So why don’t I?
“What are you doing here?” he asks, and though everything about his heavy black boots and ratty cargo jacket screams don’t-give-a-crap, he sounds interested. Maybe even concerned.
“I’m…” I search for something that sounds better than I’m losing my mind or I’m stuck in some Twilight Zone time warp, but nothing comes. And I don’t need to explain myself to him. I don’t even know him.
“Why are you here?” I ask instead.
“Because you called me,” he says, laughing again. Then he nods down at my hands, smirking. “Have you been making mud pies while you waited for me to get here?”
I flush and hide my hands, but I still take an instinctive step toward him. And then I remember that he is a juvenile delinquent and, for all I know, a psychopath. I should be running away from him. He doesn’t look like a psychopath though. He just looks like Adam.
He crosses his arms and smirks at me. “You do remember calling me, right?”
Fear snakes its way up my spine, making my tongue thick and my throat dry.
No. I don’t. I’ve never had a conversation with him, or hell, even stood this close to him until tonight.
Maybe he’s wasted. He’s got to be, right? But he looks absolutely sober. No red eyes or twitchy fingers. Kind of odd, now that I think of it, because I would have figured him for the type.
He smirks at me then, his blue eyes glittering. “I’m impressed you jimmied the cafeteria door without my help. I was beginning to think you’d never figure that out.”
What? I did what to the what?
This is nuts. Completely nuts. I’ve never jimmied anything in my life. And if I did, it wouldn’t be the door to my high school cafeteria.
He braces his hands on the back of a chair and tilts his head. A rush of déjà vu washes over me. I take a breath and hold it in, watching him drag his thumb along the back of the chair. I’ve seen this. I’ve seen him here, looking at me like this. I’m sure of it.
I stare at his hand, feeling my cheeks go white and cold. Apparently he senses the change because his smile disappears, his eyes narrowing.
“You all right, Chlo?”
My nickname sounds right on his lips. Natural. He shouldn’t even know I have a nickname, let alone feel right using it. But he obviously does.
“You look scared to death,” he adds, frowning down at me.
I’m not sure scared is the right word. I’m not sure there is a right word for all the things I’m feeling.
“I’m fine. Just tired,” I lie.
He walks right up to me, and I swear to God, I can’t remember how to breathe. My heart is pounding and my fingers are shaking, but somehow the world feels steady anyway. I’m not afraid. I should be, but I’m just not.
“Do you need to talk? Is that why you called?” he asks. “You know you can talk to me.”
“I know that,” I say automatically, the words coming from a place I can’t find, a great empty space in me where I’m sure a memory should be.
I feel inexplicably sad at this yawning hole, this absence.
What’s happening to me? What happened to make me forget?
I bite my lip and feel my eyes burn with the threat of tears. Adam’s expression softens, twisting into something pained. Not once have I dreamed him possible of this kind of look. Hell, of anything in the same zip code as this look.
He opens his mouth to say something, and my whole body goes tense, my belly a knot of fluttering things. What is going on with me?
He reaches across the desk between us, almost but not quite touching my fingers. Every centimeter between our hands feels charged. Electric.
“We can’t keep doing this, Chloe,” he says softly.
The words sting and I don’t know why. I don’t even know what he means, but I desperately want to argue with him. I want to shake my head and grab his hands and—this is crazy.
Way beyond crazy.
My whole world is sliding into a flat spin. I can’t have this guy, this total freaking stranger, at the center of it.
If I don’t get away from him, I’m going to do something stupid. Something I won’t be able to come back from.
“I have to go,” I say, retracting my hands into fists and starting toward the door.
“Chloe,” he says, touching my bare wrist as I pass.
Something warm rushes through me, making my ears buzz and my face heat up. I hear Adam laughing in the back of my mind, like the sound track to a movie I can’t see. I whirl to face him, ready to snap his head off for making fun.
But he’s not laughing. Not now. The memory of his laughter fades away even as Adam’s hand drops from my shoulder, a hurt look crossing his face.
He lets me pass without another word. My footsteps are even and steady as they carry me into the hall. I wish my heart would follow the example.
Chapter Three
My car isn’t in its normal spot. Then again, I’ve misplaced a couple of seasons, so why should this surprise me? I finally find the aging Toyota in the south lot, resting under a thin blanket of snow. So I haven’t been here long.
Only six months or so.
Panic rushes again, squeezing hot fingers around my throat. I force myself to count to ten. And then twenty. Finally, I give up on trying to harness my inner calm and I pry open my frozen car door.
I start my engine and find my scraper in the backseat and set to work shaving the ice from my windshield. I’m shaking so hard that my teeth are rattling.
I stop once to call Maggie, getting her voice mail twice in a row. The fact that she doesn’t answer is as stupefying as everything else. She doesn’t take a shower without propping her phone on the sink. Now, three calls and nothing?
I hear the roar of an engine and look up like a trapped deer as a pair of headlights turn into the parking lot. My heart flies into my throat. It stays there, pumping hard, while the red Mustang cuts a slow arc toward me.
Blake?
Oh God, please not now. Not when I’m completely frozen and totally unstable thanks to an acute case of freaking amnesia.
For some reason I can’t even fathom, the Mustang is pulling straight toward me. How would he even see me from the main road? It’s like he knew I was here.
The car rolls to a stop and the door opens. Maybe it’s his sister or his mom or, God, maybe someone stole his car and is now about to kill me. Every one of those options would be preferable to this.
But it’s not someone else. It’s him. The blond-haired, dimpled lacrosse player and not-so-secret crush of at least half of the girls in this high school.
“God, Chloe, I was worried sick,” he says, slamming his door shut and striding toward me.
Before I can speak or blink, he hauls me into a tight hug. He smells just like he did this morning, like real cologne, the kind most of the guys around here can’t even afford to look at. And yes, before this moment, I would have given everything I own for even a sideways arm-around-the-shoulder hug from him, but right now, it’s just too much. His cologne, his supersoft down coat. I feel suffocated.
I lift my hands to push away, but he pulls back first, his face a weird mix of worry and irritation. I take a step back, my ice scraper still dangling from my left hand.
He reaches out, tucking some of my dark hair behind my ear. The strands drag along my neck, leaving goose bumps in their wake. They shouldn’t reach my neck. I hacked my hair into a chin-length bob last week, but it isn’t short anymore.
Blake smiles, and I try desperately to force one in response, but I can’t.
Behind me, I hear heavy footsteps approaching from the direction of the school. Blake’s hand falls off my shoulder. I don’t need to look to know who it is, but I can’t seem to resist.
I wish I had. The expression Adam’s wearing turns my stomach to stone. I know this feeling creeping through my middle, but it can’t belong to me. What would I have to feel guilty about?
Adam flips his dark hair out of his eyes and offers us a half-hearted salute. He slings his backpack over one shoulder and turns to lope through the school yard in his half-laced boots.