Winter's Kiss (18 page)

Finally Nick focused on me again. His long, dark lashes blinked slowly. He looked lost. A more accurate end to his sentence:
My dad … is lost himself, and I don’t know whether my parents are coming back.

I wanted to reach out to him then, to touch his stubbled cheek with my fingertips. We were alone in his bedroom, after all. On his bed. His mom was gone. His dad probably didn’t care what we did. Doofus stretched into a different position on Nick’s carpet, sending a wave of wet dog odor toward us only occasionally. We could have made out.

But maybe Josh actually had a point, and it wasn’t good for Nick and me to keep making out and arguing. Perhaps making out was
not
the answer to all our problems, oddly enough. And I’d come over to check on Nick, not to seduce him. Shaking my head to clear it, I said, “I know what will make you feel better.”

“I’m not hurt,” he insisted.

“Obviously you are, or I wouldn’t have walked in on you doing half-assed yoga.” I stretched out on his bed and hung forward over the side, just as I’d found him. “Come on, I’ll do it with you.”

Grumbling, Nick bent over the side with me. We hung that way for about ten seconds of quiet before he said, “It’s not working.”

“That’s your problem, like I told you yesterday. You don’t hold the stretch long enough, and besides, you do it while listening to”—I felt behind me on the bed for his MP3 player and peered at the screen—“alt metal.” I tossed it across the room into a leather armchair. “Try this with me. Inhale through your nose, and let your legs melt into the bed. Exhale through your mouth, and let your body and your arms fall toward the floor.” I led him through a few more long breaths that way, until I could see from the corner of my eye that he’d relaxed, like when we’d made out last night.

I reminded myself yet again that this was not the time for making out. I was making up with Nick for exploding at him in public about the fire-crotch comment. As he stretched with his eyes closed, he looked so young and vulnerable, so
normal
, that I ached to reach out and feel around on his back for the bruise where he’d fallen, or to change my voice from soothing to sexy. But I’d come here on a mission to make Nick feel better. And I was pretty sure making out with me was not what Nick needed right now. I took him through a whole series of easy poses, moving from the bed to the floor.

Finally we sat up. Nick slouched glassy-eyed against his leather armchair. I relaxed in the Lotus Pose, invigorated from the stretches.

“I feel better,” he said languidly.

“I’m glad.”

“No, really better,” he said like he couldn’t believe it now that he was waking up a little.

“Keep stretching every day and take it seriously, and you won’t be as likely to get hurt boarding. Now I’d better go.” I nodded at the clock on his bedside table. “I told my mom I was taking Doofus for a walk. We could have walked to Leadville by now.”

He stood up unsteadily, leaning on the chair. “I’ll drive you home.”

I wasn’t sure this was a good idea. I had a lot of anxiety about him being polite to me. It would probably be best to give him more time to cool off after I’d yelled at him at the half-pipe.

On the other hand, I
really
did not want to walk back home through the freezing night or make Doofus do it, either. He’d been through enough. “Is your SUV parked outside, or is it in the garage?” I asked hopefully. “Doofus and I would rather not face your attack cats again.”

“There’s a cat door in the back of the house. They can come inside any time they want. Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.” He slid a machine gun from his dresser—a red-and-blue plastic water gun.

“My hero,” I breathed as he pointed his gun into the hall and looked both ways before stealthily motioning for me and Doofus to follow, like he was the star of an action-adventure flick. With me giggling at him and him shushing me as if I really were his airheaded heroine, we made it downstairs and stepped from an enormous, gleaming kitchen into a three-car garage.

His SUV, so familiar to me from seeing it parked every day at school since he’d gotten his license last year, looked out of place in the vast space next to a Porsche. The SUV seemed so … normal. Like Nick: normal but not. He didn’t mind an Irish setter dripping melted snow on his bedroom carpet or hopping into the back of his SUV. Yet his SUV was parked in the garage of a mansion.

You know what else was perfectly normal? The missing third car. His parents had separated, just like Liz’s parents had divorced three years before. The Krieger Meats and Meat Products fortune did not solve everything. I tried not to stare back at the empty space on the other side of the Porsche as the garage door tipped out of the way and the SUV pulled into the light snow.

Snowflakes zoomed around in the headlight beams, defining them far out in front of us, almost all the way down the hill to the gate. Nick turned on the windshield wipers, but he hardly needed them. The snowflakes weren’t substantial. The breeze of the wipers shooed them away like fireflies during a Tennessee summer.

He pushed another button, and the gate majestically opened for us before we even reached it. He didn’t mean anything by this motion, I reminded myself. He drove through the gate a few times a day. He didn’t give it a second thought. He had no idea that, to me, he seemed to be rubbing in how rich he was and how powerful his parents were. This was what had separated us in the seventh grade, when he’d half-believed Gavin that a girl wouldn’t date him without his family status behind him. This was what separated us still.

And yet, in a strange way, I’d never felt closer to him. The SUV crunched through gravel onto the main road, where it swished through slushy snow. But inside it was warm, and a rock ballad from the Poser CD whispered about true love lost. This should have been a date. Instead of him taking me home after I came to check on him and got run inside by killer cats, he should have been taking me back to my house after we’d watched a movie together at his. He would come inside. My parents would go to bed, and Josh would take a hint and abandon video-bowling to go upstairs and read a book. (I could dream, couldn’t I?) Nick and I would be alone with the smoldering embers of a fire. And then we would—

“—get out?” he was asking me.

I blinked at him across the dark SUV. “I beg your pardon?” I hoped to God I hadn’t been discussing any of this out loud.

“Are. You. Going. To. Get. Out?” he asked more distinctly. We’d already parked in front of my house, with the SUV’s heater still bathing us in warmth against the snowy night outside. “You haven’t said a word the whole five-minute drive here. Are you sick?” He reached across the cab and put his hot hand on my forehead.

I laughed and pulled his hand down. But I didn’t let it go. I kept it there in both my hands, on my knee. And he didn’t pull it away. We watched each other for a quiet moment.

“I’m glad this happened,” he said softly.

He was so handsome in the soft and snowy moonlight. I wanted him to be talking about our relationship: He was glad we’d finally gotten together. But after everything that had passed between us this week, doubts still lurked at the back of my mind about whether he seriously liked me, or he intended to date me twice and dump me like all his other girlfriends, or the whole thing was just a joke to him. I hoped it was for real, and I didn’t want to talk about it too much and ruin the lovely illusion that we were a couple. So I said noncommittally, “Me too.”

“Because I’ve been trying to get you back since the seventh grade.”

I must have given him a very skeptical look.

He laughed at my expression. “Yeah, I have a funny way of showing it. I know. But you’re always on my mind. You’re in the front of my mind, on the tip of my tongue. So if someone breaks a beaker in chemistry class, I raise my hand and tell Ms. Abernathy you did it. If somebody brings a copy of
Playboy
to class, I stuff it in your locker.”

“Oh!” I thought back to the January issue. “I wondered where that came from.”

“And if Everett Walsh tells the lunch table what a wicked kisser you are and how far he would have gotten with you if his mother hadn’t come in—”

I stamped my foot on the floorboard of the SUV. “That is so not true! He’d already gotten as far as he was going. He’s not
that
cute, and I had to go home and study for algebra.”

“—it drives me insane to the point that I tell him to shut up or I’ll make him shut up right there in front of everybody. Because
I
am supposed to be your boyfriend, and
my
mother is supposed to hate you, and you’re supposed to be making out with
me
.”

Twisted as this declaration was, it was the sweetest thing a boy had ever said to me. I dwelled on the soft lips that had formed the statement, and on the meaning of his words. “Okay.” I scooted across the seat and nibbled the very edge of his superhero chin.

“Ah,” he gasped, moving both hands from the steering wheel to the seat to brace himself. “I didn’t mean
now
. I meant in general. Your dad will come out of your house and kill me.”

“He won’t,” I murmured against Nick’s neck. “He came home while I was gone and went to bed early because he’s so pooped.” I glanced at my watch to make sure. “Yeah. He teaches four Pilates classes on Thursdays.” Then, just to be mean, I did a real number on Nick’s neck, like I would want
him
to move his mouth on
my
neck. I had to be careful or I would give him a hickey. Served him right for playing hard to get.

“Damn it,” he grunted in frustration. He put his hand in my hair and pulled my head back. Our eyes met for a second. I saw how frustrated he was, and how hot for me, and something else between his dark brows.

And then
he
kissed
me
. His mouth was on mine, covering mine and making me feel small. His tongue swept inside. He pulled my nape with his big hand to adjust me to exactly where he wanted me. The air in the SUV flashed too hot and then cold as he kissed me. His other hand slid up my thigh.

I would never have admitted this to anyone, and I would only put up with it for so long. But this was the part of a relationship with Nick I’d dreamed about and longed for: Nick in control of me.

He
murmured against
my
neck, “See? We can’t do this in an SUV on your street in the open.” His tone was triumphant, as if he’d conquered me.
Yeah!

“You win,” I sighed. Then I opened my eyes.

He gazed down at me, wearing the most beautiful smile. Nick Krieger was not putting on a brave face for the public. He was not faking. He was genuinely happy.

With me!

And then, it turned out that
I
won, because I got what I wanted. He kissed me for several long minutes.

Finally, he slid his hand from my nape down to my shoulder and squeezed there for a second, catching his breath. “Come on. I’ll walk you to the door.” Before I could argue about that (after all, who
really
wants a gentleman for a boyfriend, besides Liz?), he walked around the SUV and opened the hatchback to let out Doofus, whom I had forgotten about completely.

I resented Doofus a little. First he’d jumped into my arms when the cats attacked and made me smell like dog. Now, if it weren’t for him, I could have hung around outside, chatting Nick up until he agreed to get back in the SUV and make out with me for a few more minutes. As it was, Doofus would be tugging on his leash the whole time and trying to pull my arm out of its socket.

To my surprise, as I watched in the rearview mirror, Doofus leaped out of the SUV, dragging his leash. I tensed, prepared to lunge from the SUV after him. I pictured chasing him all over the neighborhood. I’d had enough snowy walks for one night, not to mention snowy runs to escape death at the paws of wild animals.

Fortunately, he didn’t run away from my house. He ran toward it. He must have been hungry. He ran straight for the fence—at this point, I suspected brain damage from our fall through the Kriegers’ back door—and hooked his paws over the top of the fence, just as he had at Nick’s house. He scrabbled with his back paws until his big red dog-booty disappeared over the fence.

If he could come and go over the fence as he pleased, there was no telling what he did all around the neighborhood while we weren’t watching. Suddenly, it seemed the O’Malleys were having a hard time keeping track of their dog
and
their daughter.

Nick seemed to be thinking the same thing as he opened the passenger door for me. “Did you see that?”

“Yep,” I laughed, swinging his hand as we walked across the snowy lawn toward the mudroom door.

“This
is
your house, right?”

“Either that, or some naked hot-tubbers behind that fence just got the surprise of their lives.” We’d reached the door. I leaned back against it, looking way up at him, thinking the strangest thoughts, such as,
Nick Krieger is finally my boyfriend!

“I’m boarding with Liz and Chloe tomorrow,” I said. “Maybe I could come over to your house again afterward and check on you?” I raised my eyebrows to
hint hint
what I meant by
checking on him
. With any luck, his father would be as uninvolved and dismissive as he’d been tonight. Nick needed more yoga in his bedroom, and possibly a physical.

“I’m boarding, too,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean you can’t check on me afterward.” He raised his eyebrows too,
hint hint
.

It wasn’t funny when he did it. “What do you mean, you’re boarding?” I asked suspiciously. “You’re hurt.”

“I keep telling you, I’m not hurt that badly. It’s no worse than a football hit, and I get those all the time and keep playing. I have to beat you in a comp in two days.”

I put my hands on my hips and looked up at him. “The comp is canceled because you’re injured!”

He shook his head stubbornly. “I’m not injured. The comp is not canceled. Every-body in town knows about our bet. I can’t quit now. My dad would kill me. My dad has actually bet
against
me. Winners never quit.”