“So where’s the birthday boy?” I ask.
Mom comes up before Logan can answer.
“Isn’t this terrific? And I knew you didn’t suspect a thing.” She jostles the sleepy baby on her hip.
“What’s with the not-so-subliminal message?” I glance up at the sign.
“Sorry.” Her lips pull back with regret. “I had the sign made up before Halloween when I thought you two were still together. I got a serious discount when I put in that huge order for Demetri’s party, so all the decorations were dirt cheap.”
“You’re forgiven.” Unlike Demetri.
“We won’t be staying long. I’d better mix.” She sprints off into the crowd, presumably to find her favorite Fem.
I turn and spot Logan off in the corner talking to Giselle and Ellis, still no sign of Gage. My gut says check upstairs, so I trot on up without hesitating.
I walk the long hall down to his room. It’s so peaceful up here, the noise from the party melts away with each step I take.
“Gage?” I give a gentle knock over his door and open it a notch.
He’s sitting on his bed with the wide-eyed look of surprise, his face white as Ezrina’s lab in the Transfer.
“Are you OK?” I step in and close the door behind me.
Gage launches a paper plane dead ahead at the basketball hoop hanging from his wall, and it lodges in the rim nestled with at least a dozen other downed airliners.
“It’s the birthday girl.” He flexes his dimples, but it looks forced.
My stomach pinches as I note the red wash of color in his eyes.
“What’s going on?” I ask tenderly as I make my way to his bed.
Gage dips his chin and looks at me from under his brows. He shakes his head just enough to let me know he isn’t going to share.
“I heard you baked me a cake.” I swallow down the tears. It’s clear I’ve hurt him, and I don’t need to ask how.
“Come here.” He pulls me in until we’re lying side by side. Gage presses a molten hot kiss over the top of my head as a searing tear baptizes me from above.
“
Gage
,” I whisper, looking at his tortured expression.
He gives a little laugh and wipes down his face with his T-shirt. Just past his shoulder I can see a journal with the pages ripped out, the word
Irresistible
on the title line and a poem just beneath that.
“Oh my, God,” it sings from me rife with disappointment. “You hate me so much you’re tearing up your poems.”
“I can never hate you, Skyla.” He brushes the back of his arm over his face a moment. “I talked to Dudley.”
Shit.
“I will strangle that Sector without blinking if he said something to upset you.”
A dry laugh bounces from his chest as he circles both his arms around my waist.
“Don’t hurt him. He didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know—at least not anything my gut didn’t tell me.”
I suck in a sharp breath.
“We’re good, Skyla. I promise,” he assures, in the most unassuring way possible.
“Did I do something that made you this upset, or will I?”
“No.” He shakes his head a little too eagerly, and I wonder if he’s telling the truth.
“It’s Logan isn’t it? We’re going to lose him.” The heavy weight of losing Logan covers me like a sheet of lead.
“Yeah, it’s Logan,” he whispers as if he were merely glomming onto the idea.
A knock erupts over the door, and Logan pokes his head in.
“Hey, they’re singing happy birthday to a picture of the two of you. Get downstairs, so we can feed the masses that ball of butter and sugar we worked on.” He eyes Gage’s arms around my waist, and his features soften. The smile melts from his lips as he gives a silent nod. Logan is acquiescing to the idea of Gage and me sharing a future.
“Just one second,” I say, and Logan closes the door. “Gage, I promise, everything is going to be OK.” Something in me knows this to be true. “I love you so much.” I press a kiss into his neck and squeeze his waist, tight.
“I love you, too. And you’re right, things will be OK. I shouldn’t let anything get to me.” He sinks a kiss over the top of my head. “Let’s get you some cake.”
We follow Logan downstairs, and the entire room bursts into
Happy Birthday
for a second time.
The enormous cake that Logan and Gage baked sits on the table—chocolate immaculately frosted with a piped blue border and scalloped edges. A giant heart is laid out with the words,
Happy Birthday, Skyla
scrolled across the top. Gage humbly left himself off the confection, and my heart bleeds for him. He’s so sweet, so perfectly thoughtful—always putting me first, always willing to sacrifice.
I glance over at Logan with his wide smile as he pulls me in, claiming me as his own if only for a moment.
Gage and his promise of forever, Logan and his all too brief
happily ever after
.
Then a thought comes to me. Why would Gage tear up a book of poems he wrote presumably for me if he were upset at Logan passing?
Unless, of course, he was upset with me all along. I hurt him, or I will in the future.
Why else would Gage Oliver lie to me on my birthday?
His dimples press in as he washes those navy lenses over my body, and I wonder.
***
The party dies down. Most of the people from school have drifted back to Ellis’s where the booze flows freely, and Emma doesn’t chase anyone around her living room telling them not to get any cake on the carpet. Mom and Tad took off, so did Marshall who stayed briefly enough to let me know he was going to “warm the sheets.”
Logan, Gage, and I are alone in the kitchen with nothing but the dim light on over the sink, the cake all gone except for an outline of frosting. I let them know I’m heading to Marshall’s to hitch a ride to Ahava, and now it’s so quiet, you’d think I had just suggested that Marshall and I were never coming back.
“You guys bake a mean cake,” I say, trying to fill the awkward silence that’s crept up on us.
“Gage mostly did it.” Logan gives his nephew an approving nod as if he’s suddenly morphed into his wingman.
“Oh.” I smile over at Gage and his delicious dimples. “I expect a cake like that every year.” I’m only half-teasing.
“You got it.” He gives an easy smile, and my heart soars. It felt like I was reeling him in like a four hundred pound fish. I’m exhausted from the effort but so very glad to have him devoid of any grief for once tonight. “I have your gift.” He practically mouths the words, and Logan takes this as his cue to leave.
“I’ll be out front.” Logan takes off toward the entry.
“You didn’t need to get me a gift.” It’s true. Gage has been my gift all along, and now I feel smaller than table salt for screwing so efficiently with his heart.
“Good, because I didn’t.” His dimples dig in deep, and I melt a little at the sight. “I made you something.” He pulls out a neatly folded piece of paper from his pocket and hands it to me carefully as if it were a newborn.
“What’s this?” Hopefully not directions to Devil’s Peak with instructions to jump off and forget my way to the Transfer.
I gently peel open the note and sigh with happiness as his neat, boldfaced printing greets me.
Skyla,
I love you more than you can ever know. You are more dazzling than the sun—you outshine every star. When God made you, all of creation smiled. Every moment we spend together, I treasure.
All of my heart forever,
Gage
Another piece of paper slips out from behind the note, a poem.
“I love your poems,” I say before I even read it.
Touching Eternity
The silent veil of tomorrow has slowly been revealed.
No more can the truth of life be ever so concealed.
In days to come we’ll sail the ocean
in search of Heaven’s sunny shore.
Your arms in mine, our lives entwined,
we’ll be lonely never more.
His words strain against my heart like a boulder. I look up at him, and my insides seize at how vexingly handsome Gage is. Gage is a god both inside and out.
“Thank you for this.” I press in a kiss over his cheek, and my lips twitch into his dimple. I turn to go then pause for a moment. “Hey, Gage?”
“Yeah?” he asks, plucking the cap off the gallon of milk in his hand.
“Who’s the one touching eternity?”
Gage looks at me a moment, his eyes riding over each of mine as if he were speaking to me through the silence. “We all are, Skyla.” He presses out a simple smile, but his dimples don’t show up for the party. “Every single one of us.”
***
Outside, Logan waits patiently, leaning against the Mustang. His buffed out frame stands dark as a shadow against the backdrop of night, and the visual unnerves me.
“I’m off.” I pop up beside him and give him a huge, rocking hug. “Thanks for everything you did tonight.”
“You’re welcome.” He warms me with his probing touch, and I soak it in. “I won’t have your gift for a little while. Lame, right? But I have a clue for you.” He reaches into his pocket and produces a long, silver chain with a shiny, mirrored heart attached to the base. I hold it out. Something’s inscribed across the front.
“Logan! You so
do
have my gift. I love it.” I crash my lips over his, and I’m not shy about it. I glance back down at the watery heart in the palm of my hand and read the pretty script font. “
Whitehorse
.” I look up at him puzzled. “Whitehorse?”
“Ignore the writing.” He pulls his cheek to the side. “They had it marked down because it had some goofy inscription.”
I belt out a laugh that echoes into the night Ezrina-style, a precursor of who I might become if my mother decides to withhold her mercy from Ezrina and Nev.
“Bullshit,” I say, blinking into him.
“OK, you got me.” He presses his fingers into my ribs, and I jump with a laugh lodged in my throat. “You’re a smart girl, you can figure it out. But a part of me hopes you won’t, so I can give it to you like a proper gift.”
“Fine. I won’t lose sleep over it.” But I think we both know I will.
Logan helps me slip the necklace over my head.
“Goodnight, princess.” He flexes a kiss across my lips.
My stomach bottoms out. “I remember you called me that for the first time at the Falls of Virtue.”
“You do remember.” Logan grows still. His eyes round out as he takes me in. “I remember that day, too, Skyla. I think I’ve replayed it in my mind a thousand times. It got me through a few rough patches when you were with—” He takes in a breath and gives a long blink. “Goodnight, Skyla. Call me when you get home. I don’t care how late it is. I just want to know you’re safe.” He pushes in a hard kiss over my lips as if he wanted to do so much more but was holding back.
Logan helps me into the driver’s seat and watches as I pull out onto the road before waving me off.
I get as far as the guard shack that barricades the entry to the Paragon Estates and pull over under the streetlamp, examining the beautiful heart one more time as it catches the moonbeams and makes them shine.
Whitehorse.
I turn the heart around, and there’s another inscription on the back.
Skyla, You’ll always be my princess.
I rub my thumb over it and love it as if I were loving Logan himself.
A tear rolls down my cheek as I pull out onto the Paragon highway.
I’m Logan’s princess.
I wonder just how much longer I’ll get to be Logan’s anything.
***
Marshall’s home is dark as boiled tar with not even the porch light to illuminate the goliath property. Shadows bleed around the Mustang as I get out and run over to the gothic estate. A strangled darkness looms around me. It’s as if evil has filtered in like a necrotic fog. Quite the opposite of what I would expect on a night I’ll visit my mother.
I pound over the door for three minutes straight, but Marshall doesn’t answer. I wonder if he forgot about our arrangement? Worst case scenario, he’s gone back in time with
Marlena
. To hell with waiting for me to choose him. A god like Marshall gets to choose. Just who do I think I am, anyway? Just thinking about him locked in my faux enemy’s arms makes me want to gag. She can’t be that great if somewhere down her unfortunate lineage, she produces Chloe Bishop.
The knob spins, and the door floats ajar. Not exactly the come-inside-and-make-yourself-at-home vibe I was hoping for, but I’ll bite. I step in and close the door. It’s dark as hell, and my heart starts in on a death rattle.
“Marshall?”
As soon as my eyes adjust, I notice a tiny light streaming from upstairs and make my way up. He did mention something about his bed. But, then again, Marshall is rife with sexual psychobabble. I never know what to believe.
Sure enough the door to his room is open, and the flicker of dozens of candles, enough to burn down all of Paragon, brighten the gap of the doorframe. I step in, and it looks like a honeymoon suite. Headless daises by the bucketful are strewn around the vicinity, rose petals by the pound, fat peonies the size of my head dot the floor, the bed. It smells like heaven, fresh as a spring meadow with the sweet scent of lilacs prominent in the air.
“Um? Marshall?” He mentioned something about getting in his bed to be exact. “I’m getting in bed,” I sing. I flick off my shoes and pull back the plush comforter, a luxurious heavy brocade with every shade of chocolate and gold interwoven throughout.
God
—Marshall’s finally done it. I slip beneath the navy satin sheets, cold as a glacier, and slip my way to the center. He’s successfully landed me on his mattress. How ridiculous is this? I’m the one with the birthday, not him. I call out to him again, but he doesn’t respond, so I change my tune.
“Master?” I call out seductively. God only knows I’m speaking his language now.
A shadow darkens the doorway—Marshall in all his Sector glory. He’s wearing something I can’t quite make out, a white shirt of some kind completely unbuttoned, and jeans I think.