“Are you all right?” Nate asked, his voice low. “I mean, I know you’re not.”
Laura shook her head wordlessly, sinking down into one of the dining chairs. She took a long moment, carefully laying her hand down flat on the surface of the table and staring at it. Trying to think of absolutely nothing at all. That was the only way she was going to get through this. Nothing at all.
Nate sat down beside her, waiting. She knew he wouldn’t wait forever. At last, he cleared his throat slightly, watching her. “How did you know something was going to go down tonight?” he asked.
“I didn’t,” Laura said, her voice barely more than a hoarse whisper.
Nate gave a disappointed groan. “Laura, you promised me. If I came to help you, you would tell me everything. You have to answer me.”
Laura’s mouthed moved soundlessly for a moment. He was right. She had promised. But that was in the heat of the moment. She had been desperate. And yes, she would promise it a thousand times over in order to save Amy’s life.
But Amy’s life had been saved.
And now?
“I’ve thought something awful was going to happen every single day since we found out she was sent back here,” she said, which was at least the truth. “I knew it in my bones. You must have seen it, too. There was no way she was going to be safe here.”
“That’s not the point,” Nate said. He spread his big hand across the table, his dark skin matching the wood. “Look, Laura, we’ve been going around in circles for too long. I’m not going to play this game anymore. You need to tell me what’s up with you. How you know the things you do.”
Laura bit her lip, staying silent. What was she going to say? That it was just luck? That it was all a coincidence? That she had a feeling? Maybe make something up, say Amy had somehow been in contact with her? That she’d been driving by the place every day and knew something was up when she saw the guards weren’t there?
That could have worked, if Nate hadn’t seen her pull up just a moment before he did.
“Laura, I’ve seen too much,” Nate said, tapping his fingers lightly on the table to underline his point. “Not just today. Other cases. You always know where to be to stop things from happening. And it’s gotten beyond a point where you can convince me that it’s just luck. If you keep lying to me, hiding this from me, I just don’t know how I’m going to be able to trust you.”
Laura turned her head, looking at him. She had expected that he might be looking at her with anger, cold and heavy, or disappointment. But what she saw cracked her heart open instead. His face was open, raw. He wanted her trust. He was begging her to let him in. To stop shutting him out. This wasn’t so much an intervention as a last desperate plea.
In that moment, she wanted so badly to tell him. To have everything off her shoulders at last. It would be such a weight to unload. To have someone else know, someone else whom she could talk to.
If it would work out that way.
Because it might not. He might think she was crazy. Worse, he might believe her but start avoiding her as much as possible, wanting to get away from her. Her ability—she wouldn’t call it a gift—might be unnerving. Knowing that someone might see your future every time you touched them.
And if she told him about the visions, she would have to tell him all of it. About the shadow of death she saw hanging over him whenever they touched. She would have to give him a death sentence.
She’d seen what that could do to a man. Her father, being told his cancer was inoperable, that the end was coming. Convicts on death row that she’d helped put there. The way it could destroy someone. She couldn’t even give him answers to all of the questions he would want to ask—how, why, when, where.
Laura swallowed hard. This was a pivotal moment—she could feel it in the air. She could take the leap now. Trust in Nate. Trust in his strength, his fairness, the way he had always treated her with respect. He was a good man. She could take the decision to trust in that, and tell him everything, believing that he wouldn’t shut her out. That he would become the rock she needed, not the hard place.
Or she could keep quiet, and shut him out instead before he had the chance to do it back, and lose him anyway.
Put like that, the choice didn’t seem like much of a choice at all.
Laura looked at him, trying to preserve this moment in her mind. The last moment before he knew. The last moment before it came undone, maybe.
“Nate,” she started, and he shifted his weight toward her, making her pause. It was only a split second, and she didn’t react in time. He moved his hand toward her, and she should have pulled away, shouldn’t have let him touch her. But he did. His hand covered her wrist, a gesture of support and comfort.
But it wasn’t support and comfort
that she drew from it. It was terror—sheer and unbridled. The specter of death that hung over him clouded her view, turning the whole room to black smoke immediately. When she tried to breathe, she felt the aura of darkness flooding into her lungs, filling her, choking her. It was stronger than ever, so thick she could barely see him looking back at her, barely fight her way out of it.
Laura yanked her hand away and stood up, stumbling backwards.
“Laura?” Nate said.
The shadow of death had dissipated as soon as they lost physical contact, but it didn’t matter. She had felt it. Breathed it in. Absorbed it and all of the little ways in which it meant she was losing him.
He was dying. She couldn’t tell him that. She couldn’t make him face it, the same way that she had to. Her nerve was gone. The hope she’d clung to a moment ago was lost, leaving only fear behind.