“Doing my best, Mrs. Dawson.” He curled his lips on one side, making his face equally intriguing as the action made it handsome. I let go of Gran and pulled a chair from the white-painted iron table before us. “Naturally, I can never live up to the standards you set during Laney’s visits.”
They shared a glance.
“You’ve been hiding him from me for too long, my dear,” Gran eventually chuckled and shot me a look that made clear I was to bring Leon every day from now on.
We chatted about school, the weather, and nothing in particular, the way we did every afternoon. But the time we spent together was a sanctuary, reminding me of my childhood, of rainy summer afternoons filled with stories and hot chocolate, of Gran’s garden, which had returned to being a wild patch of grass and emerging bushes since she had moved here.
My heart gave a small ache as I eyed her while settling down into a chair; Leon followed my lead and took a chair beside me. It would never again be like that. Her house was where Mom and I had moved to, and slowly, day by day, her spirit retreated from the rooms. That was why I came here every day. While Mom was busy with work, I had the time to visit and listen to her stories.
“You are pensive today,” she noted. Even with her thick glasses, there was no detail she didn’t miss.
Leon’s eyes were on me as I searched for something to say and failed.
“You know, Laney,” Gran began, the way she did when she started a new story, “Long before you were born, I knew a gentleman who looked just like Leon.” Leon stiffened beside me, his smile not as at ease as usual as we both eyed him.
“I look just like my grandfather when he was young.” Leon ran a tan hand through his hair, making it look as if sand was trickling through his fingers. His eyes darted to me, trying to read me.
Gran’s gaze followed his as if she was trying to figure something out.
And for a tense second, neither of us spoke.
Then, Gran leaned back in her wheelchair and sighed, eyes wandering back to Leon. “Dean Martin,” she said as if she finally figured it out. Both Leon and I stared at her. “You look just like Dean Martin.”
While Leon chuckled as if she’d made a joke, a mild shake going through his body, I wondered if there was something wrong with Gran’s memory.
She watched Leon as if trailing back into the past, and Leon got to his feet, excusing himself.
I watched him stroll up the ramp and in through the glass doors as Gran grabbed me by the hands in a sudden surge of energy.
“Don’t bring him here again.” She stared me in the eye, her own eyes suddenly bright and unclouded as if the frailness of old age had fallen off of her.
I started.
“And stay away from him, Laney.” She pulled me forward, forcing me to listen. “Do you hear me? Stay away.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. But I nodded, so in shock that I didn’t have another option.
And just as I wanted to ask why, Leon emerged from the doors, making his way back toward us.
Gran let go and slipped back into her wheelchair, her lips pulling into a benevolent smile.
“We were just talking, that it’s time for me to get back inside,” she cooed and folded her wrinkled hands in her lap. “Would you mind rolling me up the ramp, Leon?”
Chapter Three
On the way out, I waved goodbye to Mr. Frank while Leon, yet again, skipped past his door after he rolled Gran into her room.
Her words resonated with me the entire drive through the sparsely populated area between the nursing home and the main part of the village. Stay away.
Leon glanced at me from the side, both hands on the steering wheel, which was wrapped in dark leather so fine it didn’t seem to belong in his pickup. Returning his gaze, I studied him as he turned back and focused on the road.
No matter how hard I looked, there was nothing remotely dangerous about Leon Milliari. Not his dark eyes, which had become a refuge whenever the past threatened to catch up with us; or his arms, muscled and gentle, which protectively tucked me against him when we walked; or his humor…
Leon caught me staring. “You can as well tell me what’s on your mind,” he prompted.
I shook my head, and he gave me a half-smile, which expressed that I didn’t need to. At least for now.
“Your grandmother seems nice,” he changed the subject, making it hardly any better for me, but I nodded all the same for lack of anything to say. “I could come with you again tomorrow.”
For a heartbeat, I didn’t know what to tell him. That I didn’t want him to come? That wasn’t true. I did. But after Gran’s warning… The words of an old woman who was slowly losing it, or the words of someone with enough life experience to tell a rotten apple from a good one?
My hand flicked to my lips, and I chewed on my nails instead of thinking of something to say, letting generous silence spread between Leon and me. His driving style was cautious as if he knew that the images of last year were still haunting me. Not one rough break or one turn that he didn’t take with utter gentleness. Almost as if he was telling me, by the way he steered the car, that something like that would never happen when he was behind the wheel.
I didn’t need reminding. I didn’t need reassurance. I needed to forget already.
“You seem absent,” he murmured as he took the final turn to the main road back to Glyndon.
I shrugged. There were no words for what I was trying to ban from my memory. None—
The tires squealed as Leon stomped on the break just in time to avoid crashing with a sleek black sports car. My body strained against the seat belt, which almost cut off my air supply as it pressed against my chest and shoulder, and I braced myself against the glove box.
My heart jumped into my throat, and one by one, the images came back, letting the momentary pain fade to the background. The heap of scrap metal. The firemen and ambulances. And then there had been the dead—
I shot Leon a look, but his eyes were still on the street where the car had almost hit us, his breathing unnaturally fast. From the frozen expression on his face, I could tell that he remembered them, too. Even if we never spoke about it. Our little secret.
It had been the day of the accident that Leon had practically attached himself to me, becoming a willing protector, a friend far beyond what I’d known until then.
“That was close.” The words whistled from my lips as I managed to straighten in my seat and take a breath.
Leon simply nodded, his white-blond hair shifting into his forehead. He brushed it back with a shaky hand, revealing his eyes which—to my surprise—held not shock but raw anger. The expression made me cringe back into my seat.
Leon’s fingers, knuckles white, loosened their grip on the steering wheel the second he noticed the way I was eyeing him, and his face softened, returning to the familiar warm coffee brown.
“Good reflexes,” I praised, ignoring the sense that there was something more burdening him than that we’d just escaped probable death.
Mom wasn’t there when Leon dropped me off a couple of minutes later. He hesitated as I waved at him before closing the car door behind me.
“Is your mom home?” he asked cautiously through a lowered window—his tone one I’d heard less and less often over the past months from sunny Leon.
I leaned down to see his face and shrugged. “Probably still stuck at the office.” She was most of the afternoons, making me a devourer of microwaved lasagna and a friend of the quick-boiling veggies of the season.
Leon ran a hand through his hair and nodded. “Then let me help you make dinner.”
He didn’t wait for my response before he cut the engine and hopped out of the car, and I didn’t object, lingering images of the car crash a year ago giving me a migraine.
We walked up to the door in silence, and it was only when we were getting to work on the lasagna—enough for two, my mom was always prepared for Leon—that he asked, “You’re still having nightmares about it, a
ren’t you?” His voice was a golden thread through the haze that formed in my head at the memories of the street, the cars, the dead. Not bodies but whatever it was that left their bodies after they had been squished between the metal and concrete. I swallowed.
“You don’t need to answer.” He didn’t look up from the tomato under his knife.
I just watched him slice into the red flesh of the fruit, not remotely ready to answer. Knowing Leon, he already had gotten all the answers he needed from my momentary frozen silence.
Leon didn’t come to the nursing home with me the next day. On the way to Gran’s room, I noticed more staff in the corridors than usual, their conversations huffed as they all seemed to gravitate toward Mr. Frank’s room. I passed by the closed door, wondering what was going on, but noticed that one of the nurses turned into Gran’s room in a hurry.
Automatically, my pace quickened, and I made it to the room just in time to see the nurse taking Gran’s pulse and blood pressure.
As I entered, she gave me a wide smile, and I waited by the door until she finished taking the vitals before I joined them by the bed.
“Hello, bear,” Gran huffed, her skin a shade paler than usual.
“Is anything wrong?” I asked by way of greeting, unable to shake the feeling.
Gran smiled and shook her head, but the nurse took her hand and said, “Your grandmother is undergoing emotional stress. It’s not good for her heart.”
“My heart is just fine,” Gran said with a defiant smile.
Somehow I didn’t believe her.
The nurse pulled me aside, letting go of Gran’s hand, and whispered, “Mr. Frank died last night.”
A jolt of pity ran through my stomach as I glanced at Gran, who had rested her head back against the thick, white pillows and closed her eyes, the smile faded from her lips and her features relaxed except for the crease on her forehead.
Her heart wasn’t fine at all. It was weak. I shuddered. Mr. Frank had been her friend for many years, and now … he was gone. Overnight. Just like that.
I nodded my understanding at the nurse and joined Gran by her bed again, sitting on the edge of the mattress, and waited for the woman to retreat from the room.
“I’m sorry,” I told her and reached for her hand.
But Gran shook her head. “We are all old here,” she murmured, her voice filled with some humor, making my shudder run deeper.
“Not you,” I said, attempting to mirror her tone. “You’ll live forever.”
She nodded, her eyes bright and open as she lifted her head from the pillows.
“He’s in a better place now. And I’ll follow someday.” There was no humor in her voice though, and I could no longer keep up the smile.
“What happened?” I asked, hoping it would help her to speak about it. But she just shook her head.
“Let’s not talk about death, my dear. Life is too short to ponder the inevitable.” She sat up in her bed, using the triangle above her to straighten herself. “Have you ditched Dean Martin?”
Something in the lightness of her tone was disturbing. As if her friend’s death meant nothing to her—at least nothing that would make it worth mourning.
I shook my head.
Maybe the shock hadn’t set in yet. How could I possibly know—
She cocked her head, slowly enough to make it look almost comical, and gave me a long, measuring look.
I remembered her question. All night long, I had been wondering what she might have possibly meant by dangerous when she had warned me about Leon. Now that I was sitting there by her side, I somehow felt anxious to know and terrified of the answer all at once.
“Leon?” I squeezed her hand and glanced at the window on the other side of her bed. She had a beautiful view of the garden. “I have been wondering what you meant yesterday.”
She gave me a wistful look. “That’s a long story,” she sighed. “A story for another day when there is less going on.” Despite her light tone and playing down Mr. Frank’s death, a sudden tiredness had entered her body, making her eyelids droop.
“Today, I think I need to rest.” She raised her eyebrows an inch and leaned back into her pillows. “At least, that’s what Nurse Peters says.”
Before I could respond, her eyes had closed and her breathing became even.
For a while, I sat and held her hand while she slept, wondering what that long story was that she wasn’t ready to tell me today, until Nurse Peters entered the room with a soft knock to announce her presence and ushered me out, repeating what Gran had just said.
I didn’t object—only took a moment to kiss Gran’s forehead before I left, navigating through the still rushed movements in the corridor where now two men clad in dark uniform were rolling a stretcher with a covered body.
I gulped down a breath of air, avoiding the inclination to look left or right if I could help it. Last time I had seen a body, I had seen the spirit—or soul, whatever one wanted to call it—leave the mangled mortal remains. It couldn’t happen again. It wouldn’t. My heart was racing in my chest all the way to the yellow front door, my thoughts embedded in a haze like that day a year ago, since which I had been questioning my sanity.
I stormed down the ramp to the parking lot and didn’t slow down until I was halfway to my car. Only then did I dare take in my surroundings; the soft sunlight of the late afternoon, the small cloud framed in orange brightness there on the azure sky. The breeze was playing with my hair like invisible fingers, making a shiver run down my spine, and for some reason, I had the feeling as if I wasn’t alone—almost as if a set of eyes had been following from the moment I had seen the coroners. Out of instinct, I turned left and right now, almost at my car, trying to pinpoint the eerie presence that seemed to hover like a … I didn’t allow myself to think it. But I found nothing other than the nursing home behind me, windows reflecting the warm light, wide gardens stretching out to each side before the first neighboring building came into view, and the parked vehicles around me.
With sweaty hands, I fished for my keys and unlocked the car, sliding in and settling in the driver’s seat. There is nothing to be afraid of. Nothing. I kept chanting it like a mantra. Nothing. The way I had been chanting for months since the accident Leon and I had witnessed a year ago—
For a long moment, I just sat there, breathing in and out, trying to flush the memories from my mind and to calm myself enough to be able to drive. But each time the air filled my lungs, a hollow feeling accompanied it, and my hands flew to my chest to soothe the ache as I coughed it out again.
Until eventually, when dusk was already settling, my hands stopped shaking, and the danger of driving agitated seemed like less of a risk than the prospect of staying here after it turned dark.
Chapter Four
The reason the other girls avoided me wasn’t my excessively blue eyes but the fact that he was with me. Everywhere I went, he came. And they didn’t like it. Even more than they hated that he wasn’t with them.
I ducked the cold gaze of Avery Macmillan, Leon following behind as I vanished around a corner.
“One day, I’m going to kill them.” Leon grinned as he dropped his bag on the floor and settled next to it, resting his muscled forearms on his knees.
“You won’t,” I reminded him. “And they’re just giving me the evil eye because…”
I didn’t like to speak about it, the silent pact between Leon and me—
It was the same reason I hadn’t told him about Mr. Frank’s death and the strange sensation in the parking lot. It would have required bringing up the accident. And our pact with each other was put into place to prevent that exact thing from happening. Those months I had been chanting my mantra that there was nothing to fear out there had made me socially awkward in the worst of ways. Sometimes I even wondered why my other best friend, Jo, stuck with me. I understood Leon; he had seen what I had seen. But Jo … she had just patiently endured my phase.
“Because…” He turned his head, grinning
up at me as I leaned against the wall beside him, white-blond hair dancing into his eyes. Eyes like Italian coffee.
I shook my head and slid down beside him, savoring the coolness of the wall as I rested my back against it. His gaze met mine, and there was that look … that look I had been avoiding acknowledging for the past months—and the way it made me feel.
“You coming tomorrow?” he asked, his eyes resembling the dark roast that made you stay up all night.
With a flutter in my heart, I nodded. He wanted to drive to Towson to get some new books, and instead of telling me he won’t be there after my visit at the nursing home, he had invited me to come. It was an offer tempting enough. So I had said yes, knowing that Gran—herself an avid reader—would understand if I skipped one afternoon to spend between neatly packaged and beautifully covered stacks of paper. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” My voice remained—without a trace of what had been bothering all night—surprisingly humorous. So did his gaze. “If you promise me to be at your best behavior.”
Leon laughed … one of those deep laughs that gave away he was intending the exact opposite.
I peeked over my shoulder. The chatter of Avery’s minions had faded enough to tell me they had proceeded toward the gym.
Using Leon’s white sleeve to pull myself back up, I exhaled the stuffy air of Glyndon High and readied myself for another afternoon of tedium.
Leon walked me to the gym before he turned the corner to the boys’ locker room. As I watched him disappear, I couldn’t help but admit that I didn’t fully understand the nature of our relationship. Yes, Leon was with me all the time. Sometimes, my mother was surprised he didn’t insist on staying overnight—he hadn’t done that once. And yes, he was heartbreakingly handsome. And yet, there was nothing between us. For some reason, we enjoyed each other’s company more than that of the evil-eyed Avery Macmillans of this world.
Torn: A young adult paranormal romance (Breath of Fate Book 1) Page 2