and exhaled heavily. “That never should have happened. You’re not crazy. Last night proves that.”

I nodded, numb. If I’d misread him, I’d never be able to walk tall in my own school again. But I couldn’t even work up any irritation over that possibility at the moment. Not with my secrets exposed, my heart laid open and latent terror lurking in the drug-hazy memories I’d hoped to bury.

“You have to tell them again, and—”

“No.”

But he continued, as if I’d never spoken. “—if they don’t believe you, call your dad.”

“No, Nash.”

Before he could argue again, a smooth, pale arm appeared across my field of vision, and the waitress set a plate on the table in front of me, and one in front of him. I hadn’t even heard her approach that time, and based on Nash’s wide eyes, he hadn’t either.

“Okay, you kids dig in. And let me know if I can get you somethin’ else, ’kay?”

We both nodded as she walked off. But I could only cut my pancakes into neat triangles and push them around in the syrup. I had no appetite. Even Nash only picked at his food.

Finally, he put his fork down and cleared his throat until I looked up. “I’m not going to talk you into this, am I?”

I shook my head. He frowned, then sighed and worked up a small smile. “How do you feel about geese?”

AFTER A BREAKFAST I didn’t eat, and Nash didn’t enjoy, we stopped at a sandwich shop, where he bought a bag of day-old bread. Then we headed to White Rock Lake to feed a honking, pecking flock of geese, a couple of which were gutsy little demons. One snatched a piece of bread right out of my hand, nearly taking my finger with it, and another nipped Nash’s shoe when he didn’t pull food from the bag fast enough.

When the bread was gone, we escaped from the geese—barely—for a walk around the lake. The wind whipped my hair into knots and I tripped over a loose board in the pier, but when Nash took my hand, I let him keep it, and the silence between us was comfortable. How could it not be, when he’d now seen every shadow in my soul and every corner in my mind, and hadn’t once called me crazy—or tried to feel me up.

And why not? I wondered, sneaking a glimpse at his profile as he squinted at the sun across the lake. Was I not pretty enough?

No, I didn’t want to be the latest on his rumored list of conquests, but I wouldn’t mind knowing I was worthy.

Nash smiled when he noticed me watching him. His eyes were more green than brown in the sunlight, and they seemed to be churning softly, probably reflecting the motion of the water. “Kaylee, can I ask you something personal?”

Like death and mental illness weren’t personal?

“Only if I get to ask you something.”

He seemed to consider that for a moment, then grinned, flashing a single deep dimple, and squeezed my hand as we walked. “You first.”

“Did you sleep with Laura Bell?”

Nash pulled me to an abrupt halt and arched both brows dramatically over long, beautiful boy-lashes. “That’s not fair. I didn’t ask you who you’ve been with.”

I shrugged, enjoying his discomfort. “Ask away.” I wouldn’t even need any fingers to tick off my list.

He scowled; he obviously had another question in mind. “If I say yes, are you going to get mad?”

I shrugged. “It’s none of my business.”

“Then why do you care?”

Grrr … “Okay, new question.” I tugged him into step again, working up the nerve to ask something I wasn’t sure I really wanted the answer to. But I had to know, before things went any further. “What are you doing here?” I held our joined hands up for emphasis. “What’s in this for you?”

“Your trust, hopefully.”

My head spun just a little bit at that, and I stifled a dazed grin. “That’s it?” I blinked up at him as we stepped onto the pier. Even if that was true, that couldn’t be all of it. I donned a mock frown. “You sure you’re not trying to get laid?”

His grin that time was real as he pulled me close and pressed me gently against the old wooden railing, his lips inches from my nose. “You offering?”

My heart raced and I let my hands linger on his back, tracing the hard planes through his long-sleeved tee. Feeling him pressed against me. Smelling him up close. Considering, just for a single, pulse-tripping moment…

Then I landed back on earth with a fantasy-shattering thud. The last thing I needed was to be listed among Nash Hudson’s past castoffs. But before I could figure out how to say that without pissing him off or sounding like a total prude, his eyes flashed with amusement and he leaned forward and kissed the tip of my nose.

I gasped, and he laughed. “I’m kidding, Kaylee. I just didn’t expect you to think about it for so long.” He grinned, then stepped back and took my hand again, while I stared at him in astonishment, my cheeks flaming.

“Ask your question before I change my mind.”

His smile faded; the teasing was over. What else could he possibly want to know? What they served for lunch in the psych ward?

“What happened to your mom?”

Oh.

“You don’t have to tell me.” He stopped and turned to face me, backpedaling when he mistook my relief for discomfort. “I was just curious. About what she was like.”

I pushed tangled strands of brown hair back from my face. “I don’t mind.” I wished my mother was still alive, of course, and I really wished I could live with my own family, rather than Sophie’s. But my mom had been gone so long I barely remembered her, and I was used to the question. “She died in a car wreck when I was three.”

“Do you ever see your dad?”

I shrugged and kicked a pebble off the pier. “He used to come several times a year.” Then it was just Christmas and my birthday. And now I hadn’t seen him in more than a year. Not that I cared. He had his life—presumably—and I had mine.

Judging from the flash of sympathy in Nash’s eyes, he’d heard even the parts I hadn’t said out loud. Then there was a subtle shift in his expression, which I couldn’t quite interpret. “I still think you should tell your dad about last night.”

I scowled and headed back down the pier with my arms crossed over my chest, pleased when the wind shifted to blow my hair away from my face for once.

Nash jogged after me. “Kaylee …”

“You know what the worst part of this is?” I demanded when he pulled even with me and slowed to a walk.

“What?” He looked surprised by my willingness to talk about it at all. But I wasn’t talking about my dad.

My eyes closed, and when the wind died down, the sun felt warm on my face, in startling contrast to the chill building inside me. “I feel like I should have done something to stop it. I mean, I knew she was going to die, and I did nothing. I didn’t even tell her. I just tucked my tail and ran home. I let her die, Nash.”

“No.” His voice was firm. My eyes flew open when he turned me to face him, wooden slats creaking beneath us. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Kaylee. Knowing it was going to happen doesn’t mean you could have stopped it.”

“Maybe it does. I didn’t even try!” And I’d been so caught up on what her death meant for me that I’d barely stopped to think about what I should have done for her.

His gaze bored into mine, his expression fierce. “It’s not that easy. Death doesn’t strike at random. If it was her time to go, there’s nothing either of us could have done to stop that.”

How could he be so sure? “I should have at least told her….”

“No!” His harsh tone startled us both, and when he reached out to grab my arms, I took a step back. Nash let his head dip and held his hands out to show that he wouldn’t touch me, then shoved them in his pockets. “She wouldn’t have believed you. And, anyway, it’s dangerous to mess with stuff you don’t understand, and you don’t understand this yet. Swear that if this happens again and I’m not there, you won’t do anything. Or say anything. Just turn around and walk away. Okay?”

“Okay,” I agreed. He was starting to scare me, his eyes wide and earnest, the line of his beautiful mouth tight and thin.

“Swear,” Nash insisted, irises flashing and whirling fiercely in the bright sunlight. “You have to swear.”

“I swear.” And I meant it, because in that moment, with the sun painting his face in a harsh relief of light and shadow, Nash looked both scared and scary.

But even worse, he looked like he knew exactly what he was talking about.

4

NASH TOOK ME HOME two hours before I had to be at work, and when I walked through the door, the scent of freesia gave me an instant headache. Sophie was home.

My cousin stood from the couch, where she’d obviously been peeking through the curtains, and propped thin, manicured hands on the hipbones poking out above low-cut, skinny jeans. “Who was that?” she asked, though her narrowed eyes said she already had a suspect in mind.

I smiled sweetly and walked past her into the hall. “A guy.”

“And his name would be…?” She followed me into my room, where she sat on my unmade bed as if it were hers. Or as if we were friends. Sophie only played that game when she wanted something from me, usually money or a ride. This time, she was obviously hunting information.

Gossip to fuel the rumor bonfire she and her friends kept burning bright at school.

But I wasn’t about to fan her flames.

I turned my back on her to empty my pockets onto my dresser. “None of your business.” In the mirror, I saw a scowl flit across her face, pulling her pixie features out of shape.

The problem with getting everything you want in life is that you’re not prepared for disappointment when it comes.

I considered it my pleasure to acquaint Sophie with that concept.

“Mom said he’s a senior.” She pulled her legs onto my bed and crossed them beneath her, shoes and all. When I didn’t answer, she glared at my reflection. “I can find out who he is in, like, two seconds.”

“Then you obviously need nothing from me.” I pulled my hair into a high ponytail. “Welcome to the party, Nancy Drew.”

Tiny lines formed around her mouth when she frowned, and I crossed the room to pull my uniform shirt from a hanger, leaving it swinging on the closet rod. “Out. I have to go to work. So I can pay for my car insurance.” Sophie wouldn’t be eligible for her license for another five months, and it drove her nuts that I could drive and she couldn’t.

My car was the best thing my father had ever given me, even if it was used. And even if he’d never actually seen it.

“Speaking of cars, your mystery date’s looked familiar. Little silver Saab, with leather upholstery, right?” Sophie stood, ambling toward the door slowly, narrow hips swaying, cocking her head as if in thought. “The backseat’s pretty comfortable, even with that little rip on the passenger side.”

Pain shot through my jaw, and I realized I was grinding my teeth.

“Say hi to Nash for me,” she purred, one hand wrapped around my door. Then her expression morphed from vicious vixen to Good Samaritan, in the space of a single second. “I’m not trying to hurt your feelings here, Kaylee, but I think you should know the truth.” Her pale green eyes went wide in faux innocence. “He’s using you to get to me.”

My temper flared and I slammed the door. Sophie yelped and jerked her hand out of the way just in time to avoid four broken fingers. My fist clenched my uniform shirt, and I tossed it over the dancer’s-butt dent she’d left in my comforter.

She’s wrong. But I studied my reflection anyway, trying to see myself as everyone else did. As Nash did. No, I didn’t have Sophie’s lean dancer’s build, or Emma’s abundant curves, but I wasn’t hideous. Still, Nash could do much better than not-hideous.

Was that why he hadn’t kissed me? Was I a convenience between girlfriends? Or a pity date? Some kind of social outreach program for kindhearted jocks?

No. He wouldn’t spend so much time talking to someone he had no real interest in, even if he was looking for a casual hookup. There were easier scores elsewhere.

But I could use a qualified second opinion. Phone in hand, I plopped down on the bed and held my breath while I typed, hoping Emma’s mom had given her back her phone.

No such luck. Two very long minutes after I sent the text message—Can u talk?—the reply came.

She is still grounded. Talk to Emma at work.

She should never have taught her mother to text. I told her no good could come of that.

Em and I were scheduled for the same shift, so that afternoon I filled her in on my date with Nash as we sold tickets to the latest computer-animated cartoon and the inevitable romantic comedy. On our dinner break, we sat in one corner of the snack bar, sharing a soft pretzel and cheese fries while I told her about Heidi Anderson—what she hadn’t heard from her sister—where no one could overhear.

Emma was fascinated by the accuracy of my prediction, and she agreed with Nash that I should tell my aunt and uncle, though her motive had more to do with shooting them a big I-told-you-so than with helping me figure out what to do with my morbid talent.

But again, I declined the advice. I had no interest in any future meetings with Dr. Nelson—he of the medical restraints and the zombie pills. In fact, I was clinging to the hope that the next prediction—if there was another—would be months, or even years down the road. After all, there had been nearly nine months between the past two.