NATHAN CROSS STRIKE BACK..

Chapter 5

She looked at the man lying on the road in front of her.

A stranger. Someone she did not know. Someone who did not know her. Someone from a completely different world who she would likely never see again after tonight.

Not Marcus Hale. Not anyone connected to her family or her life or any of the arrangements that had been made without her consent.

Just a stranger.

“If I am going to lose this,” she thought, “then I will lose it on my own terms. To someone I chose. Not to a monster my grandfather selected for me.”

Immediately she nodded her head, and she stood up. She moved her car off the road and parked it properly on the shoulder with the hazard lights running. Then she came back to him.

Getting him to the car was difficult. He was heavy and she was not strong. But he was not completely gone when she pulled at him he responded slightly, his body helping where it could even if his mind was barely present.

She got the back door open. She maneuvered him inside. It took time and effort and she was breathing hard by the end of it.

She climbed in after him to make sure he was safe.

And then she lost her balance on the door frame and fell forward.

Her hands landed on his chest. She was suddenly right there close, close enough to feel his breath on her face, close enough to see that his eyes were not closed.

He was looking at her.

Barely. Heavily. His eyes were exhausted and unfocused and the rest of him had nothing left. But he was looking at her.

And the warmth from his chest, she went still.

It moved up through her palms and into her wrists and spread through her arms and kept going. Into her chest. Into the deep cold places inside her that lived there permanently regardless of the season or the medication or anything else.

The cold pulled back from it.

Just — pulled back. Like it was afraid of the heat. Like it recognized something stronger than itself and retreated.

She had lived with the cold her whole life. Twenty six years of it. She knew it the way she knew her own heartbeat. She knew every corner of it.

And in the space of ten seconds it was simply — less.

She did not move, she stayed exactly where she was and felt it happening. The warmth spreading. The cold retreating. Her body responding to his like it had been designed to.

“Could this be a Thermal Body,” she thought. “Twenty years of searching.”

She looked at his face, he was still looking at her. Tired and barely there but present.

She made her decision completely in that moment.

Not just defiance of Marcus Hale. Not just destroying the condition he had placed on the arrangement.

This man this stranger on the road — was the first thing her body had responded to in twenty six years of being cold. The warmth from him was the first real relief she had felt that did not come from a bottle of pills.

She wanted one night of that warmth, One night that was entirely hers.

Something that nobody had arranged. Nobody had planned. Nobody had traded her for.

She was not naive about what she was doing. She was not telling herself a romantic story. He was a stranger and she would likely never see him again and that was fine. That was actually exactly right. A stranger meant no complications. A stranger meant this belonged only to her.

She looked at him one more time.

Then she stopped thinking and let herself feel the warmth instead, and then she decided to have S*x with, and lose her virginity also.

It was a long time before she moved to the front seat.

When she finally did she sat very still for a moment with her hands in her lap.

The cold had come back. Slowly, gradually, the way it always did. But for a while for a real stretch of time  it had been gone. Her body had been warm from the inside out in a way that no medication had ever achieved.

She felt ashamed.

Of course she did. She was not someone who did things like this. She had never done anything like this. She had spent twenty six years being careful and controlled and responsible.

She pressed her hands together in her lap and looked at the dark road through the windshield.

But underneath the shame —underneath the embarrassment and the shock at herself and the voice in her head that sounded like her grandfather — there was something else.

Relief.

Quiet, solid, real relief.

Marcus Hale could not have what she had just given to a stranger on a  road. The condition he had placed on the arrangement was gone. She had taken it away from him the only way available to her.

And for a few minutes the cold had stopped.

She was not sorry, she was ashamed and she was not sorry and both things were true at the same time.

She looked back at him.

He had drifted into a deep sleep. His breathing was slow and even. The marks on his face were almost completely gone now. His color was good. His body was doing something extraordinary at a speed she still had no explanation for.

She reached into her bag, she took out her blink bank card that doesn't have her name on it and wrote the PIN on a piece of paper from her notepad. She placed both on the seat beside him carefully.

She looked at him one last time.

“I am sorry,” she said quietly. 

“I used you tonight. That was not fair to you.” She paused. 

“There is money on that card. It is yours.”

She started the engine.

She drove to **Creston General Hospital**

 After the hospital has successfully admitted him, then she went back outside and called Claire.

Claire arrived in eight minutes.

She was out of the Mercedes before it stopped properly, moving fast, her face a controlled version of panic.

“Miss Sterling.” Her eyes went over Vivienne immediately. Top to bottom. Checking everything. 

“Two hours. I called eleven times.”

“I know. I am sorry.”

“ Don't tell me you were driving after drinking”  It was not a question.

“I stopped safely. I did not hit anyone.” Vivienne kept her voice even. 

“I found a man collapsed on the road near the Westside yard. I brought him here. I have paid for his care.”

Immediately Claire looked at her carefully.

Something was different about Vivienne tonight. Something Claire could not name exactly. A stillness. Like a storm that had passed and left everything rearranged.

“Are you sure you are alright?” Claire asked.

“I am sure.”

“Your grandfather called. He wants you to call him back tonight.”

“He can wait until morning.”

Claire opened her mouth.

“Morning, Claire,” Vivienne said simply.

Claire closed her mouth.

They walked toward the car. Vivienne stopped before getting in.

“ Before I forget, Nathan Cross,” she said. “The man I asked you to find, how far the findings.”

“Miss, I did my research on him, and I found out he's just unless, everything we thought he knows and do are all fake, he copied someone else research and made the product, the news is out and I —”

“I want everything. His research. The plagiarism case. His background. All of it. On my desk before I wake up.” She met Claire's eyes. 

“I will decide what it means. Not you.”