by Dean Murray
Chapter 4
Only pure willpower let me drive away from the junior high without opening Jace's note first, and even then I broke a few traffic laws on my way to the high school so I would have time to read it before school started.
I pulled into my normal parking spot at the back edge of the main parking lot, and then fished Jace's note out from underneath my butt. It was pretty sad looking by that point. The once clean square of paper had been replaced by a dirt-stained, crinkled mess. I'd been expecting the dirt given that I'd stepped on it, but I hadn't been expecting the heavy paper to mold itself to the curve of my posterior quite so quickly.
Thinking of Jace made my skin flush. It was stupid, I barely knew him at all, but I was definitely not in control of my reactions right then. I cracked my window a couple of inches to help cool down my burning skin, and tore the envelope open. Inside was a single piece of heavy paper.
I'm sorry I let you drive off with Kat—I know she's crazy, but I didn't think she'd be quite that crazy with someone else in the car. As her (slightly) older brother, I hold myself responsible and I hope you'll let me make it up to you. How about dinner at our place? I managed to get our kitchen unpacked last night between putting new tires on your car and dropping it off this morning. I promise not to put you in any mortal danger that you don't want to be put in.
—Jace
I'd been flushed before, but the note seemed to have thrown my system into overdrive. My heart was racing and I knew I needed to get out of the car right away or I was going to start sweating. Actually, I needed to do more than just get out of the car, I needed to get out of Jace's jacket.
I climbed out into the weak morning sunlight and shrugged out of the heavy leather, setting the jacket down on the roof of my car as I stepped around to the back door. The cool air felt heavenly on my now-bare shoulders. I started to adjust the neckline on my sweater, but the lure of finally cooling back down was just too much. Instead of opening the door and grabbing my backpack as I'd planned on, I grabbed the front of my sweater and lifted it away from my skin so the cool air could more easily make its way inside.
It felt so good that I closed my eyes for a second and took a deep breath.
"Wow, the girls in my last school never could have gotten away with wearing something like that. I'm suddenly extra glad that we moved."
I'd only thought I was blushing before then. I recognized that voice and even the gentle, teasing note I could hear underlying the words wasn't enough to stop my face from heating to the point where it felt like I was going to spontaneously combust.
I left my eyes closed for a slow count of three as I steeled myself to turn around and face Jace. "Hasn't anyone ever told you that it's not polite to sneak up on people?"
I was so out of my depth it wasn't even funny. I was pleased that my response came out without having my voice crack, but my tone made me sound like a total witch.
"Hey, it's not my fault that you were so far gone you didn't hear me drive up and park next to you."
I opened my mouth to tell him that he was crazy—only he was indeed leaning back against the same gorgeous, black Viper that Kat had dropped us off in the night before. The same black Viper that even when idling had sounded like an airplane taking off.
"How did you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Teleport into existence less than four feet away from me."
"I swear upon my honor as a Boy Scout that I didn't do any teleporting this morning. And I cross my heart. Twice."
"You've never been a Boy Scout."
"You don't know that."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "Tell the truth, Jace. Have you ever been a Boy Scout?"
He let out a big, melodramatic sigh. "I hate it when you do that. You take all of the fun out of lying. Fine. I've never been a Boy Scout. I would have been a good one though."
"As long as you're coming clean about that you should admit to the teleportation too. It's always best to just swallow all of your medicine at once."
"Really, is that something your mom tells you every time you get sick?"
The teasing, happy feeling instantly turned to ash.
"No. She…she's been dead for almost five years."
Jace's face fell so fast it would have been funny if I hadn't been feeling so crappy. "I'm sorry, Selene. I didn't know…"
I shrugged, pretending that it hadn't affected me even though we both knew it was nothing more than an act.
"It's fine—there wasn't any way that you could have known. She got cancer and she was one of the thirty percent. It's just one of those things, it sucks and then it's over."
I hadn't seen Jace cross the distance between us, maybe he'd teleported again. He was standing with his hand only millimeters from my exposed shoulder, obviously wanting to comfort me, but unsure what was appropriate in this particular situation.
"Stuff like that is never over, Selene. It can't be over because it changes who you are. I'm sorry I stuck my foot in my mouth again, it's basically a time-honored tradition at this point though so maybe I should just learn to accept it."
"Really, it's fine, Jace. I need to learn not to be so sensitive about it. I'm not the only person to ever lose someone—I don't have the corner on grief. Besides, it's been five years, I should have figured out how to move on by now."
He stepped into me and placed one finger underneath my chin gently raising my face so that I would meet his eyes again.
"You don't just get over things like that, Selene. Maybe some people do, but not you. You couldn't just casually let go of someone you cared about and still be yourself. It's okay to grieve, even for years if that's what it takes. Sometimes that is the only way to properly honor someone. Tell me how to make this up to you. Please."
Having him so close to me was making me feel all tingly. I wasn't shaking on the outside, but inside of me there was an eight point nine magnitude earthquake going on. I wanted to reach out to him, wanted to go up on my tiptoes so that I could kiss him, but that felt wrong on nearly every level.
My skin felt hyper-sensitive. I could feel the weave of the fibers in my jeans in a way that I'd never experienced before. The cool, morning breeze seemed to cut right through the weave of my sweater, and the bare skin on my shoulders, back and upper chest seemed to be able to trace the temperature differentials between gusts. It felt like the wind was caressing my bare skin, like Jace was caressing me.
"You lost someone too."
"Yeah. It was a long time ago though. Practically ancient history. She…well, she's gone now and I need to accept it and move on."
"Isn't that my line?"
That earned me a shadow of the crooked grin that I remembered from the day before. This smile lacked the wattage of the last one he'd thrown my direction, but he was still heartstoppingly-beautiful. He still looked perfect, but he looked more mature, like someone who had experienced more than any seventeen-year-old was meant to endure.
"I guess it is."
"Tell me about her?"
Jace shook his head. "I wish I could. Maybe someday I'll be able to, but not now, not today."
"You wanted to know how to make everything better. What if that's what I want?"
He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them the sheer level of hurt looking out at me sliced slivers off of my soul. Mom had been religious, and I still remembered the story about Adam and Eve being cast out of the Garden of Eden. I used to wonder what that must have felt like; I didn't need to wonder anymore because I could see that exact pain in Jace's eyes. He looked like someone who had seen paradise, who had lived there, and then had it all yanked away from him between one breath and the next.
"Please don't ask me that, Selene. I would love to tell you, but it won't make anything better, not for you, not for me. It would just ruin things."
If I'd had any doubt that he was talking about an ex-girlfriend that would have put it to rest. Talking about a dead mother or a dead sister wouldn't ruin everything wit
h a girl he'd just met, a girl who wasn't even worthy of breathing the same air as him, a girl he was flirting with for no good reason.
"Okay, I won't ask."
"Still, ask me for something. I do want to make up for everything that's happened during the last twenty-four hours."
"Admit that you teleported here."
"Are you saying the thing you want is for me to lie?"
"No, I want the truth. I'm not stupid, Jace. Your car is loud; there is no way you just pulled up and parked right there without me hearing you. I was distracted, but I wasn't that distracted."
I'd made my demand playfully, determined not to let him see how unnerving his appearance had been. I hated things that didn't make sense—things that I can't explain—and even Jace's devastating looks and rock-hard body couldn't completely distract me from the things that weren't adding up.
Dad had been right, we should have heard Jace drop off my car. Our house was old enough that it didn't even have double windows. We could hear our neighbors yell at each other from inside of their house without even cracking our windows.
Even if there was some weird explanation for how he'd driven my car up our driveway without waking any of us up, that didn't explain how Kat could have followed along behind him in his Viper and not made enough noise to wake up the entire neighborhood.
I tore my eyes away from Jace and they came to rest on my tires. Dad had been right, these weren't the nearly bald, weathered monstrosities that Sandra had deflated, they looked brand new. It was one more thing that I couldn't explain.
Despite my efforts to mask how rattled I was, Jace seemed to see through me. He took a deep breath and then nodded. "Okay, I'll tell you, but not right now, not right here. Promise me that you'll come to dinner tonight."
He seemed to be admitting that there was something unusual going on, but I tried not to focus on that. There were probably a hundred perfectly normal explanations. The last thing I needed was to get all freaked out right now. Jace was nice, gorgeous, and inexplicably interested in me. I was not going to screw this up by jumping at shadows.
I needed to focus on safe, normal things. I'd spent the last five years since my mom had died with my feet firmly grounded and my head out of the clouds. I took another deep breath and drew on almost sixty months of dealing with the minutiae of life. "I can't, I need to go get Ari after school."
"Bring her along. Kat hasn't stopped talking about her since the two of them met. I'll cook dinner for both of you. Please, Selene."
"Did you really put brand-new tires on my car?"
"Yeah, sorry, the old ones couldn't be saved. That isn't a problem is it?"
"It's a problem because my dad noticed and was asking about them. It's a problem because it means I'm going to go slam Sandra Connor's head into a wall over and over again until she either apologizes and pays for them or loses consciousness."
I was so mad I could barely see straight. A very tiny part of me screamed that it shouldn't be possible for me to get this angry this quickly, but the rest of me dismissed the warning. The anger wasn't new, I just usually did a better job concealing it from everyone—including myself.
The truth was that I existed in a constant state of anger. A new set of tires was what, two or three hundred dollars? That was nothing to Sandra. She spent more of her daddy's money on a single designer handbag. For me it was more than my clothes budget for the entire school year. I did laundry twice a week because I'd splurged on the stupid top I was wearing and didn't have enough other clothes to get through the rest of the week otherwise.
In that instant I hated every single thing about Sandra and if she'd been standing in front of me I would have happily shoved a knife into her chest. I started towards the back door to the school, backpack forgotten, but Jace grabbed me before I could take a second step.
"Let go of me!"
My yell should have brought half a dozen people running towards us to make sure that I was okay, but it was nothing more than a reflex. The truth was that Jace letting go of me was the absolute last thing I wanted in that instant.
He'd grabbed my arm and pulled me back towards him, spinning me so that I ended up facing him with his right hand cradling the side of my neck. His touch felt like fire, and the trembling inside of me had made it to the outside now.
"What an incredible little berserker you are. You can't go slam Sandra's head into a wall, and you know it."
His words pierced the trembling haze that his touch had thrown over me—not all the way, but enough that I tore my right arm free of his grasp. I had a sneaking suspicion that he let me break free, which was validated when he effortlessly recaptured my shoulder just above where my sweater ended.
"I'm not saying that you're incapable of bashing her head in, Selene, I'm saying that I'm not going to let you because she's not worth going to jail over. You're mad now, but before the day is over you're going to remember that the best revenge is living well."
I wanted to laugh in his face. He knew next to nothing about me. He deserved to have me mock him for his ignorance, but I couldn't think past the feel of his hands on my neck and bare shoulder. It was like my universe ended at the nerve endings in my skin. Nothing else mattered, nothing else was real.
I felt like I could have closed my eyes and drawn his fingerprints down to the last arch and swirl. I was that hyper-aware of his touch.
"I guess the joke's on me, because not only don't I get any kind of revenge, I don't get to live well either."
"You've got all the right ingredients to live better than Sandra and her friends can even imagine. You're smart, pretty, talented, and you've got fire. You've kept it buried down deep all this time, but it's there."
"You don't know that."
"Yes, I do. I knew it when you didn't freak out after Kat nearly wrecked my car before the two of you even left the parking lot, I knew it just now when you tried to go put her in the hospital, but most of all I know it because you refuse to let her break you. Let me show you how to put all of the ingredients together. Come to my house tonight. I'll cook dinner, Kat will pick up Ari and we'll plan the best revenge against Sandra this town has ever seen."
His lips were just fractions of an inch away from mine. I'd never been kissed before and I was scared to death that I was going to mess things up, but I wanted him to kiss me with every part of my body. Even my pulse seemed to cry out for him.
"Fine, I'll come."
The lazy, half smile was back, but this time it didn't send my heart racing even faster, it calmed me down. That smile felt like coming home.
"You're going to be late to your first class, Selene, you'd better get going."
"What about you?"
He shook his head. "I got what I came for today. I can always start school tomorrow. Besides, I have a house to unpack and a night to plan."
Jace stepped back, letting go of my arms and releasing me from the paralysis that his touch had inflicted on me, and then opened the door to my car and picked up my backpack, holding nearly thirty pounds of books straight out in front of him as though it were weightless.
I went to take it from him and he moved it just out of reach with a playful smile. "I think you'd better put this on first. I'd hate for the administration to send you home to change."
His other hand was holding the leather jacket that I'd left on the roof of my car. I started to ask him what he was talking about and then looked down at myself. Somewhere during the course of the morning—probably when he'd grabbed me to stop me from bashing Sandra's head in—the neckline of my sweater had gotten stretched out. Luckily it wasn't ruined. It would be fine after I hand washed it, but it was riding much lower on my shoulders than it had been when I put it on this morning.
I'd already been flashing enough skin that it would have been a borderline case, but he was right, there was zero question but that I would be sent home.
I let him help me into the jacket, and then used the heavy weight of the leather across my shoulders and arms to
adjust the neckline of my sweater back to something less scandalous.
"I don't think that I ever actually thanked you for fixing my tires."
"Sure you did. Seeing you this morning is all the thanks I need."
It was too good to be true—he was too good to be true. As much as I wanted to just enjoy it for however long it lasted, a jaded, cautious part of me knew that the longer I went along the worse it would be when he yelled 'psych' and dumped me on my butt.
"Why are you being so nice to me?"
"You're going to be late for class, Selene."
"No, I'm serious, why are you doing all of this? All it's going to do is cause you and Kat problems here at school. I'm not worth that."
He looked angry for the first time I could remember. "Never say that again. You're worth more than all of the rest of the kids in this school combined. They are nothing more than insects. I hate this place for making you feel that way."
I should have been terrified—Jace looked like some kind of avenging Norse deity—but I knew his fury wasn't directed at me. Besides, he'd seen the worst I had to offer and hadn't even flinched. It seemed like it was only fair to return the favor.
We were standing several feet away from each other now, but I could still feel the warmth of his hands on my skin. It was like his jacket had trapped the sensation and bonded it to my skin. I forced myself to stop playing with the neckline of my sweater.
"You're avoiding the question."
His smile this time had an air of resignation to it. "If I tell you, will you get moving so you're not late for school? The last thing I want right now is for you to start getting in trouble and making your dad suspicious that something is going on."
"Fine, you tell me why you're being nice and I'll go to class like a good little girl."
"You remind me of someone I used to know, someone who meant the world to me."
I felt my expression stiffen. It all made sense now. The hints he'd been dropping all fit together perfectly. He'd lost a girlfriend at some point in the past and he still hadn't recovered from that loss, still hadn't gotten over her.
He was being nice to me because I reminded him of her. I was nothing more than some kind of freaky, post-death rebound.
I took a step backward. "I'm not sure dinner tonight is such a good idea…"
He pulled his teleporting trick and was there in front of me again. He captured my hand in his and shook his head at me. "This is why I can't tell you anything. You draw the wrong conclusions and then overreact. I'm being nice to you because I once knew someone very much like you. That means I'm uniquely placed to appreciate all of the things about you that nobody but your dad and Ari notice."
It sounded good, but I wasn't sure there was any difference between what I was afraid of and what he was saying.
"I don't know, Jace. I don't think I'm up to competing with a memory."
"With somebody else that would be the case, Selene, but not you. For you it will never be a competition."
"How is that even possible?"
He smiled at me again. "You know that I'm telling you the truth."
My heart started stuttering as I realized he was right. On some deep, untouchable level I knew him—knew him well enough to know that he was absolutely telling me the truth.
"That's crazy."
"Crazy? Yes. The truth? Yes. Wonderful in ways that you can't even begin to explain? Yes. Say you'll still come tonight. You promised…"
I just nodded, unwilling to trust my voice when my insides seemed so determined to rearrange themselves. It was his hand on mine that was doing it, but I wasn't willing to let go, not yet. I had a feeling that I would suffer through a lot worse than some industrial-sized butterflies for the sensation of his skin on mine.
"Good. Now go to your first class. You promised to stay out of trouble."
Jace let go of my hand and then reached up and guided me through a half-turn with gentle pressure against my shoulders. With his leather jacket between his hands and my shoulders, I couldn't feel anything more than just pressure, and that more than anything else seemed to break the intoxicating spell that he'd cast on me.
I nodded and started towards the school. I wanted desperately to look back at Jace, but I forced myself to watch where I was going. I might very well have already lost my ability to exercise my free will, but I needed to at least keep up the illusion that I could still choose something other than what Jace wanted.
A smile turned up the corners of my lips. At least Jace wasn't completely infallible. There was no way I was making it to my class on time. Not after the amount of time we'd spent together in the parking lot. The simple fact that there wasn't anyone else still in the parking lot would have been more than enough to establish that the second bell had rung a long time ago.