Absolute Zero (13 page)

“Hold on, Nate,” I said. “I got you.”

His body swung, and his hand waved trying to keep himself steady. Inch-by-inch we hoisted him up. He reached out to the brick wall and kept himself steady.

A metal-on-metal ring vibrated my eardrums as the balcony fell away from the building. It crashed with a thunderous boom onto my patio. Good thing we hadn’t put any furniture out there yet.

“Oh sweet Jesus what was that?” Someone behind Martin said.

“Shut up and help me.”

Some more gentle tugs followed and inched Nate closer to the window. I continued to push against the frame, helping with the hoisting, hopefully unnoticed. The metal began to give way, though.

Oh great.

It warped from the pressure of my hand against it. If I let go, though, I didn’t think Martin could keep us steady. It groaned. Similar to the sound of the balcony before it gave way. The glass crackled.

When Martin had hit it while he jumped off the balcony, he’d weakened it. I was going to have to hoist Nate back up here.

“On three. Big pull, Martin. This window’s getting weak. Nate. Hold on!” He nodded.

“One,” Martin said.

I sucked in a deep breath.

“Two.”

Martin’s grip around me tightened.

“Three.”

A massive hoist behind me followed, then I pushed with most of my strength, and I yanked. The window shattered. I fell back with a thud against Martin’s soft belly but quickly felt more weight on top of me. The sudden weight forced the air from my lungs.

Nate’s forehead smacked against my cheek, which made my head snap back and crack against Martin’s padded chest. Felt like my eye might explode.

“Mandy,” Georgia screamed.

I put my arms around Nate and held him close. I wasn’t quite sure how far he’d come through the window. If he was still halfway hanging out, I needed to keep a grip, because he’d let go of my hand.

His back popped like a popcorn maker. His breath whooshed over me, and he grunted. I felt Martin’s body shuffle beneath me, then disappear. I sank to the carpet, then two hands curled around my armpits and tugged me back. Nate went with me. A few seconds later the motion stopped.

“You’re in,” Martin said.

His pudgy face came into focus as he leaned over and looked down at me. I lifted my head and looked at Nate on top of me. Speckles of blood spotted his cheek and forehead, but he looked okay other than that.

“Okay, Mandy. You can let go,” Nate said. His voice pressured.

I released him, and he sucked in a gasp of air like I’d squeezed it all out of him. He rolled off me and went to all fours, heaving. A cough shook his body, then he looked at me and scrambled to my side.

“Are you okay?” He brushed his fingers against my cheek.

That drew a good-sized flinch from me. Must have some cuts.

He withdrew his hand and scanned my body from head to toe. “How did you pull me up like that?”

Let the lies begin…

Chapter 17

“Y
ou really know how to throw a party,” Georgia said to Nate. “Can’t wait for the next one.”

“I can’t believe that happened.” Nate shook his head.

I perched on the tabletop in his little kitchen while Georgia sat in a chair in front of me, picking out the glass and dabbing demon-possessed peroxide on my cuts. “Should we get you to the ER?”

“No. No. I’m fine. You okay, Nate? You need a doc?”

His face blanched. “Nope. I’m good. You got the brunt of the injuries.” His gaze drifted to my arm.

“Martin, you’re never allowed on a balcony again, you hear me?” I teased. He’d flopped onto the couch and hadn’t moved. It looked like it took everything out of him holding onto us. “He’s the real star here. We would have been flattened.”

“Manager’s on his way up,” some guy standing next to Nate said.

“Shit.” Nate got up and strode over to a guy. I assumed it was his roommate, Tim, because he’d just walked in. They whispered, and now was a time I wished I’d had Jasmine’s hearing.

The guy Nate spoke with walked over to Martin, and they talked for a few minutes, then both got up and left the apartment. Most people had cleared out, except Martin, Tim, Nate, me, Georgia, and about five or six people I didn’t know yet.

Nate strode toward me, eyes wide. “Want to run down to your place for a while?”

“What’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you on our way. Let’s take the back stairs. You okay to walk?”

“I’m fine. G, let’s go.” I grabbed her hand, and she helped me off the table. Oh yeah, my arm stung like a son of a monkey.

“Okay, hurry,” Nate said.

“What’s going on?” Georgia asked as she led out the door. She went to the right instead of left, to the back stairwell. “Why are we sneaking out?”

“Tim’s going to have Martin just tell them that he went out there, and it started to go down. He jumped to safety.”

“Why not tell him about us? Surely some of the tenants saw us hanging.”

“Doesn’t look like the cops have been called, so the Supe will take care of everything, I’m sure.”

Georgia held the door open to the stairwell. Our flip-flops echoed against the cement walls. The bright stairwell lights burned my eyes. We rounded the stairs to the second level and clicked open the door. Ours was six down and on the left.

“So, why are we doing this again?” I asked, suddenly very curious as to why he wanted to stay out of the limelight. Not to mention the all serious face he’d switched on. Gone was the playful guy I’d gotten to know a little better tonight. Sure, this one was awesome, too, but the abrupt switch triggered my ever-present paranoia.

“I’ll tell you inside. Come on.”

Georgia opened the door, and we all filed into the kitchen.

“Mandy, sit on the table. I’ll go get some stuff for your arm.”

“Thanks.” Man, it’d be so much easier if I could just heal myself. It looked like it was back to hiding who and what I truly was.

Fun times.

Nate sat in the chair in front of me. He reached for my feet, took off my flip-flops and set my bare feet on his thighs. “I can’t believe what just happened.”

“I tried to warn him not to come out there. I must have ESP or something, because I just knew nothing good could come of a four-hundred-pound giant coming out on that tiny balcony. But he didn’t listen.”

“Enough joking, Mandy. That was really serious.”

“I get a little sarcastic when I’m nervous. You don’t know that about me yet.”

“What I really want to know is, how did you hold on to me so long? And to Martin?”

“I told you. I’m deceivingly strong. Don’t let my little size fool you.”

He arched an eyebrow and rested his hands on my thighs. His dark eyes bore right through me.

I wove my fingers through his hair and gave the best smile I could through the stinging pain in my arm. His face softened, and the fun, relaxed Nate shone through again.

With a gentle tug to his hair, I urged him toward me. His hands slid off my thighs as he rose and planted on the table, bracketing me close to him. Heat wafted off him, and I readily absorbed it.

His gaze shifted down and whether he realized it or not, his tongue swept over his bottom lip. Such a tease.

“You’re hurt,” he whispered as he inched closer to my mouth.

“I’ve seen worse.” I pulled him the rest of the way and greedily claimed his lips.

He pulled in a sharp breath and let me in. I wasn’t really sure what prompted me to kiss him right then and there. Maybe it was the rush of what had just happened.

His hand cupped my neck as he eased back. Wide, dilated eyes stared down at me. He cocked his eyebrow up and tilted his head slightly as if working to figure out an equation or something. It was cute but also really intense. How he looked at me was different than anything I’d ever experienced.

Not that I had a wealth of experience with guys, but still. There was a mix of wonder, longing, and…fear. Maybe I was just whacked out because of my arm injury or something, but at that moment I felt so connected to him.

I cleared my throat and asked, “So, you going to tell me why you high-tailed it right out of there after talking to Tim. That was your roommate Tim, right?”

He held my gaze a breath longer, then nodded as his thumb brushed along my bottom lip. He sat down in front of me, and said, “I was kind of hoping to get to know you a little better before telling you all this.”

My stomach plunged.

Georgia strode through the doorway holding the nightmare little brown bottle and gauze.
Oy
. I’d seen enough of that crap in my lifetime, and I was only eighteen soon to be nineteen.

If I lived that long.

Georgia stopped. I thought I heard the skidding sounds tires made. “What’s wrong?”

Nate straightened in his chair and glanced at her, then me.

“Nothing. Nate’s just going to tell us something.”

“Us?”

“She’s my sister—er—well, she’s like my sister, so she hears whatever I hear anyway.”

He nodded and sucked in a deep breath. “Okay, so, I’m eighteen, but this is my third year of college.”

“Wait, third year? But this is a community college. I—”

“Yeah, well.” He glanced around and put his hand on the back of his neck. “I whizzed through high school in a couple of years, went to college when I was sixteen. Got into a little trouble. Been bouncing around colleges for a couple years.”

“Trouble?” I asked.

“Parents?” Georgia asked.

“Emancipated. And as for trouble… partying, some minor arrests for vandalism, crap like that.”

“Holy cow, Nate. Arrested?”

“I know.” He shook his head. “Anyway, Tim knows my situation and Martin does a little, too. So, they agreed to cover.”

“But you didn’t do anything wrong.” Georgia resumed the torture treatment on my wounds. I didn’t realize how many times that glass had cut me, and I couldn’t just heal myself. That would be just a little obvious, which
totally
sucked.

“I know. But still. When you have a record, you always look guilty.”

I couldn’t believe I made out with a convict.

“Ever been in jail?” I leaned forward, resting my chin on my palm. I suddenly felt very tired.

“Once. Overnight, my folks let them keep me, thinking it’d scare me.”

“Did it?”

“No. That’s a load of crap. Scare tactics are statistically proven to not work.”

Oh great. I was totally crushing on a brainiac. Hope he didn’t go all nerdy on me, spouting stats out all the time.

“Let me see that arm of yours.”

I offered my left hand to him, and he grabbed it. He turned it over to see the outer forearm. A long patch of skin, about six inches long and an inch or so wide, had been scraped off as it drug against the base of the window. It was like a massive road rash I got once when I was thirteen and crashed rollerblading.

Stinging pain zapped my neck. I flinched and saw Georgia doing her nursing impression with the cotton and peroxide.

I glanced back at my hand in Nate’s. I noticed purple and blue bruising around his wrist that resembled a bracelet. I brushed my forefinger over it. He flicked his gaze up to me. He’d moved forward in his seat, so I got a bird’s eye view of his face.

Smooth, bronzed skin. One little mole beneath his left eye. Dark brown hair, almost black, straight, but it wisped above his ears, almost like a feather I’d seen on the 80’s classic video channels Scott watched once in a while.

I pulled his hand closer. The bruising coincided to where I’d gripped him. I’d probably done that.

“You have wicked grip strength, Mandy.”

“I was just holding on for dear life. I was scared you’d fall,” I said with a whisper. “I didn’t mean for you to get hurt.”

“This is nothing. You’re missing quite a bit of skin on your arm. And while at
my
party while on
my
balcony.” He shook his head. “You’re probably never going to want to come over again.” The corners of his lips curved downward.

I glanced at Georgia. “We’ll still come over. Just not on the balcony.”

Georgia giggled. “Ah, yeah. You’ve got a sweet plasma TV, ours is just an old junky one Gary gave us.”

“Gary?”

“That’s her dad. She just turned nineteen and thinks she has to call him by his first name now.”

She slapped my shoulder. “Hey.”

“I’m just kidding. Okay, so, yeah. I guess we’ll come by again if we can watch TV it sounds like.” I laughed.

The microwave clock flashed one thirty. No wonder I was wasted mentally and physically.

Someone pounded on our door. I almost jolted to my feet, but an overpowering sting encapsulated my arm. I squealed and looked to the side. Georgia had knocked the little brown bottle over and it’d dumped onto my arm.

“Oh my gosh, Mandy. I’m sorry!”

The burning stung so bad it felt like my flesh was on fire. “Watch out. Coming through.” I hopped to my feet and made a beeline for my bathroom.

I heard shuffling through my closed door, then a new voice. It was deep, maybe Tim, Nate’s roommate?

I clicked my bathroom door closed. Okay, time to try a new trick. I had to cool the burning and the pain a little. Not a total heal, just partial. I zeroed in on the sting. I felt my eyebrows furrow and my face scrunch up as I focused on the glistening wound.

My fingernails flashed neon blue, and the temperature dropped.
Just a little healing. Just a little bit.
I kept repeating it, hoping it’d work. No way was I going to be able to explain a complete healing of a wound that size, but I had to get the pain manageable.

A light layer of frost glistened over the spot I told it to. The energy pulsating through my body was invigorating. The control I’d gained over the summer was really coming through for me now. The pain subsided slightly.

I drew in a few deep breaths and told the cold, “Back off.” A patch of ice slid down my arm and crackled against the linoleum floor.

The wound was nice and frozen, so the pain was minimal, but it wasn’t totally healed. Just a little smaller.

Muffled voices leaked through the walls, and I sucked in a breath to listen. “Mandy, you okay in there?”