Crystalline

Scars

 The car was the same as all other cars seemed to her; metal and shining and fast, speeding over the road so that the outside world was visibly moving, the change quick and abrupt, unlike the experience of flying above the ground in a plane. Kale turned the wheel, the car gliding around a gentle curve, suburban housing arrayed around them as they drove. It was the same as so many cars, as the two she'd been in during her flight from Kale's father, towards safety. But it felt different.

The silence was tremulous and fragile, something she was loathe to break. Kale shifted gears to soothe the rough growl of the engine, the corner of his mouth turned up in a familiar, hardly discernible smile. He looked as if he was enjoying himself. It was an expression she remembered seeing on him when he looked at the books in his room, the one time she'd been in it. When she'd caught him staring down at the book in his hands at the airport. He glanced away from the road, at her, before looking back at the winding expanse ahead. His smile had disappeared for a moment when he looked at her, when their gazes caught and snagged like a barbed thorn catching on skin, digging deeper. He had looked serious. There was emotion captured in his expression, in that snapshot-moment of his face, that she could not discern.

She watched him a while longer, but his eyes were hidden behind his glasses, black lenses to block out the sun. She turned to look out the window beside her and blinked, a thin, transparent eyelid covering her eyes to compensate for the glare. The window opened with the press of a button, cool air rushing over her skin. She checked to make sure that it had not returned to its mirror-like sheen and, satisfied, crossed her arms on the open window and rested her cheek against them, watching the road disappear behind them. Her hair whipped against her temples, small black strands getting into her eyes. She closed them and tried to get used to the dizzying sensation that it inspired in her; she felt like she was flying, her body and mind parted as she whirled across the black, streaming ribbon of the road, an ethereal presence. She could think of nothing but the freedom of the feeling: in that moment, she had no worries, no thoughts, no pain.

She sighed as she opened her eyes, spinning back into her own body: as with all good things, it couldn't last. She shivered, cold, and closed the window, curling up on the seat and looking at Kale. She tilted her head to the side, resting her cheek on the rough fabric of the seat. It was quiet for a while.

Then: "You're watching me," Kale observed. She didn't respond. "Why are you watching me?"

She shifted slightly in her seat. Why aren't you watching me?

"Because I'm driving," he said, slightly amused.

Exactly.

"You're watching me because I'm driving?" She watched his mouth curve into a bemused smile. She considered what to say in response, and then remembered what they'd talked about involving lies. And she found herself strangely reluctant to lie, even in the smallest way.

I'm watching you because when you drive you're lovely.

He looked at her then, with that same serious look he had before, one she now recognised from the airport, when he'd stopped her in the middle of the crowd of people. He looked away, and she watched the movement of his throat as he swallowed. When he responded, there was a carefully even quality to his voice. "Not what every guy wants to be called." He laughed in a closed way.

It's the truth. And we don't like lying.

"No. We don't," he acknowledged. He thought for a while, and she knew this because his forehead wrinkled, his brows drawn sharply together. Everything about him was sharp. She remembered looking at him once, when she was trapped in the room full of glass, and noticing that for the first time he was looking at her, really looking at her. She remembered observing how he was a younger mirror image of his father, dangerous-looking, tall and lean, with the grace and quiet ferocity of a panther. His fingers were long and slim, his hands unmarked by scars that mapped her own. She remembered the scar that stretched from his shoulder to just above the base of his neck, and wondered where it had come from. She asked him, quietly and carefully, and his hands stiffened on the steering wheel when she'd finished.