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“Yeah.”
“Well, maybe now would be a good time if you want to change your story.”
His hand tightens on my leg, squeezing with the force of possession, as though he’s telling me in his gesture that I’m his, will only ever be his.
“It’s the truth,” he says. “I haven’t had a girlfriend in years. When I did, it was never like that.”
“Like what?” I say, feeling my heart pounding relentlessly at the back of my throat.
“There was never that passion,” he says, voice getting even more intense, hand claiming me with more force. “There was never that….”
“Freya?” Julie calls out, reaching across the seat, her voice heavy with sleep. She sits up, rubbing at her eyes, then peers into the front of the car. “Oh.”
A shiver of annoyance runs through me at the interruption.
What was Felix going to say?
Guilt stabs into me a second later.
“I’m here,” I say.
She nods, arms wrapping across her middle.
Felix looks at me, meaning in his eyes. At first, I think he’s asking to tell Julie and mom right here and now.
Hey, guys, just so you know, this stranger who’s saving our lives, I’m also pretty freaking obsessed with him.
But then I wonder if he’s nudging me to ask Julie about her phone call.
“Julie, what did you mean earlier? When you called me?”
“Huh?” Her eyes flit to Felix, then back to me. “I don’t remember.”
I bite down, remembering all the times Julie saved my hide in high school and the times she stood up for me.
Just because a tragedy has taken her father from her, and something else too – herspark– it doesn’t mean she’s not the same person.
“You called me and said something bad was going to happen,” I say. “Mike, your ex….”
She looks at the back of Felix’s head, then bites down as her eyes meet mine. She gives a frantic shake of her head.
“Later?” I prompt.
She nods. “Yeah, fine, that’ll be fine.”
I repress a sigh, wanting to ask her to expand, but it’s clear she won’t, not in front of Felix.
Felix’s mouth is tight, but he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t press her for more information.
Yet.
* * *
“These are the safest rooms in the house,” Felix says, waving a hand down the corridor.
It was difficult to get a sense of the scale as we approached the lake house, other than the fact it’s very large and has large concrete sections, the foundation, and the underground rooms, as opposed to only wood.
Now, we’re in a large multi-room basement, looking as though it was built to survive a nuclear fallout.
