by Dela
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
A New Year
Snow was piled high at the front of the house, leaving Lucas no option but to carry me across the unplowed expanse. It was ridiculous; I could walk. But I played along as he set me down at the bottom of the stairs.
“Thanks so much, Lucas, for all your help. Please drive home safe,” Mom said.
He bowed his head. “I will, Mrs. Moss.”
“Come by the shop sometime if you get a chance. I would love to show you our pictures,” Dad said.
“Thank you. I would love that.” He glanced up the stairs, making my heart skip a beat. “Get some rest. I will call you later.”
“Drive safe,” I said.
As he pulled out into the icy night, I wobbled into my room, realizing I hadn’t turned on my cell phone. There were ten missed calls, mostly from Bri. I was surprised to see one from Jett, who sounded upset in his voicemail.
I dialed him first. I only had a few minutes before Lucas would come back to check on me.
“Hello?” Jett answered, half asleep.
I glanced at the clock. It was two in the morning in New York.
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize how late it was. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“No, no.” Jett yawned. “I’ve been waiting for you to call me. How are you?”
“I’m okay. Did you talk to Max?” His alarmed voice message made me suspicious. I pictured him scratching his mussed hair, his eyes puffy, wrinkly lines dented down the side of his face, and bad breath, all of which were, well, human.
“He’s really upset about something, but he won’t tell me anything. What happened?”
“I don’t know why he’s so upset still,” I lied. “I got caught in the tide and got pretty cut up on a reef, but I’m okay now.”
“That’s it? He made it seem like something more.” I could hear his sheets sliding as he rolled over.
“How was Christmas with your mom?”
“It wasn’t too bad. I’ll be home for New Year’s though. Want to hang out? I heard the slopes got tons of snow.”
“I don’t think I’m in any condition to do much boarding, so I will probably be doing something with Lucas. Maybe we could all do something together?”
“Yeah, okay. Sure.” He didn’t sound thrilled. “Well, I uh . . .” He yawned again. “I will get something planned and then let you know.”
“All right.” I yawned too.
“I’ll call you when I get back in town.”
I hung up the phone and looked at the clock, surprised that Lucas hadn’t returned yet. I decided to call Bri. She picked up the phone on the first ring.
“You are so getting it from me,” she answered.
“Bri, hey. Sorry. It’s been crazy.”
“I know. I want to hear it all. And don’t you dare leave out any details. It’s the least you can do for not calling me once while you were there.”
“Well, what do you want to know?” My body had started to ache. I wasn’t sure I had a chatty conversation in me.
“First, did you do it?” She could barely breathe as she waited for my response.
“Bri, gross. No!”
“What do you mean gross? You have the hottest boyfriend in Tahoe.”
“It’s not like that, Bri . . .” I said, remembering our unnatural lack of privacy.
A freezing draft came from the window. The window was already shut and Lucas was lying on his side next to me when I turned. He tickled my arm with his fingers, and talking normally became a difficult task.
“Well, what is this thing I heard about you breaking your collarbone? Is it true?” she asked.
I couldn’t help but to look down and sigh. “Yes.”
I heard muffled screams on the other end.
“Bri, calm down. It’s not that bad.”
“How could you not tell me something this big? What happened?”
“I got caught in a riptide, Lucas saved me, yadda yadda . . .”
I pulled the phone from my ear as more screams shrieked through. “Lucas saved you? That is so romantic!”
That was too easy.
“I know, right? He’s way cute.” I wrinkled my nose at him.
“So what did you guys do preaccidento?”
I yawned again and lay down carefully in Lucas’s arms. He nuzzled his nose into the hollow of my neck and stroked his tongue along the skin. I shivered, leaned away out of his reach, and replied in a higher pitch. “Not much. Beach mainly.”
“So not fair. I bet you’ve got the nicest tan. Anyway, we’ve got to plan New Year’s, but we can talk about it tomorrow. Tommy’s beeping in, ’night, chica.”
I had just turned to Lucas when a knock rattled my door. I looked at Lucas, but he had already vanished. There was a small indentation on the blankets where he’d been, still warm.
Max poked his head past the door. “Can I come in?”
“Sure.”
Max sat where Lucas had been and stared at his hands. I twisted my hair nervously in the awkward silence between us.
“Max, I . . .” I began.
“No, stop, Zara. I don’t want to hear your lies anymore. What the hell happened?”
My hair started knotting around itself. “I don’t know, exactly,” I stuttered.
“What do you mean you don’t know? It’s simple. You tell me to run for help because you weren’t feeling good. I mean, I’ve never seen you that white in my life. I come back and you’re missing. Not gone, but missing, Zara. Where did you go? How did you really get those cuts?”
“What do you think happened?” I said, more loudly than I’d intended.
“Honestly, I haven’t got a clue. Why don’t you start by telling me how you got those bruises on your wrist.” He pointed to Xavier’s fingerprints, slipping out underneath the gauze. “Did Lucas do that to you?”
“No, Lucas did not do this to me,” I answered firmly as I pulled the loosened bandage over the prints.
“Lucas isn’t good for you. I want you to stay away from him.”
“Is this what you came to tell me?”
“No. I came to find out the truth, but you won’t tell me. So I’m saying that I want you to stay away from Lucas.”
“The truth is I got stuck in a tide. Why can’t you just accept that like everyone else?”
Max stood, his face a new shade of red. “I know that you are lying. I was in the kitchen, getting Nicolás. You would have gone through the kitchen to get out to the ocean—there’s a privacy wall that makes it impossible to go around from the front. And guess what, you didn’t go out the back!” He was nearly screaming, his hands slicing the air.
“Just go away, now!”
He paused with a pathetic half chuckle.
“Way to go, Zara. Is that what you think of me? That I am stupid enough to believe your lame story? You’re in a heap of trouble if you think you can go around lying to us. I won’t say anything, but it’s only a matter of time until Mom and Dad find out you’re lying to them.” He walked to the door. “Whatever it is you’re trying to do, good luck.” Then he left, and I felt more wrecked than ever.
I tried to lie down, but my collarbone wouldn’t let me get comfortable. I shifted around, frustrated, knowing that Max was right. How long could I keep on lying to my family? Bitter air wisped my skin as Lucas came in again. He dropped his jacket on the chair and smoothly wrapped his firm arms around me.
“Zara,” he whispered after a minute of silence. “Your brother is right. We can’t keep pretending that nothing happened.”
I felt sick. “I just wasn’t ready for him to know the truth.”
He looked away. “Me either.”
As I looked around, trying to let the adrenaline simmer off, I noticed the messy list of college applications I’d left on the desk. I imag
ined the pressure on our budding relationship as the realities of college life flooded in—not to mention everything after. I felt weak. “How will it ever work, us going to college together?”
“I’ve been thinking of putting my doctorate to good use. I could practice wherever you decide to go.”
“Really?”
He shrugged. “It’s seems practical enough. Remember, I’m paying your way. We need a reason for me to be rich.”
“Right, because you’d be a ridiculously young doctor with no student debt. Makes sense,” I joked, scooting down to rest on his tattooed arm.
“I’m kidding.”
“My parents know I can’t pay for it on my own. They’d have to know where I got the rest of my money, and you a doctor straight out of high school? Highly impractical.”
“Nah, you’d just win a really good private scholarship. Your parents wouldn’t even have to know that I was working. As far as anyone we know was aware, I’d be a freshman at college with you.”
I stretched. “It could work.”
Lucas pulled the sheets over my arms and played with my hair. The mixture of his warm body and the flannel covers warmed me to the core. I yawned again, gave up fighting it any longer, and shut my eyes.
“Zara?” His voice chimed softly around my ear.
“Hmm?”
“I want to take you to the New Year’s party.” The kiss on the side of my head was gentle. “We can go out with your friends if you want. I know you miss them.”
His lips grazed underneath my chin. Then they moved to the other side of my neck, setting off a good throbbing in my body as his breath caressed my skin. “I can take you out to dinner, and then we can go to the Lodge to watch the fireworks.”
He lifted a strand of hair and sniffed. “I wonder if you taste how you smell.”
My body was on fire, and it was difficult to breathe as he teased. All I could think about was my blood rushing south. “Lucas . . .”
He rose onto his knees and brushed his lips across my bandaged chest. His breath was warm as his fingers pulled the dressing back slightly and kissed the skin beneath it. My breathing slowed as he lingered there, studying the wound, infatuated with my body.
“I can’t take your virginity,” he finally said with an anguished edge. His fingers took their time grazing across my collarbone to the other side, where he swept my hair behind my shoulder and kissed my neck.
“I love you, Zara,” he whispered. “For always. We have a lifetime to make love. There’s no need to rush.”
“I love you too, Lucas. But don’t you want to just play around?”
“This isn’t right,” he said. “You’re not well, and when I have you, I need you whole.”
“Whole?”
He chuckled. “I tend to get a little rough in the bedroom. So I need you healed, and . . .” he lifted up my left hand and pinched my ring finger, sliding his fingers up and down softly. “I need your hand.”
“Hand?”
“I need you to be mine. All mine.”
“Oh . . .” Marriage. That word I used casually to talk about my reason for keeping my virginity. I felt guilty for forgetting, but it was impossible to think straight with Lucas so close. “How . . .”
“Is that a yes?”
“Was that a proposal?”
His brows lowered over his perfectly blue eyes. “No, I suppose not.”
“What about . . .”
“Kids?”
“Gosh, no.” My eyes fluttered, my cheeks heated. “Didn’t you say you couldn’t have kids?”
“Does that matter?”
“Well, no, but what about . . .”
“Phew! My heart nearly stopped; oh wait, it doesn’t matter. I can’t die.” He began chuckling. It was funny and sweet, him living in only this moment—but what about . . .
“Lucas!”
“What?” The smile dropped from his lovely cheer.
“What about our age . . . in the future?”
He stared blankly as I struggled to lie down again. He shifted on his back and lifted his arm up. “Come here, muñeca.”
I rested my head in the crook of his arm. Lucas had unlimited funds. There had to be a fertility doctor who would look at him. Though I suppose there probably hasn’t been research done on immortals’ fertility.
“You know I’ve thought a lot about this,” he said. “And the answer always comes back to me the same. The gray hair leaves me no choice . . .I’m going to marry you anyway.”
“Ha! You might want to look at pictures of my grandmas before you make up your mind. I’m not sure my family ages well.”
“Say yes, Zara.”
I nuzzled my cheek along his arm and breathed in his musk. “You smell good.”
“Why are you tormenting me?”
I laughed. “Why are you tormenting yourself?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why would you want to be with me when I’m old and wrinkly?” I yawned. “Come on, it’s ridiculous.”
“Because I have no choice. Being without you torments me. I’d rather be tormented with you than without you. I love your beauty and all, but I love your guts more—the things I love most about you don’t age. You are my someday, and I will wait as long as it takes to get you.”
My heart pumped with a happiness that I couldn’t contain. “I guess you leave me no choice then.”
“Is that a yes?”
I grinned. “Maybe.”
His chest rose and he let out a long breath. “I’ll take it.”
“Good night, Lucas,” I said, and without a chance to even protest, I fell asleep.
When I woke, Lucas had set recovery terms. No more late nights. We both knew we played with fire in my room, where somebody could hear us. I might have disagreed, but it didn’t matter, I didn’t have the energy to change his mind. Over the next few days we filled out applications to colleges out east, played card games (though it was nearly impossible for me to hold cards with both hands), and watched TV until eleven every night. I complained, but I had to admit that I felt much better for it.
Later in the week, Dad insisted we stop at his shop to see the pictures from Mexico before going to the New Year’s dance.
Lucas knocked on the front door promptly at ten in the morning. Max, who had kept his distance from us, watched intently, waiting for Lucas to make one wrong move—or to find something different about him. I could see in Lucas’s eyes the urge to help me as I maneuvered slowly down the stairs, but he restrained himself and crammed his hands deeper into his pockets.
“Gabriella and Dylan are in the car. She’s quite fond of your dad and insisted that she see the pictures too,” Lucas said.
I didn’t mind. I hadn’t seen her for days.
“Hola, Zara. You look much better since I last saw you,” Gabriella said as Lucas helped me into the car.
We passed a snowplow along the highway, trying to keep up with the accumulation of new fluff. As we turned onto a less thoroughly plowed, cobbled road, the lake’s vignette of white and black opened before us. Snow covered the gray rocks peeking above the water and the teetering trees that leaned over them. The old cobblestone house sat just at the water’s rocky edge. Smoke puffed from the chimney as Lucas pulled in, the shop’s open sign blinking brightly in the gloom.
Lucas looked calculatingly at the ice glazing the cement. “I’m carrying you to the door.”
“No. I can do it.” I said, struggling to lever my door far enough out to stay open.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” His door closed soundlessly, and mine was open in the second it took me to spread my fingers. “I’m helping you whether you like it or not. Did you see all the ice?”
He scooped me up and skimmed over the sleekness. I leaned into his ear. “I’m getting a good idea of what it will be
like when I’m old and incapable, and you young and strong.”
“You’re not changing my mind,” he said, setting me down at the door just as Dad opened it.
“Hey, come in the back. And close that door tight—it likes to creep open in the winter,” he said.
We followed Dad to the back room, where he edited all his work. It was a tight workspace, cramped with camera equipment and storage, but there was one computer at its center, miraculously uncluttered.
He sat down at it and shook the mouse.
The first picture was of him and Mom on a pier. Then hundreds of tropical landscapes and exotic things popped up.
“This one is my favorite,” he said. It was the twins and Dylan, standing on the beach with sandals in their hands.
“Yes, I like that one too,” Dylan said, smiling as he leaned toward the screen for a better look.
“Those are all so beautiful, Mr. Moss,” Gabriella said.
“When I get them printed, I am going to give one to your parents as a thank-you gift.”
“They would love that,” she said.
Dad swiveled his chair around and slapped his hands on his knees. “So, what are you kids up to for New Year’s?”
“We’re going to the Lodge to watch the fireworks,” Lucas said.
Dad looked at Lucas and then threw a funny look at me. “The dance? How?”
“I won’t be doing much dancing,” I confirmed. “And I doubt I’ll last long. But I want to see everyone.”
We followed Dad back to the front room. He walked behind the cashier’s desk and put on his glasses.
“Well, you kids have fun,” he said, looking down at his receipts.
“I will bring her home right after the fireworks, Mr. Moss,” Lucas said.
As Dylan and Gabriella strolled around the room, looking at the portraits on the walls, I leaned on Lucas as we headed to the front door.
Inside the car, I put my free hand in front of the vent and hoarded all the heat, figuring the other passengers wouldn’t mind. If I wasn’t here, the heater probably wouldn’t be on.
Gabriella leaned forward and grabbed my headrest. “So, Zara, for tonight, would you want to come over and get ready with me?”