Nowhere but Here (Thunder Road 1)

“Is she dead?” My voice isn’t my own. It’s too high-pitched. It’s too hysterical.

Eli fills my vision and my body starts to tremble. His hold on my chin is firm and gentle and it prevents me from jumping off the bed and returning to Olivia.

“No, Emily, she’s alive. This happens. Not a lot, but it happens.”

“So this is normal?”

Eli maintains eye contact, but he doesn’t respond, which is the worst type of answer. She’s dying. This is his mother and he should be with her and not me. “You should go to her.”

“No, I’m staying here.”

She’s dying. Olivia is dying. Her body is breaking down, no one can fix her, and I don’t want her to die—I want her to live. My lower lip quivers. “She’s your mom.”

“And you’re my daughter.”

I detest dead things. Dead things are cold and unmoving and terrifying, but Olivia is very much alive and I need her to stay alive. She may not be the cookie-baking type. She might scare me and act crass and rude, but I like her. I briefly close my eyes as pain rips through me. I more than like her, and I haven’t spent enough time with her. Not enough time...

“Dad’s with her,” Eli says and I spot the ache in his eyes. “He needs time with her. He just needs...time.”

Eli rarely refers to his parents as Mom and Dad. Instead, he uses their names, except when he’s hurting. I don’t know much about Eli, but I can tell an awful lot about him when he’s in pain and that’s not right. There’s something fundamentally wrong that I understand him better hurting than I do when he’s happy.

“Don’t you need time with her?” I ask.

He barely nods. “Mom understands I’m running out of time with you, as well.”

All of the emotions of Olivia and Mom and Dad and Eli and even Oz crash into me and I lower my head into my hands, but I bite my lip to keep from crying. Somehow it doesn’t feel like I have the right to cry. I’m not the one on the verge of losing my mom.

“Hey.” Eli lets go of my chin, settles on the bed next to me and wraps an arm around my shoulders, gently pressing so that I’ll lean into him. Because I’m a mess, I do, and feel worse that I’m letting him comfort me. “It’s okay, Emily. For tonight, she’s okay.”

I push down my hurt and rapidly blink to keep the tears away. Eli’s strong. Olivia’s strong. I can be strong, too, but as I go to pull away, Eli only readjusts us so that we’re sitting back against the wall with me still tucked close to him.

“It scared me,” I admit, and hope it’s a plausible explanation for why I’m so messed up because I’m not sure he’d believe that I like her and I’m not sure how I feel about it myself.

“Scared me, too. Each and every time it happens, it scares the shit out of me.” Honesty is etched over his face.

“I have a hard time believing you’re scared of anything. I mean...you’re you.”

He’s a lot like his father, Cyrus. He’s big and he’s strong and basically has an entire army of scary men in black le

ather who ride motorcycles and carry guns at his disposal.

“I’m scared of a ton of things and all of them have to do with losing the people I love.” He pauses. “I learned a long time ago that I can’t control everything and now I’m learning I can’t control death. Sometimes I feel cursed. Like I get to watch everyone I love slip through my fingers.”

He wanted me. Olivia said he wanted me. I open my mouth to ask if I’m one of the people he’s referring to, if Mom is, but I snap it shut. I don’t know how to ask without divulging that Olivia is sharing secrets with me and I can’t take the respect Eli has for her away over my need to understand my past.

“What?” Eli asks.

“Nothing.”

“No, you were going to say something, what?”

My mind is completely blank. What can I say? What should I say? “I don’t like pulled pork. I don’t like any pork actually. It’s tough and it’s stringy and it’s a pig and...well...pigs gross me out. Which means I don’t like bacon either, so...yeah...that’s it.”

Eli blinks as he tries to understand any of the hot mess that just fell out of my mouth. He pulls on his earlobe and his face contorts as if he’s trying not to laugh. “You ate an entire pulled pork sandwich in Nashville.”

I did. “You were superexcited about me trying it and I didn’t want to hurt your feelings. I feel like that’s all I do—hurt you. I don’t want to, but I do. Even when I’m not trying to, it still happens.”

“Emily.” He lowers his head so that we’re eye to eye. “You don’t hurt me.”