now. He could feel the swell of her young breasts against his chest. She lifted herself onto her toes, raising her mouth toward his. He could smell her hair.
She crushed her lips against his. His face became wet with her tears. Her fingernails dug into his back. Her hair caught in his mouth. “I’m sorry,” she kept saying. “I don’t want Sam. I want you.”
The ambush took Nick by surprise. Sam had hidden himself behind the birch trees on the front lawn. As Nick headed back home, he leapt out and grabbed hold of Nick’s jacket and slung him backward. The ground was icy, and Nick’s feet slipped underneath him. His back slammed into the side of a tree. Sam grabbed him by his wrists, pinning him. The bark tore into his skin, and the shock of the sudden violence left him winded. He tried to fight back, but Sam was taller and stronger. Nick was barely able to remain on his feet. Sam’s fist landed on his face. He began to fall, but his brother held him up, hitting him again and again, until Nick, at sixteen, his face bruised and bloody, collapsed to the ground, his cheeks wet with blood and tears.
When Sam leaned down toward him, Nick thought that his brother was going to pick him back up. Instead, Sam placed a knee onto his chest and pinned him, then wrapped his hands around Nick’s neck. Nick looked up at him, unable to resist, unable to comprehend, as his brother dug his thumbs into his windpipe and squeezed, choking him. Strangling him. Nick panicked. It felt as if he might suffocate. Still, Sam didn’t let go of him. Not until Nick began to black out. Not until Nick understood that his brother was holding his life in his hands.
“Stay away from her,” Sam growled. “You hear me?” At last, he let Nick go. “Stay the hell away from her.”
Nick swiveled away from Sara, moving without thinking. He was aware of the strength radiating from his arms. An exultant sense of satisfaction shot like a jolt through his body the instant his hands connected with the tweed of the sandy-haired man’s jacket. His fingers tightened around the fabric until the cloth ripped. Nick pulled the man to him, then shoved him backward hard, and the man went sprawling, tumbling into his own parked car before he had time to react.
Sara’s face whitened with shock. She raised a hand to her mouth as Nick leapt onto the man, yanking him up from the ground by the lapels of his jacket and shoving him against the side of his car. The parking lot was filled with the two men’s raspy breathing and the scrape of their footsteps, but neither man uttered a word.
“Hey,” the man’s young date said. “Hey, stop. Stop!”
Nick had the man by the throat, the other hand pressed like a staple into his chest, pinning him to the side of his car. The man’s windpipe felt soft in his hand. The flesh of his neck offered no resistance. Nick’s teeth were clamped together, and the expression on his face didn’t change even when the man began to gasp and then choke.
“Nick, please,” Sara said, trying to separate the two men. Her hands were tugging Nick’s shoulders. “Don’t, Nick. Please, you’ll kill him.”
Slowly, Nick became aware of Sara’s hands pulling at him. He gave the man a final shove, then released him, allowing him to collapse. His girlfriend bent to the man’s side, looking up at Nick in disbelief.
“Come on,” Sara said. She led Nick into the shadows. “Let’s get out of here.”
They were safely on the ferry, Seattle rising up from the dark black plane of the water, before Nick understood what he had done.
When they reached the ferry landing in Seattle, Nick was certain that Sara would make her escape. His hands were still tingling with the sensation of the tweed fabric ripping beneath his fingers as he grabbed the man’s jacket. His jaw hurt. Perhaps the man had taken a swing at him, Nick couldn’t remember. Sara’s voice was still ringing in his ears. Don’t, Nick. Please, you’ll kill him. He had frightened her. He had let the man get to him. His temper had gotten the better of him, and no doubt he had scared the hell out of Sara. As he descended the gangway to the dock, downcast, watching her feet, mesmerized by the light step of the Gucci pumps she was wearing, he prepared himself for her good-bye.
Her hand finding his as they touched solid ground came as a complete surprise. He looked into her eyes, then found himself lost once again in the warmth of her kiss. Passion coursed through him with the same intense violence the fight had caused just an hour before.
“I’m so turned on right now,” Sara said. Her voice was a siren’s song in his ear, soft and melodious and seductive. “I want you so much.”
Nick understood that this was happening too fast. They hardly knew one another. All Sara had seen of him so far was a sullen, repressed young man, unable to bridle his fury. But even as this thought passed through his mind, Nick realized that, as elegant and refined as she was, Sara had another side, too. He had to have her. He had to make love to her right here, right now.
He leaned down, and when their mouths met, he bit her lip. His fingers dug into her flesh. He had to restrain himself from holding her so hard that he would hurt her. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Sara stepped up onto her toes, pushing herself against him, finding his lips once again with her own. “No,” she said. “I want you. I want you like that, too.”
Nick looked around the empty parking lot. They hadn’t driven to the landing, and this late in the year there were no taxis at the stand. “We’ll have to walk.”
“I can’t wait, Nick.”
“What?”
Sara broke away from him, then took him by the hand. The sound of her pumps on the pavement was nearly drowned out by the guttural roar of the ferry’s huge diesel engine. Nick let himself be led across the dark parking lot. “Over there,” she said. She was peering across the landing, and when the wind blew she reached up to pull a few loose strands of silvery blond hair from her mouth. “At the Two A.M. Club. We’ll go into the restroom.”
Looking back on that night, it wasn’t the thrill of sex with Sara for the first time that Nick would remember. It wasn’t the fear of discovery, either, or the knocking on the locked door after they’d been inside the restroom for ten minutes. It was the music. That’s what Nick remembered. The music playing inside the club, muffled through the metal door. The Police. “I’ll Be Wrapped Around Your Finger.” Bob Marley. “No Woman, No Cry.” The Killers. “Romeo and Juliet.” Sara’s skin was cool and smooth against his. Her hands undressed him. His fingers got tangled in her hair. The music played, and slowly she made love to him. So goddamned slowly. The music played, and there was no one else in the world, nothing else but Sara. Her mouth was on his body. She was naked in front of him. Tall and thin and naked inside the dirty restroom. Kissing him softly. Licking him slowly, so goddamned slowly, until the air turned into snow.
chapter 8
The air was laden with snow.
The small lake near their house in Wisconsin had frozen over. Just after dawn, the morning still dark as night, Nick and Sam stared out the window, trying to read the low, stained sky, listening to the radio for the list of school cancellations. When Braxton Middle School was announced, Nick climbed back into bed and pulled the covers snugly around him.
Sam was three years Nick’s senior, and at thirteen he was substantially older. He rousted his younger brother from bed and threw him his jeans, boots, and a sweater, bundled up in a loose but heavy wad. The buckle from his belt hit Nick sharply on the cheek, and for a couple of seconds he considered getting angry with his brother.
