He takes my arm to steady me. “A few cans of spray paint, a hammer, some nails, and a battery-operated strand of black lights.”
He flicks on a camper’s lantern, which illuminates a thick quilt spread out under a picnic basket. The bugs’ whispers fade in response to the light.
“But how did you have time?” I ask, sitting down to dig in the basket. There’s a bottle of expensive mineral water as well as cheese, crackers, and strawberries.
“I had a lot of time to kill before school let out,” Jeb answers as he selects a playlist on his iPad and props it on the backpack. A gritty, soulful ballad resonates from a miniature speaker.
I try to ignore that his answer makes me feel like an immature schoolgirl and pull some white roses out of the basket. These have been Jeb’s flower of choice for me ever since the day we came clean about our feelings, the morning after I returned from my trip through the rabbit hole. The morning after prom last year.
I hold them to my nose, trying to blot out the memory of another set of white roses in Wonderland that ended up red with his blood.
“I wanted to make this special for you.” He drags off his damp flannel shirt and sits down on the other side of the basket, an expectant look on his face.
His words echo in my head: Make this special for you.
The flowers slip from my fingers, scolding me for bruising their petals when they scatter on the ground.
“Oh,” I murmur to Jeb, disregarding their whispers. “So … this is it.”
He half grins, casting a shadow where his left incisor slants slightly across his front tooth. “It?”
He takes a strawberry out of the basket. Lantern light reflects off the cigarette-size scars on his forearms. I mentally follow them to a path of matching scars under his T-shirt: reminders of a violent childhood.
“Hmm. It.” Jeb tosses the berry, leans his head back, and catches the fruit in his mouth. Chewing, he studies me as if waiting for a punch line. The teasing tilt of his head makes the stubble on his chin look like velvet, though it’s not soft like velvet. It’s rough against bare skin.
Heat pools low in my abdomen. I avert my gaze, trying not to notice all those sexy things I obsessed about while we were apart.
We’ve discussed taking the next step in our relationship via texts and phone calls and on occasion in person. Since his schedule is so hectic, we’ve marked prom night on both our calendars.
Maybe he’s decided he’d rather not wait. Which means I have to tell him I’m not ready today. Even worse, I have to tell him why.
I’m totally unprepared, scared out of my head, and not for the usual reasons. My lungs shrink, aggravated by the dank air of the tunnel … the paint, stone, and dust. I cough.
“Skater girl.” All the teasing is gone from his voice. He says my nickname so low and soft, it’s almost swallowed by the background music and the rain pattering outside.
“Yeah?” My hands tremble. I curl my fingers into my palms, nails scraping my scars. Scars that Jeb still thinks were caused by a car accident when I was a kid, when a windshield supposedly shattered and gouged my hands. Just one of the many secrets I’m keeping.
I can’t give him what he wants, not all of me. Not until I tell him who I really am. What I am. It was bad enough when I only had a week left till prom. I’m not prepared to pour out my soul today after being away from him for so long.
“Hey, take it easy.” Jeb works my hands free from their prison of fingers and presses my palm to his collarbone. “I brought you here to give you this.” He drags my hand down to his chest, where a hard knot the size of a dime presses back from under his shirt. That’s when I notice the shimmer of a delicate chain around his neck.
He lifts off the necklace and holds it over the lantern. It’s a heart-shaped locket with a keyhole embedded in its middle.
“I found it in a little antique market in London. Your mom gave you that key you wear all the time, right?”
I squirm, itching to correct the half-truth—that it’s not exactly the same key she had saved for me, although it opens the same weird and wild world.
“Well …” He leans across the basket to place the necklace over my head. It falls in line atop my key. He drags my hair free, smoothing the strands to cover both chains. “I thought this could be symbolic. It’s made of the same kind of metal, looks vintage like the key. Together, they prove what I’ve always known. Even when we used to come here as kids.”
“And what’s that?” I watch him, intrigued by how the tunnel’s opening tints one side of his smooth complexion with bluish light.
“That only you have the key to open my heart.”
The words startle me. I look down before he can see the emotion in my eyes.
He huffs. “That was cheesy … maybe I sucked in too many paint fumes while I was working on the mural.”