Free Trapped (Here Trilogy) by Ella James

would think if he knew about my craziness. When I looked up from the cuticle I'd been playing with, he was looking right at me. I felt the blood rush from my cheeks.
    “What's wrong?” he asked.
    “Nothing.”
    One of his eyebrows arched up toward the bill of his hat. “I don’t believe you.”
    “I was just thinking about something.”
    “Something sad?”
    “After dad died, I had…issues,” I said, shocking myself that I was actually going there. I searched Nick’s face for signs of discomfort, the kind I came to expect on my friend’s faces the few times I opened up. He raised both eyebrows, a casual invitation. I glanced out the window. “I didn’t eat enough,” I said quickly. When his face remained neutral, I went on. “I think I just...didn't know what to do about it.” I looked back over at Nick. “What I mean is, I wanted to do something about it, but there was nothing I could do. I couldn't be mad about it, because who would I be mad at? I couldn't talk to my mom too much, because she would get upset, even though she said she wouldn't; she always did. I wanted to...I don't know...make a statement. A statement to the universe that I didn't approve.” I bit my lower lip, imagining I must sound ridiculous.
    It took me a second to wrangle up the nerve to look at Nick's face, even after his thumb started stroking my knuckles. When I did, his face was solemn. “I wish I had been there.”
    “It was probably one of those things that was just bound to happen.” I'd always been a little funny about food. In a session with Dr. Sam, Mom mentioned I had avoided mayonnaise and candy even as a little girl.
    “Do you believe that?” Nick asked seriously. “That things are bound to happen?”
    I shook my head. I didn't—did I? “No. I guess not really. I don't want to, anyway. What do you think? You probably know.”
    He sighed. “Not any more than you.”
    “Really?”
    “You’re surprised.”
    “No, I—” had always kind of assumed that consciousness was headed to a better understanding of those things. “I don’t know. I guess I thought you guys would know everything.” I shrugged, feeling trite.
    “There’s knowing and there’s knowing ,” he said as we passed under the arch and out the park. “We know a lot about the way the universe works. But We know only what We observe, and We only observe what We need to survive. There’s plenty We don’t know. We never ask why, either.”
    “Really?”
    “We're good at math.” He offered. “We comprehend the equations that create existence. But nothing in our knowledge leads to understanding. It doesn’t provide…I don’t know, anything existential. That’s not what we’re after.”
    My stomach rolled as we curved around the road to Gardiner. “Let's go to the little general store up here, past the bridge, on the right,” I told him. “As for the other thing...what do you mean by the equations that create existence?”
    “Well…remember what I originally asked you? Whether or not things are determined to happen?”
    “Yeah,” I said.
    “I can tell you the probability of any conceivable event occurring.”
    “That’s cool.”
    He shrugged. “I’m a cool guy.”
    We held hands as Nick drove us past the shops of downtown Gardiner.When my anxious mind dredged up thoughts of my mom, worried beyond endurance, or of the minutes ticking by like sand in Vera's hourglass, or of the devastation I knew I’d feel the moment Nick left, I tried to focus on the scenery: jack-o-lanterns by doorsteps, shoe-polish messages on store windows, potted firs in medians, the curve of the mountains behind the town, and the egg-white sky that spread out in every direction over us, almost translucent with the cold.
    “Was Annabelle really dead?” I asked, to distract from the Hitchcock birds flapping in my stomach as we rolled through traffic.
    Nick shook his head. “She wasn't dead, but she had some serious arrhythmia.”
    “What happened?”
    He