Authors: Temple West
“Y’know,” he said, pulling me away from the flood of students, “if we never fought, we’d never be convincing as a couple. Maybe this was well-timed. Come on,” he said before I could respond. “We need to talk.”
He let go of me and walked in the opposite direction of the lunch tables, stopping in front of a group of pine trees.
“I’m not your boyfriend,” he began bluntly. “I’m your bodyguard. But I’m something else, too.”
“And what’s that?” I tried to load my voice with sarcasm to hide the fact that I would rather have been anywhere other than where I was, trying once again not to cry. I could see Trish and Meghan staring at us from the lunch tables. Actually, a lot of people were staring. Adrian tended to attract attention.
He moved so that he blocked my view. “I’m your
friend
,” he said, meeting my gaze evenly. “You may not believe it, but I enjoy being around you. It’s not an inconvenience, in any way.” He put his hands on my arms. “I have a few more things to say and I want to make sure you hear them. And to make our audience happy, I want you to hug me.”
I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to touch him, because I wanted to touch him.
“Cait,” he said in that stupid, soft way of his.
I hated that he had that effect on me. I stepped forward and put my arms around his waist woodenly, staring straight at his chest. He rolled his eyes, but didn’t try to make me relax.
“One,” he began, resting his chin on the top of my head and holding me tightly. “I’m sorry you got involved in all this. You’re right, you didn’t ask for it, and it’s not fair. Two: I’m
not
sorry I got to know you. You make me feel more human, and that means everything, to me. Three, and please listen to this: There is nothing wrong with being afraid. I’m afraid every time I leave you at your doorstep and drive away. I’m afraid every time I fall asleep that whoever is on watch isn’t going to be paying enough attention.”
He tilted his face down and lowered his voice. “Fear is a good thing, sometimes. It keeps us aware of what’s important.” He smiled a little, but only a little. “Four: If the circumstances were different and I ever actually saw you in my Christmas present, I’d be in big trouble. Five: According to the chore chart, we’re supposed to kiss today.”
We actually had made the chore chart—he’d gone for the gold star stickers. Although we’d somehow managed to conveniently “forget” that Mondays were smooch days. He never brought it up, so I didn’t, either. Except for now, of course.
He searched my eyes for a moment, then leaned down, hovering half a centimeter away, giving me the chance to pull back.
But I didn’t.
So he kissed me.
Even while it was happening, I wondered if I could count this as my first “real” kiss—because in the end, it wasn’t really real. It was soft and slow and perfect and it sucked because I wanted this, but not like
this
. He pulled me tighter against him and for a moment I stopped caring about whether it was right or wrong or real or fake, because it sure as hell felt
good
. The relationship may have been staged, but my full-body shiver was a product of natural chemistry, not a choreographed show for the benefit of the admiring public.
Speaking of the public, over the sound of my racing heart, I heard a few scattered claps and even a “You show him, Mystic!” from what had to be Trish. I should’ve felt embarrassed, and I probably would in a matter of moments, but for now, all unnecessary brain function had been shut off to divert power … elsewhere.
He paused, breathing deeply. I looked up and caught his eye and in that moment I knew, absolutely, that despite whatever bullshit story we had about ourselves,
this
was real. This kiss, this moment. And I didn’t know when we’d get another one like it. I slid my hand up his chest and stood on my toes, tilting my face. His eyes turned, burning silver as he threaded his fingers through my hair and pulled me in again. Without thinking, I bit his lower lip softly between my teeth. His breath caught and he turned sharply away, his arms an iron vise around my waist.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, panicking. “I wasn’t thinking. Are you okay?”
For a long moment, he said nothing. Then, he turned slowly, hair tickling my cheek, and placed a light kiss underneath my jaw. Another full-body shiver radiated out from where his lips met my skin, and I could feel every muscle in his body tense in response to my reaction. It was another long moment before either of us dared to breathe.
“I’m okay,” he mumbled finally. “But you should probably not do that again.”
“Yeah,” I squeaked, blushing. “Okay,”
He deliberately stood up straight, his eyes pinched closed. When he opened them, they were his normal, multihued gray. He smiled lightly, though his arm was still tight around my waist. “So—are we friends again?”
I couldn’t keep an insane little giggle from escaping. Friends? Well, if that’s how “friends” made up, then hell yeah—“We’re friends.”
Adrian rolled his shoulders, letting out a deep breath, before glancing at the picnic tables. “I think pretty much everyone was watching. You want to go eat lunch in the truck?”
I leaned my forehead against his chest. Cue daily embarrassment.
“I take that as a yes.”
I nodded into his shirt. He laughed and turned so that we were headed toward the parking lot. I could feel dozens of eyes following us from the picnic tables as I tried not to trip. Maybe going to his truck was a bad idea. Maybe they thought we were going to continue our little performance where they couldn’t see us. I shouldn’t care, but I did, but I also didn’t. We rounded the corner of the building, away from prying eyes, and settled in the truck. Adrian turned the radio on and we listened to classic rock as we ate.
How could I go from being angry enough to slap him in the face one moment to mushy and breathless the next? I had
allowed
him to kiss me. I shouldn’t have, but I did, and I liked it way, way too much, and it was going to kick in soon that we might be friends again, but that’s all we were, and then this was all going to hurt.
We continued to munch silently on our lunches. I swallowed a bite of my sandwich.
“I owe you an apology,” I said, finally working up the courage to say it out loud.
Adrian stared at me blankly. “For what?”
I toyed with stem of the apple in my lunch bag. “For blowing up at you this morning. You were just trying to help. I just get pissed off so quickly and take it out on whoever’s near—and you happen to be near most of the time.”
He took a bite of his own apple, looking thoughtful. “Y’know, I feel like we spend a lot of time apologizing to each other.”
I barked a laugh, feeling suddenly tired. “We do, don’t we?”
“For what it’s worth, apology accepted—if you accept my apology for blowing up right back at you. I know I keep to myself, but there’s a lot going on with the Council and my family that I don’t agree with, and there’s nothing I can do about it. So—I get it.”
“Apology accepted,” I said, smiling. “Oh, shoot.”
“What?”
“Well, you might need to accept another apology. I promised my aunt we’d go to the ranch after school. She said she and Joe miss me.”
He sighed dramatically. “I don’t think I can forgive that.”
I snorted. “If you can’t forgive that, our cover story is headed for some serious trouble.”
He smiled. “I’d be happy to come over. Besides,” he said, tossing his apple core into his empty lunch bag, “I like your house. It’s all cozy and full of people.”
I frowned. “Don’t more people live at your house than mine?”
He stretched, putting his hands behind his head with a sigh. “Technically. But the de la Maras live their separate lives in their separate rooms. Julian’s always off somewhere, Lucian is barely housebroken, Mariana’s devoted to Dominic, and Dominic is devoted to his work. Our concept of family is pretty much nonexistent.”
I let that process in my brain for a long moment, then said, “I think Lucian really looks up to you.” Adrian gave me a puzzled look. “We had a nice conversation while you and Julian were catching up the other day.”
“I bet that was interesting.”
I searched for the right words. “It was … educational. He mentioned some of the things he liked, and you were on his list. He said you told him stories.”
Adrian looked embarrassed. “Lucian has trouble sleeping. It’s like he doesn’t know how to shut his brain off. He actually stayed awake so long that he fell into a coma. We didn’t realize when he went into his room at night, he just stared at the ceiling until someone came to ‘wake’ him up. But if I tell him a story, he relaxes enough to let his mind wander and eventually drift off. One time he had a dream about the story I told him, and now he gets excited to fall asleep, so he can dream.”
“He seems like a good kid,” I said, remembering the way he’d first introduced himself. Yes, he’d been upside down, but he’d shaken my hand and said, “How do you do?” very politely.
Adrian closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the seat. “I don’t know about ‘good,’ but he’s definitely a kid. Doesn’t know right from wrong, has almost no sense of morals or responsibility, doesn’t understand the concept of private property. He can’t be around other kids because he’d just take things from them that he wanted, and if they resisted, he’d probably get violent. And that would be bad for so many reasons.”
“He did mention that blood was one of his favorite things.”
Adrian shook his head. “He drinks more than the rest of us combined. We’re trying to get him off of it gradually, but he’s having a hard time adjusting back to this dimension.”
I remembered him holding up his hands and looking frustrated, saying that his body got in the way. “I don’t know if he really understands the concept of love,” I told Adrian, “but if any part of him is capable of it, he loves you.” I wasn’t trying to make him feel better, it was just the truth. Well, I guess I
was
trying to make him feel better—but it was also the truth.
The bell rang and we climbed out of the truck. Adrian walked me to my fifth-period class, hugged me once, tightly, and let me go. I watched him walk away, a rush of contradicting feelings flooding through me. Finally, I headed into my own classroom.
This would be so much easier if he were unattractive, or boring, or dumb.
But he wasn’t. He was incredible.
The paralysis was familiar. The setting was not.
I struggled to open my eyes, and when I did, a harsh white light glared down at me from overhead. I squinted, and realized I could move my neck, but everything else was nonresponsive. Whatever I was lying on, it was white, cold, and looked similar to the marble in Adrian’s foyer. An altar, maybe? It didn’t seem to extend much beyond the length or width of my body. Beyond that, everything was dark. I was also wrapped in my mother’s quilt. And—as far as I could tell—I wasn’t wearing anything
other
than the quilt, which scared the shit out of me.
Something tickled the arch of my foot, and if I’d had control over my reflexes, I would have jumped or kicked, but I couldn’t. It scuttled around to my ankle and it felt like it had legs—
Lots of them.
I knew it was a dream. But I could
feel
the quilt around me and the marble beneath me and the thing crawling slowly and intentionally up my leg and it might have been a nightmare, but it was real. This was too clear, too vivid, to be anything else.
Something moved out of the corner of my eye. It was a cockroach, and it crawled across the marble toward my shoulder. The thing on my leg wriggled its way under the fabric and over my knee. The cockroach disappeared into my hair, its antennae flitting against the back of my neck. I let out an involuntary sob, and then bit my tongue, breathing heavily as tears spilled down my cheeks.
When I opened them again, worms were crawling over the sides of the marble. Huge, fat, mucous-covered worms. I had no idea how they were climbing up, but they were, in waves. The centipede thing had made it past my thigh and was currently wriggling across my stomach. I was going to puke.
“You know, Caitlin, you’re not being very helpful,” my mother’s disembodied voice said from the darkness. I whimpered as a worm slid between my toes. “Why don’t you want to help?”
“
What do you want from me?
” I screamed, and then closed my mouth immediately as a centipede scuttled over my jaw, running across my lips. I shook my head violently and it flew off.
From the bright light overhead, a dark shape slowly descended. I watched in horror as it neared to within three feet and stopped, suspended by hundreds of IV tubes. Finally, I could see that it wasn’t an
it
—it was my mother, wrapped in a copy of the same green velvet quilt that was tucked around me. She was also quite obviously dead. As I watched, patches of her hair fell off and landed on my face. I shook them off violently, but strands got stuck to my eyelashes.
Her jaw moved to form words. “You let my bones change, Caitlin. You let this happen.”
“You’re not my mom,” I whimpered as the cockroaches began flitting against my arms and crawling against my rib cage. A legion of centipedes had found their way under the quilt and were congregating over my stomach restlessly.
“You let this happen,” she said again, inhumanly loud and deep in the darkness. “You let the worms eat my body.”
“I was sixteen!” I screamed up at her. “What was I supposed to do?”
The plain, milky eyes flickered white and burned down in my direction.
“Feed me.”
The bugs went into a frenzy. I clenched my teeth together so hard my jaw ached. I would not scream.
“You let the worms and the beetles and the crawling things destroy me. And now it’s your turn.”
She smiled at me, sick and dead.
And then her body disintegrated in a flood of centipedes, beetles, cockroaches, and worms. I barely had time to close my mouth before they landed, covering me in a seething mass so thick I couldn’t breathe.