Page 142 of Torn

He pulls back as if my question has slapped him in the face. “Never. We were strictly friends. Nothing more. We talked a lot, but never about anything inappropriate.”

I sigh and rub my forehead. “I’m sorry, Tor. I don’t know why this has me so upset—honestly, I don’t. I guess it was just unexpected, and finding out you wrote a song about it just sorta addsto it. Every time I hear that song now, I’m going to think about this.”

“I can’t change that. The song is special to me because it’s one of the first I wrote—when I was just a kid—and it became a huge hit. That’s the only reason. Why can’t you look at it as a good thing? If I hadn’t been with Ember that day, who knows if your parents would have hooked up and had you? Then we wouldn’t be together now.”

My shoulders drop. “It makes me feel weird thinking about you crushing on my mother. It feels twisted to me.” I know I shouldn’t be this upset, but I think it might be because of the last thing I heard my mother say, the morning of her accident. I overheard her and my dad in the kitchen, and she said,“Tor understands, why can’t you?”And my father replied,“Oh, here we go again with Tor.”I have no idea what they were talking about, but now it’s got me wondering all sorts of things, like maybe she had feelings for him? Could that be possible? They weren’t fighting, because my parents never fought. They talked everything out. But she was definitely upset about something that morning.

Tor puts his hands on my shoulders and forces me to look at him. “It’s not twisted. It was a stupid little crush that never amounted to a damn thing other than me walking her to a park. Everything feels like major drama at that age. At the time, I was jealous and pissed at Asher, sure. But that’s it. You arenotany kind of replacement. I loveyou.”

I blink back tears. I know his words are true. “I love you, too. I think I just want to be alone for the rest of the night to sort out my head. It’s late anyway. You know I have to go home.”

He runs his hand through his rumpled bed hair, his eyes darting from me to the bed like he can’t understand how a little while ago we were making love, and now we are here.

“I can’t believe this is our first fight and it’s about something that happened when I was fifteen. Really, Kenzi?”

“It has nothing to do with age, Tor. It’s that it was my mother.”

He throws his arms up in exasperation and then rubs the back of his neck. “I can’t believe this.”

“I just don’t understand why you’ve never told me. You tell me everything. You always have. Why wouldn’t you tell me this? It’s like you were hiding it.”

He pins me with dark, serious eyes. “I wasn’t hiding anything. I have no reason to.”

Going to him, I wrap my arms gently around his waist. “I’m sorry, Tor. Just let me go home and cool off. We’ll be fine in the morning, I promise. I just need to work it out in my head. I think it just surprised me.”

His arms encircle me tightly, and I know it must be hurting his ribs for him to be hugging me so hard. “There was never anything between us, Angel. I’ve been totally honest with you, like I always have.” He lifts my chin with his finger and kisses me softly. “I would never lie to you, especially about your mom. I couldn’t disrespect her, or you, that way.”

“I know,” I whisper. “I’ll call you in the morning.”

Reluctantly, he loosens his hold on me. “Text me when you get home so I know you’re okay.”

“I will.”

I’m acting like an idiot. This I know, but I still can’t seem to stop myself. Is it jealousy? Or just worry about what my parents were talking about that last morning? Or maybe it’s like it’s always been—anything related to thinking about my mother tends to turn my head all around into a twisted mess because she’s nothere to talk to. There is no closure. No answers. Just questions. It’s a bizarre feeling to have your parent here, but not. Maybe Aunt Katherine was right, and I should have been in therapy to deal with my confusion about my mother.

As I’m lost in my thoughts driving home in the dark, suddenly my Jeep starts to sputter, jerking me back into focusing on driving. A small light I’ve never seen before has suddenly lit up on my dashboard. Squinting at it, I realize it’s the gas light.

Shit.

I pull over to the side of the dark, woodsy road and the car dies. It just stops, and won’t start again.

This can’t be happening.

Driving to the beach and back today must have sucked up a lot of gas, and I didn’t notice when I was driving us home earlier that the light was on or that the gauge had gotten so low. My father has told me a hundred times to always make sure I have a full tank of gas, and somehow I still forgot.

Grabbing my phone from the passenger seat, my heart sinks when I see that I have no service out here on this mountain road that I need to take to get home. There are a few houses on this road, but they are all set way back off the road, and I’m not about to go traipsing down someone’s dark driveway right to their house not knowing what kind of person could be living there. Realizing I’m going to have to walk until I reach the small town a few miles up the road to get reception, I dig the tiny flashlight out of the center console that my father had put there, and jump out of the car.

Okay, Kenzi. You know this road. There’s a full moon, so it’s not that dark. Just walk. And keep walking. And walk. Fast.

I’m doing okay as I chant this over and over in my head while I walk until a motorcycle roars up the road behind me and pullsto a stop a few feet ahead of me. A chill runs down my spine as I realize it’s not Tor, as I fleetingly hoped. I know the sound of his engine, the shape of his body, and the man in front of me isn’t him. And, besides all that, Tor’s bike is still in the shop.

I freeze, rooted to the side of the dark road, contemplating running back the other way. I never should have left Tor’s house in the middle of the night over a stupid fight. The rider turns sideways to me, a lit cigarette hanging from his lips, his long shaggy hair parted on the side and hiding half his scarred face. The night glasses are covering his eyes, but I know behind them are eyes the color of turquoise. Eyes that once belonged to the golden boy of this town. Captain of the football team. Star of the lacrosse team. Voted prom king and most likely to become a star. But not anymore. Tyler Grace is a psychotic enigma with a terrible, violent past. His gravelly voice breaks the night silence as we stare at each other.

“If you run, I’ll chase you. And Iwillcatch you. Get on the fucking bike.” His voice is raspy, as if his throat is coated with sandpaper.

In the distance to my right, I can see a porch light on at a house through the woods, and I choose to bolt down their driveway rather than stand here on a dark road with someone that I have absolutely no idea if I can trust. The fact that he’s Tor’s brother doesn’t change what he’s done, what he could do, or that he’s been completely unhinged for years.

As I run down the dark dirt driveway, I hear him coming up behind me, his feet pounding on the dirt behind me.