Page 85 of Just One Look

She stared at him with the kind of look a terrified horse gave you, eyes wide and ringed with white. He pulled her, and when she held onto her tree, he pried her hands loose, picked her up bodily, and carried her back to his car. His neck stabbed him like a knife, but what else could he do? Setting her down, then slamming the door on her and running around to get in on his own side, and she already had her hand on the door handle.

“We have to get out,” she told him through chattering teeth. “It’s not safe.” And opened the door again.

What the hell? What was going on? He pulled her back, and the door shut again, but she was reaching for it again, too. He said, “No. We’re safe.” He shouted it, then. “We’resafe.”

“No!” she said. “No! It’sflooding!”It was more of those white-ringed eyes, and something was very wrong. He pulled her into him, wrapped his arms around her, and held her tight. He held hard, because she fought him, and she was strong. The wind rocked the car, the rain lashed it, her body was wet and cold and bucking against his, and he held on.

The wind didn’t stop, and neither did the rain, but finally, she was struggling less, and then she was quiet and taking deep, shuddering breaths, her body trembling with tension and cold despite the heat that was blasting now. She’d been crying, maybe, but how could you tell?

She said, “I’m sorry.”

He said, “No worries.” It was a stupid thing to say. It was all he could think of.

“I can drive home,” she said. “But we should go a different way.” Her voice was shaky, not like her at all.

He said, “We can leave your car here and come back for it later, after this mess is over. Cyclone, eh.”

“Oh,” she said. “Cyclone. That’s a … a tornado, though.” A bit fuzzily, like she’d been out of herself, but now she was coming back. Or maybe just utterly exhausted.

“No,” he said. “Hurricane. Not much of one, not once it gets all the way here, just enough to well and truly bugger the roads for a day or two.”

She said, “Oh. I never … I didn’t look at the weather report.”

“You don’t look,” he guessed, “because you’re always at the hospital.”Keep her talking,he thought dimly.Keep her here, not in wherever that was.

“Yes,” she said. “I can drive home now. I’m sorry. Thank you for your help.” Distant as the moon. Retreating back into her shell, insisting that she wasn’t sensitive, that she wasn’t purple.

He said, “I’d rather drive you. Whatever this was about, it’ll still be bad out there. The roads will be a bugger, and I know how to get around the jammed bits better than you do. Hang on while I move your car, and we’ll go.” When she would have spoken, he said, “I’ll bring you back tonight for it, once things have calmed down.”

Her face, white and strained, turned to his. He put a hand on her cheek and said, “Could you trust me on this, you reckon? This one thing?” And waited a long moment until she nodded.

After that, he moved her car, and then he took her back to Ponsonby. The roads were a right royal mess, as anybody could have predicted, and he navigated them, focusing hard in the streaming dimness. And she wrapped her arms around herself, shivered, and said not a word.