My eyes narrowed, probably making the circles look more dramatic.
“I will answer any and every question you have for me,” he said, “soon, but I want to give you my full attention as I’m certain your questions will require it, and right now I’m too preoccupied with getting your body back to normal.”
“Who’s John?” I asked, chancing a quick look at his face to see if I was pressing my luck. It remained unchanged.
“I suppose you could call him a kind of godfather,” he replied carefully.
This wasn’t the answer I’d been expecting. “The religious kind or Francis Ford Coppola kind?”
He grinned, keeping his eyes straight ahead. “Both.”
“Why does he want you to come back, to wherever that is . . .”
“Of all the off-limit questions you’re trying to sneak in tonight,”—he looked at me in a knowing way—“you’re asking all the wrong ones.”
“What are the right ones? Since you’re the expert apparently.”
“Why did they come after you?” he said, trying to keep his voice level. “Why did they . . . hurt you?” he said tightly, looking up at the starless night sky.
My eyes turned upward, although it wasn’t the sky I was gazing at. “Bad luck, destiny, fate,” I answered, not wanting to question why yet another tragedy had befallen me. No matter what the reason was, bad found me. Like a noxious weed, the world had been trying to pluck me from its soil from the beginning. “Take your pick.”
He shook his head. “Wrong,” he said as if he’d never been more sure of anything in his life. “They sought you out because of me. Because they knew you were close to me.”
“No, this happened to me because of them,” I said with more conviction than I’d intended. “I would have been this”—I went limp as a fish and stuck my tongue out the side of my mouth dramatically—“if not for you.”
“You are in this position,” he pointed his eyes at my head in explanation. “because of me. I should have foreseen this happening.”
“Foreseen?” I quoted. “Do you read crystal balls now? Or maybe palms? What can you tell me about my future?” I teased, turning up my hand at him.
He stared at my hand with so much intent, I was almost convinced he could see what life held in store for me and what it had already doled out. I snapped it shut.
“Really, you can’t take the credit for my uncanny ability to find bad luck around every corner,” I said, laughing a few notes. “I was overdue for a near-death run-in, so now I can scratch that off my To-Do list. I should be good to go for another month or so.”
His lips were pressed shut, and his pace had quickened in that stewing sort of way.
“Are we going to fester now?” I asked lightly, forming my mouth into an exaggerated frown.
“If this is your idea of lightening my mood,” he said, “you’re doing a lousy job.”
“You didn’t even give me a chance to get warmed up,” I said. “But since you’re not being very receptive to my mood-lightening attempts . . . who were those guys and how do you know them?” I asked casually, and before he opened his mouth, I knew my question wasn’t going to be answered.
“No more questions. For tonight,” he said.
“But—” I protested, ready to break into my rebuttal.
“Trust me,” he said, the undertone of a plea in his voice.
I exhaled. “I don’t want to.”
“Ah, but you do,” he said, sounding elated. “That’s the thing about trust, it’s like love. You can’t help who you trust or love sometimes—you just do—you can’t turn it on and off when you want to.”
“My brains are practically spilling out of my head,” I said dramatically. “Could we keep the psycho-analytics to a minimum? It’s giving me a headache.”
“Touchy,” he said under his breath. “I must have hit pretty close to the mark, but what mark—the trust or love?”
He eyed me mischievously from above.
“Headache status updated to migraine,” I groaned.
“This should help,” he said softly, sliding one hand up to my outside temple. His thumb massaged the area first—I closed my eyes so he wouldn’t see them rolling in the back of my head—before applying a growing pressure that literally jolted every nerve within me like a live wire, before they all dulled into the most relaxed, glowing stupor. If this was a drug, I’d just become a hardcore junkie.
I shifted my eyes to the side, wondering if I could combust from staring at him for too long. When I did, I let out an audible gasp. I clasped my hands over my mouth. “How did you know?” I whispered through the tangle of fingers while I eyed the penitentiary-inspired building before me. Never during any of our conversations had simple dialogue come up, things like hometowns, favorite colors, or which dorm I lived in . . .
I felt his body stiffen, before he let out a long breath. “You know how you said you hadn’t seen me this week?”
He didn’t wait for me to respond. “Well I saw you. A lot.”
I took a second before replying, attempting to sound stern, “Is this bordering on stalker status?”
“If you’re going to label me, I prefer the term scientist.”
“Scientist?” I repeated, not understanding what he was getting at, but not caring either. Was he saying what I thought he was? I hadn’t seen him once, but he’d seen me . . . a lot without me even realizing it. Something wasn’t factoring out right, but there wasn’t enough time to work it all out in my head.