Spark (17 page)

She read the screen.

All OK w the girl?

She took it out of his hands, oddly touched. “But he doesn’t even know me.”

“Nick’s like that. Always does the right thing.”

She glanced up from the phone, hearing the tension in his voice. “You still owe me a secret.”

“One is enough for tonight.” He took the phone back and tapped out a quick text. The phone chimed almost immediately, and he sighed and shoved it into his pocket before she could see what his brother had said.

She tried to figure out his expression. “You all right?”

His voice was closed off now. “I should probably take you home, before your dad sends out a search party.”

So that was that. She bit at her lip, wondering how to fix this.

He stood. “It’s late.”

Oh. Loud and clear. She nodded. “Okay.”

But when they were walking, he reached down and took her hand. “You doing anything tomorrow?”

His fingers were sending bolts of electricity up her arm, and she shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

He leaned down and brushed a kiss against her temple.

“Maybe if you actually use that number I wrote in your notebook, we could figure something out.”

Gabriel sat in the car, staring up at his house for the second night in a row. The porch lights were on, but the lower level lights weren’t. The front step: empty. Both front windows on the second level were dark, but one was Chris’s and one was his, so that didn’t mean much.

He’d been tempted to drive to Hunter’s, but that would probably give Michael an excuse to report him for auto theft or something.

And then there was the subtle accusation in Nick’s second text message.

Gabriel pulled the phone out of his pocket and looked at it again, like he couldn’t remember three words.

You coming home?

Simple enough, but full of subtext. Did Nick expect him to be out all night? Was this a challenge? A warning that Nick would be waiting to hash things out?

And then there was Layne.

Christ, Gabriel could have sat in that parking lot with her all night. He’d never been with a girl so perfectly . . . imperfect. She got it. She got him. He’d been ready to tell her. About the fires, about everything. He’d warmed up to it, telling her about his parents’ deaths.

But then she’d told him about her scars. What was he supposed to say to that?

Funny thing: I actually started the fire that killed my parents.

Gabriel punched the steering wheel.

His cell phone chimed. Nick again.

You can come in. Mike is out.

What? Seriously? It was almost midnight. Curiosity was enough to shove Gabriel out of the car.

But when he made it to the second floor, he looked at Nick’s door sitting a few inches open. Alt rock music was on low, sneaking into the hallway. No feminine laughter. No Quinn.

Nick was waiting for him.

Gabriel hesitated. He wished those text messages had come with some kind of sign, whether Nick was pissed or exasperated or just completely done with him. Hell, a freaking emoticon would have been helpful.

His own room sat pitch-dark at the opposite end of the hallway. A black hole. Gabriel eased around the creaky spot in the floor and slid past his twin’s room. Once in his own, he flung his duffel bag onto the ground and shut the door, closing the dark around himself. He sighed and kicked his shoes into the well of blackness under the bed. Maybe Nick hadn’t heard him. Maybe he thought he was still out in the car.

“You are so predictable.”

Gabriel swore and fumbled for the light switch.

Nick was straddling his desk chair backward, his arms folded on the backrest.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Gabriel snapped. “Why are you sitting here in the dark?”

His twin shrugged. “Because I knew you’d walk right past my room.”

This would be easier if Nick wanted to start throwing punches.

Gabriel sighed. “Look. It’s late ”

“Did you get the girl home all right?”

“Layne. Her name is Layne. And yes.” Though he’d had to park three houses down to watch her walk up the sidewalk. He hesitated. “Thanks for letting me take the car.”

“You’re welcome.”

Silence clung to the air. Nick could read a lot from a silence, Gabriel knew. The air would whisper to him as strongly as fire did for Gabriel. That didn’t make gaps in strained conversation any easier to fill.

He fought not to fidget. “Where’s Michael?”

“He was meeting someone for coffee.” Nick shook his watch straight on his wrist. “That was at seven.”

Gabriel picked up on the note in his voice. “Someone?”

“He said it was an old friend from school.”

“A girl?”

“He didn’t say.”

Gabriel had a pretty good idea, anyway.

Then Nick offered, “He spent a long time getting ready. Said, and I quote, ‘Don’t wait up.’”

“That sneaky bastard.” Gabriel dropped onto the corner of his bed, bemused. “He’s going out with Hannah.”

Nick raised an eyebrow. “Who’s Hannah?”

Gabriel snapped his eyes up. That comment hammered home just how disconnected he’d been from Nick over the last few days.

If his twin didn’t know about Hannah, that meant Michael had kept his promise about the night Gabriel accidentally set the woods on fire.

But Gabriel couldn’t explain Hannah without revealing it himself.

Could he tell Nick about the fires?

No. Nick wouldn’t approve. He wouldn’t understand.

He’d tell Michael. They’d make him stop.

“Hannah is just a girl.” Gabriel couldn’t meet his brother’s eyes. He focused on the joints of the chair. “She used to go to school with Michael.”

Nick sighed, obviously not convinced. “All right, forget about Hannah. Forget about Layne, even. Keep your secrets, since you obviously can’t talk to me anymore.”

The last bit wasn’t said with spite or contempt which Gabriel was expecting. Just furious resignation, which was a hundred times worse.

“Look. Nicky ”

“I’m surprised you came home. Chris said you had a bag full of clothes.” Nick’s gaze went to the duffel bag Gabriel had dropped by the door.

“That’s not about you.” The words almost hurt to say.

“What’s it about, then?”

Every question was another tick toward an explosion, like a bomb counting down. It didn’t help that Nick was sitting there, completely implacable. “It’s about Michael.”

“You mean, because he thinks you’re starting fires?”

Gabriel flinched. But what could he say?

“It might help,” said Nick, “if you would deny it.”

“I shouldn’t have to deny it.” The lights flickered.

But that’s all. The power waited for direction. Gabriel held his breath.

Nick glanced up, and some of the anger leaked out of his voice. “You want to talk about it?”

Gabriel tried to dial back the power. Chill out.

It flickered again, almost a refusal but then settled, easing back into a normal rhythm. Gabriel let a breath out. “No.”

“Fine.” Nick’s voice sharpened right back up. “You want to talk about why you couldn’t give me a heads up that we’d been accused of cheating?”

Oh. Damn.

“They said something to you?”

“Of course!” Nick straightened in the chair. Wind whipped through the screen to ruffle his hair. “Damn it, Gabriel, you might not give a crap if you graduate, but I sure do.”

Of course he cared. What did Nick think, that he was too stupid to bother? It took three tries to speak, and even then, it came out strangled. “When they asked you . . . what did you say?”

“I said I’d stop! What the hell do you think I said? You know, she asked if I was taking your tests in other classes. She said cheating was grounds for expulsion. She said this could go on my transcript ”

“Oh, who cares.” Gabriel snorted. “You think the people who hire us to plant perennials are going to check your high school transcript?”

“No, but colleges might.”

College? Shock almost shoved Gabriel off the bed. Nick had never said one word about doing anything more after high school than helping Michael with the family business. “You want to go to college?”

Now Nick looked sheepish. “Well. I knew you weren’t interested ”

“Where the hell are you going to get money for college?”

“I don’t know. There’s aid, and . . . look, I haven’t even applied yet. It’s just something I’m thinking about.”

When Nick thought about something, it wasn’t a whim. Nick would have schools in mind. He might be thinking about moving away.

Away.

Gabriel had spent two days barely saying a word to his twin, and it felt like water torture. He couldn’t imagine weeks passing. Months.

When they were little, they’d shared a room, a bed on each wall. For years, Gabriel had thought a twin bed meant only twins slept in them. If they dressed in the same pajamas which had been almost every night Mom would say they looked like a pair of bookends. Half the time, Gabriel would wake up in the morning to find Nick had climbed into bed with him sometime in the night.

Nick had grown out of that sometime in elementary school.

Only to start back up again when their parents died.

He didn’t do that anymore, of course. But now he was just one room down the hall.

Not down the road.

Or in another state.

Gabriel glared at him. His voice was tight, and probably sounded angry. “Why didn’t you say something?”

More wind streaked through the room, a good ten degrees colder than the last gust. “Yeah? When should I have said something? When you were insulting Quinn? Or maybe when you tried to burn the house down ”

“I did not try to burn the house down.” Gabriel was off the bed now, his hands curled into fists. Electricity pulsed in the walls, ready to flare.

The air turned cold enough to bite bare skin, thin and hard to breathe. “That’s right,” said Nick. “You don’t have to try, do you? You’re pretty good at destroying things all by your ”

“Enough.”

Gabriel jumped. Michael stood in the doorway, a hand braced on each side of the frame. His breath fogged in the air.

“Nick” he sighed “would you give us a minute?”

Nick disentangled himself from the chair, but he did it slowly, and the room didn’t get any warmer until he’d pushed past Michael to step into the hallway.

He didn’t glance back once. Not like Gabriel was looking.

Michael remained in the doorway. Gabriel didn’t want to look at him, either.

“You’re home,” said Michael.

“Yeah.” Gabriel picked at a thread on the cuff of his jeans.

“Not out destroying any lives tonight.”

“Very funny.”

“How was your date?”

“It wasn’t a date.” Michael paused. “I was trying to make sure they’re not still investigating you.”

For some reason, that was infuriating. “So you’re just string-ing her along to find out what she knows? Christ, Michael, that’s kind of a dickhead move ”

“You want to tell me what’s really going on?”

“There’s nothing going on.” At least this was a brother he could fight with. Gabriel stood. Got close. “I’m home. Go spend your worry on someone else.”

Michael didn’t move.

Gabriel shoved him. “Go. ”

He watched Michael draw himself up, ready to hit back. But then his brother just shifted toward the door. “Thanks.”

Nonplussed, Gabriel stared after him. “For what?”

His brother paused with the door halfway closed. “For coming home. I’m glad you did.”

Then the door clicked shut, closing Gabriel in.

And closing his brothers out.

Saturdays usually meant landscaping work with Michael.

The hell with that.

Since he had the car keys, Gabriel was out the door before anyone else was up. He threw the duffel bag in the backseat, just in case. Nick could use those college-bound brains to figure out a way to get around.

Gabriel grabbed a cup of coffee and a breakfast sandwich from Dunkin’ Donuts, but that didn’t kill any more than fifteen minutes. He decided to test the bounds of friendship.

Do you want to practice today?

Hunter’s return text took a minute.

Are you seriously texting me at 6 am?

Gabriel smiled.

Thought you might be up for a 10 mile run before we

light hay bales on fire. Go back to bed, slacker.

He set the phone down and took another sip of coffee.

His phone chimed almost immediately. Gabriel glanced at the display and nearly choked on that sip.

Sounds good. Give me 15 mins.

They ran on the B&A Trail, a paved track that stretched from Annapolis nearly to Baltimore. This early in the morning, it was mostly deserted aside from a few lone cyclists and joggers out to take advantage of the chill in the air.

After the fourth mile, Gabriel glanced over. Hunter had looked a little bleary eyed when he’d picked him up, and he hadn’t said much in the car, but he was keeping up without any trouble.

Then again, they weren’t breaking any records. “You know, I was kidding,” said Gabriel. “We don’t have to run ten miles.”

Hunter didn’t slow. “What, you’re tired already?”

Gabriel was, a little. He’d run hard yesterday, and he was going on his third restless night.

“Just making sure you can keep up. Thought you might have had a late night with Calla Dean.”

A wry glance. “Don’t worry.” Then Hunter stepped up the pace.

Bastard. Gabriel pushed to keep up. He was fit. He could do this, no problem.

“You know,” he said, “Becca tried to talk to me last night.”

He glanced over. “About the fires.”

“She tries to talk to me, too.” A pause to catch his breath.

“She wants to know if I know what you’re doing.”

“What do you tell her?”

“I tell her you suck at Xbox.” Another pause, another break for breath. “I think her dad’s putting pressure on her.”

“Because of the Guides?”

“Yeah. But we’re being careful.”

“Are you worried?”

“Does it matter? I can’t sit around doing nothing. Could you?”

Gabriel thought about that for a minute. “No. I couldn’t.”

Then he had to shut up, because Hunter stepped up the pace again.

Beyond the seventh mile, Gabriel was really starting to feel it.

They were holding a seven-minute-mile pace, and his legs ached.

His lungs burned. That stitch in his side that had been a minor irritant at mile three now felt like a red-hot iron poker.

The one time he wanted to pull energy from the sun, and the sky was overcast.

“If you want to stop,” said Hunter, with zero strain in his voice, “I can swing back for you when I’m done.”

“We’ll see who’s lying in a pile at the end of the trail.”

“Race you to the car?”

“Yeah, I’ll wait for you at the car.”

And then, though his legs screamed in protest, Gabriel leapt forward into a sprint.

Damn, it felt good to compete, to do something he could control. He hadn’t realized how much he’d miss the easy camaraderie of a team, the physical strain of working toward one common purpose. On the field or on the course, or hell, here on the trail, the objective was clear. Make a basket. Put the ball in the goal. Win the race.

Pass the test?

Gabriel wondered if that’s why this guy was starting these fires. It was so much easier to send things on a path toward destruction.

At the turnoff for the parking lot at the trailhead, Gabriel didn’t slow. Hunter was right there, not letting up. They veered around a couple with bikes, almost trampled a mother navigating a jogging stroller, and shot onto the parking lot, spraying pea gravel with every step.

He stretched out a hand to slap the tailgate of the SUV.

Right at the same time as Hunter.

“Damn it,” he gasped.

At least Hunter was breathing as hard as he was, his hands braced on his knees. “All right. Another five miles?”

“Shut up.” Gabriel smiled.

They dug for change in the center console and bought bottles of water from the machine at the ranger station by the trailhead.

Then they collapsed in the grass under an oak tree. The sun was starting to break free of the clouds, and Gabriel pushed damp strands of hair off his face.

“Figures,” he said. “Now the sun comes out.”

Hunter took a long pull of water. “Do you usually run with Nick?”

“Nah. He’ll go if I drag him out of the house, but not for any kind of distance. Chris will run in the spring, when baseball starts.”

Hunter peeled at the label on his bottle. “I used to run with my dad.”

“Was he slow, too?”

That earned a smile and a punch in the arm. “No.” A pause.

“We were going to run the Marine Corps marathon this year.”

Gabriel recognized that hollow note in Hunter’s voice. Sometimes he had to fight to keep it out of his own.

Hunter shrugged. “Really, I forgot all about it, what with moving here and all.” He hesitated. “Last night, I got an e-mail with the details, when to pick up the packets, stuff like that. I deleted it I mean, you know.”

Gabriel nodded and kept his eyes on his own water bottle.

“Yeah.”

“Then you texted me this morning and asked if I wanted to run ten miles, and ”

“Shit.” Gabriel straightened. Another day, off to a raring start with a fuckup. “Man, I’m sorry. I didn’t ”

“No!” Hunter looked at him, hard. “I’m glad. It was . . .

good.”

“All right.” Gabriel settled back and stared at the sky. It was almost eight now, and more reasonable runners were starting to pack into the lot. The sun felt heavy on his face, and he let the energy pour into his skin.

“It gets easier,” he said.

“Yeah?” Hunter’s voice was skeptical. “When?”

“I’ll let you know when it happens for me.”

Hunter snorted, but there was zero humor behind it.

“You could still run the race,” said Gabriel.

“It’s a month away. I’m not in shape.”

“I didn’t say you could win the race.”

Hunter didn’t say anything.

Gabriel spun his water bottle on the ground, watching the fractured sunlight turn the grass different shades of green. “I’m the only one of my brothers who gets up early. My mom did, too.

She used to drink coffee and play board games with me until the others woke up.” When he’d turned ten, she’d started making him a cup of coffee, too, filling half the mug with milk and two tablespoons of sugar before adding any coffee at all. He still drank it the same way.

“The morning after the funeral, I came down to the kitchen. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, like there’d be coffee in the pot and a game of Sorry set up on the table or something.”

He paused. “Nothing. Just an empty kitchen. I think that’s when it really hit me.”

Hunter still didn’t say anything.

Gabriel glanced over. “So I made coffee.”

He’d set up the game, too, for whatever reason. Then he’d sobbed into his mug for forty-five minutes, until his coffee went cold and Michael found him sitting there. Gabriel had been worried his brother would bitch about the coffee or the crying or something he rarely needed a reason in those days.

But Michael had just poured himself a cup of coffee and pushed the dice across the table. “You go first.”

Gabriel didn’t want to talk about any of that. “All I’m saying is” he shrugged “if you were going to run the race, maybe you should run the race.”

“Maybe,” said Hunter. He’d peeled almost the entire label off his water bottle.

This was getting too heavy. Gabriel leaned in. “Dude. Seriously, if you start crying, people are going to think I’m breaking up with you.”

Hunter looked up. A smile broke through the emotion. “The way you run, they’d be more likely to think I’m breaking up with you.”

“You can kiss my ass.” His phone chimed, and Gabriel didn’t even want to look at it. Probably Michael, whining about some job.

No, but a number he didn’t recognize.

Were you serious about today? Layne

Layne! Gabriel sat straight up.

“Who’s Layne?” asked Hunter, reading over his shoulder.

Gabriel shoved him away and typed back.

Absolutely serious.

Her response took fifteen agonizing seconds.

My dad has to work this afternoon, and Simon is going to

see our mom.

He smiled.

Are you inviting me over?

Another lengthy pause.

No. My dad said I’m not allowed to have you over.

Her dad probably had snipers on the roof, trained to shoot Gabriel on sight.

His phone chimed again.

But maybe we could go back to your house and work on

your math homework.

He scowled. The words were full of highs and lows. His house!

She wanted to come back to his house! But . . . math. Math.

Another chime.

The faster you learn math, the faster we can do other

things.

Well, that set his heart pounding. He typed fast.

Pick you up at 2?

This time, her response was lightning quick.

Make it 3. Don’t text back. Gotta go.

“Come on,” he said to Hunter. “Let’s go set things on fire.”

“Got a date?”

“Actually, yes.”

But a few minutes later, he looked over at Hunter climbing into the passenger seat. The heady tension of their conversation had dissipated, but it wasn’t completely gone.

“Hey, man,” he said. “You all right?”

Hunter nodded, his eyes on the windshield. “Yeah.”

When he didn’t say anything else, Gabriel started the engine and started to back out of his parking space.

And while he wasn’t looking, Hunter said, “I don’t think I could do it.”

Alone. That’s what he wasn’t saying. He didn’t think he could do the race alone. Without his father.

But he wasn’t alone. Even if Hunter didn’t realize it yet.

Gabriel wished he’d figured that out five years ago. Maybe then he would have played that game of Sorry with Michael.

Instead of flinging the dice in his brother’s face and telling him to fuck off.

Gabriel pulled onto Ritchie Highway. He’d never considered that it might have cost Michael something to sit down with him.

He had to clear his throat. “I’ll run it with you.”

A big hesitation. Then Hunter said, “Come on. You don’t have to ”

“I know.”

“It’s twenty-six miles.”

“I know what a marathon is.”

Hunter was looking out the window again. “I’ll think about it.”

Gabriel nodded, shut his mouth, and drove.