The Roses Academy- the Entire Collection

by Tara Brown

  Chapter 12

  My plan to stay away from him was easier to think about and plot than it is to execute. He has followed me everywhere, trying desperately to convince me of his innocence in my family's death. The murders I saw him commit. He hasn’t given me a second of breathing room. He doesn’t come into the house; it's the only peace I get. But he hangs out in the yard and follows me to the motel. He's all but kept my damned truck too.

  I glance at him standing down the driveway beside my friggin’ truck.

  “Who's the guy milling about?” Luke asks.

  “He's—uhm—my ex?” I don’t even have an answer for it. It's awkward in ways I haven’t explained to myself.

  “I can get rid of him if you want,” he says.

  “Thanks, but he’s trying to work his way back into my life. He won't give me a minute of peace. But he's my problem. Don't bother with him.” The idea of Whit hurting him makes me instantly angry.

  He laughs. “Oh, I got me one of them myself.” He pulls out his cell phone and shows me a picture of a redhead with bright-green eyes. She is beautiful.

  “Rebecca Ryan. If you see her near the property, call me right away. She's nuttier than squirrel shit.” He chuckles but my jaw drops.

  I take the phone and stare. “She looks just like my friend Angie used to.” The red hair is the only difference. It's stunning how remarkable the resemblance is.

  “Her grandmamma is Angie, she's Angela Palatino. Her granddaddy is Martin Ryan, you must know him. Governor of Louisiana. Old as Methuselah's goat now. He was supposed to marry your great-aunt or grandma, the one you're named after.” He looks confused but then nudges me and laughs. “You know, the engagement party of doom.”

  My mouth feels like I'm spittin’ cotton. I take a deep breath and shake my head. “Oh uhm. No, Angie was my age. She lived in New Orleans. Maybe a relative. She ain't the same one. Not a Palatino.” I'm mumbling and stumbling over my words and crazed thoughts. I can hear friggin’ Whit laughing all the way down the driveway at my incoherent statement.

  I think I'm gonna die. How did she live? How did she not die? I swear I saw her death. The night is still so intense in my mind. My memories could be jumbled.

  Worse though, how the hell did she marry Martin? I almost vomit on Luke, thinking about it.

  Luckily, he shrugs and takes the phone back. “Not sure. Maybe. Anyway, her granddaughter is a piece of work. I'm gonna get back to work.” He walks into the house that now has a front door, a real one.

  I look over at Whit and scowl. “Go home.”

  “I am.”

  “Ugh.” I roll my eyes.

  He pushes off the truck and walks up the driveway to me. He towers over me and looks down. “You're starving, aren’t you?”

  “No.” My stomach is empty. I feel hungry just thinking about food.

  He takes my hand and pulls me back to my truck. I struggle, but I don’t stand a chance with him. He pushes me inside and climbs into the driver’s seat.

  He starts the truck and reverses fast. When he throws it into drive, he burns out.

  “Those tires aren’t cheap, Whit.”

  He grins at me. “I notice you don’t call me Mr. Whitlock anymore.”

  “That’s because you used to be my Mr. Whitlock. Now you're just Whit, some asshole who broke my heart and killed my sister. I hate you enough that I think I could actually call you Jameson. Or Lord Whitlock. Or even James.”

  “I miss shy little Lorelei.” He scowls. “And can I just say that the night we were going to leave, your mother—”

  “STOP! We are never having this conversation. I never want to speak of this. I saw you. I saw what I need to know.”

  “Fine.” He shrugs. “Have it your way.” He drives and we don’t speak. He pulls into a small trailer park where the smell of poverty lingers in the air like chimney smoke.

  He stops in front of a small yellow trailer and then drives away quickly. He parks on the road. He gets out and walks around to my door. “Get out.” His tone is feisty.

  I make a face, but he drags me from the open door. I kick him in the side and he slams me against the truck. His fangs are out. My skin shivers.

  “You're pissing me off, Lorelei. You refuse to forgive me for the one bad thing I've ever done to you, which honestly, if you let me explain, you'd see it wasn’t so bad. Now you're blatantly flirting with that construction worker. Do I have to kill him too?”

  “One bad thing? One bad thing? That one thing happened to ruin my entire life, which FYI—ISN'T ENDING! I just suffer day in and day out. Suffer, suffer, suffer.” I cover my eyes and take a deep breath. I put my hands down. “I just want you to leave me alone. If you kill him, I will kill myself in the sunlight.” I don’t know why I haven’t done it yet. I hope he doesn’t question it too.

  “Aren't you afraid of the family curse?” He laughs.

  “Ass.” I shove him but I'm weak. I'm starved. “How do you know about that?”

  He leans in and kisses my neck. “I told you already, Lorelei. I have things to show you. I just want to explain. I'm going to hold you down and make you listen to me.”

  “Yeah, that's going to make me forgive you.”

  His face hovers over mine. “I can make you love me.”

  “You already did that, Whit. I’m still suffering with the side effects. Fortunately, I love my sister more.” I spit my words at him.

  “Still?” He whispers, “You do want me.”

  I laugh. It's true. I can't even deny it, but I can torture him. “I was gonna feed and then go take it out on Luke. He seemed like he was into me.”

  “Do it.” He smiles bitterly. “It'll be the last thing he does.”

  “Stop threatening to kill people.” I sigh.

  He gives me his lazy grin. “Stop acting like you don't love me as much as I love you.”

  “It’s not an act.” I shake my head and gaze around. “I don't. Why are we here?”

  “My feeding grounds.” He pulls me through the woods. We walk in silence.

  We are close to a trailer park that stinks of poverty in the soaked Louisiana air.

  He glances back and puts a finger to his lips.

  We walk silently till we get to the back window. He slides it open. “I own the trailer park and rent the trailers.”

  “Sneaky rotten bastard,” I whisper. It gets us around having to be invited in. I peek in and see an older woman. She has needle marks on her arms. She’s asleep.

  I pull myself up into the window and stare back at him uncomfortably. I've never fed in front of anyone. It feels too personal to do with another person.

  I drop to my knees in front of her and try to block out the fact he has climbed in the window too. I brush her salt-and-pepper hair out of her face. Her neck brings my fangs out instantly. I lower my face to her throat and put my hands over her eyes.

  I bite down, waking her. She tries to struggle, but I hold her face down and pin her body with mine. The first bite is the best. The hot blood sprays into my throat. I gulp her back until the last of the blood slips from her body. I stop drinking and pull back. The last of the blood in her trickles down her ashen throat. I wipe my mouth and walk from the room. He doesn't follow me. He stays and waits for me to finish.

  I don’t think about them. I don't get to know them or feel bad for them. I'm immune to it. The only feelings I have now are intense love and hatred and desire and regret. It's impossible for me to feel something partway and I can't pity them fully. Their lifestyle is always why I'm here. I never feed from healthy people. I never feed from good people. I always eat criminals, homeless, and drug addicts. I always have.

  Except in the beginning, when I ate animals.

  The drive back home is quiet until about halfway. Then he starts again, “You smell so good.”

  “Please, don’t.”

  He pulls the truck over and leaps at me, kissing violently. My back is pressed against the truck door.

  A voice interrupts t
he madness, “What's going on in here?”

  I shy away from a flashlight as Whit grabs the man at the door and lifts him off the ground. He bites into his throat and drains him on the side of the road. I see his uniform and his car on the other side of the road and grimace.

  “Uh, that's not a bad person.” I can’t believe he kills so savagely.

  Whit drops the dead policeman to the ground and slams the truck door. He starts the truck and drives.

  The smell of blood is in the air.

  Whit speeds to a dirt road and pulls off. He parks the truck and gets out. He opens the door and takes my hand. He drags me behind him, and after a few minutes, I know where we are.

  I see the hiding house and pull on his hand. “Tessa is staying there.”

  “I want to be alone with you.” He looks at me and growls.

  “I can’t do this.” I back up, grinning from ear to ear. “You can’t expect that because you bought dinner I’m getting you dessert.”

  “I do think that.” He walks toward me slowly.

  I step backward. “I can’t do this.”

  “You want me.” His lazy grin breaks my heart as I trip and he's on me.

  He pins me into the itchy wheat and kisses me fiercely.

  I want to stop and get away from him but I don't know how. My brain creates an awesome diversion. I let the words slip from my lips, “How many have there been?”

  He lifts his face from my cheek. “How many what?”

  “Girls?”

  His eyes widen. He processes my question and then decides to be angry. “What?”

  “How many?” I gulp and sit up. This will end it.

  The moon casts shadows on his face but doesn’t hide the anger. “Why? Why are you bringing this up now?”

  I cross my arms. I need to stall until the blood lust is gone. “All this time you were searching for me, were you missing me or was that only a part-time thing? Were you sleeping with other girls the whole time?”

  “No. Of course not.” He runs a hand through his hair and shakes his head. “It wasn’t like that. It was just, you know.”

  “I don’t know.” I bite my lip. “I never—anytime I got close—I well—I lost control.” I admit the one thing I think will make him feel guilty.

  He processes again. “You ate them?”

  “Yeah.” I'm ashamed. “It was an accident, usually. I went on dates with boys. Nice boys. But whenever I tried to date anyone too long I had to break up and move on.”

  “So what you’re saying is you waited for me?” His eyes glow with the same sarcasm that's in his tone. “You saved yourself for me?”

  “No. What I’m saying is I have lived a chaste life. I’m still technically eighteen years old. I always will be. You robbed me of that, that happy ending. And then you tell me that you love me and you want me back, and you've been searching for me all this time, but really you were with other girls having a grand old time.” My anger slowly starts to become real and painful in the small way I can feel it. “While I ate boys I tried to like and hated myself for it.”

  He crawls over me. “Can't we just let it be ancient history? Start over?”

  I lean back, disgusted. “I guess it doesn't matter to you that you murdered my family. But even if I can't seem to get over you because of whatever you did to my brain and my heart with your poison, my family still counts more than you do in my heart. I would never date you.”

  “I didn’t murder your family and yes, love, we're dating. We have been dating this entire time. We never broke up.” He grins and bats his thick lashes shamelessly. “This is the courting stage where you get me to try to win you over. When you live as long as we do, it can last a hundred years.”

  “Why don't you come back in a hundred years and see if I’ve changed my mind. And try not to have sex with other women or kill my family like you did this time.”

  “I never said I had sex.” His Scottish accent is thicker and his voice gets high pitched.

  “It doesn’t matter. Me and you are nothing.” I point from him to me. “This is just blood lust. This isn’t anything. Let's be real. You aren’t making me dinner and bringing me flowers and wine. You don’t sleep over. We are making out in the grass. This is so us not dating. Things like us don't date.”

  “Lass, I took you to dinner.”

  “No, you took me to kill people and eat them. It's not the same thing.”

  His face flushes like it used to and he smiles and looks down. “I don't want to date. My intentions for us have not changed in forty-eight years, Lorelei. I want to marry you and take you home to meet the family. I want to be with you forever.”

  “You killed my family.”

  He looks like a little kid. “You hated your family.” His eyes get sad. “Except your sister. But I did my best there.” He sighs, defeated. “My family isn’t dead.”

  “What? How old are you?”

  He bites his lip. “Five hundred and one. My mother, father, and brothers are alive.”

  It doesn’t make sense. “Y'all are like this?”

  “All.”

  “How?”

  He shrugs. “Just are.”

  “I want answers.”

  He leans over. “And I want to take your clothes off. I will explain everything later.”

  I kick him back and hold him there with my foot on his chest. “No.”

  “Then let me explain about that night.”

  “No.”

  He sighs. “You’re a mood killer.” He plants a kiss on my shin and stands. He offers me his hand. The blood high is leaving. We will both be normal again shortly.

  I take his hand and stand next to him. The wheat whispers to us. I remember the last dawn, the one where he begged me not to leave him. I hate him. I have to remember that.

  I pull my hand away and walk back to the truck.

  I can hear him sigh again, but I let it get lost in the whispering wheat. When I turn back, his face looks the same as it did the night he begged me, not far from where we are standing.

  He drives in silence and drops me off at my motel. I hop out of the truck, my damned truck, and close the door, not even saying goodnight.

  “Can I pick you up tomorrow? I have two things I still need to show you.” His voice is soft again as he shouts out the door.

  I glance back and nod. “I have house things to do, but you can get me at the mansion at midnight. The contractors refuse to be there after six.”

  He smiles hopefully. “I can help with this, you know. I'm actually very good with my hands.”

  “Well, you know what they say, ‘practice makes perfect’ and let's face it, sugar, you’ve had loads of practice.”

  His eyes narrow. “I meant the building part of using my hands.”

  I open my motel door and slam it when I'm inside.

  “I still want you.” His voice is muffled outside my door. “But more than anything in the world, I want my chance to explain.”

  His hand brushes the door. I press my back into it and try not to cry.

  Chapter 13

  I sneak alongside the governor's mansion to the exact spot where Whit saved me. I peer in the window of the basement. Lights flicker a few rooms away. I can't believe Angie married that jerk Martin.

  A voice breaks the silence, “This is like holy land for me and you.”

  I jump and turn to see Whit smiling down on me.

  He points and grins. “Remember when I saved you here?”

  “No.” I shake my head and give him my best uninterested look. “Now be quiet.” I creep along the side of the house to the back basement windows. I walk until I reach the window with the flickering light. I see bodies, old bodies doing things I’m not emotionally prepared for.

  “Damn. Angie looks good for sixty-nine,” I whisper, confused.

  Whit peeks and then gags, pointing and backing away. “I don’t want to see a woman of that age doing that.”

  “Shut you. You’re five hundred years old. Pot
s and kettles.” I laugh and shove him. I step away from the window.

  “I look good.” He jogs up to me. “That could have been you.”

  “Who is that man? Luke said she's married to Martin now. I know what Martin looked like, and even old as they are, that ain't him.”

  He makes a disturbed face and shudders. “Her lover, one of the many. Martin has his lovers. They all resemble you in a creepy sort of way. The dead Huntington girl.”

  “What?”

  “Angie was in the woods with Martin that night. They were getting it on when the shit went down.”

  “The shit? You mean the killing of my family?”

  “Anyway, they were in the woods having sex. That’s the gossip.”

  “The girl in the black dress. He dragged her back there. She was so drunk.” I remember it so clearly.

  “I thought you didn’t remember it.” He cocks an eyebrow.

  “Just the parts with you in them.” I turn back in the direction of the window and shake my head. I am desperately saddened by it. Martin used Angie. The same way he used Margery Banks. I just know it. “He always was scum,” I mutter.

  He takes my hand and pulls me along to the gazebo. “Remember when we came here?”

  “No.” It's a lie. I remember every smell and sensation like it was seconds ago.

  “But the memories of me murdering your family are sharp?”

  “That's all I have of you from before.” I nod once as we walk up the stairs.

  He pulls me into his arms and spins me. “I loved you the minute I saw you.”

  “No, you didn’t. I don’t believe in that. Instant love is as fake as Angie's seventy-year-old breasts.”

  He makes a gagging noise. I laugh and rest my face against his chest. It's nice to be with someone I can't hurt. I can smell him and not worry. I let myself like it for a minute and pretend it could be anyone.

  “That was cruel,” he mutters.

  “No crueler than murdering my entire family.”

  His body becomes rigid against mine as he grabs my arms and pulls me back. His dark eyes are filled with desperation and emotion. He lowers his face onto mine. His lips brush my lower lip as he sucks it into his mouth softly. He bites down gently and drags his teeth along. I shiver from the slow and sensual effect of it. He kisses next to my mouth and murmurs, “I never murdered them. I saved them.”