Haunt Me (Heartbreaker Duet #2)

thirteen

The winter goes on agonizingly slow, and I split my time between school and the woods. School is torture. But the woods are where I find her: the woods are where I can breathe. And that’s how I survive.

On a random Tuesday, my phone pings in the middle of class, which never happens. I’m technically not allowed to have my phone in class, but I of course have it on me at all times. It’s never happened and I doubt it ever will, but if Mom or James suddenly need me the way I need them, I don’t want to miss it.

Of course, whenever I need them, I never call or text them.

But they might be braver than me. I glance at my phone, eyebrows meeting, and the minute I see who it is, I go full-on panic mode.

“Eden,” I murmur.

The phone’s screen goes black. It goes to voicemail after ringing only once. My stomach sinks to my shoes. Something is horribly wrong, or she wouldn’t have dialed my number, let alone let it ring.

I run out of the classroom and call her back, not caring about the consequences. Steps sound behind me—a teacher or a friend coming after me; I just keep running.

“Eden! Eden, what’s wrong?” I ask, breathing in deeply when she answers .

“I… I don’t know where I am.”

My blood runs cold. She sounds so scared.

“You…Are you hurt?”

“Not yet.”

Jesus. What does that mean?

“What’s wrong?”

I’m already out the door, running down the hallway, before she starts explaining in this small, trembling voice. When I begin to understand what she is saying to me, I stumble and fall with a thud to my knees, hearing bone cracking as I land in a heap.

But there is literally no time to fall apart. Every single second counts.

I pick myself up and run blindly to the parking lot.

…

I drive like a madman down the highway, only slowing down slightly when I hit the midday traffic rush. My eyes are frantically searching for a slender figure on the median between the high-speed two-way lanes.

Impossible as it sounds, I think that’s where Eden is right now. At least, that’s what she told me on the phone.

I don’t even know how she got there—or why.

I can’t quite wrap my mind around what is happening right now, but I’m too busy freaking out about how I’m going to stop the car to get her in once I find her. Cars are zooming by me as I try to slow down enough to look for her, and I almost get hit twice.

Then, there, between the sea of cars, a flash of brown. Her coat.

She is stranded in the middle of the highway, in a sea of fast moving car. She looks so small; she would be invisible if I hadn’t been looking for her. My heart leaps in my throat. She is small and lost and about to be blown to bits by the speed of the cars speeding past her. This is no place for a pedestrian, and there is no way for her get out of it on foot. How did she get in it in the first place? And how did she have the presence of mind to call me?

I see her swaying in the middle of the honking cars. She doesn’t know what to do.

I don’t know what to do.

I slow down, preparing to stop, but a car nearly plows me over. I speed again. This is insane. No other car is slowing down, and there is too much traffic for me to be able to pull over. My heart is thrumming in my ears .

“I can do this,” I murmur between clenched teeth.

I know I might die.

I know a sane person would leave this highway asap and call the police. But I am not a sane person right now. I am a person who has officially run out of time. As I frantically glance at Eden standing there, frozen in place, cars rushing past her, making the air swirl and lift her skirt, there is no time left for hesitation. I push down on the brakes as far as I can go without completely stopping, and open the driver’s door while the car is still in motion.

The minute I reach her, I jump out of the car, not stopping to pull the handbrake. I grab her by the waist and drag her inside. She falls on top of me, and the next second my foot is on the pedal, speeding and swerving cars at the same time. As we quickly gain speed and avoid the danger of being crushed by tons of metal, Eden crawls to the seat next to the driver’s, and just crouches there, knees on the seat, hair in front of her face, panting frantically, as if there is not enough air.

I try to keep my eyes on the road so as not to get us killed, but they keep drifting to her. There is nowhere to pull over, not yet.

She makes a choking sound as if she is drowning.

“Are you ok?” My voice is gruff. Scared.

“I don’t know.”

The car swerves; I quickly right the wheel. “You got hurt? Let me see.” I reach out a hand to her.

“No, I… My heart is beating so fast.”

I press my palm against her ribs, like I did once before, and hold it there until the manic fluttering subsides. I can’t take my eyes off the road; I want to, but I can’t. “Better?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry, I am so stupid.”

“You are not. There’s only one thing that matters right now: Did you get hurt? In any way?”

She shakes her head and I see it in my peripheral vision. I exhale in relief, but my breath catches. I can’t do this. I need a minute. The adrenaline rush is fading fast, and I’m crashing—and if I am, she must be too. She is staring vacantly straight ahead, her face stony and white.

The traffic subsides a bit after ten minutes, so I finally slow down, then pull over on the curb. I have no idea where we are: I also don’t care.

We are alive.

At least I hope we are .

“I need to check you everywhere, baby,” I say when she folds herself into a tiny ball, like the day we met. “I need to know if you’re hurt. I’m sorry, but you’re in shock, so you might be hurt and not even realize it until it’s too late. I… I won’t be able to breathe unless I’m sure you’re not injured.”

She uncoils a little, so I carefully inspect her.

I touch her gently on the arms, the stomach, the legs. “Does this hurt? Does this hurt?” When I get to her heart, that’s the only time she says yes.

I press my hand against the middle of her chest and feel her heartbeat, fast but steady. My fingers come behind her neck and I cup her head. She lets it fall on my shoulder, exhausted, as if it’s too heavy. I close my eyes tightly as I rest my chin on the top of her head.

“You’re safe,” I tell her. “I could have lost you today, but I didn’t. You’re safe.”

“I’m so stupid,” she repeats, her voice trembling.

“You shaved off ten years of my life.”

“We’re even then,” she sniffles, and I vaguely remember her telling me the same thing when I had my panic attack. But this is not the same.

This is serious. There is something wrong here, deeply wrong, and I am way out of my depth. I am deeply ill-equipped to deal with whatever this is.

“Your heart is beating like crazy,” she says.

“I’m scared out of my mind. I just can’t believe how you… Help me understand here, Eden. How did this happen? How did you get to be standing on the median of a high-speed highway? You were a second away from being killed. Were you trying to… to get yourself killed?” The minute I say it, I want to take it back.

This freezing-cold fear seizes me and I can’t draw breath.

Not her , I think. She’s no coward. She wouldn’t.

But the fact that I’m not sure; the fact that I wondered even for a second scares me so badly I can barely speak.

“Talk to me, Eden,” I say as calmly as I can. “I’m still on that highway, watching you stranded in a sea of cars. I thought I’d never get you out of there alive. Tell me… Holy—Eden, tell me what happened.”

“I didn’t know…” She stops. Her cheeks, even her ears have gone deep red. “I was walking and I suddenly found myself in there and I couldn’t get out. I guess I took a wrong turn.”

“Where were you going?” I ask her .

“Nowhere. Exploring,” she replies. “I’m not used to…” she lets the phrase trail off. “I didn’t calculate correctly… I’m sorry. It’s so stupid.”

“Look at me.” I tip up her head until she is looking up at me. “I’ve never been more scared in my life. But what happened was definitely not stupid.”

She starts shaking, the delayed response to the shock, and I get scared that she is going to faint on me again. I crush her in my arms, frantically repeating over and over:

“You’re ok, you’re ok.”

“I don’t want to die,” she whimpers, voice muffled against my shirt.

“What?”

“I thought… He said I’d die if I went out. And now it’s happening.”

I don’t even understand what she is talking about. Who said…?

“Open your eyes, look at me. I’m here.” I smooth the hair away from her clammy forehead. “I won’t let you die, ok? If you die, I’ll stop existing, so that’s not something I will ever allow to happen.”

She doesn’t say anything, so after a few minutes, I peel back into traffic. We pick up speed, and I can feel her stop breathing next to me. I look at her, taking my eyes off the road for a second, and then I have to I turn the wheel quickly to avoid an oncoming car. I swear softly under my breath. I need to concentrate on the road, and once we’re safely out of the highway, I can focus on her. But that’s not easy, seeing as I want to drop everything and press her into my chest until the image of her white face in a sea of cars stops haunting me.

Spoiler alert: It never will.

“I will slow down soon, I swear,” I try to reassure her. “I won’t be driving so fast in a minute, once I find our exit.”

“As long as you’re ok driving at the speed of light,” she murmurs, still sounding kind of breathless.

I smile. If she’s ok enough to crack jokes, then she’s going to be fine. I hope.

“You should see how fast I drove to get to you,” I say and she inhales sharply. “Don’t worry, I’m used to crazy driving,” I add quickly. “My brother drives like a maniac.”

“How old is your brother again?”

“Fourteen and a half.”

“Oh, cool. And he’s already driving? And like a maniac too? ”

“Yeah, it’s… Cars are one of his passions. Dad used to let him drive when we would go to Vermont for the summer.”

“Is this your car?”

“No, I just… I borrowed one randomly from the school’s lot. Wait, I think this might be my English Lit professor’s car.” I chuckle. “I hardly knew what I was doing. My car was too far to reach, and I was in a hurry. Keys were on, so here we are.”

“And there you’ll be,” she says, “in detention for the rest of your life.” Down goes her head in shame.

I ignore that. “I can take you on a real car ride, you know, with my actual car. No felony involved or anything.”

“You could?”

“Yeah, I can. I will.”

“Father—Dad used to take me on long drives, back before he got so busy with work,” she muses. “Now I’m mostly alone, and we haven’t been anywhere together for years.”

I just reach out and grab her hand. It’s shaking and cold, but she goes still once I engulf her fingers in mine.

“It will be ok,” I tell her; I need to hear it too. I’m not going to ask her what she was doing in the middle of the highway again, unless she volunteers the information. But the questions are burning inside my brain.

How did this happen? What was she doing out here?

Why is she alone all the time?

What can I do to help her?

What can I do?

….

Of course, now, I understand what happened.

She didn’t know.

She had never been out alone on the street, on any street, before the day she met me. She wasn’t used to walking on the side of the road, had never learned how to cross the street and be mindful of moving vehicles.

How not to enter a freeway on foot.

The moment I grabbed her out of the traffic and into the car, I could barely concentrate on anything else apart from the way her body fit to mine, pinned under me, and how close my lips were to hers. I was absolutely buzzing and paralyzed at the same time.

I still remember the feeling to this day, but it’s all overshadowed by guilt .

How could I not see it?

How could I not see her?

My God, how?

…

When we reach the school, there is no one at the parking lot looking for me. That doesn’t fool me for a second; there will be consequences. But I’ll deal with them later. We quickly get out of the car, but Eden is shaking so badly, she can barely walk.

I sling her arm around my shoulders and half-carry her safely out of sight, into our woods. She is freezing, numb with shock. Her eyes are unfocused. It’s like she is disappearing in front of my eyes. I shake her a little, and some life comes back into her eyes.

“Come back to me,” I whisper, my lips brushing her velvet cheek.

“This is how I will live my entire life,” she says. “Frozen to the spot, drowning, while every single person around me is speeding by.”

I turn her face towards me and my voice comes out ferally, wildly, angrily: “No. You’re not standing there. Not anymore.” She looks down, and I pull her chin up so she can face me. “I saved you,” it comes out as a muffled cry. “I got you out of there. I’ll always get you out. No matter where you’re stuck.”

She won’t look at me.

“You are not scared,” I continue through teeth clenched with rage born of fear. “You are not frozen, Eden. You are the bravest person I know.”

A spark of surprise lights up in her face.

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

I pull her to me, draw her into my chest and she just fits there, perfectly, as if my body was created hollow in the shape of her.

“Eden,” I murmur. “Eden. What is happening to me? What are you doing to me? I thought I would lose my mind. When I got your message it was like… having my air cut off. And when I saw you, standing there… about to get killed…”

I gasp for breath, pushing my face into the crook of her neck.

And then I’m kissing her skin. I can’t help myself. I just run my lips down the slope of her shoulder hungrily, trying to keep myself in check. Failing.

I won’t kiss her. I won’t kiss her .

I won’t lose.

She stays absolutely still as my mouth explores her, barely breathing. At some point, I feel her inhaling sharply, her lips trembling as the air filters through them, and a violent shiver shakes my entire body, nearly bringing me to my knees.

“Eden,” I murmur, and at that moment, her name is synonym with paradise.

Then my lips travel to her mouth. The minute I touch the corner of her lips, she freezes. I stop.

“Is this ok?” I murmur, another shiver shattering my body. “Can I do this?”

I am barely holding on to my sanity, waiting for her reply. My whole body is on fire, I am this close to losing all control, and this cannot happen. Not without her saying it can.

“Baby?”

She turns her head away so quickly, I think she’ll pull a muscle. Now it’s my turn to freeze.

“Hey no, what’s wrong? Talk to me,” I beg. “Did I hurt you?”

But she doesn’t talk to me. She doesn’t turn her head once to look at me as she stumbles and nearly falls in her hurry to run away from me. I scramble to reach her, but she’s already getting away. I scream her name as I run after her, my shoes pumping the snow-caked ground so hard, cold mud splatters my ankles. I reach her within seconds and take a hold of her elbow.

“Eden,” I whisper, tasting the fear on my tongue. “Eden.”

It sounds as desperate as I feel. I don’t even care.

She stops.

She turns to look straight at me with a strange expression in her eyes. It’s determination, but it’s also something else. As if she’s having an inner dialogue with herself. Deciding something. Arguing—and winning.

“The other day, when you were having trouble breathing and I helped you…” She is talking about when I had the panic attack.

“Yeah?”

“You said… Or maybe I imagined it?”

“I love you,” I say. “I said I love you.”

She goes quiet.

“I love you,” I say again. It feels so amazing to say the words out loud. Intentionally. The truest words I can say. I close my eyes and savor them. She is still quiet, her eyebrows meeting. “I love you. I don’t expect you to say it— ”

She closes the distance between us in two steps, walks up to me, and gives me a peck on the lips. Just a soft brush, barely there. It paralyzes me.

I freeze, all the way down to my toes.

She retreats quickly, but I’m not going to let her run away. Not now. Not after this.

I reach her with a single step, put my palm under her jaw, my fingers closing lightly around her slender neck, and fit her mouth to mine.

“No no no no no,” I whisper against her mouth, teasing her lips open with my mouth, kissing her and not quite kissing her yet. “You finish this.”

“I don’t know how,” she murmurs. Her breath is coming short. I breathe it in.

“Then I guess it will never end,” I say.

And then I’m tasting her lips. I turn my head to fit her mouth better, my chin melded to hers, and my legs bend so that I can reach down to her height. My arm is around her waist, my other hand cupping her ear. I taste her lips again and again, electric fire scorching my body, and I feel her shaking as badly as I am.

“Is this your answer?” I ask, almost too out of breath to talk. “Is this your ‘I love you too?’”

“That is my ‘haunt me’”, she says against my lips and I smile, still shaking.

I don’t care if she ever says the words or not. She has said more than words can say here today. She came up to kiss me first. I know how much courage that took. I saw her trembling as she stepped up to me, I saw the inner battle she fought. She won that, for me.

She is still shaking, but I hope there’s more of a reason for that than fear.

I hope that reason is fire. My fire.

“I love you,” I say against her mouth, and I can’t get enough. Of saying it. Of tasting it on her lips. I can’t get enough. “I love you I love you I love you.”