Free Ignite by Lily Paradis

putting his hands on my head to turn it from side to side. I closed my eyes and let him comb his fingers through my hair and looked for blood.
    His breath was warm on my forehead in the cold air, and I didn’t dare open my eyes to see how close he was.
    “You really need to stop falling,” he said softly. “Look at me.”
    Reluctantly, I met his gaze. I was amazed at how tired I was, I could barely keep my eyes open. I just wanted to sleep and wake up and be back home. My brow furrowed. Where was home? I guess I classified it as school, but even that didn’t seem like home anymore. I didn’t have one, and hadn’t since I was Emma’s age. That was when Mom and Dad and Tucker and I all lived in the Springs together.
    Dean sighed after studying my eyes.
    “I can’t tell in this light,” he whispered of consideration for my noise sensitivity. “Did you pass out at all, or were you just blacked out from the pain when you hit your head?”
    I tried to remember, but couldn’t.
    “I don’t know,” I said truthfully.
    He didn’t seem happy with that answer.
    “Let’s just talk then,” he said, sitting down on the floor beside me. “You need to stay awake.”
    I frowned.
    “Well, what do you want to talk about?” I said, clearly exasperated.
    He looked at the other side of the room instead of me.
    “I’m not what you think,” he said finally, meeting my gaze again.
    I wanted to laugh, but I felt like that was rude, so I just smiled slightly.
    “And what does that mean?”
    “I’m just not who people say I am,” he said shortly. “I’m sure Kenzie’s told you things.”
    I bit my lip.
    “Those things don’t seem so unfounded.”
    He just sighed sadly, but kept looking at the other side of the room where the windows were covered by snow. He looked frightened.
    I knew I should be scared, but somehow I wasn’t. We’d find the phone, and someone would find us. I kind of liked that he was being honest with me and acknowledging my presence, unlike earlier. He felt like a real person, not just a guy who’d swept me off my feet and then knocked me to the ground.
    After what felt like an eternity, I decided to throw him a bone. Part of me was aching to understand who he was underneath it all, because he reminded me so much of myself. Layers of walls built up over the years, so thick that I wasn’t even sure I was still alive in there anymore.
    “Tell me one true thing about yourself, Dean Powell.” I tilted my chin up and looked at him with all the seriousness I could muster, and he matched it with an answer that carried with it the weight of the world.
    With one sentence, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but I knew he was telling the truth. And part of that truth was why he was the person who he was, and he was willing to reveal it to me. It revealed why he and Jenny were on their own, and why he had such a heavy heart for a person so young.
    As much as I thought I was chipping away at him, he took a pickaxe and drove it through the ice block the thing that was beating in my chest.
    “My dad was a drug lord.”

 
     
    AND JUST LIKE that, he shattered a little piece of my heart.
    “Something about yourself ,” I managed to say quietly after a few minutes in silence. I couldn’t tell whether he regretted saying what he did, or if he was wrestling with himself about it. But in that moment, I realized we were two of a kind. I grew up with a loving family up until my mom decided to run off and become a flight attendant, then I lost my dad, and I lost Daniel. I still had Tucker, but he was across the country playing soccer for an Ivy League school on a scholarship, which was something he couldn’t say no to after all we’d been through.
    Dean didn’t have anyone either. That part of me, the part that understood the feeling of being alone and not having any sort of home ached for him. I’d spent so much of my life building up walls and keeping people out, but he came crashing through every