Chapter 8

ChapterEight

Blaste

I’ve always pridedmyself on being ready for anything, but I’m not prepared for what the world has become. It smells different. Like fuel. The air is thicker. Cars are oddly shaped and quiet. People don’t smile at each other anymore. Everyone’s heads are bent over their phones on the bus to the mall. Pants are looser, shoes are…frankly, ridiculous looking. Huge and gleaming white, big marshmallows stuck on everyone’s feet. You wouldn’t catch me dead in them.

I’m getting that crowded feeling in my chest again, overwhelmed by the way my town has transformed overnight, places I used to frequent are gone. Or different. It’s easy to focus on Shiloh, though. Lord, is it easy. She’s like a beacon in the middle of the fog, guiding me in the right direction. I put my arm around her on the bus and she fits herself against me, a hand curled on my chest and everything inside of me goes calm.

Until we’re inside the mall, that is. Sounds are unrecognizable, people are like cartoon versions of what people used to look like. A lot of them are staring at me as they pass, as if I’m the one who doesn’t belong—and I don’t. Shiloh seems to understand exactly what I’m thinking, though. Seems to understand that my thoughts are racing, my pulse thumping like a jackrabbit’s foot, because she threads her fingers through mine and smiles, bringing me back to my center. She is rapidly becoming that center. An integral part of me. How was I operating like a regular human before I sped through time and landed in her backyard? I can feel us fusing from two people into one with every second that passes. Becoming an inseparable unit.

I look down at the new jeans and soft, long-sleeved shirt she bought me in a store that was playing too-loud music that sounded like clanging metal. Could I get used to dressing like this? Could I update myself in order to stay here, if needed?

Yes. I could. I would do anything to remain with her, no matter where or when.

“Where are you taking me next?” I ask, sliding an arm around her shoulders. Pulling her close to my side and flexing my jaw at a group of passing men. She’s wearing this short, white dress that basically amounts to a long T-shirt and matching high-top Converse that makes her look too young and fresh and fuckable to be out in public, in my opinion. “I’m starving, sugar.”

“Let’s go to the food court, then,” she says, veering us down a wing of this massive warehouse she calls the mall. There is yet another endless row of sparkling windows and vivid colors and people with irritable expressions. “What do you feel like eating?”

“Besides you?” I lean over and plant a hard kiss on her temple. “I don’t know. What’s the best thing this century has to offer?”

It takes her a second to recover, that blush making my dick sweat in my new jeans. “Hmm. I’m thinking…tacos?”

“Tacos? Never had one.”

“Then it’s settled.” She sparkles as she pulls me along. “Oh, I’m excited. The plan was to ration my allowance this week, but this is definitely an emergency. I’m getting you one of everything on the menu.”

Magnetized by her enthusiasm, I match her footsteps. “What are you rationing your allowance for?”

“A laptop. I’ve been writing in notebooks, but my thoughts come faster than my hand can move sometimes.”

“You’re a writer?”

She hums. “I’m trying.”

Gone is my anxiety about being locked in a different time seventy-four years in the future. All I’m worried about now is not being able to provide for her. Not being able to buy her lunch, buy her whatever she wants. If I’m stuck indefinitely in this time, how will I get a job? Ranching techniques have probably advanced by leaps and bounds, everything becoming reliant on technology that I don’t understand. How am I going to buy Shiloh a laptop?

“What is a laptop? Are they expensive?”

She laughs. “It’s a smaller version of a computer. It’s wireless and it fits on your lap.”

“Hence the name,” I mutter, pushing five fingers through your hair. “I only need one taco, Shiloh. Save the money for your miniature computer.”

She goes up on her toes and kisses my jaw. “I’ll get there eventually, don’t worry.”

I nod, trying not to let my worry show. “Your mom won’t buy it for you?” A flash of disquiet skids across her beautiful features. “What?”

“Nothing.” She opens her mouth and closes it. “It’s just that my mom…she doesn’t even know I write. We’re not very close. After my dad left and we moved in with my grandmother, she sort of left a lot of the parenting to my grandmother, since she had to work so often. We’ve just drifted. I feel like…”

“You feel like what?”

“I don’t know. Like maybe she resents having to work so hard to support me. Like maybe she just wants to be free.” She looks like she’s debating whether to tell me something else and I encourage her with a squeeze of her shoulders. “I wouldn’t blame her. Sometimes I just want to fly away, too. Maybe she and I are exactly the same in that way, but we’ll never know because we don’t really talk to each other.”

We stop at the end of a line in the food court, three people in front of us waiting to order at a place called Baja Fresh. “Sorry, Shiloh,” I say into her hair, wishing desperately that I could suck the pain out of her body into mine. “My brother and I used to fight all the time. I mean, fisticuffs after the church sermon, after dinner, hell, on Christmas morning. It was bad. Then he got into an accident, slipped on some rocks down at the quarry and landed himself in the hospital. Scared the hell out of me. We didn’t fight after that. I don’t know, I just lost the will.” I shake my head. “Humans are just like that—we think we have all the time in the world to fix what’s broken. But we don’t. Not always.”

Her eyes are shining up at me. “You miss your brother.”

“Yeah.” The mood is getting too heavy and I just want to see her smile again, so I wink at her and lean down to kiss her mouth. “He’d love you.”

Her lips jump at one corner. “Why do you say that?”

“Because you don’t put up with my macho bullshit.”

“That is true.” She turns to face me, tracing a fingertip down the center of my chest. “Not unless I feel like it.”

Just like that, I’m starting to breathe hard. “And when exactly do you feel like putting up with my macho bullshit?”

“When we’re in bed together…” She drops her voice to a whisper. “I seem pretty willing to put up with anything. And everything. I didn’t expect that from myself.”

My zipper is beginning to feel incredibly restricting. “Shiloh, you keep looking at me like that and I’m not going to be fit for public.”

“How am I looking at you?”

“Like it wouldn’t take too much convincing to get you down on your knees. Sucking on me.” I groan into a kiss. “Don’t tell me if I’m right—”

“You’re right.”

“Fuck. Take me back to the closet.”

“Can I take your order?” chirps a girl in a baseball cap behind the counter.

“Uhh.” Shiloh has to physically shake herself in order to focus and I can’t help but grin, sliding a hand down to her ass to give it a squeeze, making her yelp. “We’ll take one of each taco. Carnitas, chicken, fish, veggie—”

“Veggie? Nuh-uh. You can have that one.”

“Fine. And two drinks.” Shiloh looks at me. “What do you like?”

You. Just you. “Coke.”

She nods. “One Coke. One Diet Coke.”

“There’s a Diet Coke now? What the hell for?” The woman behind the counter gapes at me. “Just kidding. Sometimes I like to pretend I’m a time traveler from nineteen forty-nine. She gets a real kick out of it.”

Shiloh practically throws a fistful of money at the girl and drags me away giggling. We fall into one of the padded benches at the edge of the food court. When she tries to sit on the other side of the table, I shake my head and drag her over beside me, stroking my open my mouth up the slope of her neck, kneading her thigh with my left hand. She puts her hands on me, too, tracing my muscles through the new, gray shirt, squirming the more we let the kiss get away from us, telling me she’s getting wet. What am I supposed to do about it here?

The food place calls out our number and I let her mouth go with a growl, adjusting my cock as she struts up to the counter, that ass twitching around in her dress. She glances back at me over her shoulder, all flushed and swollen mouthed. Goddamn. If we don’t find a place to fuck soon, I’m going to throw her up on this table and get to pounding.

A minute later, she returns and I bite into my first taco.

“Holy shit,” I say around a mouthful of flavors I’ve never experienced.

“Good?”

“I don’t have proper words for this.”

“Guess what?”

“What?”

She bursts out laughing. “That’s the veggie one.”

I stop chewing and glare at her, but she only giggles harder…and this might be the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. No, I know it is. A million miles away from ordinary and this girl makes me feel like I couldn’t possibly exist anywhere else. Not without her.

“Shiloh—”

I’m about to tell her I love her, that it’s crazy but I love her, when she abruptly stops laughing, her gaze darting to a group of newcomers on the other side of the food court. “Oh God,” she whispers, sinking down into the booth. “I can’t believe it. Please don’t look over there.”

I’m already looking. “Who is that?”

“Nobody,’ she says, too quickly. “Just some kids from school.”

Turning back around to study her, I immediately know these are more than casual schoolmates. “They’re some of the ones who bullied you, aren’t they?”

She doesn’t answer, which is an answer in itself.

“Please don’t say anything,” she implores me.

I really don’t want to embarrass Shiloh any more than these people already have, but it’s causing me physical strain to watch her shrink into herself when she is the most incredible person I’ve ever met. Unique and open-minded and passionate and utterly beautiful. Even without meeting this pack of weasels, I already know they can’t hold a candle to her. No one could. “I won’t say a word unless they say something first, sugar. But if they say something unkind to you, not even God will be able to save them. Is that fair?”

“I guess,” she whispers, no longer eating.

“Good.” I look over my shoulder again. They’re close now. Maybe five, six tables away. I’m not sure if I’m hoping they’ll say something shitty…or dreading it. “Jesus, those boys are scrawny as all get out. They’re your age?”

“Yeah.” Her eyes run the length of my shoulders. Apparently, we don’t grow them like we used to.”

“My baby cousin, Eugene, could whoop those boys.” I jerk my thumb to indicate the approaching group. “And he’s eight.”

Some of the color returns to her face. “Say more.”

“They’ve got necks like pencils. I could go all day.”

“Oh my God,” comes a nasally voice behind me. “They really will let anyone in here.”

“Oh shit, Zander, it’s that slut that tried to seduce you freshman year.”

Shiloh’s eyes slide closed, her shoulders slumping dramatically.

It’s like I’ve been set on fire.

My skin burns, head to toe. A rash of flames.

Righteous rage is a juggernaut inside of me, knocking bones and ribs into new locations.

Zander. That’s the guy. Who touched my girl against her will.

“It’ll be over quick, Shiloh,” I say, hoarsely. “Promise.”

With that, I’m shooting to my feet, already turning with the tray in my hands. I find my target—the only young man in the group—cracking the hard plastic against the side of his head, sending him reeling sideways in shock, before he drops down onto his ass. The girls screech at the top of their lungs, but I don’t pay them any attention. For one, I don’t raise my hand to females, but two, I blame this piece of garbage for the last four years of my girl’s misery. He spread a false rumor and didn’t take the opportunity to clear it up. And he touched what’s mine. I don’t care if I wasn’t in her life yet, it’s unacceptable.

He starts to get up like he’s actually going to try and fight me, so I plant a boot in the middle of his chest and keep him down. And I point at the two females he came in with.

“Tell them what really happened with my Shiloh. Do it fast or I’ll start breaking bones.”

Shiloh’s hands are on my back, fisting the T-shirt. “Stop, Blaste. You don’t have to—”

“I’ll always take care of you without you having to ask, Shiloh.” The motherfucker still hasn’t said anything, so I remove my foot from his chest long enough to give him a right hook, enjoying the plume of blood that sprays from his nose across the beige tile floor. “Start talking.”

“All right,” whines the pipsqueak. “I kissed her. She didn’t want it and I…did it anyway.”

I glance over at the two females long enough to watch their mouths fall open. “Even if she’d kissed him back, it wouldn’t have been reason to call her those words. Apologize. All of you. Or it’s going to get a lot worse.”

“Sorry!” cries Zander, blood dripping down his chin. “Come on! Apologize!” he shouts at his companions.

“Sorry!”

“We’re sorry!”

“Say her name,” I growl, back to grinding my foot into his sternum.

“Sorry, Shiloh,” they all say in unison.

Far from satisfied, I take my foot back, nonetheless. “We done here, sugar?” I ask, pulling her into my side and kissing the crown of her head.

“Yeah,” she says, sounding dazed. “We’re done.”