Wildalone (43 page)

You are the first woman he has truly loved
. Everyone had said it—Jake, Silen, even Carmela in her own bubbly way, with hints that Rhys was finally
in love after almost falling for someone years ago (as if a girl like Elza would have settled for “almost”).

So he did exist, after all, the boy who had broken the ethereal witch's heart. He must have met her in Bulgaria, on that trip he wouldn't talk about. Maybe, because of him, she had decided to go to Princeton. Then, for reasons I still didn't know, things between them hadn't worked out. They had ended up in that fight. The accident. To bring him back from death, she had become something believed to exist only in legends.
Wildalone
. And he, what had
he
become?

According to Giles, the Greek daemon was a toned-down version of Dionysus. Halfway between man and god. Sensual. Temperamental. Prone to madness and even violence. But I didn't want to think of Rhys as inherently dangerous. Silen's description fit him better:
A beautiful creature, virtually indistinguishable from any mortal man
. Did this mean that he fell in love the way mortal men did? That, despite immortality, his heart could still be broken?

Because there was also Jake. Undeniably, unquestionably human. Jake, who was so much more like me—not a demigod but a living person, with fears and flaws and a sense of his own imperfection. Now he needed an answer. My long overdue decision: him or his brother.

Unfortunately, three months of being with someone did make a difference. And with everything bad from those months now flipped on its head—Rhys turning out to be the victim, not the villain—I couldn't imagine leaving him.

I couldn't imagine not wanting Jake, either. People probably lived with this all the time. Dating someone and feeling a connection with someone else too. Having brief fantasies. Uncontrollable crushes. The occasional stolen peck on the cheek. It didn't mean that I would act on any of it, or that Rhys should know. He had said it himself:
Knowing always changes everything. Be with me this way.

These were still the only words on my mind when I woke up the next day, having slept for twelve straight hours.
Be with me . . .

Amazed at having waited this long, I ran to his house, but its emptiness
hit me from the start: the front door gaped open, as if the place had been abandoned for good. Then it occurred to me that this could be an oversight and Rhys might still be asleep (if daemons slept at all). I went up to his bedroom, knocked—no answer. Just one sound as I walked in: that of falling water.

He stood under the shower with his clothes on, hands pressed against the wall, head bent down as low as the neck would have it. The water poured over him—the indigo of the jeans even darker when wet, the tank top vibrant with the soaked yellow of lemons, and everything else around him white, blindingly white—

Then he turned. Saw me. Reached to stop the water without taking his eyes off mine. His face was ash-pale, but I didn't wait for him to ask.

“Rhys, I know the truth and it hasn't changed anything.”

He took me before I had finished the sentence. Took me with his arms, with his mouth, lifted me against the wall, kissing me all over until the space around us vanished and our bodies collapsed into each other through the clothes, oblivious to anything else, wet, exploding, aching.

When he finally slowed down, I realized we had ended up completely dry.

“How did you do this?!”

“I didn't want you to catch a cold.”

“Yes, but that's not what I asked.”

“You're right. No more secrets.” He glanced down—the floor was still wet. Suddenly all the water rose up in a swirl. Accelerated. Began to spin so fast my eyes couldn't keep up . . . until it turned bright red and splashed back down, in the shape of a giant poppy whose petals burst for a second, spilled into a million drops, then vanished through the tiles, leaving them dry and white again.

“You look horrified. Should I not do these things in front of you?”

“I just . . . I need some time to get used to them.” Although I wasn't sure that I ever would, or how to even go about it.

“What did Jake tell you?”

I summed it up in a few words.

“That's more or less it. The rest is just details.”

“I should probably know those too.”

“None of it is good, Thea. I belong to her once a month, that's all.”

“It's just sex though, isn't it?”

“It's whatever she wants. She can do anything to my body—that's the deal.”

The thought of her even touching him made me feel nauseated. “Were you ever in love with her?”

“Me? Are you serious?” His laughter shattered against the tiles, as that whirl of water had done a moment earlier. “If I were, she wouldn't need this damn arrangement.”

“The arrangement wasn't for her sake. She saved your life.”

“I never asked to be saved. Besides, she was the reason I had that accident in the first place. So trust me, I'd do anything—anything—to be free of her.”

“That's not how it looked.”

“How what looked?”

“You saw me standing there, by the tree. And you didn't even stop.”

“Stop? Do you have any idea what would have happened if she'd seen you?”

“I've read the legends.”

“You've read nothing. This woman is vile; she gets high on killing and would have ripped you to pieces if I hadn't—”

“Rhys, she is my sister.”

“Don't ever count on this, okay? She may have been your sister once, but now there's nothing human left in her. Nothing!”

Silen had said the same thing:
as far from being human as possible . . . a place from which she can never return . . .

We went to the bedroom and he had me lie down, rolling over on his stomach next to me.

“Ask me anything. Anything else you want to know.”

I already knew the most important detail, but part of me hoped he would deny it: “What would happen if you stopped seeing her?”

“That's not an option. The rules are simple: I don't object. I don't make her wait. I don't refuse anything.”

“And if you do?”

“I tried once. It wasn't pretty.” The rage in his eyes filled in the rest for me. “Which is how I discovered the only remedies that worked: alcohol and women. Drinking washed everything from my mind. And the women, they—” He shook his head, as if the irony of it was beyond him. “They compensated for everything she was doing to me. So absurdly, unbelievably willing. All I had to do was pick any one of them—or more than one, whatever—and it was a done deal.”

I could see now why my refusal to become the next “done deal” when we first met had exasperated him. “And all this made going to Elza easier?”

“Much easier.”

“How?”

“It just did.”

“I need to know, Rhys.”

“After a few women at Ivy, one more on the golf course doesn't seem such a big deal.”

“I see. So you just . . . added me to the mix?”

“You?” He glanced up at the ceiling and smiled. “You were something else entirely. My eyes fell on you in that fog and the world was suddenly at peace. A peace I had never imagined. I knew—before you had said anything, before I had even touched you—that all I wanted was to be near you.”

“Even though I looked so much like her?”

“Or more so because of it. I had no idea the two of you were related, of course, but . . . I was drawn to her too, at the beginning. She had that same air of gorgeous, unspoiled innocence that just gets under my skin. Except in your case it's genuine.”

“And hers wasn't?”

He chose not to answer. With incidents like the Nude Olympics, “innocent” probably wasn't the best way to describe Elza.

“Did it honestly never occur to you that I might be related to her?”

“Come on, who would have thought? You're fifteen years apart, and she had never said anything about a baby sister. I assumed the resemblance was just a coincidence, some Eastern European look I apparently had a
soft spot for. By the time I found out, it was too late. I was already hooked.”

“How did you find out?”

“When Jake said your last name at the dinner here. I guess he had seen your recital posters.”

No wonder Rhys had driven me to Forbes that night without a word.
Nice to meet you, Thea Slavin.
My name had become Jake's secret revenge—on his brother, for stealing his girl.

“That's when the hell began. I tried to stay away from you, and couldn't. Then I made a pact with myself: we would be together, but not have sex until you knew the truth. Of course, I almost blew it. And I still couldn't bring myself to tell you.”

“Why not?”

“Because I thought you'd be devastated. What was I supposed to say?
By the way, babe, I'm banging your sister once a month?”

“Sure. Just like you told me you could see other girls.”

“I never said this.”

“No, only that you were not a one-woman guy.”

“Because I'm not, Thea. There will always be one other woman in my life. A woman I detest.”

I was probably going to detest her too. Once a month, on every full moon.

“And what about everything else?”

“What else?”

“The guys in the jeep.”

“I'm done with that. The night when you showed up at my house, I could have killed Evan for the nonsense he blurted out in front of you. I was angry at him. At myself. At the whole fucking world. Then things got even worse, when we had that fight about Carnegie.”

“I still don't understand why you said you couldn't come. The full moon wasn't until Saturday.”

“Guilt, basically. How was I supposed to face you and your parents, knowing where I'd be the following night?”

“But you came to the concert anyway. I found your note.”

“I had to hear you play, one way or another. The plan was to watch from a distance, then drive back here and see Elza on Saturday. It worked—almost.”

“Almost?”

“I didn't expect to be jealous of my own brother.”

“You. Jealous of Jake.”

“No, not that way. I trust Jake more than I trust myself. But I envied his freedom. To spend the evening with you like a normal guy, the kind of guy you need—none of the stuff I come packaged with.”

I tried not to think about what I needed, or how things might have turned out if I had ended up with Jake. Rhys was quiet too. High on the wall above us, the painted look-alike sat in peace, guarding his own silence.

“My Greek Art professor mentioned daemons once.”

His eyes traced mine up to the canvas. “And?”

“It didn't sound so bad. Definitely supernatural, but not a malevolent spirit. At least not in the Greek myths.”

“A hopeful start. What else?”

“Unmatched intelligence and talent for the arts. Is this why you play piano so well?”

He laughed. “I like to think that my playing wasn't terrible to begin with. But you should hear my brother. Apparently, one can be fantastic on the keys even without demonic powers.”

Everyone who knew Jake had made it clear what a superb pianist he was—Ferry, now Rhys, and even my no longer human sister who, years ago, had called him “Miracle Hands.” But the last thing I wanted was to confirm Jake's phenomenal playing for myself. It was safer for everyone if I never did.

“Speaking of my brother, I need to call him. I lost my temper yesterday.” He still didn't know that I had overheard their fight. “Wait for me here; I'll be right back.”

The call must have been quick because he returned right away. “It's all sorted out. Jake will be here in an hour.”

“Did you tell him?”

“Tell him what?”

“That you and I made up.”

“No. Why ruin the surprise? He can find out once he gets here.”

We went downstairs, to a kitchen with so many cabinets it seemed equipped to feed all of Princeton. He poured me a glass of wine, but I barely took a sip. Jake—about to walk in, any moment. What would I say to him? How would I look him in the eyes?

Meanwhile, Rhys kept telling me stories about his brother as a little boy: Jake having his first piano lesson at age five; Jake falling from a tree and breaking two fingers, then crying that he would never be able to play again; Jake getting scared by a pigeon that had come in through one of the French doors and flown out of the piano when he began playing . . .

Neither of us had heard his steps. I felt someone watching me—leaning quietly against the door, caught in the darkness of his own thoughts, as always.

My hand began to shake as I lowered the glass on the countertop.
Clink.
The touch of stem against granite. Rhys turned at the sound, saw his brother, and rushed to give him a hug.

“Welcome home! Sorry for what I said yesterday; I can be such an ass sometimes.”

There was no answer, just a nod.

Rhys slipped his arm around me. “I've never been happier and I owe it all to my brother. We should celebrate.”

Finally, a word dropped from Jake's lips: “We?”

“You, me, and Thea. But we'll skip Ivy this time. The real party is off campus.”

“You two can go. I'll see you in the morning.”

“That's a joke, right? It's Saturday! Besides, I want you with me on the best night of my life.”

Jake continued to look at Rhys, and his face began to soften up. “What time are we leaving?”

“Nine or so. After dinner.”

“I'm not hungry.”

“Jake, come on! I said I'm sorry about yesterday. Tell me how to prove it to you and I will.”

“You don't need to prove anything. It's been a long day and if you want me out later, you'll have to eat without me. Just come get me when you're ready to go.”