“And you can stay, Connor,” he adds.
Connor goes tense in response, like he’s unsure how to respond.
“Rebecca would want you to,” he says. Then he stands from the bed and releases my hand. “I’ll go make sure the doctor’s still on his way.”
He leaves. I feel unsteady. Why is he acting so strange? I have trouble rising, so Connor helps me to my feet, then he supports me as I walk across the room to the bathroom, but I pause in the doorway, realizing I won’t be able to take a shower. I can barely stand. The thought is depressing because I desperately want to get clean now that I’m more awake.
“Do you have a bathtub?” he asks.
“My dad’s master does.”
“Well, we’ll just have to do that, then.”
I don’t miss the we in his statement, but I’m too tired to comment. I let him search my closet to find me something to change into, and then he leads me to my dad’s room. We stagger into the large bathroom, and he sets my clothes on the counter, lays out a towel on the floor, then turns on the water to get hot. Once the water is steaming, he plugs the tub and pours soap in, creating pillows of white bubbles. He’s keeping himself busy, not saying anything as I sit on the stool by the vanity, watching. I wonder why he hasn’t gone to get my dad. Or why my dad has disappeared—not that I’d be more comfortable with him seeing me naked, but I’m sure he wouldn’t be a fan of Connor helping me bathe.
Once the tub’s full, Connor cuts off the water and turns to me. “Okay . . .” He studies me for a second, then averts his eyes. Now he seems to feel the awkwardness that he was ignoring before. “Maybe I should go get your dad for this part.”
“Yeah.” But I just want to get in the tub and wash off all this mess. As he starts to leave, I say, “Maybe if you just close your eyes.”
He swallows hard, not moving.
I’m done waiting, so I grip the counter and try to get to my feet. I hiss in pain before I can stop myself—they’re so raw.
Connor rushes to my side and leads me to the edge of the bathtub. I stand in front of him, both of us facing the water, and lift my arms. “Just close your eyes and pull up,” I say.
And then I feel the fabric slide along my sides, but I don’t check to see if he’s following the other part of the directions. Once I’ve wrangled myself out of the crusty tank top and then slip off my bra, I lean back in exhaustion and Connor’s hands go to my waist to hold me steady. I can’t hide the sharp intake of breath at his touch on my bare skin. We both sway and I feel a little dizzy.
I look up at his face and see his eyes are still closed, but he looks very uncomfortable.
My body should be in too much pain to feel turned on right now, but his restraint, the feel of him fighting not to look, almost makes me forget the word should ever existed. Because I should be embarrassed to be naked in front of him. I should be mad at him for pushing me away. And I should shy from this intimate moment. But all the shoulds seem to have gone right out the window.
“I think I can just get in with the bottoms on,” I manage to say. Because there’s no way I can picture him helping with my shorts, and then my underwear, without it becoming excessively awkward, eyes closed or not.
He nods, a small bit of relief on his face now.
I hold on to his upper arm and step into the warm water. Instantly the ache in my foot becomes agony, forcing a gasp from my throat. But I just clench my jaw, grip him tighter, and get all the way in, sliding down so the bubbles cover my breasts.
Connor just stands there for a second, eyes still closed, forehead now cradled in his hand. “This is killing me. I can’t be in here with you, Rebecca.”
“It’s okay,” I say through my emerging tears. “It just hurts my feet and hands. But they have to get clean.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ll just be out there.” He points toward the bedroom, and then he opens his eyes, staring at the floor as he turns and walks back into the main room. He slides the bathroom door shut, leaving a small gap, then disappears from view.
FORTY-EIGHT
Rebecca
I grit my teeth, trying to ignore the pain as I pull my shorts and underwear off in the water and set them on the side of the large tub. I study my hands and see the swelling has gone away almost entirely, even if they still hurt. I pick up the soap and begin scrubbing my arms, my chest, my knees, feeling like everything is caked in mud and blood and sweat. Next I start on my hair, washing out the bird nest it’s become. After a few minutes in the water the sting in my feet dims, too, and my body relaxes a bit. Once I’m done with my hair, I rest my head on the back of the tub and close my eyes, letting the warmth soothe my aching muscles for a while.
When I feel like I’ve had enough, I pull myself up and grab the towel, wrapping it around my middle to cover myself, then I sit on the side of the tub.
“Can you help me out now?” I ask, hoping he’s still close by. There’s no way I’ll make it out of this bathroom on my own. “I have a towel on,” I add just in case.
The door slides open and Connor comes in, helping me into the room, settling me onto the ottoman at the foot of my dad’s bed. “Is this okay?” he asks.
I nod and ask him to get me my clothes. He walks back into the bathroom and brings them to me, then turns around. “I’d leave but I . . .”
“It’s okay, Connor.” I pick up the sundress that he pulled out of my closet and manage to get it on over my head without too much trouble, then I somehow pull up my underwear while sitting on the edge of the seat without falling on the floor. Thankfully when I glance at Connor, he’s still turned away like a gentleman. “Okay, I’m good,” I say when I’m put together.
He turns back around, but instead of coming to sit by me, he stands there and shifts his feet. “I can go,” he finally says. “If you want me to.”
“Why would I want that?”
“Rebecca . . . I’m . . . I’m so sorry.”
“What? Why?”
He starts to pace, running a hand through his hair. “I wasn’t watching. I left you here and you were vulnerable, I should have—”
“Oh, please, you can’t possibly—Connor, would you please just come sit down, for heaven’s sake?”
He stops pacing and moves slowly to my side.
When he’s settled next to me, I take his hand in mine. “I’m all right. It was . . .” I swallow. “It was terrifying. But I’m okay.” I try to give him a smile, but my bones ache, my feet burn, and I’m exhausted. I sort of want to cry again.
He hesitates but then asks the one question I’m not sure I’m ready to answer. “What happened, Rebecca?”
I release a heavy sigh and just tell him in the simplest way I can. “I was possessed.”
Heavy silence fills the room, but he doesn’t move away. “A demon?”
I’m surprised by how calm he is at the idea of that horror. “No, not a demon, it was a ghost. The ghost of Aidan’s mom. She said that she took over my body to protect me from the demon. And from Ava. But I think when she went into me she also . . . I don’t know, flipped some sort of switch on my power.”
“Your power?”
“I sort of demolished a convenience store. With my mind.”
Concern fills his features.
“I also . . .” God, how do I say this? I trapped a seven-foot demon, with fists the size of my head, in the ground with magical roots. No biggie. Instead I keep it simple. “I fought that demon, Hunger. And won.”
He turns to face me, so he can look me in the eyes. “You have powers like Aidan.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Yes, you’re his balance. Like in the spell.”
I shake my head. “I threw a three-hundred-pound man across a room with nothing but my brain, Connor.”
He makes a face like he’s impressed. “Nice.”
“How are you not freaked out by that?” I ask, amazed at him.
“Because . . .” He shrugs. “It’s you. The guy probably deser
ved it.”
I laugh in surprise.
He takes my hand slowly in his and then brings our joined fingers to his lips, brushing a kiss over my knuckles.
My insides melt, and I’m reminded of how tired I am. “What happened to you, Connor? What’s with the bandage?” I need to distract myself from wanting to kiss him. I’m not sure I’m ready for that right now. And I can tell he doesn’t want to talk about whatever got him that bandage, which means he needs to.
He clears his throat and looks away. He sits there for several seconds, just staring at the floor, and I wonder if he’s going to speak at all. He’s suddenly tense, like he wants to bolt. Then he seems to steel himself. He releases my hand and reaches up to the bandage on his neck, pulling it off.
I gasp. A twisted scar runs down the front of his neck in a thick mass of flesh. It’s pink and irritated. A wound that’s healing. But that’s not a wound you recover from.
Then I notice the smear of dried blood on his collarbone. My hands shake as I reach out and pull his shirt aside at the neck. More blood on his shoulder.
“I died,” he says, sounding far away.
Died . . . he died? “Like dead, died?” I ask stupidly. It doesn’t make sense. He’s here.
“Something happened, and . . .” He shakes his head and then hunches over, rubbing his forehead with his palm. “Finger’s dead.” A small crack of pain breaks his voice and then the words spill out. “The demon ripped into him and he never came back—it fucking ripped his heart out. My God. It tore into me first, nearly got Kara. If Aidan hadn’t—” Another shard of pain hits him and he chokes on his words.
My body goes numb, listening to him, realizing what he’s saying.
“The house is ash,” he continues. “It’s gone. Everything Sid worked for, it’s all burned to the fucking ground. And he’s so sick—he’s gasping for breath now like he’s drowning.”
My throat clenches. It’s suddenly hard to breathe. “Wait. Aidan, is he . . . ?” But I can’t ask that, I don’t want to—
“He’s dead,” Connor whispers.
The small words hit me hard, knocking the air from my lungs. No. No, that’s not possible. He can’t be dead. I’d have felt it. I know I would have.
“His body is at the club,” Connor says. “This guy that was stalking Aidan—some blogger—he got himself killed in the chaos, too, and then he came back to life, saying Aidan resurrected him. And I woke up healed somehow, so . . . we think he might still be able to come back. He’s . . . he’s died before. But it’s never taken this long for him to wake up.”
I don’t know what to say, how to process it. “He’ll come back. He’s not gone.” I say it with so much conviction I think Connor even believes it. I have to believe it, too.
“But Finger . . .” Connor shakes his head in misery.
I think of the silent boy, think of him being gone. And it feels as if a part of me went with him, far away.
Connor and I sit in silence and lean on each other as the weight of what was destroyed falls over us. He puts his arms around me and I curl into him. We both let the tears come then. We cry for the loss of a boy, for the loss of a home, and eventually we find ourselves lying side by side on the bed. As the tears ebb, I cling to him, realizing he almost left me. He was almost gone from me forever, just like Charlie. The idea shakes me to the core. I can’t lose him. I can’t.
“I need you,” I say into the side of his neck.
He kisses the top of my head, his fingers combing through my damp hair. After a pause, he whispers, “I’m falling in love with you, Rebecca. And it’s terrifying.”
I grip his shirt and hold him even closer, knowing exactly how he feels.
FORTY-NINE
Rebecca
We’re woken up by my dad when the doctor arrives. I sit up in the bed and Connor moves to the ottoman. My dad doesn’t comment about how he found us. He seems so glad to have me home, I think he could’ve caught us naked and it wouldn’t have bothered him at all, at this point.
The concierge doctor comes around the bed and kneels on the floor, then frowns at my feet for the next five minutes, asking a whole bunch of questions I’m not sure how to answer. Especially when he asks me where I went when I disappeared, because I have no clue. I just tell him I somehow ended up in Arrowhead, which makes him start looking in my eyes and asking questions about if I’ve ever lost time before, or forgotten how I got somewhere.
I look to my dad for some help in answering, but he’s obviously very uncomfortable, his feet shifting nervously when the questions start, until he’s eventually rubbing his left temple, which usually means he’s beyond stressed. It looks like the doctor gave him a real brace for his wounded arm so that’s good. Hopefully he’ll go in for an X-ray as soon as I’m settled.
“I’ll bandage your feet,” the doctor finally says to me. “And I think you need a couple of stitches for that cut in your knee, but I’d like to schedule you for some more testing about the memory loss.”
“What kind of tests?” I ask, even though I know they won’t help answer his questions. I’m guessing ghosts don’t leave evidence behind.
“An MRI, I think. And perhaps some psychological testing to determine—”
My dad stops him. “Thank you, that’s enough. Just stitch her up, please, and I’ll go get your check.” And then he’s walking out of the room, not even sparing any of us a glance.
Connor and I share a look.
“Let’s bandage you up, then,” the doctor says, seemingly fine with not digging deeper into my memory loss. He pulls out some white gauze, some tubes of medicine, and packages of several different sizes. Then he starts slathering clear goo on my soles, laying pads of cotton over them, then wrapping the gauze round and round.
It’s when he gets to my knee that the nerves start buzzing under my skin. He doesn’t look at me or speak, he just begins using Q-tips to clean out the cut and—ouch! Ah, man, it hurts.
Connor comes over and sits on the other side of the bed, taking my hand and letting me squeeze the life out of his fingers as the doctor sticks a needle into the cut several times, telling me it’s going to help with the pain.
I release a tired laugh, but he doesn’t seem to get the joke.
I’m just glad he’s a quick stitcher, because we’re done after only a few more minutes, the last bandage securely in place. I’m relieved that my hands have healed so quickly. Something tells me that’s related to the magic that made the burns in the first place.
Once the doctor’s done with everything, he gives me a lecture on dehydration and getting plenty of sleep, and hands me a bottle of pills, saying they’re for the pain, just in case. Then he leaves, and Connor and I are left alone again until my dad walks in five seconds later, going back to pacing the carpet without a word. He has an envelope in his hands.
I glance at Connor. “I think I need to talk to my dad. Can I come to the club later? Maybe I can see . . . maybe I can see Aidan?”
“Sure,” he says, hesitantly. He stands from the bed but then lingers. “I can come back in a little while and drive you.” He glances at my dad, but he’s not paying attention. So Connor kisses my forehead softly. “I’ll come back in an hour.”
I nod and watch him go, knowing he’ll probably just wait out front in his Jeep.
My dad still hasn’t looked up from the floor.
“Are you all right?” I ask.
He lifts his gaze to mine and I see how tortured he is. My pulse speeds up.
He releases a shaky sigh and sits on the side of the bed. “I need to talk to you about something.”
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
This strange tingle of memory filters through me. I go cold, recognizing the look on his face. It’s the same . . . the same as the day he told me about Charlie.
He sets the envelope that he’s holding between us. My name is written on it in delicate curly script, Rebecca Emery.
“What’s that?” I ask, but it sounds like the
question came from someone else.
“I’ve been lying to you.”
My gaze skips from the envelope back to him.
“I’ve been lying to myself, too. I hoped it would all just go away, that you would never have to know. But after what happened . . .” He swallows hard, shaking his head. “You need to understand.”
“Dad, what—?”
“Just let me . . . let me speak. It’s difficult. I’ve been pretending for so long.”
“Okay,” I say in a small voice. I feel like I’m suddenly six again and Charlie is telling me a story about how Dad found me in the backyard growing on a tree, that I was never born. It scared me to death, thinking my whole life of six years had been a lie. I was actually an orange, not a girl.
“Your mother, she . . .” He takes a shaky breath. “She didn’t . . . leave us, she didn’t leave you. Not by choice.”
I stay perfectly still, letting the words sink in. But I have no idea what to do with them.
“She’s been in a mental hospital for most of your life.”
A small sound comes from deep inside my chest.
“Your brother never knew, either. I wanted to protect you both, to keep you from knowing what . . .” He chokes on his words. “She struggled with the choice. We both did. It was a very difficult time. I thought . . .”
A tear slips down his cheek and my stomach clenches. I want to squeeze his hand, to comfort him, but I can’t move. And I don’t understand any of it. How could he lie for so long?
He breathes deep, like he’s running a marathon, and tries to continue. “She was sick—I thought she was sick. Even she believed she was.” He shakes his head. “I was blind. I know that now.”
“Where?” I ask, amazed my voice works with all the pain in my throat. “Where is she?”
He looks over at me, his eyes full of agony. “She died in Mercy Hospital a few months ago.”
Dead. She’s . . .
Months ago?
He whispers, “It was the week I told you I was going to Paris. I was actually in Connecticut, with her.”
Darkness Savage (The Dark Cycle Book 3) Page 28