Free Wild Hunt by Margaret Ronald Page B

Volsungs play into it.”
    I drew a deep breath and let it out. There were a lot of things I could say to him, and so many of them were the wrong thing to say. And none of this was made any easier by the sudden reminder that I hadn’t gotten further than second base in, oh, at least a year. Romance is for people with clear calendars.
    “So does this make you Siegfried?” I finally asked. “Because I always thought he was a colossal prick, and you don’t seem the type.”
    Nate smiled, and I knew I’d said the right thing, or at least not a horribly wrong one. “I hope not.”
    “Yeah, well, if the Rhinemaidens start coming up out of the Charles, I’m blaming you first.” That won me another smile. “I’m not in touch with my father,” I said after a moment. “I mean, we know where we stand, and I figure if something big happened he’d contact me. But we haven’t really spoken since he called to apologize, a few years after Mom’s death.” Nate glanced at me, and I managed a smile. “Yeah. Shitty timing. But it still mattered that he got in touch that one time. Maybe it might be worth it for you to talk to your father. Even if it’s just this once.”
    Nate didn’t answer. I thought about Abigail, about what she’d planned to do just to escape her own nightmares, about what I had offered to do in her place. And briefly, why I’d come out here, or the reason I’d told myself I had to see Nate. “Is that why you asked me?” I said after a moment. “Because I’m estranged from my father too?”
    He shook his head. “I’m telling you because I can’t tell anyone else.”
    Blame it on the hormones. Blame it on the way he’d looked at the Red Sox game, getting rained on and still yelling his heart out in perfect unison with me, blame it on my own issues. Whatever the reason, I reached out and touched him on the shoulder—nothing much,I told myself, just the sort of thing one friend would do for another.
    His body stilled under my touch, and he reached up to cover my hand with his own, relaxing for just a second. Then a shudder passed through him, and as quickly as he’d moved to yank Katie out of traffic, he stepped closer, close enough that even in the warm air I could feel the heat of his skin. I caught my breath, momentarily unable to hear anything over the blood rushing in my ears. For a moment I forgot this was Nate, forgot that we were friends, that it had always and only been friendship between us.
    And then whatever damnable self-preservation instinct or Catholic guilt or whatever you wanted to call it spoke up in the back of my head: the last man that made you feel like this tried to turn you into a thrall of the Fiana.
    The thought dropped like a seed crystal into my mind, and I froze up. Nate sensed it, and with all the finality of a lock snapping shut, his scent changed, shutting him off behind that wall of iron. He let go of me and stepped back like a cat springing away from a firecracker. “Sorry. Um. I should go,” he said, not looking at me. “My advisor wanted a revised chapter by the end of the week—”
    “Yeah.” I cleared my throat, trying to shake the buzzing from my ears. “Yeah, I have, um, a meeting to get to.”
    He moved so that he stood with his back to the sun, and even in the low raking light, his face was hidden in shadow. So I couldn’t see the look in his gray eyes, only imagine it, only remember that weird shift in him that I’d seen on the banks of the Charles, that I had seen under Fenway when he lost control before. I hadn’t seen it this time, but I’d felt it—and I didn’t yet know what I thought of it. “I’ll. I’ll see you.”
    Without another word, he turned and headed back the way we’d come. I sank onto the closest bench, mylegs feeling like they had turned to rubber. Not now , I told myself, not now, not you, not Nate. He doesn’t deserve the kind of crap you could give him .
     
    If I’d wanted an example of what the undercurrent can