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I look at Nick again, silently admitting I’m more interested in staying here and talking to him.
This time, Kennedy notices where my eyes wander. Her eyebrows fly up somewhere in her hairline as she swipes curls out of her face. “Uh, hi…”
She glances at me.Who is he?Kennedy mouths.
Her surprise isn’t surprising. She’s never seen me so much as talk to a guy before, and she had to drag me out tonight in the first place.
I shrug in response to the silent question. Even if Nick wasn’t standing right here, I don’t think I could verbalize an answer.
“Who are you?” Kennedy doesn’t have much of a filter in any circumstance, but the lack of one is exaggerated right now by the amount of vodka she downed back at the dorms.
“I’m Nick,” he says in response to Kennedy’s brazen question.
“Kennedy.” She looks him up and down, admiration written all over her face. Then, she glances between us, as if she’s trying to figure out what I’m doing. Why I’m not as eager to leave as I was when she left me. “Come on, Lyla. Let’s go.”
I should feel grateful to her. Kennedy is giving me an easy out before we run out of things to talk about or another girl approaches Nick.
I glance at him. “It was nice to—”
“Stay.”
That’s all he says, just one word. Nopleaseafter it. NoI wish you wouldbefore the four letters. But it sounds like more than one syllable. It sounds like a request he means, from someone unaccustomed to making them at all. For some reason, I decide not to analyze. I listen.
And that’sthe moment.
The moment my whole life changed.
NINE YEARS LATER
CHAPTERTWO
LYLA
There’s always a second immediately after you’re hurt when there’s no pain yet. Before the reflexes and the panic set in. It takes longer than the time for a rush of red to reach the surface of the skin. But it’s slower than the spill of blood turning crimson as it leaves the body and reacts with oxygen.
“Lyla?Lyla!”
I turn to watch Michael enter the kitchen. His tone changes from questioning to panicked as soon as he spots the drops of scarlet I can see swelling, then starting to drip down my hand.
I canseeit.
But I can’tfeelit.
Not yet.
Michael becomes a blur by my side, herding me over to the sink. Grabbing the white towel from the dish rack and pressing it to my palm to stanch the flow of blood. “What happened?”
I ask myself that question a lot, usually late at night, staring up at the cracked plaster of my bedroom ceiling, and I never have a good answer. They’re just words that bounce around in my head.
Life choices aren’t what Michael is wondering about though. He’s asking why I’m bleeding.
Michael’s grip tightens around my palm, holding the cotton flush against the cut. I wince at the heavy pressure. His anxiety and the strained clasp are erasing the numbness I was enjoying. Shock and adrenaline are ebbing away.
I’m aware of it all—the pain, the metal tang to the air, the dizziness.
“The knife slipped. It’s not that bad.”
“Not that bad?” Michael’s expression is dubious, his voice anxious and incredulous. “There’s blood everywhere!”
