Cursed (Book 1, The Watchers; Young Adult Paranormal Romance) (22 page)

“That’s not
possible, hon,” Tara said.  Her tone told me she was afraid the experience had
made me lose my mind.  “Will was right here with me the whole time.”

I shook my head
slowly.  “No, I know what I saw.”

No one seemed to
know what to say.

“Well, I don’t
care if you saw Jimmy the Cricket down there,” Tara said.  “I’m just glad your
ok.”  She held onto my hand tightly, not willing to let go.

“Will, I think we
should leave and let Lilly rest,” Brand started to walk toward the door with
Will following close behind.

I stood up. 
“Brand, you’re leaving?”

He wouldn’t even
look at me, just held his hand on the door knob looking at it.  “You need to
rest Lilly.  I’ll try to call you later.”

And he was out the
door before I could make another attempt to protest.

What was wrong
with him?  Why was he acting so strangely?  Why was he leaving me?

“Come on, hon. 
Let me make you a bubble bath to help you relax.”

Tara must have
thought I was in shock after that.  She had to undress me, bath me, put new
clothes on me and tuck me into bed.  But, I couldn’t sleep. I
was
in
shock. What was wrong with Brand?  Why wasn’t he with me when I needed him the
most?  Why did I get the feeling he was pulling away from me, leaving me
forever?

A new energy
coursed through my body.  I had to find out what he was thinking.  I slipped
some sneakers on, grabbed my Mom’s car keys and ran out the door before Tara had a chance to ask me where I was going or try to stop me.

I reached Brand’s
house in record time.  When I walked into his home, I found him sitting in his
living room staring out the windows towards the lake.  No lights were on, no
TV, just complete silence and darkness.  The only light in the house was coming
from the moonlight spilling through the glass windows on either side of the
fireplace in the living room.

I went to stand in
front of Brand.  It seemed to take him a few seconds to pull himself out of
wherever his thoughts had taken him and realize I was there.

“You shouldn’t be
here,” he said in a cold voice I didn’t recognize.  “You need to stay away from
me, Lilly.”

 “Why are you
saying that?  What did I do?”

He leaned forward,
resting his elbows on his knees with his hands clasped in front of him.  He
stared at his hands, either unwilling or unable to look at me.  “You haven’t
done anything.  It’s all my fault.”

I kneeled down in
front of him.  “No, it wasn’t your fault.  She was just crazy is all.”

“You don’t
understand, Lilly!”  He stood up, frustration written all over his face.  “And
it’s not something I can explain to you.  It was me.  It’s because of what I am
that she almost killed you!”

“Stop!  Stop
saying that!”

“It’s the truth,”
he turned his back to me.  “You need to leave.”

The utter lack of
emotion in his voice scared me.  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.  What
was he doing?

“Are you breaking
up with me?”  I couldn’t help the crack in my voice.  This couldn’t be
happening.  He wouldn’t do this to me would he?  After all the times he said he
loved me?

“I can’t be around
you any more.  I thought things would be different with you, but I can’t ignore
what I am.  You
need
to leave.”

“No,” I said
stubbornly.  I wasn’t about to let the best thing in my life go so easily. 
“No, I’m not leaving.”

“Don’t you
understand I don’t want to see you anymore!”  He turned on me with a fierceness
I’d never seen in him before.  “I need you to leave!  I don’t want you anymore
Lilly.  What part of that don’t you understand?  Leave me alone!”

I ran out of his
house with tears streaming down my face.  I got into my mom’s car and raced
down his driveway.  By the time I hit the highway, I was blinded by pain and tears. 
My chest felt like it was about to implode from misery.  I had to pull over to
the side of the road until I could stop crying long enough to see where I was
going.

When I got back to
the apartment, I collapsed into Tara’s arms.  She didn’t ask me any questions
just held me while my heart broke.

Chapter 12

After crying on Tara’s shoulder most of the night, I finally fell into an exhausted sleep on the futon. 
The next morning Tara made me eat a little breakfast before taking me to the
police station so we could get that over with.  I called Utha Mae and my mom
and told them what had happened.  They were going to come see me, but I asked
them not to.  The less stress I had in my life the better.

“You’re going to
miss your classes,” I told Tara.

“Girl,” she looked
at me with one hand on her hip like I was crazy.  “Do you think I’m lettin’ you
go there by yourself?  No way.  We’re playin’ hooky today.  With what you’ve
been through, you deserve to take a day off.  Heck, we might just take the
whole dang week off!”

I called Detective
Randall before we left the house.  He said he was already at the station and
had some interesting news to tell us.

When we got to the
station, Detective Randall escorted us to his office and took my official
statement.  After describing everything I could in as much detail as I could
remember, he sat back in his seat behind his paper strewn desk and told Tara
and me what he had discovered.

“It seems Michelle
was behind everything that’s happened to you in the past few days.  She
confessed to running you off the road, turning on the gas in your apartment and
also to sabotaging your car.  Something about your alternator?”

“Yes, it went out
on me the night before she made me crash into the ditch.”  I remembered Brand
asking me if I had recently had any work done because it looked like my car had
been tampered with. 

“What was her
plan?  I mean why tamper with the alternator?” I asked.

“Well, apparently
she was waiting to follow you on the highway when you got back on it.  She planned
for you to breakdown there and need a ride.  Then she would have had you and
basically followed through with the same plans as yesterday.”

If her plan had
succeeded, I knew I would probably be dead now.  Brand hadn’t given me his
phone until after that happened.  The realization of how close I had actually
come to death finally hit me, hard.

“We also did a
blood work up on her to see if she was taking any drugs.  What we found was
…odd.”

“Was she on
drugs?” Tara asked.

“Not exactly. 
They found high levels of something called androstadienone in her system.”

“I don’t know what
that is,” I confessed.

“Well, the lab
guys tell me it’s thought to be a human male pheromone.  How she came into
contact with so much of it we’re not sure.  Whether or not it has anything to
do with why she wanted to kill you is a mystery too.  I just thought you might
want to know.”

Detective Randall
thanked us for coming in and said it was pretty much an open and shut case.  I
wouldn’t need to do anything else except show up to her sentencing hearing, but
that was up to me.

We left the
station and went back home.  When we got there, Will was waiting outside our
apartment sitting on the steps leading to the second floor landing.

“Hey, I just
wanted to come by and check on you,” he said standing up as we made our way
towards him.

“I’m fine.  We
just went to the police station to give my statement.”

“Is there anything
I can do?” he asked.

It was nice to see
Will wanting to help me.  It was almost like when we were kids and he’d always been
there to comfort me when I needed it the most.

“Not really.  I
think I just want to take it easy today.”

“Well, if you need
me, call me.  I’ll be here before you can blink your eyes.”  He kissed me on
the cheek.

“Take care of
her,” he told Tara before getting in his car and driving away.

Tara and I spent
the day cleaning the apartment.  I have no idea why, but I always clean when
I’m trying to forget about things going on in my life.  Since the apartment was
small, we were through by noon.  I called Dr. Barry and told her I wouldn’t be
in that day.  Apparently my near death experience was the hot topic on campus
that morning.  She already knew everything that happened before I had a chance
to tell her.  She told me to take my time and come back when I was ready.

The rest of the
afternoon I tried to catch up on my homework in my bedroom.  I started with the
journal I was supposed to be keeping for Mrs. Connor in English lit.  In no
time at all I had filled almost 20 pages with what had happened to me in the
last two weeks.  Some of it was highly personal but I didn’t care.  It helped
me work through my feelings about nearly losing my life and losing Brand.

Brand.  I had been
trying not to think about him.  Every time I did I felt like crying because my
heart hurt so much.  The joy he had brought into my life was replaced with
emptiness now.  Why had he turned his back on me?  Why, when I was ready to
choose him above Will, did he completely reject me and say he didn’t want to
see me again?  Was that the way you acted toward someone you supposedly loved?

As if sensing I
was thinking about Brand, Tara came in with a dish filled with a mountain of
freshly made chocolate fudge.

She looked at my
face and ordered, “Stop thinking about him.  He ain’t worth the effort.”

She sat down on my
bed and I took a piece of fudge from the dish eating it quickly.

“I can’t help it. 
I just don’t understand what happened.”

“Well, I ain’t an
expert but maybe he just needs some time.  I mean I hate to say it and give you
false hope, but that man loves you.  Why he’s actin’ like a jackass right now,
I don’t know.  But I’ve seen how he is around you.  I’ve never seen anyone in
love more than him.  Just give him some time.  Maybe he’s scared or somethin’.”

“Scared of what? 
Me?”

“He was half crazy
when you went missing.  Maybe almost losing you was too much for him.  I think
you should just give him some time, Lilly.”

I took Tara’s words to heart.  Maybe she was right.  Maybe he just needed to sort out his feelings
for me.

“I wish he could
have seen me in my dress.”

“Who says he
won’t?”

“Well, it’s not
like he’ll be taking me to the ball now, Tara.”

“Pfft, who needs a
man to take you to a dance.  I’ll take ya, girl.”

“But you’re going
with Simon.”

Tara waved her
hand in the air like that didn’t matter.  “Girl, he can just meet us there and
feel lucky I let him dance with me a couple of times.  There’s no way I’m
letting you sit here alone in the apartment on Friday night and let that dress
go to waste.  Anyway, it’s a Black and White ball.  We’ll match the theme.”

I couldn’t help
but chuckle at Tara.  I really did want to wear my new dress.  And maybe, just
maybe, Brand would show up to see me in it. 

The rest of the
week at school was torturous.  Everyone kept looking at me like I was an
attraction to a side show carnival.  Brand didn’t show up to any of the classes
we shared that week.  In fact, I didn’t see him on campus at all.  It was just
as well.  Seeing him again would have just made me feel bad.  Will came by each
afternoon to check up on me.  He could tell I was depressed but didn’t ask me
what was wrong.  I got the feeling he already knew what had happened between me
and Brand.

The night of the
ball I felt like our apartment had turned into a mad house.  Tara was so busy
fixing me up she barely had time to do anything to herself. I finally forced
her to stop fussing over me and fix her own hair and make-up.

“I don’t want to
show up with some nappy haired girl on my arm,” I teased her.  “You better look
good if you want to be seen with me.”

She stuck her
tongue out at me.  “Go put that dress on.  I want to see those high heels on
your feet too, girl!”

After I put the
dress and shoes on, I looked at my self in the full length mirror in the
bathroom.  Tara had done an excellent job of making me look like an old Hollywood siren.  She had put soft bouncy waves in my otherwise straight hair and parted it
to the side letting the waves frame my face.  Then she put in a fake diamond
barrette to lift it up on one side.  The lipstick she used seemed awfully red
to me be it did go with the illusion of yesteryear glam.

When Tara came out of her room, she whistled at me.  “Well if that doesn’t draw some attention
from the male population on this campus, I don’t know what will.”

“There’s only one person
I want to see me, and we don’t even know if he’ll be there tonight.”

“Well, whether
he’s there or not, girl, I don’t think you’re gonna have a hard time findin’ a
guy to dance with.  Come on!”

The dance was
being held on the football field.  They had brought in a dance floor made of
large black and white tiles.  The band stage was lit up with blue lights and
the wall behind the bandstand was black with white floating music notes and
musical instruments.  There were a few tables scattered around but most people
were standing. 

When we stepped
onto the dance floor, I immediately scanned the crowd for Brand.

“I don’t see him,”
I told Tara, unable to hide my disappointment.

“Well, his loss. 
I’ve obviously got the hottest date here.”

“What are you
talking about?”

She looked around
the dance floor and whispered, “What guy isn’t lookin’ at you right now?”

When I looked back
at the crowd, I saw what she was saying.  It did seem like most of the guys,
whether they were with a date or not, were staring me up and down.  It was
unsettling.  I didn’t feel comfortable with all the attention.

One guy I had
never met before came up to us.  “Hey, aren’t you Brand Cole’s girlfriend?”