That’s all I’ll do: see if she’s okay and then leave it alone.
I take a step toward her and she flinches, but I don’t let it bother me, I continue forward, stopping about ten feet away from her.
“Lily?” Her name leaves my lips forcefully, throaty and angry, but I don’t mean it to.
Her gaze flits over to Mom’s house and then behind her to the little alley that leads to a poppy field.
“I… yeah.” She tilts her head back, looking up at me.
Narrowing my eyes, I watch her, assessing the look buried deep inside her eyes. Pain; so much pain I can almost feel it vibrating off her.
“You okay?” Fuck, why did I ask that?
“Me?” She points at her chest, pulling her lips into a forced smile. “Yeah, sure. I’m just running late for school and—”
“You want a ride?” I blurt out. What the fuck am I doing?
Her gaze bats between me and my SUV, unsure. I’m about to tell her to forget it when she slowly nods her head, wrapping her arms around her middle and shuffling from foot to foot.
Nodding my head to the other side of the road, I hold my hand out, signaling she go first. She hesitates before I watch her chest rise and fall, her lips moving silently before she crosses the road.
I follow her to the passenger side, reaching around her to open the door, but halt my movements when she squeaks. I stay still, waiting for her to take a breath before gently telling her, “I’m jus
t gonna open the door for you.”
What is it about her that makes me want to not be so brash? I almost wish I wasn’t six foot three and built like a bodybuilder. I wish I was more like Evan in this moment. Not that he’s scrawny by any means, but he has a way of talking to people, making them feel at ease with a joke or his placating voice. Me? I’ve never been good at that. I grunt, mumble, say it as it is with “fuck” being every other word.
But when she turns her head slightly, my gaze zones in on the bruise forming on her face. How the fuck didn’t I notice that when she was looking at me before?
“What—” I cut myself off, knowing if I ask she won’t tell me—they never do. Something is going on with her, Mom was right. I have no doubt she’ll keep it locked up inside. I’ve seen it before, and I know what it takes to get victims of abuse to tell their story—to get help.
Shaking my head, I pull her door open, watching as she lifts up into the SUV, her breaths gasps as a muscle in her jaw tics.
Closing the door before heading to the other side, I jump in and back out of the driveway.
The silence is deafening. I love silence, but this one is one I want to fill with something—anything.
“I’m guessing you go to Halow High?”
“Yeah,” she answers, her soft voice making me relax in my seat.
My gaze flicks over to her several times as I’m driving before it clashes with hers when I pull up outside the front of the school.
I don’t know what she’s trying to say silently, but I can feel it screaming at me. I frown, my hand lifting off the steering wheel and moving slowly toward her.
What the hell is going on? It’s like she has some kind of spell over me, and I have no control over my own body.
This time she doesn’t flinch—this time when I get a hair's breadth away from her face, she closes her eyes, her chest expanding on a deep breath.
Something in the air crackles and everything fades away—the school I’m parked in front of, the fact I don’t know her very well if at all—but I feel like I do know her. Something pulls her to me, an invisible thread.
My palm touches her cheek, my thumb rubbing softly over the bruise. I hear her suck in a breath at the contact, my own heart pumping so fast in my chest I’m sure it’s going to escape with the force.
I should want to ask her what’s going on; I should tell her that if she explains everything to me, I can help. But I don’t. I can’t go there again—not with her, not with anyone.
Her eyelids open, the dark blue becoming glassy with tears as her hand comes up and wraps around my forearm. The feel of her palm has me going hot and then cold, sensations rolling through me I’ve never had before.
What’s going on? What’s—