The Reaping

by M. Leighton

  His tongue delved into my mouth and I slid my hands into his hair to hold his lips to mine. I stretched up on tiptoe, pressing my body to his, craving the contact.

  His hand left my neck and, a second later, I felt both his palms at my hips. They moved down to knead my butt before traveling lower, to the tops of my thighs. I felt his fingers tighten, digging into my flesh, and he lifted.

  Automatically, my legs wrapped around his waist. The contact of our bodies in such an intimate way was nearly more than I could bear. I tightened my legs around him, desperate for him to do something, anything to end the sweet torture. Derek moaned and a wave of chills rolled down my back.

  I tore my mouth from his, gasping for air, my body on fire. I felt his teeth nip at my lower lip and my chin then I felt his hot breath at my ear. I wiggled against him, needing more than what he was giving me.

  For an instant, his tongue slipped inside my ear before it blazed a hot trail down my neck to my collarbone. I felt one hand come up to press between my shoulder blades, forcing my body toward his mouth. The action pushed my breasts against his chest, my nipples tightening and tingling in response.

  Liquid heat poured through my body and pooled in my core, threatening to explode, the pleasure was so intense. I heard his name slip from my lips, a plea for him to finish what he’d started.

  And then I was on my feet, the heat of Derek’s body gone, my head and hormones reeling. He held me at arm’s length, literally, his breathing as ragged as mine.

  “Don’t push me, Carson,” he panted.

  “But—”

  “No buts. You know we can’t.”

  “But—”

  “No, Carson. It’s for your own good. Believe me, purity will work in your favor over there. He can use anything, any vice, any weakness, to his advantage. He’ll exploit everything he can find.”

  “How do you even know that?” I knew I sounded like a petulant child, but at that moment, I didn’t care. My body was still on fire.

  Derek stopped and gave me the strangest look, a look that caused my desire to shrivel. “Because he exploited all of mine,” he said flatly.

  Other than more questions, I had nothing to say. So I said nothing. I knew that now wasn’t the time to poke and prod what looked to be a painful wound.

  Derek continued as if the awkward moment had never happened. “Over the years I’ve picked up a lot of useful information, too,” he said nonchalantly.

  “From where?”

  “Some from just living, living cursed.”

  “Where else?”

  His expression steeled, a belated indication that I’d inadvertently hit another sore spot, but this time it aggravated me. Playing his cards and his life so close to the chest just left me in the dark. How was I supposed to know where his emotional landmines were? And it hurt to think that, as much as I trusted him, he didn’t reciprocate. And that made my trust waver.

  Cue my temper.

  “You know,” I began, fists on my hips. “I’ve been completely honest with you and I expect the same in return. But if you don’t think you can trust me, maybe we shouldn’t be in this together.”

  Fury hardened his features and I regretted the words instantly. I knew, just knew, that he was going to turn around and walk out of my life forever. That was just not the kind of thing you said to Derek and I knew it.

  But he didn’t.

  I was relieved and more than a little shocked when Derek answered my question, as if his emotional response hadn’t even happened. And on some level, that bothered me. It wasn’t like him to acquiesce so easily. Derek doesn’t compromise. He just doesn’t.

  “As you are well aware, the twinning gene runs in families. I guess you could say I was fortunate in that my grandfather was a twin and liked to tell stories.”

  “What?” My surprise was genuine. “You mean your grandfather was cursed, too?”

  “I believe he was, yes.”

  “But you don’t know for sure?”

  “Well, it’s hard to say. He died before I knew what was happening to me. But when I think back to the stories he would tell us—ghost stories, campfire stories, bedtime stories—I believe they were drawn from personal experience, not just an overactive imagination like most stories are.”

  This was huge. “Does your father know anything about it?”

  Derek shrugged his big shoulders in that way I’d come to love. “Who knows,” he said, a statement not a question.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “My father left just after Garrit and I were born. I never knew him.”

  “But you were close to your grandfather. I figured…”

  “My mother’s father.”

  “Ah,” was all I said. Then, “What about your mother, does she know anything about it?”

  “Don’t know that either. She killed herself three years ago, when Garrit died,” he said, a hint of bitterness evident in his tone.

  I couldn’t suppress a gasp. I did the math and realized that at nineteen, Derek had lost both his brother and his mother. How could anyone survive that? And the pain he must have felt—might still feel—over the way they died. Derek had taken one’s life and the other had taken her own. It must be torture for him.

  I tried to temper the pity that rushed in. Derek would rather be dead than be pitied. He’d actually told me that once. “Oh, Derek. I didn’t know. I’m- I’m so sorry,” I said, knowing how empty those words were. I’d just heard them thousands of times from virtually everyone after my father’s death. And even though I really meant them, I knew they were no comfort, but I didn’t know what else to say.

  “I know you didn’t. It’s alright.”

  “What did she think happened to him?”

  “She knew exactly what happened to him.”

  “She knew that you- that you k-killed him?” I asked quietly.

  Derek nodded miserably and my heart broke for him. I wanted to go to him, to soothe him somehow, but when I took a step forward, he took a step back. As I’d been warned, he didn’t want my pity.

  “Yes, she knew.”

  “But how? How could she know?”

  “She knew about the curse.”

  “From your grandfather?”

  “No. I think she had more…intimate knowledge of it than just from old stories,” he said, bitterness clear and sharp in his tone now.

  I stared at him in confusion for a minute before what he was insinuating dawned on me. “You think she knew about the deal?”

  “Yes,” he said curtly.

  “But how?”

  Derek looked at me, something close to hatred in his eyes. For a moment, I couldn’t tell whether that hatred was for me for opening this old wound or hatred for his mother. “Well, let’s see, Carson. What are the only two ways she would know something like that?”

  I recoiled from the coldness in his voice, from the loathing in his eyes. I shook my head, not knowing what to say, what he wanted me to say.

  “Either she knew about the deal,” he said icily, pausing before he continued. “Or she made it.” His expression was pained, and it was no wonder, if he actually thought that his own mother might’ve made a deal that cost him so, so much.

  “And then she killed herself,” I said, more to myself than to Derek, working the details out in my head. I knew that Derek saw her escape much the same way I did. She was so riddled with guilt that she couldn’t live with herself. And that looked really bad.

  Despite the polar temperatures emanating from Derek, I went to him. And this time he let me. When I wrapped my arms around his neck, he was stiff at first, but I didn’t let go. I held on, wishing desperately that I could help him, heal him, that I could comfort him somehow.

  After a couple of minutes, when I didn’t budge, Derek loosened up. I felt his arms wind around my waist and draw me closer to him.

  He let me hold him for maybe a minute before he drew back. I let him go. When our eyes met there was only a trace of sadness in the swirli
ng silver depths of his.

  With a weak smile, he ran one hand down my arm and took my hand in his. “Come on. Let’s call it a night,” he said, turning in the direction of the road and his motorcycle.

  Less than thirty minutes later, Derek was pulling into the driveway at my house. He let me off so I could go around and open the garage. I hadn’t been able to find the remote opener since the funeral so I had to use the manual controller on the wall inside the garage.

  As I walked toward the front door, I could see the green of the grass in the light of the street lamp. At the time I hadn’t realized I’d done it, but my upset over Dad the day of his funeral had killed all the grass at the house, too. So one of the first things I did when I learned to control my power was to fix the grass at the house as well as at the cemetery. I was hoping that no one would pay much attention to it, but that those who did would just think we’d put down sod.

  I let myself in and walked through the dark house to the garage where I hit the button to raise the door and let Derek in. He had been staying at my house since that Sunday when Leah had left after spending the weekend. He always slept on the couch, though it was getting harder and harder to leave him out there when I really wanted him with me. Though he didn’t share my bed, I think it made us both feel better when he was close.

  In deference to the sterling reputation my dad had ensured that I build for myself, we hid Derek’s bike inside the garage so that the neighbors wouldn’t talk. Not even Leah knew how close we’d gotten or that he spent his nights with me. Or at least that’s what I’d thought until that next Thursday on the way to school.

  “So, is Derek ever going back to…wherever? Or is he just going to stay with you forever?”

  Her comment stopped me in my tracks. I just stared at her, my mind spinning through excuses, my mouth opening and closing like a fish’s. “Uh, I, uh. He- um we- why would you think—”

  Leah just smiled a knowing smile, apparently enjoying my discomfort. “Don’t even try to lie, Carson. I know things,” she said mysteriously, winking at me behind her clam-shell glasses.

  “What do you mean? What kind of things?”

  “I don’t know. I can just tell that something’s going on.”

  “What do you mean?” What had happened to my vocabulary since September? It seemed I was always asking the same questions and then just repeating myself over and over and over, like Rain Man.

  “I don’t know,” she said again, shrugging. Now I had her repeating herself. “It’s just a feeling I get. It’s hard to describe.”

  Though that was hardly a bothersome or telling remark among friends, considering the things I’d seen and experienced in the last few months, things of a supernatural nature, I took exception to her comment.

  “A feeling?” I asked, trying to appear nonchalant as I resumed our walk to school.

  “I guess that’s a good way to put it. Maybe it’s just intuition. Women’s intuition,” she said with a plucky grin.

  “Sure it is,” I said doubtfully, dramatically narrowing my eyes on her.

  After a few seconds, her expression sobered and she said, “Just be careful, Carson. Derek is- he’s—” I watched Leah struggle for an adequate description. “Just be careful,” she repeated.

  “I am careful, Leah, but,” I paused to look at her. “Why do you say that? It’s like you think he’s…I don’t know, dangerous or something.” I tried to sound unconcerned, but I had to admit that her warning was making me uneasy.

  “I don’t know, Carson. I mean, he is a lot older than you and—”

  “Five years is not a lot.”

  Leah shrugged. “I guess not, but he, uh. He’s—” she stammered. “Just be careful,” she finally said, for the third time.

  “I will,” I assured her, my smile much lighter than my heart. We dropped the conversation on that note, but it was far from forgotten. I had just tucked the dialog away for later dissection.

  School was uneventful, as usual. My meteoric rise to fame over the milk in Stephen’s face ordeal was surpassed (in magnitude and longevity) only by my plummet to a less-than-zero status after the incident at the lake. The fallout wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been, though. My father’s passing seemed to have subdued the worst of the ridicule. Looks like even in death I owed my father a debt of gratitude.

  I walked through the halls largely unnoticed, just as I had in previous times, and somehow I drew comfort from that. I’d gotten a taste of what I used to dream about and found out it is totally overrated.

  Walking home was typically the high point of my day. After I left Leah at her driveway, I was always excited to get to my house and see if Derek was there. I loved it when he was. It still bothered me to come home to an empty house.

  On days when he wasn’t there when I got home, he usually arrived within an hour or so. I tried not to ask too many questions about his day; he was very vague with his answers and I found that a source of frustration and, deep down, concern. That was another thing that caused my trust in him to waver.

  As I strode up the driveway today, something looked different, but it took me a second to put my finger on it. Derek’s bike was parked in the driveway, as it usually was during “acceptable” hours. The garage door was open, as it often was. The front door was closed, as it usually was.

  Then my eyes flew back to the garage. That’s it! The garage was empty. The Camaro was gone.

  I stood in the driveway debating how I felt about this newest development when I heard a deep, throaty rumble. I turned to see what it was.

  Coming down the street, toward my house, was the Camaro. And at the wheel was Derek.

  Feelings of anger, sadness, accomplishment, bitterness, pride, and pleasure collided inside me in a complicated emotional wreck. I carefully schooled my features as Derek slowed and made the turn into the driveway. I took a few steps back to give him ample room to pull past me into the garage, but he didn’t advance that far. Instead, he stopped right in front of where I stood.

  With a smile that I rarely got to see, Derek shifted into park and got out of the car, the idle motor throbbing quietly. Rather than shutting the door behind him, however, Derek held it open and swept his arm toward the driver’s seat, indicating that I should slide inside.

  “Your carriage, my lady,” he said formally, his brilliant smile settling into a mischievous grin.

  “When did you finish it?”

  “Just today.”

  “Evidently it runs alright,” I said, trying to keep my tone light.

  “Runs like a top,” he confirmed, equally light. Then his silver eyes, eyes that missed nothing, met mine. He sobered instantly. “You’re upset,” he said, very matter of fact.

  “No. I-I—”

  “Yes, you are. Don’t lie to me.”

  “No. Really, I—”

  “I can tell you’re upset.”

  “I don’t know, I just—”

  “Look, Carson, you—”

  “Stop interrupting me!” I shouted, interrupting him instead. “I don’t know how I feel about it. Okay?” I turned and stalked through the garage and into the kitchen, slamming the door behind me.

  I knew I wasn’t being rational, but since when did emotional outbursts have to be rational? I thought absurdity was implied.

  I didn’t stop until I was in my bedroom with the door closed behind me. I paced the floor a few times, clenching and unclenching my fists, struggling for control of my turbulent emotions. I knew that being out of control only opened the door for trouble. Derek had taught me that.

  Taking deep breaths, I walked to stand in front of the window. I could see the driveway clearly. I watched as Derek, who’d been standing exactly where I’d left him, staring at the house, slid behind the wheel and eased the car into the garage. I heard the motor die and some of my anger died with it.

  It made no sense that I would perceive Derek’s hard work and consideration an act of betrayal, even though that’s what it felt like. My father
was never going to return and finish the car. I couldn’t do it by myself. It was serving no purpose sitting in the garage, defunct. So what was the big deal?

  I couldn’t settle on an answer. Something inside me just wouldn’t let it go. The best I could do was to come out, after almost an hour, and be civil.

  Derek was in the kitchen, leaning up against the counter, facing my door when I exited my bedroom. When I appeared, he made no move, no comment. There was no change in expression. He simply stared.

  “Sorry,” I said as sincerely as I could manage, which wasn’t very sincere considering I still wasn’t sure that I really was apologetic.