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Scotty stalked into my line of sight, and when I twisted to face him, I noticed Reed had vanished into the adjacent workout room.
“I’m wondering if dinner could become problematic,” Scotty noted, his shaggy hair pulled back into a small bun at the nape of his neck.
I frowned. “Why?”
“That looked more like foreplay than fighting.”
My cheeks burned, double-flushed with post-workout exertion and embarrassment. Apparently, we hadn’t been subtle. “We were training.”
“Training for what exactly?”
“The same thing as you.”
His face scrunched up with distaste. “Unlikely.”
Sighing, I swept past him, desperate for a shower. “I’m going to freshen up. Pick me up in an hour?”
He paused, then followed after me. “Yeah? You still want to go?”
“Of course. I’m starved.” I gave him my address, gathered my belongings, and glanced into the workout room where Reed was throwing punches at the swinging bag with the fuel of a dozen men.
Lingering for a beat, I watched him move. Watched his arms fly left and right, pummeling the synthetic leather with fury, power, weakness, and all the same things I felt brewing inside of me.
He pressed his forehead to the bag, stifling its movement with both hands as he went still. Then his eyes lifted in my direction. Eyebrows pinched together, face flushed and lined with beads of sweat, he sent me a tortured look as I hovered near the main door with my fingers curled around the handle.
I only let my gaze latch with his for half a heartbeat.
Then I opened the door and walked out into the cold, wintry night.
I was a matchstick.
Small, brittle, and unassuming.
But I was only one strike away from igniting.
And if I wasn’t careful…I’d burn us all to the ground.
CHAPTER 17
March, 1997
“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” Whitney asked me, zipping up her coat and flicking her thick brown curls out from the collar. “I’ll have my pager on, and you have Laurel’s phone number. Please don’t hesitate to call. Emergency. Non-emergency. Anything.”
I sat on the couch with my brand new film camera that Tara and her mom had gotten me for my nineteenth birthday, my thumbs idling over the array of buttons. Setting it aside, I glanced up with a smile. “I’ll be fine, I promise. You’re only driving up to Green Bay. Not the moon.”
“I wish we were going to the moon,” Tara declared, whizzing past me with a giant suitcase, her ponytail set high and bouncing with each step—a contrast to her down-and-out mood. “You’re so lucky, Hals. You don’t even know. This is the worst.”
“Your aunt seems really nice. You’ll have fun.” Truthfully, I’d only met her Aunt Laurel one time over Thanksgiving and she was verging on dreadful. But I’d never admit that. “And you haven’t seen your cousins for over a year. Enjoy the bonding time.”
“The last time I visited my cousins, Demon Dorothy quite literally bonded bubblegum to my hair while I was sleeping. The extra stretchy kind. I had to chop it off at the shoulders and it still hasn’t grown all the way back.”
I winced. “She was just young.”
“She was fifteen.”
“Well, sleep with the doors locked.”
“Aunt Laurel doesn’t believe in doors. Privacy is a ‘secular notion.’”