Page 13 of The Storm

“I. Have. A test,” I say, very slowly and clearly. “Give me the keys, or I will kill you.”

“Oh, for crying out loud.” She disappears from view, and I let out a breath of relief, only to pull the sucker back in as every muscle goes tense when she appears on the landing with Nick.

“Problem solved,” she says. “Nick’ll give you a ride.”

“Di—” And she’s gone. Leaving me standing in the hallway. With Nick. He comes down the stairs, the usual impassive, stony look on his face.

His arm brushes mine by accident when he passes me to grab his car keys from the hook on the wall. I try not to react. I try not to inhale or do anything stupid that’d garner me more coldness.

Because that’s what Nicholas Hayes is.

Not rage.

Not fury.

But ice-cold hate.

I always imagined hate as fire. Something roaring, bright, and destructive. Loud and reckless. Something you would see coming. Fire at least warns you. It crackles and spits and leaves smoke in the air. You can see it approach, even if it comes on fast.

I was wrong.

Hate isn’t like that.

Hate is ice.

It settles in quietly. It creeps through your veins and numbs everything it touches.

Fire destroys quickly and loudly.

Ice is patient.

It crawls in slowly until there’s nothing warm left.

Ice preserves. It keeps things exactly as they are. Every slight, every betrayal, every wound, every wrong word will stay untouched forever. Nothing softens. Nothing fades. It just hardens.

And spreads.

It’s in his voice and in his words and in his eyes.

The shards, when he aims them at someone, are sharp and merciless.

It’s in the way he looks at you. It’s in the undertone of his words. It’s in the way he speaks to you.

It’s the way he seems to feel absolutely nothing.

He grabs his keys and stops at the door. “You coming or not?”

An uninterested flick of his dark eyes follows that question.

I wait until he’s out the door then let out a curse and a breath at once before I push my feet into my sneakers and jog outside. Experience tells me he has no problem leaving me the fuck behind and without a ride if I take a second too long.

I get in and throw my bag into the back seat before I buckle in.

The drive to Annapolis takes twenty-two minutes. Twenty-two long minutes. The kind of minutes that last for hours.

I try to pretend we’re in an Uber, and he’s a random driver.

It’s pretty much how we’ve been handling the last fourteen months. Two strangers forced to coexist.