Nobody But Us by Halbrook Kristin

Author:Halbrook, Kristin [Halbrook, Kristin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperTeen
Published: 2013-01-28T23:00:00+00:00

WILL

ZOE’S IN MY BED. AIN’T BEEN A BETTER THING TO wake up to since … ever. She’s still sleeping, her hair’s swirled all over her face and her pillow. Ain’t a sound in the room ’cept breathing.

I can’t stop myself from wondering what that bastard did to her. How far he took it. What more he did than plow her to the ground with his fists. Maybe that was all it took to make her afraid of everything, of me. But thinking there could’ve been something worse makes me wish I’d killed him when I had the chance.

Thinking she needs more to get through this than a ride out of North Dakota scares the shit outta me.

The girls I’ve known, the girls at the home, the daughters, the girls walking down the street: I could tell when there was something. Some secret, horrible thing. It happens more than it should. The girls at the home talked about it like they were spilling it on some talk show.

But those girls were hard from their experiences. Zoe ain’t like that. She’s a soft thing lying in my bed, breathing mountain-cold morning air. I wrap a piece of her hair around my hand and move my lips to it. There’s something about doing that that I ain’t never felt before. Like I wanna drop the hair and move back. But I don’t.

Her feet poke out from under the blanket. They dangle over the side of the bed. Her toenails are painted in chipped pink polish. Knowing these things about her, that she ain’t painted her nails in a while, that she uses pink polish when she does paint them, these are the things that I wanna know. I’m desperate to know them, all the little things, as quickly as possible. Maybe when there’s nothing left to hide, she won’t be afraid no more.

I pull her to me. She makes a noise, smiles a little, burrows against me. I feel like we got all the time in the world to be here doing this. Ain’t nobody knows we’re here. Who could find us in this mountain town? Even the noon checkout time would stand still for this.

“Morning,” she whispers.

“Hi.”

“What time is it?”

“Does it matter?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Good.”

The sun comes in through the slit between the curtains and across our hips. I put my hand over the stripe, push up the sleeve of my shirt with my chin, and kiss her shoulder. The smell of her and me are mingled in that spot.

I don’t care what nobody says about lacy lingerie; there ain’t nothing better than this girl in my T-shirt.

“Zoe?”

“Hm.”

I press my nose gently to her shoulder. “I been thinking about what you said.”

“Hm?” She doesn’t move.

“So, I decided I should see where I was born.”

She doesn’t say nothing.

“Will you come with me?”

“Are you sure?”

“About bringing you along?”

She swats at me but gets nothing but air.

“About seeing where you were born.”

“Yeah. I think so. Why not? I don’t care none about it, but at least you can make sure I come from an upstanding place.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.