Nolan is silent and I turn my head to look at him. He’s looking off in the opposite direction, lost in thought.
“You didn’t hear anything about that night, right? Like, maybe some of the workers were here and saw something?”
He shakes his head, but still doesn’t turn to face me. I start to call him on it when he suddenly turns and leans toward me.
“You know I care about you, right? And I’d never let anything happen to you?” he asks.
I nervously rub my hands up and down my arms, feeling agitated by what his words do to me. Nolan and I have spent every day together since my mother’s death. Because my father has locked himself in his office, he hasn’t given the grounds crew a list of jobs that needs to be done, like he usually does every morning when they get here. After the first day when they finished with all of the obvious things that needed taking care of, they didn’t figure it would make sense to come all the way out here and have nothing to do. They left, telling me to have my father call them when he wanted them to come back to work.
Much to my surprise, when I woke up the following morning and came outside for some air, Nolan was sitting on the top step of the porch waiting for me. I tried to brush him off, ignore him in the hopes that he’d go away, but he wouldn’t give up that easily. I didn’t want to like him. I didn’t have time to waste looking forward to his visits. I was too consumed with my newly discovered personality, enjoying the thrill of behaving however I pleased, without having to worry about consequences. I still had secrets to uncover and memories to remember and being with Nolan was simply not on the agenda.
I thought it would be easy to push him aside because I didn’t like the way he made me feel. When he spoke to me so soft and sweet, when he looked at me like he was interested in what I had to say, it scared me deep down to the very core of me. I wasn’t afraid of being chased through the woods, almost drowned, and having my mother aim a loaded gun at my chest. I’m not afraid of my memories that show me the horrible things that were done to me, the awful words that were said to me, and I know I won’t be afraid of what’s yet to come, when it all clicks into place and everything makes sense. All of those things strengthen me and push me to keep going, get to the bottom of everything, and show them all, whoever they are, that they can’t ignore me any longer.
One look, one word, one brush of Nolan’s hand along my bare arm, and I want to get up and run as far away as possible. I hate the way he makes me feel, but at the same time, I crave it. I realized my fear comes from being afraid of the unknown. No one has ever looked at me like he does, no one has ever spoken to me like he does, and I don’t know how to handle it. I can easily deal with the anger and hatred, the pain and misery. I’m used to those things: they’re a part of me and the more they’re thrown in my direction, the stronger I feel and the harder I fight.
I don’t know how to deal with someone being genuinely nice to me. It’s foreign, and it’s strange, and it puts me on edge. After two days of trying my hardest to pick fights with Nolan by calling him names, belittling him, shoving my hands against his chest, and doing whatever I could to try and get a rise out of him, I finally had to give up and just deal with the discomfort.
Instead of answering his question about knowing if he cares for me and that he wouldn’t let anything happen to me, I change the subject before I do something stupid and pathetic like cry.
“I need your help with something today,” I tell him, pushing myself up from the dock to stand over him.
He shields his eyes from the sun as he looks up at me. “Please tell me you need help moving out of your room.”
I smile and hold my arm out toward him. He wraps his warm callused hand around mine and I pull to help him up, quickly dropping his hand when he’s standing in front of me before it makes me feel like running in the opposite direction. I need the use of his muscles today, and I don’t have time to run away like a child.
“As a matter of fact, I do,” I tell him as we walk back up to the prison.
Nolan has been begging me for days to move out of my bedroom and into the spare room. He is completely grossed out that my mother’s blood still stains the window and walls of my room, and he doesn’t understand why I continue to sleep there every night.