Wynter's Horizon (26 page)

Beck went first, glancing back at me with a grin as I tentatively followed. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m not too fond of rodents and snakes.” He laughed quietly, but the sound bounced off the walls and sounded a million times louder to me. “Shh. We might be heard.”

“By who? The barn owls? You know I can see in here like it was bright daylight, right?”

“Uh-huh,” I lied. I still forgot about his enhanced powers.

“Don’t worry. I’ll protect you from the killer rodents.” He held his hand out, and I slipped mine into it. His skin felt cold today. He told me it didn’t stay the same as a normal person’s, sometimes running cold and sometimes hot and that he rarely felt the temperatures. In contrast, I always felt flushed around him; as usual my heart had kicked into overdrive as soon as he’d appeared outside my window. Beck made me believe anything was possible. I missed that feeling when he was gone. I remembered Galen explaining to me once that what I felt for Jason was not love because love didn’t make you nervous, didn’t make someone want to hurt you and make you cry.

“Where are we going?” I whispered.

“To the roof,” he called back, pointing to the ladder I assumed led to the hayloft. I gulped and kept going, tightening my grip on his hand. The loft was deserted except for one or two old bales and some owls. I shuddered to think of what lived under those bales. I kept ducking my head down, sure a bat was going to land on me.

“What are you scared of now?” He sounded amused.

“Bats.” He chuckled as he tugged me across the loft; our movements echoed off the walls.

“Do you think I’d take you up here so some creature could suck your blood?”

“Ha-ha. You always say I smell nice.” I could see his shoulders shake with laughter. He pushed open the loft shutters, leaning out as far as he could go.

“What are you doing?”

“Figuring out a way onto the roof.”

I groaned. I hated heights.

“Now what’s wrong?” His voice sounded further away. It took me a moment to realize he was no longer in front of me.

“I hate climbing. Besides, maybe it’s going to fall down.”

His face appeared upside down in the open space of the loft window. “It’s not falling down. It’s a stone barn. Don’t you trust me?”

“I don’t know.”

He reached down to me with both hands. “Smart lady. Give me your hands, and I’ll have you up here in no time.” I leaned out and saw him kneeling on the roof. Cursing under my breath, I held out my arms. “I heard that,” he said as he hoisted me up next to him. His strength did have its benefits.

“You and that hearing thing.” I bet he could hear my heart going double time.

“Jealous?”

“Maybe. What are we doing here?” I looked around and tried to act like I stood on the roofs of barns all the time. He shrugged out of his leather jacket. I stared at the way his t-shirt draped across his chest. My stomach curled and heat travelled downward. I took a deep breath, trying to think of anything else besides him. He dropped the jacket on the ground, motioning for me to have a seat. He folded himself behind me, laying his arms on either side of my legs as if to make sure I didn’t tumble off, and pointed toward the sky.

“We are doing this. Look up.”

I leaned into him, using him as a backrest. God his chest was hard. I looked up, my breath catching in my throat at the spectacle. The sky was filled with so many stars it was hard to see any blackness. I felt so high up, I thought I could touch one and bring it down.

“Wow.”

“I know. It’s really clear tonight. I noticed it when we were landing.” We sat there for a long time, me leaning into him, silently watching the sky.

“What are you thinking about?” I finally asked.

“That it doesn’t get any better than this.” I sighed, knowing he was right—except for one thing. I wouldn’t have minded rolling around up here, minus the threat of falling off.

“Which constellations do you see?” I asked, trying to distract myself. Despite my dress at the formal, and what I felt were some seriously sexy, take-my-clothes-off looks on my part, he hadn’t made a move. I needed to be happy with just friendship.

“I don’t know. The north star?” He answered hesitantly.

“Whoa, the north star? Go crazy. I thought you had ultra-sensitive, perceptive eyes?”

“You better watch that tone or I’ll leave you up here with your friends the bats and snakes.” I laughed and snuggled into his arms. I felt safe, even on the top of the barn.

“How was your trip?” I asked.

“Okay. I didn’t get as much done as I hoped. Who lives in the house?”

“It’s vacant. There was talk that a developer bought the property and was going to tear it down and cram a bunch of houses in, but it hasn’t happened.”

“That’s a shame to tear down an old house like that.”

“I know. I love this place. When I was little, I used to imagine I lived here.”

“Hmm. So, how’s your summer been?”

“Good. Julia and I found an apartment in the city. I bumped into an old friend and he hooked us up.”

I could feel Beck’s body stiffen a bit. “Really?”

“Yes. It’s downtown and pretty nice and cheap, which is great for New York. We couldn’t afford a doorman building, but it’s in a good location. We’ll be fine. Brian will be there all the time. And my friend lives in the building, too.”

He twitched. I twisted around to look at him. His eyes were averted, studying the sky. “Is something wrong?” I hated when he got silent.

“No,” he answered, his face tilted up like he could get a tan from the stars.

“Are you sure?” I couldn’t let it lie.

“Why do you ask?” He finally looked at me. My heart flipped at the intensity in his eyes.

“Well, sometimes you get very quiet … like suddenly. And I never know what you’re thinking when you do—if you’re here with me or somewhere else.” I could feel my cheeks grow hot.

It seemed like he might explain, but then he just smiled. “I’m here,” he said lightly, drumming his fingers on his knees. I nodded and turned back around, pretending I didn’t want him. We settled into watching the sky.

“Well, don’t worry. This guy lives with his girlfriend, and he says its super safe, and Julia and Brian will be there a bunch,” I volunteered.

I wanted to ask him if he would be there, too, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I changed the topic. “I only like the night when you’re around,” I confessed.

“Why is that?”

“It’s dark. It scares me.”

“Perhaps you just don’t know enough about it.”

“Maybe. What do you hear?”

“I hear the cars on the road and some music your neighbor is listening to. I hear the ball game your dad is watching.”

“Who’s winning?”

“Yankees.”

“Well, that’s good. What about other stuff? Like animals? How are the rats in the barn doing?”

“I can hear that, too.”

I laughed and nudged him, only half believing he was kidding.

We stayed up there for hours, watching the sky and just listening, until dawn finally showed its edges. He deposited me in my bedroom, promising to call in the morning, and then he left.

I snuggled down in the covers and drifted off.

Chapter Fifty

Beck—Summer

I took to visiting Wynter whenever I could, most times at night. Long after her parents were in bed, I crawled through her window like some high school boy, then crawled out with her, traversing the woods and the old estate, oblivious to the rest of the world fast asleep. Wynter’s home was situated in an exclusive and remote area of Long Island, close enough to the city but nestled near the sound on the north shore where once the old blue bloods of New York had their country estates. It was heavily wooded, with twisting country roads.

We lived in a bubble, ranging far and wide in secrecy, separated from everyone else. She told me her plans and hopes for the future, and I listened and yearned for a life I could never have—a world I was not part of. But, for those brief hours, I was allowed to exist within her life, to touch the very edge. When she had been in college surrounded by her friends, I had been so careful about getting too close, and still it had been a struggle. Here, with Wynter separated from her friends and living in her parents’ house, I had a dangerously open accessibility to her, and I reveled in it.

I toyed with fire, I knew. Sometimes, I wanted her with an intensity I could barely control; I had no choice but to distance myself to contain it. I contemplated divulging the truth to her. I knew my actions confounded her—my mercurial behavior and the silences I lapsed into at times when we were together.

But I also knew what I was, of what I was ultimately capable, even if she didn’t, and I never forgot it. Yes, I had done good, found missing persons and brought them home, but I was a trained assassin, and some of my missions fell firmly in the gray area between good and bad. I was a weapon, and a deadly one in the right hands. And I had no idea what my future held, where I was headed and what I would do. Besides, the possible consequences of such a discussion and my unwillingness to lose her made me wait. I didn’t want to jeopardize our friendship on the possibility of more when that more had tragedy written all over it. She was starting graduate school in the fall, and I knew if I wanted her to find love with a normal person, someone who could commit and stick around, someone who didn’t wake in the middle of the night screaming bloody murder over what I had witnessed—which she deserved—I would need to extradite myself from her life. It was a difficult thought to reconcile, and I found myself always making excuses to spend just a little more time with her.

***

The last Saturday before school started, Wynter, Julia, Galen, Hailey, and Sophie came up to my house for an overnighter. I was skeptical about having them stay but my nightmares had decreased recently, and I wanted to spend as much time as I could with Wynter before she started school. They came early in the morning dropping their stuff before taking off for the beach. Quinn and I stayed behind, poring over documents Drew had sent. He had a new mission involving humanitarian workers and was still working on the drop into Colombia. The girls returned later that day, smelling of sun block and salt, with stories of lifeguards and beach volleyball.

“Hey?” I was in my bedroom, reading some long-winded government report. Wynter stood in the doorway, her hair blond and wavy from the wind and salt, her face bronzed. She wore my favorite cut-off shorts and her bikini top.

“I was on my way to a shower and wanted to thank you for having us all up,” she said.

I thought of water rushing down her naked body. “No problem. You know that. My house is yours.”

She smiled, her teeth looking so white against her darkened skin. An image of that mouth doing all sorts of things crossed my mind. Damn. My shorts grew incredibly tight. Her body angled, she stopped, peering over her shoulder as if to say something else, but then she turned all the way and left. I blew my breath out. I needed a cold shower.

We went to Clarke’s Cooke House for dinner, and afterward they darted across the street to the arcade. We played the games, collecting paper tickets at each, which the girls cashed in for disastrous gadgets and horrendously colored stuffed animals. They enjoyed choosing the ugliest prizes they could, plastic rings and weird-shaped candy. Wynter picked a purple spider ring, a candy bracelet, and a necklace made from black plastic twine with a pendant of the moon and a star. She seemed especially pleased with the necklace and asked me to tie it around her neck.

We finally headed back to the Jeep, plastic jewelry and stuffed animals in tow. Quinn turned on the stereo when we got home, dragged out our entire alcohol supply, and rearranged the furniture for drinking games and dancing. Wynter and I slipped out, trekking through the property and heading for the beech tree at the edge. I lifted her up onto the lower branch, climbing to sit behind her as her backrest, and we settled into watching the sky. She played with her new necklace, twisting the white plastic pendant through her fingers. It was truly awful looking but no worse than the purple spider gracing her finger. She had traded the bracelet to Hailey in return for a candy ring that she had sucked the entire car ride home and which had produced too many ideas in my mind.

“Quinn’s crazy,” she said, laughing.

Folded within my arms, her scent wafted over me. I wanted so badly to kiss her. “I know. He’s always been that way. .”

“Did he grow up like you?”

The question surprised me. She rarely asked me about our past anymore. I think she had picked up on how much I hated talking about it.

“No.”

“He doesn’t have the nightmares you have, does he?”

I stared off into the night, wondering what to answer. “No. But he had a different childhood, and his emotions don’t careen as much. He has greater control.”

“What are your nightmares of?”

I contemplated changing the subject, but she had a right to know. She shared a lot of herself with me and accepted my taciturn nature without complaint.

“My parents died in a fire. I dream of that sometimes. Of being able to reach them. I see the people I killed. I got tortured in Colombia. I see the training process we went through. The missions we went on.”