by Cora Carmack
“What? Don’t be ridiculous.”
The car jerks again as he tries to keep one hand on the wheel, and the other pressing what I now realize is his wet shirt against my head.
I push his hand away, taking hold of the shirt myself. “Listen to me, Wilder. You can’t take me to the hospital.”
“I don’t care about whatever the shit is you’re running from. I don’t know if you’re in trouble or scared or what, but none of that is worth your life, Kalli.”
“I’m not going to die. I promise you. Take me home, and I’ll be just fine.”
“No—”
“Take me home!” I yell.
His wild eyes snap to mine, and I can see how afraid he is. We’re both drenched, and he’s shirtless. There is blood on his hands and some smeared on his cheek, and I’m sure I look far worse.
Softer this time, I say, “Take me home, Wilder.” I glance at the clock. “And in seven minutes, you’ll get all the answers you’ve been wanting from me. I’ll tell you everything.”
I can see him warring with himself.
“I’ve kept things from you. But I wouldn’t lie to you. Not about this. Take me home, and I promise I’ll be just fine. You’ll see.”
“I can’t lose you.” His voice is gruff. Raw.
“Things are … complicated. But you’re not going to lose me. Well, not unless you decide you don’t want anything to do with me after you hear the truth.”
He reaches over to grip my thigh, his fingers desperate against my flesh. “That will never happen.”
“Then trust me and take me home.”
With a sound somewhere between a sigh and a growl, he switches lanes, abandoning his route toward the highway, and instead turns left toward my place.
That immediate catastrophe avoided, I sink back into the seat and close my eyes. I hadn’t realized how much the streetlights and passing cars had been paining me, until the relief of darkness washes over me.
“Kalli?”
“Hmm?”
“Don’t fall asleep on me.”
The ragged terror in his voice makes me open my eyes. I hold his shirt against my head with my right hand so that I can reach over and lay my left on top of his forearm. He immediately shifts to lace his fingers with mine, and I close my eyes.
He squeezes my hand every few seconds as he drives, and I squeeze back. And I can’t bring myself to feel anything but relief at feeling this close to him again. I must fall asleep even though he asked me not to, because I come to with my door open and his hands on my face.
“Damn it, Kalli. I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“No. I’m up. Sorry. Just … just take me inside.”
He helps me from the vehicle, his arm wound tight around my waist, and I lean my weight into him. Even through the rain, he smells familiar. Like Wilder. I fish my keys out of my pocket and hand them to him, and he pushes through the front door and leads me straight to the bathroom that sits across from my bedroom.
“What time is it?”
“Midnight.”
No, not quite.
“What time is it exactly?”
He glances at his watch. “Two til.”
One look in the mirror reveals his white shirt is tinged pink by water and blood. I drop it in the sink, knowing it’s well past its usefulness.
“Hey!” Wilder grabs a hand towel off the holder by the sink and tries to press it over the wound on my forehead, but I put a hand out to stop him. It’s still bleeding, but just a slow trickle. The rain washed away most of the blood from before, but there are still a few marks and stains.
Two minutes.
I kick off my shoes and hold out my hand to Wilder.
“What’s going on?”
“We’re getting in the shower.”
“Kalli.” He still doesn’t take my hand, so I turn and push aside the curtain instead. I step in the tub, still wearing my dress, rust-colored stains splotched down the front. It’s a barbaric replay of our first night together, but this time we’re at my apartment, and instead of kissing him, I’m about to change everything about the way he sees me. About the way he sees the world, too. I start the water, letting the faucet run and the water warm up for a few moments, and Wilder steps inside. I turn to face him, and I mentally estimate, “One minute.”
I pull the knob to switch the showerhead on. I wait, letting the water run down my back, and I know the second it hits midnight. The dull throbbing in my head disappears, and the overhead light in the bathroom no longer makes my eyes water from the sensitivity. I lean back, letting the water run over my head. I lift my hands, intending to rub away at whatever blood is left on my now healed forehead, but Wilder grabs my arms and pulls them away before I can do more than smudge it.
I meet his eyes, pulling one wrist free from his grasp, and with him watching, I rub my fingers over the spot where my head had apparently hit a lamppost earlier as I fell. I don’t just hear him suck in a breath; I feel it too. His grip tightens around my arm, and his body locks up next to mine. He starts to step away, but it’s my turn to grab hold of him this time.
“Wait. Don’t go.”
He stares at me for a long moment, and I can feel tears welling at the corner of my eyes. This could be it. This could be the moment he walks away from me.
His fingers graze my cheek, and he steps in closer. His height puts him looking down at me, and he rubs his thumb across the skin just above my eyebrow, just below my former injury. His eyes dip down to mine briefly before returning to my forehead, then he tilts my head back, leaning me into the line of the water again. It sprays against my hairline, smoothing through the knots and clumps left by the rain and blood. He runs his thumb over the unblemished skin there—back and forth, back and forth—as if he needs to touch it to believe his eyes.
“How?” he finally breathes.
Here goes.
“I’m—” Not human. Not like you. Not normal. “Immortal.”
He doesn’t react. He doesn’t call me a liar or crazy. He doesn’t ask me any questions. He doesn’t say anything at all. So I keep going.
“I’m a muse.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Wilder
I can’t stop staring at the smooth olive skin on her forehead. There was a cut there. Not just a cut. The skin had been broken, and it had bled and bled.
It bled so damn much.
But now there’s nothing there.
I can’t decide if I want to be afraid or worried for my sanity or to pinch myself to wake up. Maybe that was it. Maybe I missed Kalli so goddamned much that this was some elaborate fantasy dream gone wrong
“Wilder, say something.”
Her arm smooths over my bare bicep and presses hard against my chest.
“You feel real,” I mumble, more for me really, than her.
“Of course I’m real.”
She’s always felt too good to be true. How beautiful she is. The pull I felt to her from the very first moment I saw her. The way we both fell so quickly and so hard.
Am I crazy? Is that what’s happening here?
“Wilder, did you hear what I said?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
How the hell is this happening?
I touch her forehead again. “How?”
“I told you. I’m immortal.”
The word doesn’t really register in my head. And if she told me, I must not have heard her. Maybe I really am going crazy.
“Immortal … like live forever immortal? Like a vampire or something?”
She grabs my wrist, pulling my arm down in front of her. Her index finger traces over my forearm, down the form of Atlas tattooed on my skin.
“Like this. When I told you that my name is Kalliope, you mentioned that you remembered a goddess by that name.” She pauses, her eyes searching mine. “I’m her.”
Water is still spraying around her head and shoulders, and maybe it’s a trick of the light or maybe it’s part of my delusion, but she d
oes look ethereal all of a sudden. The spray creates a halo effect around her head, and the water sluices down over her perfect skin. Her clothes cling to her form, and she’s a modern day statue. Fabric draped against her breasts, revealing beautiful curves and lines.
One second I’m standing up looking at her, and the next my knees have given out and my back is slamming into the shower wall as I fall down into the tub.
“Wilder!”
Kalli kneels over me, cupping the back of my head, easing me down until I’m laying back against the wall and my legs are stretched out in front of me.
Everything feels like it’s spinning out of my control, and as often as I look at her, as I touch her, there’s a shrill, shouting fear in the back of my mind that this isn’t real, and I’m going to lose her all over again. But it will be so much worse because I won’t be able to win her back, to find her. She just … won’t exist.
I clutch her waist, pulling her closer until her knees are over my thighs and she’s straddling me. I take hold of her neck and pull her face down to my level. Her forehead rests against mine, and she feels so solid and good in my arms. But there’s still a spot of blood on her neck, and more on my hands, and I don’t fucking understand.
“How is this real?”
Her fingers drag through my hair, holding me tight.
“It just is. I was born several thousand years ago. I’m the daughter of Zeus, the god of gods, and Mnemosyne, the deity of memory. The rest of the gods have withdrawn from the human world, but my gift as a muse, my ability to inspire artists, is just as much of a curse. I have to use it.”
She starts talking about poisonous energy and influencing humans and the madness she’ll experience if she doesn’t do it.
“The night you found me downtown—when I ran out of that club and you came after me … I’d thought I could fight the energy. I’d thought I could live without doing what I’m supposed to do, without affecting mortals. But the energy had a will of its own. My mind … I lost control and did a terrible thing. I put a lot of people in danger, and I was running from it when you found me.”
“What terrible thing?”
Her hand trembles, releasing her grip on my hair.
“There’s a fine line between genius and madness. A little time with me can open up a person to their potential, move them to greatness. But too much time with me … and that balance can be damaged. That fine line can be crossed. I … before we met, there was an artist I was seeing. He became obsessive. He couldn’t let go. Of me or what my abilities did for him. I stayed too long, and he tried to kill himself. It’s why I pushed you away at first. Why I ran the morning after our first night together. I’m dangerous. Being with me is dangerous. And you were better off never knowing me at all than risking the same fate as him. But—”
“But I kept coming back. Kept pushing you.”
“But I fell in love with you. And even more than that … you and I, we’re connected. I can feel it, like our fates are tied together.”
That’s it exactly. From the moment we met, I’d felt like there was something that tied me to her. I couldn’t let go even when she told me to. I couldn’t give her up even when she disappeared for months on end. Because something deep in me, buried beneath tissue and muscle and bone, something told me that we belonged together. I clung to that, knowing that regardless of what was happening in that moment, somehow we’d be together in the end.
But I’d thought that was love. Faith, maybe. Stupid, blind stubbornness.
Not something more. Something supernatural.
“So when you left,” I begin, trying to piece everything together.
“I saw you singing in your kitchen. Writing music. You never told me you were a musician. The whole time we were together, I thought I could keep you safe because you weren’t in any way connected to my ability. I would burn up the energy with Lennox and Mick and—”
“Jack?” Shit. Oh shit. Am I crazy that this is actually making sense to me? That I believe her?
“Yes. Him, too. It was the only way I could spend time with you and keep you safe. I thought …” She laughs darkly. “I thought I had everything figured out. I thought I’d finally found a way to have a normal life. To have all the things I’d never been able to have … love, family, a home. A future. Then I saw you in your kitchen, and I knew I had only fooled myself into believing what I wanted to be true. I was just as dangerous to you as I had always been. And I’d been so incredibly selfish. So … I left. It was the only way I knew to guarantee your safety. If I hadn’t …” She looks down at my fingers curled around her hips, her body pressed against mine. “Well, I’m not very good at staying away from you.”
“Good.” It’s the first thing that comes to my mind, my gut reaction.
She shakes her head and starts to peel my hands away from her hips. I let her, but she’s not about to move away from me now. The only thing keeping me together, the only reason I’m not completely losing my mind right now is because I can touch her, feel her, know she’s real. My hands migrate to her neck instead, gently pulling her toward me. She doesn’t hesitate until her mouth is almost on mine.
“Wilder, don’t. Are you even listening to me? Spending time with me could ruin you. It’s not safe.”
I keep pulling her, until her mouth is a breath’s width from mine.
“Did you ever stop to think that maybe I started writing music again not because of any magical ability on your part, but because I love you? Is that not reason enough to be inspired?”
She exhales against my lips, and when her eyelids fall, they send a few tears down her cheeks.
I kiss her then, and she doesn’t fight me. Her body melts into mine, each soft curve tempting me to pull her closer, hold her harder, until the only thing I can feel or see or hear or smell or taste is her. I coax her mouth open, weaving my fingers through her wet hair, and let her become my everything.
It’s easy, really. To get lost in her.
Our clothes are cold and wet, but I can feel the hint of her hot skin beneath. I drag my fingers up her spine, introducing myself to her body again, trying to swallow all this new, strange information she’s given me.
A muse.
My brain conjures an image of marble. A lifeless portrayal of wavy hair, barely hidden breasts, holding an instrument maybe. Are there figures of her out there like that? Paintings? I know Jack painted her. And suddenly my mind is filled with hundreds upon hundreds of imagined paintings and photographs and sculptures. I think of all the eyes that have looked at her, hands that know the warmth of her skin, mouths that have kissed where I’m kissing now. She’s immortal.
I burn with the need to erase every single person who came before me. To know the shape of her body better than anyone has. To own more of her. To wrap her up in whatever it is that binds us together until she’s as helpless without me as I am with her.
I reach for the hem of her dress, pushing it up her thighs, and she stills.
“I heard you,” I say before she can protest again. “I know who you are. I know the risks.” I wait until her eyes are on mine before continuing, “But I don’t care. I have never been so scared in my entire life as I was when I saw all that blood tonight. When you left three months ago, I thought that was the hardest thing I’d ever faced. And I was absolutely miserable without you. But a part of me always knew you wouldn’t stay away forever. I believed that you would come back because we belong together. I couldn’t see any other future for myself but with you. But tonight … everything happened in slow motion. You were running from me, and you were so damn close. If I’d been a little faster, that guy never would have hit you. Or maybe I could have caught you. Or if I’d listened to my brain the first time I thought I saw you in that bar, maybe I wouldn’t have chased you outside in the first place. I thought of all the dozens of things I could have done differently. They flashed through my head faster than I could get to you. And I thought … Christ, Kalli. You were unconscious and bleeding, and I th
ought I’d lost you for good. Not for a few months. But permanently. If it’s addiction you’re worried about, too late. I already can’t live without you, but I swear it has nothing to do with music or energy or any of those things. And if you think I’m going to walk away because of all of this, you’re wrong. We’ll find a way to make it work. I’ll never play music again. You can hang out with fucking Jack as much as you need to. And if that’s still not enough, then we take our chances. I don’t give a fuck about genius. But I’ll take madness if it gives me you first.”
She starts to speak, but I cut her off again. I’m done letting her take all the responsibility on herself, letting her make all the decisions.
“There’s still blood on you. I can’t concentrate on anything else but how I almost lost you tonight when I see it. Let me wash it off. Then you can say whatever it is you have to say.”
After a moment, she nods.
“But just so we’re clear, it won’t change anything. I love you. Fuck everything else.”
She laughs under her breath. Or at least I think it’s a laugh. There are still tears in her eyes, and her lips are drawn in a tight line, so it’s hard to tell.
She braces her hands on the sides of the tub and lifts herself up off me. I grab hold of the bar on the tile wall, and pull myself up after her. Then it’s just the two of us, standing before each other in a too small space, and it feels like things have come full circle. There’s a weight to the moment that I can’t describe, beyond the fact that I love her and she loves me. More than the importance of her secrets. I’ve never really been the type to believe in fate. I couldn’t stand by while my father dismantled the family he was supposed to love and provide for and say, ‘Things happen for a reason.’
But now?
I know in my heart that we’re exactly where we’re supposed to be. And if there were ever a reason to believe in a bigger plan, Kalli is it. She’s the only fate I want any part of.
I take the hem of her dress again, and this time she doesn’t resist when I begin to pull it up her body. She raises her long, lithe arms, and I keep dragging until the fabric is completely over her head. I ball it up and throw it on the bathmat just outside the curtain. As soon as we’re out of here, I have every intention of tossing that blood-stained thing in the trash.