“We’ve seen him,” Nate announced. He walked over to the sink and immediately filled a glass of water for Serena and him.
“He’s with them,” Serena explained, taking the glass and draining it. Clearly they had flown directly here and landed just outside the house. They were out of breath and a bit windblown. And they were covered head to toe in leather- leather pants, leather jackets, and thick leather boots. I hadn’t climbed on the bad-ass bandwagon yet, preferring to fight and fly in my yoga pants and t-shirts. But they rocked this look with their otherworldliness. “We found them in London. Seth was with Aliah, Seven and a few more Fallen that we recognized.”
“What were they doing in London?” I demanded. The words fell from my lips before I could stop them, even though it felt like hearing the answer would kill me.
Serena shared a look with Nate and then turned her bright blue eyes back to me, “It looked like they were celebrating.”
“Celebrating?” I choked.
“Stella,” Nate started in his authoritative, rumbling voice and I knew he was about to confirm our deepest fears. “Seth is Fallen. Serena, we…. it was confirmed. He is Fallen.”
The words echoed around my head like marbles in empty space. They just kept rolling and rolling, bouncing off my skull, but never settling. I didn’t- couldn’t- wouldn’t understand this.
“It’s not possible,” I insisted.
The room was silent in answer. There was no response to my complaint, because everyone else had accepted what I wanted to believe was a lie. He wouldn’t have done that to me.
He wouldn’t.
A knock on the back door drew all of our attention. In unison we looked up and stared at it, like it was its own life form. Slowly my dad stood up and walked over through the mudroom to find out who it was.
When he returned into the main part of the kitchen, relief sagged his shoulders and he half turned to me, “Stella, it’s your friends.”
Piper. In all the craziness, I forgot she promised to come over.
“Oh, right.” I stood up, feeling like I had to push against the weight of the world to get to my feet. “I’ll go outside with them.”
I reached the door, feeling a building excitement to get out of this house and away from these people. I needed to be around my friends- the ones that wouldn’t abandon me, the ones that had nothing to do with the ugly side of my life.
“Stella,” my dad called out to me. “Whatever his thinking, or reason for doing what he did, he cares about you, Sweetheart. I believe he did what he did out of concern for you, not because he truly defected.”
My shoulders dropped and I felt the treachery of tears prick my eyes. “But it doesn’t matter, does it? He still did it. He’s still Fallen. No matter why he did it, or for whom he did it. The outcome is the same.”
Nobody had anything to say to that, so I opened the door and walked outside. Away from the ringing disappointment that Seth had just ceased to be a part of my life.
Forever.
Chapter Eight
“Hey,” Piper smiled at me. “You really do look like hell. I’m sorry I ever doubted your close call with death.”
I tried to smile back but it fell flat. I was a mess, teetering on the edge of losing it completely and holding it together for just five more minutes. A tear snuck out the corner of my eye and trailed slowly down my cheek. I didn’t even have the energy to wipe it away.
“Stella, are you alright?” Tristan stepped forward and held my arms in his strong grasp. “Do you really feel this terrible?”
I shook my head and slipped off the precarious edge I was barely holding onto. Tears tracked down my face now, in streams of messy ugliness. “Seth is gone,” I whispered.
My friends heard me and immediately converged on me. Tristan pulled me into a hug, even though I knew it kind of killed him to console me over Seth. And Piper wrapped both of her arms around one of mine and laid her head on my shoulder.
“What do you mean, he’s gone?” she asked in a gentle voice, but hearing the words repeated back to me felt like razor blades against my heart, no matter how softly they were spoken.
“He left,” I sobbed. “He left me.”
“Where did he go?” Piper pressed, sounding a little hysterical with her confusion.
Tristan held me closer, absorbing my racking pain into his own body. His hand tangled through my hair and then stroked the length of it. I buried my face deeper in his chest and let him hold me. There was no reason to feel guilty anymore. No more voice in my head told me to pull back from Tristan because Seth could catch us like this. What was the point? Seth was gone. I was free to do whatever I wanted.
My heart split open at that thought and I cried harder. I didn’t want to give up on Seth. But now I felt more confused than ever.
“Stella, where did Seth go?” Piper repeated firmly. “Did he run away?”
Did he run away? Yes. Could I tell Piper that? No.
“He left to go live with his family.”
Well, that was true.
“I thought he lived with his grandpa?”
“Some of his other family,” I emphasized.
“And he’s not coming back?” she asked a bit desperately.
“Never,” I whispered.
And then I cried harder.
They continued to hold me until I grappled some control over my emotions. I finally pulled back and used my t-shirt to wipe off my face. I hadn’t bothered with makeup today, so I didn’t need to worry about that, but I felt how puffy and swollen my eyes were and how inflated my lips were.
“I’m a mess,” I whispered.
“You’re beautiful,” Tristan argued. He put a finger under my chin and tilted my head up so that I had to look at him. “It’s going to be alright.”
“No it’s not,” I shook my head, my blonde hair falling around my shoulders.
“It is,” he promised. I stared into his green eyes, the color of emeralds. They were steady, solid and familiar. I sucked in a breath and…. and started to believe him. “Are you up for a walk?”
I nodded and we took off.
We used to do this all the time as kids. Piper, Tristan and I had spent days exploring the acres of land my parents’ house sat on. We jumped hay bales during harvest, we got lost in the rows of corn during the summer, and during the spring we would splash in the huge puddles the tractor tires made until we were covered head to toe in mud.
We’d given up those games sometime around the start of puberty, but every once in a while we enjoyed walking the land together. There was something so organic and wholesome about conversation on a walk. We talked about everything, anything…. nothing. And it all felt right.
And sometimes, like today, it felt like therapy.
The sky was filled with dark storm clouds, heavy with rain yet unshed. The air was cool and smelled like the brewing storm that it was. There was a greenness to the horizon that could mean tornado warning, depending on the storm system. The weather fit my mood perfectly.
We walked for a while without talking, until long after the house was out of sight. Piper had a million questions, I could see them simmering behind her hazel eyes. Her bangs were even longer than usual and swept thick and heavy over her eyes, but beyond her veil of hair I could tell how much she wanted to drill me on this.
Eventually we found a crop of trees that were mostly cleared in the center. There were two young trees that had fallen over and not been removed yet. They tangled in each other with their dead branches and elongated upraised roots.
I sat down on the bent over trunk and ignored the dampness of the bark under my thin leggings. Piper crawled up next to me and linked her arm with mine before laying her head back on my shoulder. Tristan leaned a hip next to me and looked off into the distance as if the answers to my heartbreak were somewhere out there.
And I supposed, in a way, they were.
“Tell us what happened, Stel,” Piper commanded.
I took a few steadying br
eaths and then I admitted, “I don’t really know. I mean, I now my…. sickness scared him, a lot, but I just talked to him this morning and everything seemed fine. He had…. come over to check on me, and he was really sweet. But then when he left me, he like really left me. He just went to his family, completely turning his back on me and Jupiter and my family. He didn’t even say goodbye- not really, anyway.”
“He didn’t even tell his grandpa he was leaving?” Piper asked in disbelief.
“Nope, he just left. We found out later.”
“How did you find out? Did he call you? Leave a note or anything?”
“Mutual friends just happened to see him, with his family.” I shrugged. This was mostly the truth, although there was no way she could pick up the gravity of my words, or their ugly meaning.
“So they live close by?”
“Not at all. He flew there.”
“He bought a plane ticket and just took off?” Piper gasped.
I shrugged and then echoed, “He just took off.”
“What’s his grandpa going to do?” Her voice was sadder now, as if she was finally accepting that he was gone.
“Nothing,” I admitted. “What can he do? Seth’s with his family. He’s obviously where he wants to be. There’s not a whole lot his grandpa or any of us can do.”
“I’m so sorry, Stella,” she whispered. She pressed a kiss to my shoulder and then laid her head back down. “What a bastard to just leave you like that, though.”
“Well, we weren’t exactly a couple or anything.” The words burned in my throat and ripped and clawed at my heart. We weren’t- but we should have been. Could I have prevented this all if I’d just given into the inevitable? Was my stubborn independence what drove him away?
But we had been growing closer recently. Lately thoughts and feelings for Tristan had been fading into the background because of a dominating attraction to Seth. There were moments when I knew what was growing between us would last forever, would surpass everything else.
And then Seth left me.
What was I supposed to think now?
Was there any hope for a relationship with him of any kind?
No. The oppressing realization hit me hard and fast. There wasn’t any hope. He was gone.
His words this morning whispered through my mind again and I couldn’t help but feel confused. Don’t give up on me. We can do this for the rest of our lives. We will get to do this forever.
It didn’t make sense. Why tell me those things? Make those promises to me…. and then leave me?
“But he obviously had feelings for you,” Piper insisted. “Is he going to call?”
I let out a bitter laugh before I could stop myself. “God, I hope not.”
Her head shot up and she gave me a concerned glance. “You don’t mean that.”
“Trust me; it wouldn’t be good for either of us if he called me now.”
“Who was the family he went to live with?” Tristan asked as the pieces started to come together for him.
“His sister and uncle,” I said meaningfully.
Tristan let out a foul curse under his breath and Piper’s eyebrows snapped together. “What am I missing here?”
“Nothing,” I mumbled.
“Don’t do that.” Piper slid off the tree trunk and whirled around to face me. She was all righteous indignation and bubbling fury. “Don’t go into secret Tristan and Stella world. Stop hiding things from me! I want to know!”
My expression sobered and I swallowed back the entire truth. I had wanted to tell Piper for as long as I could remember. But I always held back. Tristan knew, because there wasn’t a choice in my life in which he did not know exactly who I was. But it was easier to lie to Piper, even if I hated it. It was easier to gloss over this part of my life because she filled in every other space. She was my carefree humanity, my reckless immaturity. She was simply my friend, not a mile stone in my life or a choice to be made.
But she did deserve the truth. Or at least part of it. “His family is bad news, Pi.”
“What do you mean? Like they’re… what, like criminals?”
“Yes, and worse.”
“What’s worse than a criminal?” Her eyebrows were hidden behind her thick bangs, but I knew they were raised. Her eyes were huge, and her face flushed with the frustration to understand.
“Them,” I answered cryptically. “They’re just…. they’re the worst kind of people. That’s why he’s always lived with Jupiter. His other family doesn’t have his best interest in mind. In fact, before they’ve always tried to hurt him.”
“Like physically abuse him?” She was stunned and I didn’t blame her. Even out of context and watered down this sounded bad.
“Yes, and emotionally and mentally.”
“Does he think this time will be different or something?” I knew she was grasping at anything to make this situation better, but it was a futile effort on her part. There was no way to make this better, there was no way to bring Seth back.
“Maybe.” I looked down at the ground, unable to meet her eyes. “But it won’t be.”
She fell silent then, and I was glad. I didn’t want to answer any more of her questions. I didn’t want to dissect Seth’s decision any longer.
“I know you’re worried about him, Stella,” Tristan’s voice cut through the tense silence. I looked up and met his gaze. “But, you’ll be alright. And that’s what’s most important- that he didn’t hurt you before he left. If he was this…. unstable, it’s a good thing he left when he did.”
I knew what Tristan saw and how he wanted to view Seth in this new light, but I knew better. Seth wasn’t a ticking time bomb. He hadn’t been in danger of following the darker side of his soul, not once until this morning.
He was goodness and Light and all things admirable.
This move was calculated- I knew that. But why? What could he accomplish by entering enemy camp? And why was it more important than staying with me.
On top of feeling heartbroken and betrayed, I also felt vulnerable and exposed. Not three days ago, he saved me from getting my head chopped off.
I would have died without him.
I still might die without him.
If he didn’t want me to give up on him, then exactly what did he expect me to do?
“Stella, I have to go,” Piper said. She looked down at her watch and then back up at me. “I have to be home for dinner.” She walked over and pulled me into a tight hug. “I’m glad you’re feeling better. Well, not better… but not sick anymore.”
“Thanks, Pi,” I said sincerely.
“Call me later.” She released me and started walking back to the house. “Oh, and I left your books and homework on the porch.”
I groaned. “Ok, thanks.”
She walked off and Tristan and I were left alone. We hadn’t been alone since he got in that fight with Seth last week. And we’d barely talked, not even on the phone. Things had been… tense between us. But I didn’t know how they would be now with Seth out of the picture.
After Piper disappeared I looked over at him and caught his gaze immediately. He was staring at me with concern etched all over his beautiful face. He ran a hand over his closely shaved head and then let out a long breath.
And then he was there- in between my legs with his arms wrapped around my waist.
I fell into him, clutching him like the lifeline that he was. I was beyond tears by now, but his closeness did so much to soothe my aching, gutted soul. He was what I needed right now. He would be the strength that got me through this.
“I’ve missed you,” he whispered against my hair. “I’ve hated keeping my distance.”
“Is that what you were doing?” I half laughed, half sighed into his chest.
“Trying to,” he admitted. “I’ve never pressured anyone to go out with me before, Stella. And I really haven’t hated someone as much as I hate Seth. You might find this hard to believe, but for the most part, people like me.” He was tea
sing in that dry way of his and I smiled because it was true. Most people did like him.
“I believe you,” I laughed lightly.
He sobered some and said, “And while I believe you’re worth the fight, I have to be honest, that wasn’t me. I can admit that Seth didn’t deserve that. And you especially deserved to be treated better. Then I felt like such a jackass. And I didn’t how to apologize to him or you. So I just stayed away. I thought I’d give him a fair shot. I thought… you know, let the best man win and all.”
My lungs stopped working in my chest, and confusion settled thick and cloying over me once again. I lifted my head and met that green gaze, wondering how to process his confession.
“Tristan, I can’t-“
“No, I know, Stella,” he cut me off with the pads of his fingertips on my lips. “And I’m not asking you to. I just wanted you to know where I was. I don’t expect anything today or tomorrow, or even, well, I’m just saying take your time. I waited all my life for you. I can wait a little bit longer. There’s no pressure. But I am here for you. Whenever you’re ready. Whenever….. whenever or whatever you want.”
His last words were said on a throaty whisper that made my stomach flip-flop.
“Thank you,” I smiled up at him.
“I’m just glad we both realize what a prick he is.” He grinned boyishly down at me and I knew he was just trying to lighten the mood, but his words felt right.
My grief had turned to anger and I was ready to punish him- him as in Seth.
“You weren’t really sick though, were you?” Tristan asked carefully, almost like he was already angry.
“I was not sick,” I confirmed. I was silent for a moment more, enjoying his arms around me, his body heat, his smell as it mingled with the stormy air and damp wood around us. “I was attacked.”
“At school?” His eyes narrowed and his throat jumped while it worked to swallow. Oh, yes, he was angry- more than angry.
“It started at school, but it ended somewhere in New Mexico, I guess. I don’t really remember much of the end. Well, except for the almost dying part. But I didn’t. I’m fine. See? I’m fine.” I waved my arms around when I felt all of his muscled frame go tight with furious tension.
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