Page 2 of Never a Hero

She accepted the phone from him, trying not to feel anything when his fingers brushed hers. ‘Thank you,’ she heard herself say.

Nick smiled, small and so familiar that Joan could hardly bear it. ‘I’m always losing mine,’ he said.

‘Really?’ Joan was surprised into asking. He’d always been careful with details. She’d never known him to lose anything.

‘Well—’ Nick’s smile warmed into something more relaxed than Joan had ever seen on him. ‘Really, my little brothers are always stealing it.’

‘Brothers?’ Joan echoed. She heard the wonder in her own voice. His brothers were alive. Joan had known it, but somehow hearing him say it felt like a miracle. The Nick she’d known had been tortured over and over, his whole family murdered in front of him. Joan had seen the recordings. She’d never forget them—not one second of them. All those bodies on the kitchen floor.

‘Brothers and sisters,’ Nick said, still smiling. ‘Six of us, if you can believe it.’ And Joan heard an echo of that other Nick telling her, with shadows in his eyes: Three brothers and two sisters. My brothers and I all slept in the TV room until I was seven.

‘Big family,’ Joan said. They’d had this conversation before, alone in a house in London, curled up next to each other as darkness had fallen.

Lightning illuminated the field. It shook Joan out of herself, and she was horrified to realise that she’d been about to talk about herself too. I’m an only child, but I have a big extended family. What was she thinking? A minute alone with him, and she’d forgotten herself.

She made herself start walking again and felt a twinge of disquiet when Nick fell into easy step beside her. It was too comfortable, a worn groove from a different lifetime.

‘I think I’ve seen you around,’ Nick said, and Joan looked at him, surprised. ‘You’re in the year below me, right?’

‘Yeah,’ Joan managed, trying to ignore the warm glow it gave her. He’d noticed her. She’d thought … Well, it didn’t matter what she’d thought. There couldn’t be anything between them—not this time, and not last time. Not ever.

Nick ducked his head shyly. ‘I’m still pretty new at this school.’

This time, Joan didn’t trust her voice. She’d never forget her first day back at school after the terrible summer, when her body had still been telling her that she was on the run. She’d jumped at every raised voice, every slam of a locker door. Sitting in her stuffy little classrooms, with their single exits, had been close to unbearable.

That first day, she’d walked up the school corridor with her friend Margie.

Holy shit, Margie had said. Have you seen that new guy yet?

New guy? Joan had asked.

So hot, Margie had said. And not just normal hot. I mean proper Hollywood hot.

And then they’d turned the corner, and there he’d been. Nick. In their school uniform. Tall and square-jawed and perfect. And Joan hadn’t known whether she wanted to run toward him or the other way.

Now, a few months later in November, he was already about fifteen rungs more popular at school than Joan had ever been. Nick Ward, the new football captain. The hottest guy in school. The smartest guy in school. Most of Joan’s year had a hopeless crush on him.

‘Do you have far to go?’ Nick said now. Joan shook her head. She was just a few streets from home. He smiled then—the smile that made half the school weak at the knees. ‘I’m just here.’ He pointed at one of the houses across the road.

Oh. So this was it, then. Remember this, Joan told herself. Because there wouldn’t be any more conversations like this. She couldn’t let this happen again.

Nick’s dark hair was falling over his eyes. There was a stray leaf on his collar—a red rowan leaf, the last of the season. Joan let herself wonder just one more time. Nick, don’t you remember who you are?

‘You have a leaf—’ She gestured at her own neck.

‘Oh no, really?’ He laughed. A flush climbed his throat. ‘Not very smooth.’ He brushed at his collar. ‘Gone?’

It was still there, hooked to the shoulder of his green and grey football jersey. Joan shook her head. ‘Can I?’ She tried not to notice how his flush deepened. He nodded.

Joan reached up. Her own breath hitched, and she could tell that he’d registered it. His eyes darkened. She half expected him to stop her—to catch her wrist. But he didn’t flinch, not even when she brushed her knuckles against the back of his neck, just touching the soft bristles at his nape.

‘Gone?’ he asked. His voice deepened, like just before he’d kissed her.

Joan made herself smile back at him. ‘Yeah,’ she said. She snagged the leaf and took her hand away, very careful not to take any life from him. ‘All gone.’

He was gone. He was really gone. Joan felt empty suddenly. And so lonely. She was the only one who remembered him as he’d once been. A boy who could walk unarmed into a room full of monsters and have them flee in fear. A boy who’d protected humans from the predators among them. Not even he remembered.

He didn’t even know that monsters existed anymore.

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