“Hey!”
I hear a guy’s voice behind me, but I’m so desperate, I don’t slow down. My heart is pounding now, so fast I feel like it’s going to burst out of my chest. I know I just need to calm down and wait for the panic to pass, but when I’m caught up in the whirlwind, I can’t see straight long enough to try.
“Hey, wait up!” The voice comes, louder, and then there’s a heavy hand on my arm, pulling me around.
“What?” I gasp, violently yanking back. “What the f**k do you…” my protest dies on my lips as I stare up into the face of the most beautiful guy I’ve ever seen.
His eyes are the first thing I notice. They’re dark blue, mesmerizing, the color of skies after sunset. It’s always been my favorite time, that moment when the last light of day has faded away, and the first stars come out. Now I’m looking right up into them, endless midnight constellations. Ringed with thick, dark lashes, they burn into me, intense. Full of secrets, full of scars.
“Where are you going?” the guy demands, still gripping painfully onto my arm. “You can’t just walk away from this!”
I pull away, still dazed. He’s older than me, but not by much, his early twenties maybe: tall and broad-shouldered, skin tanned a deep bronze by the sun. His arms are taut beneath the black T-shirt he’s wearing, damp and clinging to his muscular torso. His body is slim but compact, almost radiating with tightly-coiled power in his black jeans and beat-up workman’s boots. Rain drips from his dark hair, curling too-long around his collar, and on his right bicep, I can see the dark ink of a tattoo snaking up beneath his shirt.
He takes my breath away.
The world shifts back into focus, and I find that I can breathe again OK. Just like that, my panic begins to ease.
“Are you listening?” he demands, face set and angry. Then the anger fades, replaced with concern. “Wait, are you hurt? Did you hit your head?”
He reaches for my face, fingers grazing against my forehead with surprising gentleness. I look into those deep blue eyes again and feel a shock ripple through me. Electric.
I lurch away, startled. “I’m fine,” I manage, my heart-rate finally slowing. What the hell am I doing? I scold myself. Drooling over some guy on the side of the highway? Don’t I have more important things to worry about—like the fact I was this close to dying just a few minutes ago?
Now he knows I’m not injured, the guy’s angry expression returns. “Then you’re lucky I don’t kill you myself right now.” he tells me, grim. “What the hell was that back there? Don’t you know you shouldn’t drive fast in a storm?”
I catch my breath, my frustrations all boiling over at once. “First of all, I wasn’t driving,” I yell back. “And second, it was an accident! Our tire blew, it happens. How is any of this my fault?” I challenge him, folding my arms.
His eyes follow the motion of my arms, and I’m suddenly painfully aware of my thin T-shirt, now wet through and clinging against my chest. I shiver, seeing a new hunger in his eyes as his gaze trails down my body, lingering on my bare legs. I feel my skin prickle, and my breath catch, not with discomfort, but something new, some kind of heightened awareness. I feel a heat pool, low in my stomach.
The guy drags his gaze back up to meet mine, and then he looks at me with what I swear is a smirk curling at the edges of his perfect mouth. “How are you the mad one right now?” he asks. “I’m the one with my truck totally f**ked back there.”
I look past him. His truck is nose deep in a sandbank, back wheels spinning. “Yeah, well we’ve got a flat tire and no spare.”
He smirks for real this time. “What kind of idiot doesn’t keep a spare? We’re miles out from anywhere.”
“Maybe the kind of person who drives in the city, where we have little things like cellphone signal and tow-trucks!”
The smirk fades. “You’re summer people.” he says, like it’s a crime.
“Let me guess,” I shoot back. “You’re a townie with a chip on your shoulder. Well, maybe you should save the issues until we both get out of here.”
He opens his mouth in surprise, then stops. He looks around at the wet empty highway, and finally, it sinks in that I may have a point.
“Fine,” he says, grudgingly. “I’ll call for Norm to come get us.”
“I thought there wasn’t signal out here?” I frown, pulling out my phone from my pocket again, just to check.
“I’ve got a CB radio in the truck.” He heads back towards the red pick-up. “Stay there!”
“Where else would I go?” I sigh, watching him walk away. I trace the back of his body with my eyes, absorbing the grace in his gait. Then he turns, catching me. I blush, hoping frantically that he can’t see my pink cheeks in the rain.
“You didn’t tell me your name.” he calls.
“You didn’t ask!” I yell back.
He grins, and waits, until finally I surrender.
“Juliet,” I tell him, and wait for the snarky quip, but instead, he just cocks an eyebrow at me.
“I’m Emerson.” He calls. Then he smiles, a flash of something true and reckless, so darkly beautiful I feel my heart stop all over again. This is what they write stories about, I realize, as if from far away. All those books and movies and poems I’ve read, this is what they all were preparing me for, the day when a strange man smiles at me, and makes me forget who I am.