1. Indy
ONE
INDY
“Dia, come on!” I yell up the stairs as I glance at my watch for the thousandth time. “We’re going to be late if you don’t hurry the fuck up!”
She peeks out from behind the corner. “I’m almost done. I just have to take a quick shower.”
I take another look at my watch. “What the hell do you mean shower? We have to get going!”
“I have an audition for the school musical,” she says, singing the last few words and flicking her hair over her shoulder. “I have to look the part. Have you ever seen Elle Woods look anything but her best?”
“Dia,” I grit out.
“I’ll be five minutes tops.”
I let out an incredulous laugh. “In what universe? Just give me the keys and take the bus.”
“I can’t take the bus in my costume.” She puts one hand on her waist and juts her hip out. “Are you insane? Have you actually gone insane?”
My sister, everybody. The drama queen.
“The audition is in the afternoon. You don’t have to be in your costume.”
“I need time to get in character. You take the bus.”
“I will never make it to the bus stop on time,” I grouse. “Just drop me off at school and come back if you’re planning to skip first period anyway.”
“I don’t have the time.”
“Dia, I swear to God—”
“Skip first period too, and we’re good.”
“I. Have. A test,” I say, very slowly and clearly. “Give me the keys, or I will kill you.”
“Oh, for crying out loud.” She disappears from view, and I let out a breath of relief, only to pull the sucker back in as every muscle goes tense when she appears on the landing with Nick.
“Problem solved,” she says. “Nick’ll give you a ride.”
“Di—” And she’s gone. Leaving me standing in the hallway. With Nick. He comes down the stairs, the usual impassive, stony look on his face.
His arm brushes mine by accident when he passes me to grab his car keys from the hook on the wall. I try not to react. I try not to inhale or do anything stupid that’d garner me more coldness.
Because that’s what Nicholas Hayes is.
Not rage.
Not fury.
But ice-cold hate.
I always imagined hate as fire. Something roaring, bright, and destructive. Loud and reckless. Something you would see coming. Fire at least warns you. It crackles and spits and leaves smoke in the air. You can see it approach, even if it comes on fast.
I was wrong.
Hate isn’t like that.
Hate is ice.
It settles in quietly. It creeps through your veins and numbs everything it touches.
Fire destroys quickly and loudly.
Ice is patient.
It crawls in slowly until there’s nothing warm left.
Ice preserves. It keeps things exactly as they are. Every slight, every betrayal, every wound, every wrong word will stay untouched forever. Nothing softens. Nothing fades. It just hardens.
And spreads.
It’s in his voice and in his words and in his eyes.
The shards, when he aims them at someone, are sharp and merciless.
It’s in the way he looks at you. It’s in the undertone of his words. It’s in the way he speaks to you.
It’s the way he seems to feel absolutely nothing.
He grabs his keys and stops at the door. “You coming or not?”
An uninterested flick of his dark eyes follows that question.
I wait until he’s out the door then let out a curse and a breath at once before I push my feet into my sneakers and jog outside. Experience tells me he has no problem leaving me the fuck behind and without a ride if I take a second too long.
I get in and throw my bag into the back seat before I buckle in.
The drive to Annapolis takes twenty-two minutes. Twenty-two long minutes. The kind of minutes that last for hours.
I try to pretend we’re in an Uber, and he’s a random driver.
It’s pretty much how we’ve been handling the last fourteen months. Two strangers forced to coexist.
There was a time when I thought… It doesn’t really matter what I thought.
It shouldn’t be that difficult to ignore the arctic hostility that surrounds him like an impenetrable wall at all times.
I shouldn’t let it get to me.
The rest of my family manages perfectly well.
Sort of. Dia would never let anybody else’s shitty attitude get to her.
She once told me it was like practice for rejection at auditions.
Mom got her promotion, so she’s working a lot.
Whatever frustration Dad might be feeling about this situation, he channels into his paintings.
They all seem to have tapped into some kind of well of patience where it doesn’t get to them at all, no matter how shitty Nick’s attitude is or how much he hates us all.
They just take it. I can’t figure out why.
I glance at Nick.
Or maybe it’s that the way he treats me just feels… It just feels personal. Like out of all four of us he saves all his extra loathing for me.
I bite back a sigh when we hit traffic almost the moment we get to the interstate. I take a covert glance at the clock on the dash. I’m on the verge of being fucked.
“Big day?” he asks.
It’s impossible to say if it’s genuine interest or if he’s laying the groundwork for something mocking or cutting. A mix of the two.
“Umm. Maybe. I guess.”
I’ve become so careful this past year. Weighing words and my replies, making sure I don’t say too much or leave myself open to the knife blade of his distaste.
“We’ve only been back to school for a week. Who the fuck has a test one week into the year?”
“It’s not a test-test,” I say.
He throws me a look, and I bite down on my lip for a moment, trying to suppress the urge to fill the silence. I speak when I get nervous. It’s been a difficult habit to break.
“I want to get into advanced math,” I say. “It’ll look good on my college application.”
He turns his head to look at me, his elbow on the sill of the open window, fingertips against the steering wheel. There’s the slightest quirk of his brow. “There’s a test? I would’ve figured the nerdier classes welcome anybody who shows the slightest bit of interest.”
I put on my most amiable grin. “Fuck off.”
“It’s an interesting choice,” he muses.
“What is?”
“Torching any hope of a social standing so willfully.”
I blink at him while I try to figure out where he’s going with this, because I’ve never seen anybody less interested in being social. He doesn’t give a shit about anybody or anything, which seems to translate as being mysterious and brooding, when really he’s just a bit of a dick.
But then, he’s also stupidly tall and has the kind of dark eyes that look almost black in certain lights and make you feel like he can read every thought that goes through your head.
He drums his fingers on the windowsill while we wait at a red light. We inch forward, a long row of cars before us.
He runs his fingers through his thick, chestnut hair that immediately falls into perfect waves. Muscles flex, and my eyes get stuck on his forearms, even though they shouldn’t.
He’s… He makes me feel small. And young. Stupid. Innocent. Like a kid.
I snap my eyes away before he gets the wrong idea and concludes that I’m staring. Which I’m not.
He absently pulls open the compartment in front of the gearshift and starts to rummage around. The cars in front of us start to move and immediately a horn blares from behind.
Nick holds up his middle finger at the rear window, not bothered in the slightest.
“What are you looking for?” I ask.
“Phone charger,” he says before he drives forward a few feet and then has to stop again.
“Let me.”
He sends me another one of those bored, unimpressed looks.
“You’re driving.” I’m already leaning forward, and the tips of my fingers slide over the back of his hand for the briefest of moments. I frown at the mess inside the compartment and pretend I don’t notice the way my pulse pounds against the inside of my neck.
It’s a thing that sometimes happens. His close proximity and my inexplicable nerves mix, and it makes the air buzz. I can’t explain it.
“Stop rooting around in my shit,” he says. Annoyed. Because that’s one of the few emotions he’s willing to show.
Fingers tangle in the tight space, and I have a sudden image of both our hands getting stuck in there and—
“Got it,” I say, too loudly and on an exhale, so I sound out of breath for no reason at all. “Hand me your phone?”
He pulls it out and slaps it onto my palm, but he doesn’t let go of it at once like I expect him to, and my brain doesn’t get the message, so I close my fingers around it. Around his hand.
I snap my eyes up. The touch burns. It’s maybe a second, but that second extends before I get my head on straight enough to pull away. The phone clatters as it drops down between the center console and his seat.
“Shit! Sorry.” I stuff my hand between the seat and try to fish the phone out. I’m leaning over to see better. He turns his head.
For a ridiculous moment, I swear he inhales deeply. I freeze on the spot.
I’m imagining it.
I know I am.
There’s no excuse for the way heat creeps up my neck, or how my heart gives a series of lightning-fast thumps that feel suspiciously like excitement.
I scrabble for the phone. I can’t get it out fast enough. I lean forward an inch more just to hide my face. Now it’s me smelling him because I’m too close. I finally reach the phone then pull away and busy myself with it, determined to look anywhere but at him.
“There,” I say once I’ve connected it to the charger. “All good.”
We’re silent the rest of the way to school. He parks the car, and I lunge for the door handle, ready to get away. Once outside, I start to move, but my manners win out, and I turn around again and lean down to look at him from the open door.
“Thanks for the ride.”
He glances up from his phone, eyes moving up and down me, but he doesn’t acknowledge me otherwise.
I slam the door shut and walk away. The feel of his skin against mine has mostly disappeared.
It was nothing. Just nerves and adrenaline and the irritated buzzing of my skin he so expertly coaxes out every time I’m near him.
I really shouldn’t let him get to me.