Saving Quinton (Nova #2)(32)
Author: Jessica Sorensen

“You could always tell me the stuff that I don’t get,” she suggests as she turns the car off the main road and into the drive-through lane of a busy McDonald’s.

I swiftly shake my head, getting sick just thinking about the idea of telling her about my past, what I’ve done, the people I’ve killed. “I can’t.”

She straightens the wheel. “Why not?”

“Because I just can’t.” Because then you’ll look at me like everyone else does—like someone who’s taken life. She’ll think less of me, maybe even pity me, and I don’t want that. I’ve seen it enough.

She’s silent as she pulls up to the drive-through menu and rolls down her window. “You know I’ve thought about you a lot over the last several months,” she admits, reading the menu, seeming casual, but her chest is rapidly rising and falling, and I can tell she’s struggling to breathe.

I don’t know how to respond and I even if I could I don’t get the chance because she starts to order some food. I space off, my thoughts running a million miles a minute. All I want to do is ask her questions, find out why she’s here, but at the same time I want to get out of the car and run back to the only place that I can call home. I almost do, but I lose focus, watching her as she rattles off her order, then somehow I end up with a hamburger on my lap and some fries.

Then she pulls around to the front of the building and parks the car in a spot of shade beneath a tree.

She leaves the engine on as she opens up her chicken sandwich and takes a bite. “It’s really hot here,” she says. “God, how can you stand it…I feel disgusting.” She fans her hand in front of her face.

“You look beautiful, though.” I let it slip out, my mouth and thoughts barely under control anymore.

She blinks, slowly, her eyelashes fluttering. “Thank you.” She takes in a gradual breath before rotating toward the window. She starts eating fries, her forehead creased, like she’s confused as hell, and so am I. I’m not even sure what’s going on anymore. Why we’re here. What the point is.

“Nova,” I say as another drip hits me and I can focus again. “What do you want from me? I mean, you show up here out of the blue and you just want to hang out? It doesn’t make any sense.”

She chews the bite of food and then shuts her eyes. At first I think it’s because she’s going to cry or something, but when she opens them, her eyes aren’t wet with tears.

“I came here to help you,” she confesses, looking directly at me, intensity radiating from her expression. “I…I called because I wanted to find out about you signing that release to use the video. I’ve actually been looking for you for a while, but it’s been really hard to track you down.”

“Okay…” I pick at the fries, not even close to being able to eat them, my jaw too sore from grinding my teeth and my belly too queasy from the crystal I devoured before I left, so I immediately set them back down. “But I don’t get why you think you needed to come down here to help me. I’m fine and I don’t get why you don’t get that or why you’d even think differently.”

Her bluish-green eyes unhurriedly scroll up my body with zero indication that she believes in any way that I’m okay. “Because Delilah told me something on the phone…about you.”

I stiffen, my pulse accelerating, my lungs tightening, stealing my air away. “What did she tell you?” What the hell have I told Delilah? God, I have no idea.

She deliberates something with caution, wetting her lips with her tongue and licking some salt off them. “Do you remember the concert we went to together?” she asks.

“Of course…how could I forget?” It’s actually one of the few things I can remember. The sun, the smell, her, Nova, all over me.

Her lips curve slightly upward like she’s happy that I can remember. “Yeah, I’ve never been able to forget either, all that time that we spent together, how I was…and how I just ran off in the middle of it all.”

“It was good that you did,” I say and I mean it. “You never should have been hanging out with us to begin with—you never belonged in our world.”

“I know it was good that I left when I did,” she agrees. “And I learned something about myself, not then, but later on, after I got better.” She gazes off at the gas station in front of us as a car backfires. “I’ve spent the last few months learning a lot about myself and I discovered that I want to help people, you know. I’ve missed a lot of chances of being able to help because I was too afraid to see the truth or I couldn’t take care of myself enough.” I’m not sure what she’s getting at and I’m about to ask her, but when she looks at me, something in her eyes stops me. “I want to help you get better.” She says it like it’s as easy as breathing, but it’s not. It’s harder than finding a bottom in a bottomless pit.

“You can’t,” I say, very aware of the tattoos on my arm—Lexi, Ryder, No One—and the fact that she can see them. Permanent reminders that I can’t be helped—that I shouldn’t be helped. But Nova doesn’t know what they mean, since I never told her. If I did, she wouldn’t be here. “Nothing you can say or do will ever be able to help me—I’m not helpable.”

“Yes, you are and I know I can help you.” She rotates in her seat and brings her knee up on it. “If you’ll just let me, you’ll see that.”

I almost laugh at her because she doesn’t get it. How could she, when she doesn’t even know anything about what’s going on? “You don’t even know what you’re talking about—you don’t even know me at all. You can’t help someone you don’t know and besides, I don’t even want to be helped. I’m fine right where I am.” I belong right where I am. Everyone knows it. My dad. Lexi’s parents. Tristan’s mom.

“I wish it’d been you that died,” I hear Tristan’s mom sob. “I wish it’d been you—it should have been you.”

I blink, fighting back the tears as I lie in the hospital bed, surrounded by people who hate me. “I know.”

She starts to sob harder and runs out of the room, leaving me alone with my guilt consuming me, and all I want to do is feel death again.

I tear myself away from the memory as Nova’s quivering hand slides across the seat and takes hold of mine. Heat. Warmth. Comfort. Fear. All these things surge through me and all I can do is stare at our hands, fingers tangled, connected. It’s been a long f**king time since I’ve felt a connection, the last time being with her last summer.