Cora Carmack - Seeking Her

“Should I call you that? Am I most ­people?”

I fisted my hands in my pockets and picked up my pace. “Honestly, I have no idea what you are.”

And it was driving me crazy .

We didn’t talk much after that. She turned at random, and so did I, trying to subtly steer us in the direction of her hostel in the central part of Budapest.

Around sunrise, we hit the Danube, which meant we were close.

I didn’t realize she had stopped until I’d already passed her. I stopped and looked back at her. She was holding her breath, gazing at the sunrise with renewed energy.

She pointed south. “There’s a club a little ways that way that’s open until six.”

She needed to rest. And so did I. And I was scared of what I might let myself do if I went to a club with her. “I think you’ve partied enough tonight.”

God, I sounded like such a buzzkill. But it was true. If she hadn’t managed to chase away her demons for the night, more alcohol and dancing wouldn’t help. She just needed to sleep it off.

She didn’t answer me. Instead, she stepped out into the street and crossed toward the river. She hadn’t even bothered to walk at a crosswalk. I glanced around, checking for cars. There was one coming, though still far away.

“Where are you going?”

She turned, walking backward again in the same way she did when she’d nearly fallen earlier. “Absolutely no idea.”

I heard the thrum of an engine, and knew that car was getting closer, moving fast.

I ran for Kelsey, who was now just standing in the street. I dragged her up onto the sidewalk, my heart beating a little faster.

“Are you crazy? Don’t walk across a fucking road without looking where you’re going!”

She jerked away from me. “ Relax . I’m fine. There’s no one out this time of morning anyway.”

The car stole past, a sleek black sports car. Two-­seater by the look of it. I tried not to look smug.

Kelsey’s lips puckered. “You don’t have to say it.” She started jogging toward the river. “I’m a piece of work. Got it. But you know what?” she shouted louder. “I’m so good at it.”

I followed close behind. When she started slipping off her heels, I wasn’t sure whether her feet were hurting or if she was planning to dive into the Danube. She lifted her arms into the air and screamed into the early morning air. A nearby group of birds took off into the sky, and she sucked in a lungful of air.

I watched her, fascinated. She was trying to get out from under the darkness, that much was clear. She stands out in a crowd but, I wondered, how much more radiant she could be if she managed to get free from her demons.

“You’re ridiculous,” I said.

“Correction: I’m fun .”

She took off running, and I dragged my ass after her, a smile creeping onto my face. I was imagining what it would feel like to catch her, winding my arms around her waist and pulling her back against me, when she abruptly slowed to a stop.

I came up behind her, and one look told me where we were. I still bought guidebooks in every country, though I’d yet to have much use for them. I knew from my current book that this was the Shoes on the Danube Promenade .

“It’s a Holocaust memorial,” I told her. During World War II, a group of Jews, including some from the resistance, had been lined up by the river by a militia and ordered to take off their shoes. Then they’d been shot into the river. In memory of them, there are dozens of iron-­cast shoes mounted by the water on the promenade.

She sucked in a breath, and that light she’d been trying to reclaim, that girl that had screamed at the top of her lungs just for fun, faded away.

Tragedy does that.

War does that.

I’d gone into it fully prepared to give up my life in the process. But war never gives you what you’re prepared for. It takes pleasure in being unpredictable. No one ever expects to be a sole survivor. When things go wrong, you always expect that you’ll go with the rest. Better to be gone in an instant in one well-­timed blast than to fade away slowly.

I knew—­logically, I knew—­that those iron shoes were old-­fashioned styles that were over half a century old. But when I looked, they all seemed to morph into the familiar marine-­issue boots of the unit, the family I’d lost.

War changes. It’s fought with different weapons, in different places, by different ­people.

But it never gets any less ugly.

WHEN I PULLED my gaze away from those imagined boots, Kelsey’s eyes were wide and glassy. She had that empty look again.

“Are you okay?”

She turned away from me, clearing her throat, and I wanted to pull her into a hug. I didn’t. But I wanted to.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. A sentence I was getting used to hearing. “Just yawned. Maybe I’m a little tired after all.”

Trying to make her more comfortable, I teased, “You mean I finally get to walk you home?”

She turned around, smiling and composed, but I could still see the heavy sag in her shoulders.

“Come on, then, Prince Charming. Let’s see what this chivalry stuff is all about. I hear good things.”

That might have been the moment when I stopped blaming her for dragging me to bar after bar in city after city. Not that it hadn’t all been miserable as hell. But there was one difference between Kelsey and the way I’d been a few years back.

She tried . She tried so incredibly hard, which is more than I ever did.

So I smiled, and turned to walk her home.

“I haven’t been called chivalrous in a long time,” I said.

This time she looked before she crossed the road.

“Fine by me. Chivalry sounded pretty boring anyway.”

I laughed because she was funny. Despite it all.

She met my eyes. “Tell me something. If you’re not walking me home because it’s the gentlemanly thing to do, why are you here?”

“Back on the serial-­killer bent, are we?”

It was easier to joke than acknowledge why I was really there.

“Nah, you’re not a serial killer. Too soft for that.”

“Soft?”

She threw me a smile before turning onto the street with her hostel.

“Hold on, now. Did you just call me soft ?”

I turned her around by her shoulder. Maybe I pulled too hard or maybe she wasn’t quite sobered up yet because she planted a hand against my stomach to keep from falling into me.

I stiffened.

“Well, I wouldn’t call this part of you soft.”

She looked up at me through her lashes, her voice smooth, and want for her punched me in the gut, right where I could feel the heat of her hand bleeding through my shirt. She leaned into me, and the adrenaline pouring through me made everything except the beat of my heart go silent.

“Kelsey,” I said. I was already too sucked in to push her away, but I tried to warn her off anyway.

She tilted her head to the side and said, “How did you know my name?”

Shit. Fuck. Shitty fucking shittery.

“That girl said it. The one you came to the bar with.”

That answer wasn’t any better. Now she’d know I was watching her long before I talked to her.

She reached up to my shoulder and smiled. She didn’t look suspicious.

“Well, then, you know my name, and I know yours. How else could we get to know each other?”

Her hand slid up my abdomen to my chest, and I tensed, barely holding on to my control. I swayed toward her, touching her lightly just above where her waist was smallest. I wanted to touch her everywhere.

She gripped the back of my neck, bending my head down, and I flexed my hands, trying to stop myself from throwing her over my shoulder and taking her back to my hotel room.