Romeo Redeemed

by Stacey Jay

  “So things were bad after?” she asks. “With your dad?”

  I nod. “He hated me. For living, when I should have been the one to die.” I take a deep breath. Let it out slowly. I wish I could tell her more. I wish I could tell her how cold Father was to Mother after Nicolo’s death, as if he blamed her, too. I wish I could tell her how—after a decade of Father’s cruelty—my mother became a shade of her former self, how she died the day I was banished, how Father blamed me for that as well.

  But I can’t. There are aspects of my story that don’t mesh with Dylan Stroud’s life. And there are truths too painful to speak.

  We’re quiet for a moment, both of us staring at the sea and the white birds swooping up and down on the salty wind. Finally she whispers, “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re not going to tell me that I’m crazy? That of course my father doesn’t wish I were dead in my brother’s place?”

  “You could be crazy.” She sets the box of tacos on the ground, her second one untouched. This game has killed my appetite as well. I toss the last of my uneaten dinner into the box beside hers. “I mean, I know I’ve underestimated how much my mom loves me, so I’d like to think … But … I’ve heard some things about your dad.”

  Dylan’s dad is a drunk with eager fists, but I’d take him over my own any day. Dylan has some good memories of his father—trips to the beach when he was little, shared beers on the couch watching the Stanley Cup, his sixteenth birthday, when his dad gave him a car and the freedom he knew Dylan craved. My own father was simply brutal.

  He taught me to fight by nearly killing me with his sword. I survived living with him by learning to be quick with a lie, to say whatever he wanted to hear before he banished me to my room for a day or more, with orders forbidding my mother or the servants to bring me food. He taught me that hell could be a place on earth and that the devil was a man with a thick brown beard and eyes that relished my pain.

  I loved Juliet, but I would be lying if I said the fact that she was the daughter of my father’s sworn enemy wasn’t part of the reason I fell for her so quickly. I knew marrying a Capulet would drive my father mad. Juliet and I fantasized about her cold mother and my wretched father dropping dead from shock when they found out what we’d done. We imagined how much better life would be when it was only her father left; the way my mother’s heart would heal when I was the new lord of the Montague estate. If I hadn’t killed Juliet’s cousin, maybe our dreams would have become a reality.

  Instead I betrayed her and proved myself as monstrous as the man who sired me.

  “I’m sorry. For saying anything about your dad,” Ariel says, making me realize I’ve been silent too long. “Are you mad?”

  “Of course not.” I shrug. “Word gets around in a small town.”

  “Yeah. It does.” She scoots closer, presses a kiss to my cheek, and whispers, “If you need to get away, you can come to my house. Anytime. No matter what.”

  Before I realize what’s happening, before I can talk them down, tears prick at my eyes. It’s a little kindness, but it feels like so much more. It feels like being brought in from the cold. It’s proof that Ariel is the person I see when I look at her, someone good. The Ambassador is wrong. This girl could never be evil. Never.

  I turn to her, full of some emotion I can’t name. Gratitude? Respect? Kinship? My lips part, but I can’t think of the words to let her know that I feel … something for her. Something real. As impossible as it seems.

  “Are you crying?” Her eyes open wide. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  “Don’t be sorry.” I take her face in my hands and pull her to me, kissing her with all that feeling I can’t name.

  My tongue slips past her lips, and I taste salsa and something sharp and sweet that is Ariel’s taste, and then I’m beyond taste or smell or even touch. She wraps her arms around my neck, pulling me in tight, and I swear I feel my soul brush against hers. I expand beyond the boundaries of Dylan’s body, out until I am the waves crashing on the beach, the sun shining in her hair, the wind that sweeps over our skin. I am everything and nothing and exist only because this girl presses her heart to mine.

  My chest is unbearably tight, and for a breathless moment—as Ariel shifts her thighs and slides into my lap—I feel I might die from the beauty of being so close to her, from the beauty of her fingers threading through my hair, her weight settling into mine, her lips moving to my throat, where she kisses the place where my pulse rushes beneath my skin.

  “God, I love you,” I whisper, and come crashing back into my body with a suddenness that makes me gasp. I don’t know what’s more shocking—that I’ve called on the god I don’t believe in, or that the lie I told felt so much like the truth.

  At least, in the moment, it did. Now, staring up into her face, watching suspicion banish the flush from her cheeks, I’m keenly aware of my deception. I feel some soft feeling for her, but I don’t love her. I don’t love anything, not the way a real person does. I am a selfish, bitter, nasty creature out to save his own skin. Whatever I’m feeling, it’s undoubtedly born from selfishness and fear, with a hearty dose of lust thrown into the mix. And Ariel is too clever to believe my lie.

  She slides off my lap, swiping the back of her hand across her lips to wipe the taste of me away. She shakes her hair around her shoulders and tips her chin down, drawing the curtain between us as her hands fist in her lap and squeeze.

  I curse myself beneath my breath. I should have waited; I should have been careful to pace myself and the progression of our false romance. Now I could have ruined everything, all because I let pleasure overwhelm my purpose. I’m like a hormone-addled boy, swept away by a kiss.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, knowing I have to say something.

  “Why are you doing this?” She hunches her shoulders, and for a second I think she’s going to cry. Instead, when her words come, they are cold and hard with edges that will cut me if I listen too closely. “Why did you come to my house this morning? Why are we here right now? What do you want?”

  “I want to be with you.”

  “Why? Why now?” She looks up, and her eyes make me breathless again.

  She is so completely … herself. I stared at this face for hours when Juliet was inhabiting Ariel’s body, but it’s like looking at a different person. I never realized how much difference a soul could make, though I should have. No matter what body she wore, I always knew Juliet on sight. I didn’t need the golden light hovering in her aura to point my former love out in a crowd. I’m beginning to think it would be that way with Ariel, that even if she looked at me through different eyes, in a different skin, I would know her.

  And fear her a little, even if she didn’t hold my future in her hands. There’s something about her that makes me feel like I’m not nearly as clever as I’d like to believe. The girl … gets to me.

  “Why?” she demands again.

  “Because I like you.” I do. I like her. I like the way she kisses my cheek so softly one moment and pins me with her ruthless stare the next. I like the way she makes me certain she’s a fragile thing in need of protection, then turns around and fills me with giddy laughter and nameless dread.

  “That’s not what you just said,” she whispers.

  “I know.” I reach for a napkin, buying time wiping my fingers while I think of what to say. I need a pretty lie, but the only thing that comes to me is the truth. “I like kissing you too much. My lips got away from me.”

  “So you don’t love me.”

  “Maybe not. I don’t know. I … I’ve never felt this way before.” I meet her eyes—trying to gauge if the confused-lover routine is buying me back a degree of trust—and find her studying me with an intensity that makes me fight the urge to squirm. “What about you?”

  “What about me?” she asks, as wary as she was last night on the playground.

  Shit. I wet my lips and try to laugh, but fail and end up covering my awkwardness with a shrug. “Nothing. Never
mind.” I force a smile. “I just wanted to know if you’ll go to the dance with me on Friday.”

  Now it’s her turn to blink. “You want to go to the dance?”

  “I want to go to the dance with you,” I correct her. “It could be fun, right?”

  “But I thought you …” She studies her hands. “I heard you talking to Jason at practice. I thought you two were going to leave right after you sing your solo. Don’t you have a gig?”

  “I’ll cancel it. If, you know …” I watch her, but she gives no sign if I’m on the right track. I take a breath and soldier on, not knowing what else to do. “I’d be happy to cancel it if you can put up with me stepping on your feet for an entire night.”

  She narrows her eyes. “This isn’t a Carrie thing, is it?”

  “Who?” Carrie? I search Dylan’s memories but can’t find any information on a girl named Carrie. But he’s had his share of casual encounters. There’s a chance he was with a Carrie and doesn’t remember her name. Shit again. I shake my head, having no choice but to confess my ignorance. “I don’t know Carrie. Is she a friend of yours?”

  “No, she’s— You really don’t know Carrie?” Her lips thin and curve. I’m so glad to see her smile that I couldn’t care less that I’m the source of her amusement.

  “No.”

  “Carrie,” she says, as if repetition will penetrate my thickness. “You know, the Stephen King book about the freak girl who goes to the dance with a cute guy, but it’s all a joke and the popular kids dump blood all over her and she ends up killing people with her mind powers?”

  “I never read it.”

  “Really?”

  “I stopped reading books a while back.” Like, two hundred years back, when my ability to empathize with man’s condition deteriorated to the point where I couldn’t understand why the characters were making the choices they did, or why I should care if they lived or died or found their happy ending. For me, happiness was the electric moment before a new Mercenary convert drew his or her knife across their loved one’s throat, that shining instant when I wasn’t the most dreadful creature in the room.

  “But it sounds good.” I push the dark memories away. There’s nothing I can do to change my past. Dwelling on it is a waste of time.

  “It is good. Sad, but good,” she says. “There’s an old movie, too. I’ve got it at my house. My mom and I watch it every Halloween. You can borrow it if you want.”

  “Let’s go watch it now.” I grab the taco box and stuff the last of our trash inside. “We still have time before your mom gets home.” I stand, but Ariel stays seated, peering up at me in confusion. “What?”

  “You never answered my question,” she says.

  “You never answered mine, and I asked first.”

  She licks her lips, and then presses them together. For a second I think she’s going to say no, and unexpected disappointment flashes through me. I asked her in order to deflect attention from our love talk, but I can’t deny I like the idea of swaying in the dark with her. It would be a nice way to spend the last hours before I leave my borrowed body.

  “Okay,” she says.

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Yes. I’ll go to the dance with you,” she says. “But if it’s a joke, I swear I—”

  “It’s not a joke.” I come to my knees beside her and stare deep into her eyes, making sure there’s no way she can miss the truth I’m about to speak. “You are not a freak. You are beautiful and clever and very enjoyable to be around. When you’re not mad at me.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Right, but you—”

  “And I’m not one of the shining people,” I say, refusing to let her brush me off. “I’m a choir dork who wears a lot of black and drives a crappy car.”

  “No one thinks you’re a dork.”

  “No, they think I’m a bad boy with a dad who knocks me around and the front man for a band named Demon Biscuit. And that was my idea. I thought that was cool,” I say, smiling when she laughs. “I’m a bigger freak than you’ll ever be. I honestly don’t know why I’m not ostracized by humanity.”

  “I do. You’re confident and a great singer … and the hottest guy in school.”

  I sit back down, the need to be next to her a compulsion I don’t want to resist. “You think I’m hot?”

  “Duh,” she whispers, then adds with a blush, “And you’re an amazing kisser.”

  “Takes one to know one.”

  “Right.” Her laugh puffs at my lips, making me ache, but I don’t close the distance between us. The only thing better than kissing Ariel is waiting to kiss her, those moments of delicious anticipation when I know she’s about to sweep through me and empty me of everything but light and desire. “I’m an inexperienced kisser.” Her lashes spread across her pink cheeks, and I barely resist the urge to kiss her eyelids. I want to kiss her everywhere, taste every inch of her skin, memorize every knobby elbow and gentle curve. “Last night was my first kiss.”

  “Is that your Tell Me True?” She nods, and I lift my hand to her hair, running a lock through my fingers, marveling at how soft it is. “So it’s my turn again.” She tips her head back, a silent invitation to kiss her. I bring my mouth to hers, but stop just before we touch, to whisper my lie against her lips. “I don’t care if I ever kiss anyone else,” I say, refusing to feel guilty, knowing I’m making her happy. “You are …”

  “What?” she whispers.

  “A revelation.” And that part is not a lie. She is a revelation.

  When she kisses me, I taste truth and beauty and all the good things I was certain were beyond my reach. But they aren’t, not with her. With her, I am … better. Still not good, but farther from evil. I wrap my arms around her and pull her close, and for the first time, I wonder if maybe … if I had the time … and the chance …

  Maybe I could actually be worthy of her love.

  INTERMEZZO TWO

  VERONA, 1304

  Juliet

  The nightmares rend my sanity with tiny demon claws, but still I fight to stay asleep. I fight, but even in dreams the smell reaches me—the sweet, musty, mineral scent of salvation. Water. Water.

  I wake with a start that sends agony shooting through my stiff muscles.

  The world inside the tomb is still as black as pitch, and my aching bones howl as I roll to the right side of my prison, but I don’t let fear or pain distract me. I reach out, find the trickle of water through the marble with shaking fingers, and press my mouth to the stone. I am so weak, my soul clinging to my body by a few rapidly unraveling threads, but the water is an inspiration.

  I run my tongue across the rock and taste hope. I purse my lips and suck, greedy and shameless, until the silence outside my grave is broken by a chuckle near the source of the life-giving water I drink.

  Life-giving … if the friar hasn’t poisoned it.

  I scuttle to the far side of the tomb, pressing my hands over my mouth, stifling the scream swelling inside me. I pull my legs into my chest, scraping my knees as I move. There is just enough room for me to ball my body into the fetal position, to seek protection in the most primitive, helpless way a human being can.

  “Juliet?” My name becomes a filthy thing when he speaks it. His evil permeates the stone, washes over my body in oily waves that make me tremble. “Speak to me, my dear. Let me know that you are well.”

  I tuck my head, squeeze my eyes closed, and pray for sleep. But sleep is far from me now. The water set things moving in my mind that won’t be so easily stilled.

  “I thought you would be thirsty. I’ve tried to move the stone, but it is too heavy for one old man,” he says. “We must wait for Romeo.”

  Romeo. The first time I lived through this day, the friar pulled me from the grave to witness Romeo’s seemingly lifeless body crumpled on the floor in the hall of the tomb. The friar said the messenger had lost his way on the road and Romeo had never received our letter. Romeo had had no knowledge of the plan to fake my death and had assumed I ha
d truly drunk poison rather than be wed to Paris. That’s why he had taken poison as well, and lay dead on the cold earth.

  I can remember the rage and pain and misery and helplessness I felt. I can remember how empty the world seemed without the light of my love, how easily the decision was made, how smoothly his dagger slipped from its sheath. I shoved the blade into my breast without the slightest hesitation. The agony of my heart bursting inside of me was a cruel blessing. Then, death had seemed the only choice.

  Is that still their plan? For Romeo to play dead and trick me into committing suicide? If so, then why is the friar here now? Why does he pretend he lacks the strength to move the stone? He is a Mercenary. He has the strength to lift my entire sarcophagus off the floor. So why …

  “Juliet. Please … I know you are awake. I hear you crying.” I bite my tongue, stilling the sobs I hadn’t realized were escaping. “I fear for you, my girl. I fear your mind has been touched by this terrible risk we’ve taken.”

  I pick at the flaking skin on my lips, the sting as I pull a strip of dead flesh free helping me focus through my fear. The plan must have changed. He and Romeo must have a different plot. But this time I will be ready for them. I won’t go quietly. I won’t go at all. I will live to bring what goodness I can to the world. It’s what Ben would want. Ben, who would never hurt or deceive, who loved me so well in such a short time, whom I will hold in my heart when terror threatens to overcome me.

  I pull his face to the front of my mind, and imagine I am looking into his eyes as I whisper, “I am awake.” My voice is hoarse and small, but the friar hears me. I know he does.