Volition (8 page)

He lingered for a few moments, and then I heard his footsteps retreating. The telltale clang of the gate told me I was alone again with a hundred Hales and two McKennas.

What I wasn’t expecting was to hear the clang again a few minutes later and the crunch of his feet as he approached me.

When I looked up, it was my eyes that went wide this time.

He was carrying a second shovel.

“What are you doing?” I asked him, wiping the moisture off my brow with the back of my hand.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” he asked, mirroring my words.

“It looks like you’re going to help me dig up this grave, but I might be hallucinating.”

He buried his shovel in the ground above Denny, much deeper than I was able to. “You’re not.”

I swallowed the basketball-sized lump in my throat.

After a few minutes, he interrupted our silence. “Do you remember me?” he asked, tilting his head to look at me.

I didn’t meet his gaze. “No,” I told him, except I did.

Of course I did. How could I not? He was asking such a silly question, and because those words left his lips, he gave it away that he didn’t know how important he was to me.

I didn’t care for many people in this world, but I cared so much for Jesse Elliott. Something inside my soul recognized something inside his and not because he was helping me dig up my father’s grave. There was something wrong with him, and I wanted to know what it was and what had made him that way. I had never known what it was.

I hadn’t forgotten him, but he didn’t know I was the one who got him this job. He hadn’t left rocks on my window, and we hadn’t spoken for years. I wondered if this was the big plunge, the big event that would finally put the broken pieces of us back together.

The only sound for a few minutes was that of our shovels.

He broke the silence again. “So, who exactly are we digging up today?”

“My dad,” I told him.

I stole a glance at him. His dark hair was falling over his forehead. I couldn’t see his eyes. Maybe if I saw them, I could get a glimpse inside.

“And why are we digging him up?”

I pointed over to my mom. “Because they need to be together. They deserve to be next to each other, within arm’s reach, not across from one another like they weren’t soul mates. Like they still aren’t.”

He stuck his shovel in the dirt and looked at me with an expression I didn’t understand. “You are the strangest girl I’ve ever met, Tate McKenna.”

I stopped shoveling. We were barely making a dent anyway.

“Shut up, Jesse,” I said, revealing that I did remember him after all.

Jesse.

I rolled his name around in my mouth without saying it out loud again. I’d never seen a person fit his name so perfectly before. I couldn’t explain it. He just did.

He wiped his forehead on the back of his arm. “It’s getting dark,” he said, pointing out the obvious.

It wasn’t
getting
dark. It was dark—pitch-black, to be quite honest.

Southern darkness would scare most people half to death. It wasn’t the same kind of darkness that you saw everywhere else. Strange things lurked just beyond your field of vision, and paranoia was inescapable. Sometimes, I’d put my hands out and feel the energy that radiated off the earth and into the air because I knew it didn’t let go of the things that had happened here. Strange things scarred this land forever, and I loved it.

Jesse didn’t seem bothered by it. He was simply stating a fact.

“How about I help you finish this tomorrow when we can actually see what we’re doing?”

I didn’t want to leave my dad this way, but we had only just scraped off the grass.

“Okay.” I was strangely complacent, and I didn’t know why this boy had always had some kind of power over me.

“Okay.”

I let him take my hand because he moved as if he did it every day. Then, he led me back to the warm glow of the house.

After he left, I heard the clink of a rock against the glass of my window. I didn’t get it until morning, but I couldn’t help but smile.

For the first night in a long time, I slept the whole way through.

Now

“DO I NEED to file a restraining order?” I keep my voice calm and don’t turn around to look at Hayden.

“Do you?”

I take a deep breath and steady myself before I speak next. Old Tate would have done something crazy. I try my best to be New Tate.

“Is it necessary? You’re supposed to be at the Empire State Building.”

“That’s not your favorite place in New York City, is it?”

“I’m addicted to the Empire State Building. That doesn’t mean it’s my favorite, but everyone thinks it is.”

The postcard should have misled him.

He moves to stand next to me instead of behind me, and I can feel the heat from his body when it brushes mine. I shiver, but only because this small act has made me realize how cool it is in the air-conditioned museum. I almost move to rub my hands over my bare arms, but I don’t want him to think I’m shivering because of him, so I stay as still as one of the statues in the Greco-Roman room downstairs.

I study him from out of the corner of my eyes, straining them to observe him without him noticing. He’s looking straight ahead at my painting. Ironically, with his looks, he could be turned to stone and fit perfectly into the Greco-Roman gallery.

Somehow, I expect him to wear a suit and tie for all eternity because that’s what a Rockefeller should do. All the paintings of important men always portray them in suits, and Hayden belongs in a beautiful historic painting instead of standing next to me, staring at one.

His head turns ever so slowly, and I wonder how anyone can be that graceful in such a small movement. It’s as if space and time exist for him, not the other way around.

“How can you be addicted to a place?” he asks. He seems genuinely interested in my answer.

I bite my tongue in my mouth until I taste blood because Hayden is a person that makes me feel like I should censor my answers rather than spit them out rapid-fire like I used to. He makes me nervous in a way that I imagine normal people feel around people they are attracted to. I’m used to something entirely different, and my nervousness makes me into someone I don’t know how to be. I suck in a deep breath and let it back out.

“It’s entirely possible. I hope you’ll find out someday.”

I start to walk away because I can see other people clearing out of the galleries as closing time approaches. If Hayden hadn’t appeared, I would be the last one out the door, but I don’t want everyone to leave me alone with him. It’s like they’re betraying me with each footstep, and they don’t even know it.

I shut my eyes and wait to hear his steps echo mine, but I don’t hear them. He’s not following me, and that is nothing if not surprising.

I turn ever so slowly as I think about my words. “I do have one question. How did you know I would be here?”

He laughs as he puts his hands in the pockets of his jeans, and one side of his smile goes up higher than the other. “A good reporter never reveals his source.”

“You’re not a reporter.”

“Lighten up, McKenna comma Tate.”

I roll my eyes. “Catherine.”

He nods, and I think about taking a restraining order out on my best friend.

Then

I WAS TRAPPED in Colin’s car with him slumped over the wheel, snoring.

“Wake up, you incorrigible bastard. I need to go home.”

It was two in the morning, and Colin and I learned that driving around in Charleston really wasn’t the same as driving around near school. Unbeknownst to me, Colin had decided to drive under the influence, and he had passed out a few miles from Hale house.

I shook the lump that was Colin, but he wouldn’t budge. He was much too heavy for me to move out of the driver’s seat even if I did want to attempt getting behind the wheel.

Tears were prickling my eyes, and I had to look up to force them back down. I refused to let them fall. There was enough water falling from the sky, and it reminded me too much of the night when my life changed forever.

I pried the door handle open and threw myself out into the rain, letting the droplets soak my entire being. If I had to walk home, so be it. I would leave Colin here to rot because he deserved it.

My dress was completely soaked and clinging to my body, as was my hair. The chill in my bones was nothing compared to the chill in my soul. It was as if the wind was rushing straight through me.

I wasn’t out of sight of Colin’s car when I saw another coming up the road. I imagined that I was in
Psycho
, and that my blood would probably be going down a shower drain soon. No one ever drove out on this road.

Colin wouldn’t even know they kidnapped me. He would just wake up with a hangover in the morning, sans Tate. Poor Catherine. She was going to be stuck for the rest of her life with this ingrate.

I saw the bright light that everyone talks about and started to walk toward it before my brain registered they were just headlights on the car.

It pulled over, and I prepared for my doom. I knew I couldn’t outrun a car, so I stood my ground, trying to look as dignified as possible. I really hoped my screams would wake Colin, so he would have it burned into his brain forever as revenge. Normally, I would have crawled into his backseat and slept until morning, but something in me had snapped. I was sick to death of the monotonous driving that used to thrill me.

The driver’s door opened, and a shaggy dark head was immediately soaked.

“Tate,” it said, “what are you doing out here?”

“Who the fuck are you?”

I knew very well it was Jesse, but I made an effort to seem uninterested. I always tried to seem uninterested now that he wouldn’t talk to me. After that night in the cemetery, I thought I was going to get him back, but then he stopped talking to me. He stopped looking at me. He stopped with the rocks. He flat out ignored me, and I hated him for it. I hated the sting of rejection.

I was squinting because of the falling rain, but I could have sworn I saw him roll his eyes.

“Get in the car?”

“No.”

“Tate, it’s not safe.”

“Better die out here than in your car.”

“You think I’m going to kill you?”

“You do move dead bodies for a living.”

He scoffed. “I wouldn’t really say I do it for a living. But that last one was at your request if I remember correctly.”

Two mornings after Jesse found me trying to dig up Denny, I traipsed into the cemetery to find the earth disturbed, and he and Maggie were no longer across from one another. As groundskeeper, he had the necessary equipment, so I was sure he did it for me, but he had never confirmed it.

I stared at him through the droplets, but I couldn’t make out a clear picture of his face. The rain or my eyes were playing tricks on me.

“Get in the car, Tate,” he repeated. His voice had an edge that I wasn’t familiar with.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“What am I supposed to do with him?”

I gestured back to Colin’s car where I was sure he was still drooling on the steering wheel.

“Who is in the car?” Jesse asked, the edge rising even more.

“Colin.”

“Who is Colin?”

“My friend.”

“Your boyfriend?” He put unnecessary emphasis on the first part of the word.

I wanted to scoff because if he thought Colin was my boyfriend, then Jesse knew nothing about me anymore. We were strangers again.

“No. He’s just an asshole, but I can’t leave him out here to be eaten by wolves.”

“Oh, the wolves out here are
terrible
,” Jesse said sarcastically. “A friend of mine was eaten just last week. Barely made it away with my life.”

I crossed my arms and couldn’t help but crack a smile. Tate McKenna didn’t smile. I forced it back down inside me and wished I could throw it out instead.

“I can’t leave him,” I said, starting back toward Colin.

“Tate, wait.”

I didn’t look back, but I heard Jesse kill the engine. Thankfully, he didn’t turn off the headlights, or we would have all been plunged into darkness.