by Jill Haven
“And you…” He spun around on Jade and she scrunched her face. “You didn’t look surprised at all, and you’re going around talking about me now? You know something, just like I know you knew why Devin, my ex, disappeared. I know it, but you wouldn’t tell me, and I didn’t want to push. Same shit, different day. I’m not stupid. I know you… do things sometimes to keep me safe, but you meddle.” He tilted his head and looked at her for a second, as if a new person had appeared in her place. Then he turned to give me a long glare. “You know what’s going on with him, don’t you?” He whirled back toward her and she ran her hands through her long black hair without saying a word, apparently as much at a loss as I was.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly.
“You’re not denying it?” His scent shifted, sweeter, less afraid, but there was another unpleasant undertone to it. Not the sweet musky lust I wanted to lick off his skin, something that nearly hurt me to the core. I’d rarely smelled sadness before, not even at the funeral I attended recently, but on him it burned my nose and made me want to scoop him close and hold him safe. “Something weird is going on, and I hate being lied to. I’m going home. I… I know you helped me, but I can’t handle someone stringing me along and messing with my mind.” Haiden ducked his head and his hair fell in front of one eye. He rushed away from us, back the way he’d come from. Jade sighed, long, low, and defeated, and followed in his wake.
The woman that Haiden’s father had shoved to the ground was still over there, sobbing and trying to stand on a leg that didn’t seem to be holding up under her weight. My instinct was to follow Haiden, I needed to be near him. Instead, I dredged up some common decency and went to help the woman.
“May I assist you?” I asked as I approached. She was a dainty little thing, and once she nodded at me, I had no trouble hefting her into my arms. I got her to the benches near the small entrance of the park that sat adjacent to the main street of town and overlooked the town center.
“Thanks,” she said, giving me a pat on the shoulder. “I can call someone for a ride.”
“If you want, I’ll wait?”
She shook her head and sniffed. “No, I’m fine.”
My muscles screamed to get away, to search out Haiden, so I didn’t waste time asking a second time. Instead of locating Haiden, I stumbled upon Jade, flinging rocks with all her might into the stream next to the path. Bright yellow willow leaves rained down around her as she pitched her missiles.
“You’re the elder in charge of the entire region. You’re twice as old as I am.” Plop. The rock she held slammed heavily into the water, and a small geyser shot into the air. She spun and her skirt whirled out around her thighs. She pitched a rock at me, and I caught it. “Hatchlings have better control over their form than you do. Is it all the lazy city living where people are so civil? Is that why you’re weak?”
“Watch yourself.”
“Or what?” she shrieked. I hadn’t seen her discomposed so far, but her face was red and black ran under her eyes where her makeup had been ruined by tears. “Do you know how long I’ve been making sure he was okay? I watched him grow up. I… god, never-fucking-mind. He’s suspicious now. Thanks to you. All these years I have kept it together, but you come along and in no time, he knows something’s up.”
Searching for the best response, I could come up with nothing, so I blurted, “I’ll apologize.”
“You don’t get it. He’s been fucked around so much, by his dad, by that asshole he was dating before, that he doesn’t trust anyone. He trusts me and Eric, and he was starting to trust you, but we just fucked that all up.”
“What do you suggest?”
She hurled another rock at me and this time her aim was true. She nicked the tip of my ear with a pebble and laughed when I smacked my hand there. “Now I feel better.”
“Wench,” I groused.
She snickered and relaxed a bit, but our truce didn’t last long. She was red-faced again in seconds. “We’ll have to tell him the truth. He saw you. He won’t forget that, and if we manage to convince him otherwise, he’s… I mean, he already has serious anxiety. Have you seen it?”
“He’s shy….”
“No, you don’t understand.” She stared at the ground and the rest of her pebbles dropped from her hand. “Living with that monster, the one you chased off, wounded his mind in ways that aren’t always clear. There are modern names for it, but maybe you recognize shell shock?”
“He’s too young to have fought in a war.”
“On a battlefield, maybe. There are all kinds of a fights, and some of them happen behind closed doors.” We stood and stared at each other, and again the idea of finding that man and bathing in his blood took hold of me. I shuddered at the delight that coursed through my veins.
“How will he react?”
She shrugged. “To the news of dragons? Who knows. He’s pretty accepting of things he can see and touch.” She narrowed her eyes on me, but I refused to be ashamed of the way I’d wanted to keep him safe. “Us lying to him, on the other hand? That, I don’t know. He may never fucking talk to me again.”
She stared out into the center of the stream and my heart dropped quickly to live somewhere near my small intestine before it violently ricocheted back where it belonged. “We were just getting to know each other. It can’t go down the drain already.” My chest ached and felt like something important had been dug out of it. I burned to trail Haiden home.
“Yeah, this fucking sucks,” she said.
That about summed things up.
12
Haiden
Panic beat heavy fists inside my skull and made it difficult to focus. I didn’t want to leave Carlisle. It hurt to go, but my mind was in meltdown mode. Nothing made much sense. I ran along the path through the woods in Chesterfield Park until sweat dripped along my spine, my shirt stuck to me, clammy and disgusting, and my glasses slid down my nose. Then, I kept going. I came to the end of the path that emptied onto a small turn-around next to the main road into town and stumbled to a stop on the drop-off next to the blacktop. My lack of breath won. My heart drummed so loud in my ears that it didn’t seem like it was coming from inside me anymore.
What did I see back there?
My mind spun. I was certain, more than anything I’d ever been sure of in my life, that catlike golden eyes in Carlisle’s handsome face had reflected the sunshine. The gleam was so bright it had nearly blinded me. His irises had captured the light and glinted like coins, eerie and beautiful in a way that was not human at all.
I knew that what I remembered had happened. I didn’t make it up. I shivered and my skin ran cold. Years of Dad telling me that I was lying and inventing real incidents that happened, him telling me that I was blowing things out of proportion, him convincing me that I imagined things that weren’t true all boiled up in my mind. For a long time in my teen years I felt downright crazy, and only Jade had kept me from tipping over the edge. My side ached with a stitch that wasn’t working itself out. I made myself pick up my feet and walk.
The park was probably only about a mile and a half from my apartment. Little odd things about Jade that had been building up over the years that we’d known each other, but I’d always ignored, snuck into the awful montage of Dad playing in my mind. She did things that I was mostly sure other people didn’t, from time to time, like eat her steaks bloody and walk around in the dark with no flashlight—assuring me that was normal.
She also had a perfume that no one else wore, but Carlisle kind of smelled the same way. That was strange. Where Jade smelled homey, he smelled like sex and heat, though. That was different. Groaning, I kept putting one foot in front of the other, and held my head with both hands, like maybe I could keep all the crap in there from spilling out.
Something really weird was going on, and she knew about it. I could tell from the look on Jade’s face that she was hiding something. I hated this. What did they know that I didn’t?
My phone rang, scaring the
life out of me. I flinched and dug it out of my pocket. Jade’s smiling face flashed on my screen, and I almost answered. A violent shiver racked my body. The thing with Carlisle upset me, but my chest squeezed and seemed on the verge of collapse at the idea that maybe I couldn’t trust Jade. I shuddered again, and my skin felt cold, even though I was still sweating from my run and I was dressed for the weather.
Today Dad had looked just the same as always. He didn’t seem to age much. He was attractive for an older guy, I knew that, and that’s why he kept snagging pretty girls half his age who he wore down until they left him. Trembling so badly that I nearly dropped my phone, I put it away as it began to ring with Jade’s smile flashing again.
He was such a monster. I ran my fingers along the puckered scar on my jaw and walked, my mind going curiously blank for a while. I crossed my arms over my stomach, absolutely freezing all of the sudden. Not too long later, the front door to my apartment came into sight, but I could feel something bad happening. My heart hammered like I was still running, and I couldn’t stop shaking. I knew where this would end—in a panic attack—but I couldn’t bring myself out of it. I never could.
Backed into the corner with Dad ranting in my face. He spewed terrible things I’d heard before. Screamed. Planted his fist through the wall near my head. “Murderer. You’re a drain. You’re a fucking eyesore. What right do you have to look so fuckin’ much like her? Get out of my house.” I tried to sneak around him, but he shoved me back against the wall so hard the back of my head hurt where it bounced off. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going? I’m not done talking to you, boy. Fuck, why bother.”
He backed off, shaking his head. He sat in his chair in front of the television. For a while I huddled on the spot. I had to go to the bathroom, so I began to slink along the wall in that direction. The whiskey bottle Dad had been holding flew at my head. I ducked, but the glass shattered on the wall, spraying me with alcohol. The smell turned my stomach, and then searing pain along my jaw crippled me to the floor among the glittering glass. My blood was everywhere—down my shirt. He laughed and wouldn’t take me to the hospital. He was too drunk to drive anyway.
I ran my fingers over the slightly raised scar along my jaw repetitively, but the action didn’t calm me the way it sometimes did, only seemed to clamp the vice around my chest tighter. The trees dropped bright yellow leaves onto the grass as I watched. I rushed to the door of my apartment, but then had trouble getting my keys into the lock.
My fingers tingled and felt numb and my eyes burned with tears that hadn’t fallen yet. I sucked in air that didn’t seem to help the dizziness closing in on me. The stairs leading up to my efficiency were like a mountain, and I crawled up them, not able to close the door behind myself. I got to the top door and shoved the inside door open, still not standing. Every inch of headway into my apartment felt like a mile. I rested my head on the floor and tried to remember anything I’d read about calming down, but couldn’t. My chest began to burn and ache. I clawed a hand at it, certain I was having a heart attack.
“Panic attack. Not heart attack,” I chanted on a whisper to myself, and fought to think. My pills. I had a bottle of pills. I’d stashed them in the kitchen. I forced myself there, but I had to stand to see where the pills were. Gasping, tears finally burning their way out of my eyes, I got to my feet and swayed as I clung to the counter. My tiny kitchenette didn’t have much room in it, and I felt like the walls were falling in. The medicine bottle sat innocently in the drawer and I picked it up.
Pill, water. Then I’ll be good. I’ll be okay. Even if I’m alone, I’ll be fine. This can’t kill me.
But it sure felt like I would stop breathing and fall over dead. I twisted the cap, but it wouldn’t budge with my hands shaking so badly. I tried again and the cap gave way. I tried to pull the top from the bottle since it was loose, but the damned thing didn’t seem to be moving, and then all at once the whole thing was. The little brown bottle shot out of my hands and landed a few feet away on the floor in front of the fridge. The cap popped on impact and the little white pills inside sprayed like sad confetti over the floor. Not many of them were left and they were out of reach. Sinking to the floor, I gasped, my vision blackening around the edges.
My chest hurt. My eyes burned. My throat felt tight.
I tugged at my shirt until I was able to rip it off, and managed to do that, but couldn’t breathe better. I fumbled my phone out of my pocket. Getting Jade’s number up from my call history was almost more than I could manage. I hit her name repeatedly. The phone rang and I put it to my ear.
“Haiden,” she said sharply, and that tone had me curling in on myself. I dragged my knees to my chest and lay on my side on the floor, so cold I could barely stand it. “Where are you?”
“Home. They’re all over the floor, I needed them and they’re on the floor and they’re too far away.” The room felt like it was floating off from me, even though I was lying on the floor and physically in it. Nothing felt right or made sense. “I’m going to have to get more and that’s so much money, and it takes three hours to go. I’ll be stuck here forever, broken.” I sobbed and hated it and couldn’t stop.
“Shit, are you talking about your pills? Haiden, what happened? Haiden?”
She was talking, and she said something, but it didn’t seem like it was to me, and I tried to answer her, but my chest hurt so bad and I had trouble dragging in breaths. Tears burned their way out of my eyes and clogged my nose, and my throat was so tight.
The cold took over and I laid my phone down, closing my eyes. The dark in my head was scary, but also safer than out here. I scratched at my chest and gasped like a goldfish.
Warm. That’s the first thing I noticed. Softness. Blankets? I was in bed, but how? The smell of something good and fatty cooking, maybe chicken, hit my nose and my stomach grumbled. I peeled open my eyelids and that wasn’t easy. The room looked off, and it took me almost a minute to realize it was because the window was dark behind the shade. Footsteps nearby startled me. Carlisle appeared in my line of sight. He hunkered down next to the bed, easily folding his large body to get closer to me. He was mostly a fuzzy outline. He leaned near and rested his fingertips on my forehead. This close, his image was sharper. His eyes were so blue they didn’t seem real, like raindrops stuck in eyes. The world behind him was fuzzy for a few seconds before he slipped my glasses onto my nose. I couldn’t help but smile at him.
“You’re awake. I was coming to check on you.”
He grinned, his blue eyes bright and intense and definitely not gold. His lips were wide and looked so touchable. I wiggled my hand from under the blanket and ran a finger along the curve at the top of his lip. Touching him made me feel safe and comfortable. He closed his eyes and swallowed. My cheeks burned and I dropped my hand back to the blanket.
“What time is it?”
“Nearly seven,” he murmured, and brushed my hair back from my forehead. Happiness swirled in my belly.
“How did you get here?” I croaked. I tried to clear my voice. Carlisle got up and when he came back, he had a glass of water. He helped me sit up, and I chugged it all in one long, noisy gulp.
“I was with Jade when you called her. We both came over here to check on you. I got you into bed, and she went to the city to refill your meds for you. I picked up the ones that were on the floor, but we thought it might be better to get new ones. Do you want one now?”
I shook my head carefully. My entire body ached from the panic attack earlier. My muscles got so tense when I had an attack that I would probably feel like I’d been bench pressing five hundred pounds for a couple of days.
“No. They’re immediate-acting, for when I’m having an attack, not a long-term thing. I probably need a long-term anxiety med, but….” I shrugged, not wanting to tell him exactly how fucked up I was.
He frowned and swiped my hair from my forehead again. Heat settled into my stomach. Carlisle had freaked me out earlier, and then tried to lie to me,
which was what really sent me over the edge, but his touch still felt good and he was so handsome. His scent curled around me, musky and smoky, but I got a good sniff of the food, too, and became distracted.
“You’re cooking? I didn’t have anything here.”
“I went shopping.” He winked. “I do know how.”
Flushing, I looked at my blanket and plucked at a string on the edge of it. “And you bought me food.”
He rested his hand on mine. “Yes, it’s ready, too. Do you want to eat right now?”
My stomach chose that second to rumble and he chuckled, a low sexy sound that shivered happy tingles over my skin. I nodded. We ended up eating chicken and dumplings together, me still under the blankets, him sitting on the floor beside the futon.
“I’m sorry you had to—you know.” I dropped my attention to my plate.
“What? Come take care of you?” He tilted his head, and I shrugged a shoulder.
“Yeah. I know it’s a pain. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t mind,” he said softly. “I actually haven’t had anyone in my life for a long while. I like doing things for you, taking care of you.”
“Oh.” I shoved some more chicken, seasoned just right, into my mouth. “Thanks.”
“My pleasure, I promise.” His husky words made me think about sex more than food, and heat flowed into my groin. This was wrong so soon after a panic attack. I shouldn’t be this content, this at ease. It was nice that I wasn’t huddled in an awful little ball under blankets by myself, but this also wasn’t right, or at least wasn’t how things usually went.
“You still haven’t told me… about what I saw today. You lied to me.” I set my plate aside on the floor and stared at him. He finished chewing a bite and glanced down at his own plate, apparently deciding he was done too because he set his next to mine.