“Then let me say it loud and clear. I’m not going anywhere.”
We glared at each other, facing off. “Fine,” I snarled. I moved to roll up my sleeping bag. There would be no more sleep this morning, so what was the point of trying? Asher moved to help me, and my anger drained when our fingers brushed. Last night had begun so differently.
I sighed. “This can’t happen again.”
I loved Asher, but I wouldn’t be like my mother, making excuses for someone who hurt me. Not for Asher. Not for anyone. That kind of life chiseled the soul out of you, one small chip at a time.
“It won’t. I swear to you it won’t.” His fierce promise soothed my raw nerves, and I pretended not to notice when he shifted out of reach. The expression on his face smoothed out as he stood as if he’d discovered a new focus. “Remy, I think we should give each other some space,” he announced calmly.
The punches kept coming. I rocked back on my heels, crouching at his feet. The air fled my lungs, and my mouth dropped open. “You want to break up?” I sounded devastated, even to my ears.
“No! God, I’m making a mess of this.” He rolled his shoulders back to ease the tension.
I froze. “I think you had better explain what this is because I’m thinking you just said that you’re breaking up with me.”
He grabbed my sleeping bag off the floor, tucking it under his arm. “No, I said we should step back to give each other space. I know you’ve felt the tension lately.”
He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, and that hurt. I guessed that he’d been thinking about this for a while because when he said space, he meant space from me, and I thought I heard a whisper of anticipation in his voice.
“Semantics,” I said.
“That’s not fair, Remy!”
I squeezed my eyes shut and threw up my mental walls to block him out. I’d been fighting for him for months. Patiently waiting for him to turn around and see me there. The long campaign had worn me down to nothing. Like him, I didn’t want to feel anything anymore. I didn’t want to be hurt when he rejected me again because this ongoing agony was worse than any wound I’d taken on.
“Fine,” I said in a flat voice. “I’ll give you space.”
He watched me with a frustrated expression as I pulled a change of clothes from my bag and blocked me when I tried to pass him.
“Please, don’t sound like that,” he pleaded. “I still love you, Remy.”
I stared at his chest through burning eyes, as I clutched my clothes. I needed to cry, and I didn’t want him to see me doing it. That would be the final nail in the coffin of my humiliation. “But not the same way, right? Because you changed and I didn’t.” I shrugged and swallowed past the lump in my throat. “It’s okay, Asher. We couldn’t keep on the way we have been. Something has to give, right?”
I hadn’t expected that thing to be our relationship.
A sob rose up, and I shoved past Asher and ran to the bathroom. An icy cold shower did nothing to make me feel better, but it covered the noise. I didn’t come out until I’d shoved all the pain down inside me, and I wished I’d never learned to cry again.
Asher had ripped my heart from my chest and tossed it to the elements. The months of shutting up and putting up had taken their toll. Asher’s bad temper, Lucy’s growing depression, and dealing with the battering of guilt and disappointment had worn me out. Loving people sucked.
As we packed up to leave the empty house, Lucy noticed the bruises on Asher’s throat and the scratches on his wrist from my fingernails. I hadn’t healed him, and he hadn’t asked. He wore the marks like a punishment. I told Lucy that we were taking a break. She hugged me and didn’t push me to say more.
In the truck, I stared out the passenger window, blind to the passing scenery and hyperaware of every move Asher made as he drove. Conversations we’d had replayed through my head. His promises to love me forever no matter what. After Dean, I’d had walls six feet thick, but Asher had broken through them.
Everyone you care about hurts you in the end.
I’d thought I’d left that life lesson behind when I fell in love with Asher, but some things never changed.
Hours and minutes blended together as we drove to San Francisco. Asher ignored me except when he needed to ask me a direct question. I ignored him, except when I had to answer. And Lucy ignored both of us after her attempts to get us to talk crashed and burned.
By the time we arrived on the outskirts of San Francisco, the inside of the truck felt like a morgue where we all kept watch over the slow death of my relationship with Asher. His tension had ratcheted up until he spoke in grunts when Lucy gave him directions. I guessed it was because we’d returned to the place where he’d been kidnapped by my grandfather’s allies. How would Asher react when we arrived in Pacifica, where he’d been tortured?
Lottie had found us a furnished three-bedroom house not too far from San Francisco State University, and the key had been hidden behind a planter. Living near the college would allow us to blend in with the students in our area. The garage took up the first floor with the living quarters on the second floor, and the second-story windows faced the street. The huge bay windows offered a view of the sparkling ocean and wind-whipped mounds of sand. A stray person here and there dared to walk the beach, leaning into the biting winter wind. This type of view had soothed me in Maine, but here in California, it did nothing.
I turned from the windows, more lost than I’d ever been.
“Don’t you want to explore?” Lucy asked. She wore a look of concern, but I couldn’t make this better for her.
Asher stood in the doorway to the kitchen, watching me with eyes that begged me for something. I couldn’t begin to guess what he wanted from me, and I was so bone-weary. Normal girls got to nurse their bruised hearts in private, but I’d been forced to sit by Asher for hours on end, gluing myself together until this moment when I could finally escape. There wasn’t a lot of space to be had on a road trip.
I avoided his gaze. “I’m tired. I’ll explore later. When do you guys want to begin scouting?”
“Tonight after we all get some rest,” Asher said. “I think you and Lucy should follow Alcais to Pacifica, and I’ll track Franc at his house in the Presidio.”
He thought I would argue. I could hear his expectation in the belligerence he’d injected into his tone. I merely nodded. “Fine.”
I turned away to escape him. At the first empty bedroom, I entered and closed the door behind me. I flipped the blinds down to block out the sun, stripped down to my underwear, and crawled into the bed. And then I shoved my face into the pillow so the others wouldn’t hear me as I cried myself to sleep.
Sometime later, I woke in the unfamiliar room. My head felt as if someone had stuffed it with cotton. The house seemed silent as if Lucy and Asher slept, too, and I wondered what time it was. I dressed and wandered into the kitchen, where I devoured an apple to fill the yawning pit in my stomach. The hallway off the living room led to what I presumed were bedrooms. The doors were closed, though, and I didn’t want to wake anyone when I wasn’t ready for company yet. The clock on the microwave said it was just after six, which meant I’d slept for five hours.
The water in the bathroom was hot, and I gratefully inhaled the steam of my first heated shower in weeks. After cleaning up, I dressed in dark jeans and a black T-shirt. My bare feet made no noise on the wood floors as I padded into the kitchen, while drying my waist-length hair with a towel. I froze in the doorway when I noticed Asher eating a bowl of cereal at the kitchen table. Much as I wanted to turn around and walk back into my room, I couldn’t. We’d come here to find my father, and Asher was part of that effort, despite the pain it would cause me.
Faking calm I didn’t feel, I folded into the chair farthest from him. He studied me with sad eyes, seeing the evidence of my tears in the swollen, bloodshot eyes and pale cheeks that I’d noticed in the mirror.
“Are you ready for tonight?” I asked to distract him
.
His brows rose in suspicion. “Worried I’m going to go postal when I see Franc?”
I lifted one shoulder. “He brings out the worst in people.”
Asher pushed his bowl away. “I’ll be fine. What about you? Ready to take on Alcais?” His lip curled with hatred when he said Alcais’s name.
“I can handle him,” I said, and I wasn’t bragging. I’d had my run-ins with him and walked away.
Asher took his bowl to the sink and rinsed it out. On his return to the table, he veered toward me, drawn as if he couldn’t resist the pull of what we used to be together. The towel fell from my hand when he tugged on it, and I sat very still as he rubbed strands of my hair with the material to dry them. The scent of him filled my nose as I inhaled, and I savored the familiar smells of the forest and him. For a moment, I tilted my head, absorbing the heat of his hands through the towel. He’d done this once before when I’d been sick with the flu and unable to heal myself due to temporarily short-circuited powers. He’d taken such sweet care of me, and I’d fallen deeper in love with him. The memory hurt, and I snapped upright and yanked the towel from him.
“Please don’t,” I whispered. “It’s confusing.”
The muscles in his face tensed, but he nodded. His actions had been more habit than anything else, and I wanted him to touch me. But if I let him close, and he pulled away again, the pain would be a thousand times worse. I couldn’t do this if I wasn’t sure he really wanted me for good.
Lucy saved us from saying anything else when she entered, yawning and stretching in a series of pops. “I could eat a bear.”
I got up to fix two bowls of Count Chocula, and I picked up the thread of the conversation about Alcais like the last few minutes with Asher hadn’t happened. “Alcais thinks he’s untouchable. He takes chances, and he’ll make a mistake if we’re patient.”
The cruel boy had used Healers like Band-Aids, acting recklessly because his sister, Erin, would always be there to heal his injuries. He’d reminded me of my stepfather even before I’d found out that Alcais had been one of Asher’s torturers. He was also the one Gabe had followed to find Asher when Erin told me he was still alive. The girl had been my only friend among Franc’s people. If not for her, we would not have found Asher. My grandfather had known that she helped us, and I prayed that he hadn’t hurt her for it. I’d wanted to call her so many times, but I worried it would make things worse for her.
As I washed my bowl and spoon, Lucy said, “I forgot to tell you. I called Lottie before I took a nap. She mentioned that she spoke to Gabe yesterday.”
“Yeah?” I asked, feeling Asher’s gaze on my back.
“Mm. He’s in Europe somewhere. I guess he’s been hanging out with old Protector friends, trying to see if any of them have heard of someone like you. He figures there has to be someone who knows something, and they’re just not saying. He’s going to stick around there a little longer to see what he can learn.”
Or maybe Gabe was doing his best to stay away from Asher and me. He’d said as much the last time I saw him. Lucy didn’t know that, though, so I said, “I hope he finds answers. We could use them.”
After our dinner of cereal, we headed to the garage. Lottie had arranged for new transportation. Asher would continue to use the truck, and Lucy and I would take the black Mercedes that his sister had bought. She’d also arranged for new burner mobile phones for each of us, and we pocketed those.
Lucy climbed into the passenger seat of the Mercedes, toying with the controls. I hesitated to join her. If something happened, I might not see Asher again . . . He didn’t seem to share my worry. He walked toward the truck, and I finally turned away.
Enough, Remy. Let him go. Focus.
I was about to open the car door when Asher whipped me around. His eyes clouded with worry, and he hugged me tight enough to steal my breath. I could only hold on, my heart pounding and my thoughts spinning. The embrace didn’t last long enough.
Asher stepped back and tipped my chin up. “Be careful.”
I nodded. “You, too.”
We separated and got into our vehicles. It wasn’t until I saw San Francisco disappearing in my rearview mirror that I realized we hadn’t said “I love you.” Would saying good-bye ever get any easier?
CHAPTER FOUR
“I ’m bored,” Lucy said from the passenger seat when
I hung up the phone.
“Don’t even start,” I told her.
I threw a cheeseburger wrapper at her. She didn’t react, except to toss it over her shoulder into the backseat, where it landed with the other fast-food trash we’d collected. The interior of the car smelled like a menagerie of greasy takeout, spanning the range from tacos to French fries. We’d been watching Alcais and Erin’s house for three days now and had nothing to show for it, except a list of times that their mother, Dorthea, had come and gone to work or to run errands. Erin, Alcais, and their friend, Delia, had been conspicuously absent, though I’d described them all to Lucy so she would know what to look out for.
Asher’s luck hadn’t been much better. Every day, he sneaked close to my grandfather’s house in San Francisco, using the forest to hide his presence. Lights flipped on and off, and he’d noticed Franc passing by the windows a time or ten, but my grandfather never left the house. That in itself was unusual considering how he’d practically spent all his time in Pacifica when I’d lived with him.
The whole situation was anticlimactic, and if it went on much longer, I feared Asher would try to confront Franc. For all our worries, we’d sat around twiddling our thumbs, waiting for Alcais and my grandfather to show themselves. The inactivity was getting to all of us, and things hadn’t gotten any better between Asher and me.
“What did Asher say?” Lucy asked, gesturing to the phone. “Any news?”
I shook my head, and the hopeful light in her eyes faded.
“Is he still acting like an ass?”
“Lucy!”
“What? It’s true. He’s being an ass.”
I shrugged to avoid answering. Honestly, she was right. Asher was wound so tight these days that he snapped at Lucy—the person most likely to speak to him—more often than not. This morning, she’d threatened to join his stakeout if he snarled at her one more time. Very aware of her capacity to chatter, Asher had shut his mouth in a hurry. I’d found myself wishing that I’d sicced her on him sooner.
“Can I get out?” Lucy asked a few minutes later.
Once the sun had gone down, we had parked the car on a street facing the pier. We waited for dark when I could sneak closer. During the day we could blend in with all the people going to the beach, but at night we needed the shadows for cover before I could backtrack to Alcais’s house. The Healers watched their neighborhood too closely for us to camp out on his street. In daylight hours, I stayed in the car, wearing a baseball cap to hide my hair and face, while Lucy scouted in the long brunette wig we’d picked up for her. Most Healers had never seen her, and she could explore without drawing attention.
The view of the pier brought back a lot of memories, a very few of them good. As the teenagers in the group, Erin, Alcais, Delia, and I had been thrown together often. Whenever we’d wanted to escape scrutiny, we’d wandered to the beach. I’d spent long hours there with Erin. She’d reminded me of my sister, and that had been a comfort for a time.
Beside me, Lucy grew increasingly impatient when I failed to answer her. She hated sitting in the car, but people would notice her now with the beach crowds gone for the night.
“No,” I told her. The sun had set a short time ago. “You’ll stand out too much.”
She sighed dramatically, and I rolled my eyes.
“Can I call someone?” she asked.
“Who?” She’d already called Lottie an hour ago, and I’d just checked in with Asher.
“Nobody.” She shrugged, faking nonchalance.
I scowled. “Lucy, you can’t call Tim.”
She missed her boyfriend.
They’d begun dating about the time Asher and I had. It had been hard for her to leave him behind in Blackwell Falls.
Lucy’s head whipped around, and her glare flayed me alive. “This sucks.”
“I’m sorry.” I meant it. I hated how trapped she must feel in this situation.
“No, you’re not. This whole situation is perfect for you. Your boyfriend is here.”
I tried not to react to her snide tone. “We’re giving each other some space. Anyway, Tim doesn’t know about Healers or Protectors. It wouldn’t be fair to drag him into this world.”
She turned away, but I heard her mutter, “Like you care.”
“Hey! What is that supposed to mean?”
She crossed her arms and refused to meet my eyes. “You didn’t exactly give me a choice.”
I stared at her in disbelief. “I tried to protect you. I did everything I could to keep this from touching you.” I waved a hand in the air so that “this” could be interpreted as me and Pacifica altogether. “I left home to keep you safe.”
“But you didn’t stay away, did you?” she accused.
A small dagger slid between my ribs, and the pain was sharp and swift. I sucked in a breath.
Lucy clapped a hand over her mouth, regret lighting her features. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean that.”
I looked out the driver’s window to hide my expression. When I could control the tremble in my voice, I said, “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”
She touched my right hand where it rested on the seat. “No, really, sis. I’m sorry.”
She sounded so contrite that I repeated, “Don’t worry about it. Just drop it, okay?”
I shoved the pain away. She’d hurt my feelings. So what? How could I blame her for resenting what I’d done to her life? It wasn’t my fault that I was a freak, or that I’d come to Blackwell Falls to live. But I could have tried harder to move back to New York or, failing that, I could have moved somewhere else. The truth was that I had wanted to stay in Blackwell Falls. I’d needed the home and family that I’d discovered there. I loved them, and I hadn’t been able to leave them. I’d made my choice and the fallout had affected everyone, from my family to the Blackwells. I might want to shove that thought away, but it always returned.
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