As possible was the key word there.
“We appreciate that, Liam,” my mother said. She bounced her gaze back at me as if ready to stamp the word approved on Liam’s forehead. “So what is it that your parents do?”
I found I had to keep my face parallel as I ate to avoid anything that would make me smile. Though my parents would never see it, I knew the question carried such a double meaning. What did they do? They protected humans from other immortals who wish us harm.
“My father is a medieval studies professor at North Carolina State University.”
I couldn’t resist. I wanted to see the slightly snobby demeanor in my father’s face. It was the same expression he had on his face when he lectured my Uncle Greg about playing on a UNC scholarship. My father, who was a Duke graduate, was prejudiced to any other university. Of course, Sean and I knew that his prejudice was really linked with his own insecurities. People assume it ends with high school, but throughout life it’s easier to put someone down than to accept they were better. Growing up with my father, I came to believe that maturity had nothing to do with age.
“I don’t know much about their program, but Duke has some of the best history professors in the country.” I rolled my eyes, not at how random the comment was but at how blatantly rude it was, like a backhanded compliment. You could try and sugarcoat it all you want, but it was still an insult when you turned it around.
My neck turned back to Liam, now soothing his own hand. But his facade never faltered at the comment. In fact, he even smirked.
“Duke offered him a position, but he felt NC State was closer to Washington.”
“Well, I can’t say I’d make the same decision,” my father said before shoving a huge glob of lasagna down his throat.
I was starting to really hate the idea of Liam meeting my parents. Funny how meeting an entire family of immortals, one that didn’t quite approve of Liam’s and my unnatural relationship, seemed better than five minutes with my human one.
“What does your mother do?”
I was glad to hear the curious tone of my mother. There was nothing condescending about it.
“She is an interior decorator,” Liam said.
I was stabbing a few pieces of salad when my eyes shifted back up to meet Liam’s. I squinted in surprised laughter I managed to contain. Well, he had to tell them something, I thought. But for some reason I thought it seemed easier if he had gone with her passion, nursing.
“Maybe I could meet her sometime. I could always use a professional’s opinion.”
“I will have to let her know,” Liam said.
My mother smiled with an eager excitement before looking down to finally grab a bite. When I looked back at Liam, I noticed that all the food from his plate was gone. But his eyes weren’t on me. They were down, almost focusing on the wood of the table. I couldn’t help but squeeze the hand that was still in mine. He didn’t look all the way up at me, just gave me a mere glance. But in that moment’s glance—a risk-filled moment he had taken in the hopes that my parents were distracted—I found the reason. I saw the brightness of his green glow with a humming flicker. He was looking down to avoid having my parents notice the change.
After a minute, he looked back at me so that I could see the brightness slightly fading back to a green that was his regular abnormal bright, at least for a moment until once again his gaze left mine for his phone.
“Is something wrong?” my mother asked.
Luckily, she had only now begun to observe the two of us. I turned to her with an apologetic gaze. I didn’t realize that Liam and I had been so engaged. As I was about to say, “No, just staring at my boyfriend,” I heard the chair beside me slightly screech across the tile floor.
Liam lifted the napkin to his lips as he stood. “If you’ll excuse me, my mother is actually calling me at the moment.”
My dad refused to acknowledge the request, but my mom waved her hand in dismissal.
“Oh, go right ahead.”
“Thank you,” he said before nodding and walking out of the kitchen.
I smiled awkwardly at my mom as I finished my lasagna. I was thankful she left me to a quiet peace when Liam was gone. Fortunately I didn’t have much time to speculate, for only a few minutes later Liam walked back around the corner.
“I am sorry to leave so abruptly, but seeing as I did not expect to be staying for dinner I also did not let my parents know.”
I stood with my plate almost simultaneously with my mother, who did the same with her own.
“That’s all right, Liam. If I had known about you, I would have had Emma tell you.” She wasn’t speaking in an annoyed tone, but rather in a teasing manner to me. I rolled my eyes as she reached her hand out for my plate.
“Thanks,” I said to her before turning my neck back to Liam. “I’ll walk you to the door.”
He grinned at me as he looked back at my parents. “It was a pleasure to meet you both.”
“Likewise, Liam.” I could tell my mom was getting a kick out of saying his name. “Right, Paul?”
He looked up from his second helping. “Pleasure. I look forward to seeing more of you.”
As I walked around the corner with Liam I could hear my mother say, “Really, Paul?”
I didn’t really focus on much more because I was watching Liam’s newly furrowed brow.
“What’s wrong? Was that really Mary?”
I followed him onto the porch before he turned back to face me. “I need you to meet me outside your window.”
I stepped back with narrowed eyes. “Not that I mind, but this doesn’t exactly sound like something good.”
“Just meet me there in twenty minutes, please.” There was a polite request in his anxious words.
He leaned down to kiss my forehead before he turned to walk toward his BMW. It had taken him not even a second with his speed to get from my porch all the way to the curb. I watched him drive away before I sighed and walked back through the front door. I stopped at the kitchen, waiting until I caught my mother’s attention.
“I’m going to bed.”
Her mouth opened, about to start the line of questioning. I shook my head to let her know that tonight was not the night. She took the hint clearly. “All right, night, babe.”
I left before my dad could follow it up with something else. I walked toward my room feeling a swarm of anxiety control my stomach. I was glad Liam was coming back, but there was a small catch attached it seemed. His expression had told me that.
Once I closed my door I went to sit on my bed, looking with my eyes toward my window. I turned my neck to look at my clock when I felt the breeze. I turned back to see Liam waiting on the other side of the window.
I stood, walking over to lift the frame with a small resistance before pushing the screen out into his hands. I knew Liam was very capable of doing this task himself, but a flicker in his eyes told me it was a moment he was giving me, a moment to refuse his company. That wasn’t good.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He sighed quietly.
“I need you to come with me.”
Of course I would go with him, but why now? Why such urgency?
“Where are we going?”
I looked into his sheepish expression with much concern now.
“My house,” he said firmly.
I was full of curiosity as images of the Alexanders sitting around, waiting, flashed into my mind. The concern quickly became a reel of nerves in my stomach. I recalled my first visit with his family just hours ago. Now it was round two. Would this be the part where they get wise to their decision, where they force me to stay away to be with my own kind?
Though my knees felt wobbly, I had complete trust in Liam as I stepped over the sill and into his extended arms. As he swept me off my feet and against his chest, he seemed to inhale my scent as if it were a comfort, something to get him through where we were going. He quickly looked in the direction of my window, and the lamp in my room w
as turned off and my window shut itself.
“You know, that power is pretty convenient.”
He smiled teasingly.
“You think so?”
I gently brushed his cheek with the back of my right hand as my left wrapped around his neck for support. It felt easier to joke with him.
“Yes, I do. But we can’t all be that lucky.” He chuckled as he gazed into my eyes. “Okay, let’s do this before I lose my nerve,” I said.
Liam wasted no time as he set my feet down in the front seat of the already open door of his BMW that was parked a few houses down from mine. I couldn’t deny that it made me exhale a chuckle. I felt like a little kid being placed in my mom’s car. Of course, the sensation Liam gave my body with his hold made me feel nothing close to a little girl.
As he drove down the dark road toward the mansion, I reached for his hand. He took my own hand and gently raised it to his lips and kissed it softly. My heart raced as he lowered it back but continued to hold it.
I could feel in my gut that he was bracing me for what was coming. I was looking at his face when I felt the car slowing. My nerves began to tingle my fingers as I looked out the window to see the Alexander mansion. The porch lights were on.
I didn’t realize Liam had parked the car but I did notice when he let go of my hand. There was an emptiness without it. My attention was on his face a second before he was gone and my door was flung open. I didn’t realize how much I needed something to ease me, some conversation that would help me forget my vulnerability.
“So there is something that bothered me, or had least made me curious,” I said.
I quickly unbuckled my seatbelt with anticipation. Liam offered me his hand to help me out of his car. Though I knew he could have lifted me off my feet and run me to the porch, he didn’t. We walked at my pace. It was like he needed the slower time himself.
“I’m listening,” he said.
Liam stared ahead as we continued walking forward. “Why are you in high school? Wouldn’t it be easier to do your job if you had more freedom?”
I shifted my gaze away as we walked hand in hand up the porch steps.
“It would be, yes.”
“Then why the pretense at all?” He was silent as he walked a leading step ahead of me, until I too had stepped up onto the wide porch, beside him. A new tension turned in my stomach, as we walked toward the wide length door of the mansion. “Liam? Is there something you’re not telling me?”
He looked back to me with hesitancy, as if he were afraid of me looking too deep into his bright eyes. “It’s complicated,” Liam said. I watched him hold the doorknob before shifting it open. His lips shifted apart as if he were about to say something more, but he only moved aside for me to cross the threshold of the mansion first. “Why is it complicated?” I walked inside while still managing to hold my gaze on Liam. I didn’t like the way he now avoided looking at me. The only thing that kept us linked were our joined hands.
“I can answer that.”
My head jerked around at the voice from inside the house. My body froze as much as my mind to see Sean sitting on the Alexander’s couch. My eyes widened at not just the sight of him, but also at the one who sat next to him in warm, affectionate comfort, Grace Alexander.
I stood shockingly still at the sight of my brother’s hand entwined with Grace’s, much like I had mine in Liam’s. I was finally meeting the last Alexander. Only I knew him as Sean Jacob Morgan.
Complicated. You could say that again.
.
20. Sean’s Secret
My knees were locked as I watched Grace gravitate her body closer to Sean. I felt like this was some version of a dream. There was no way I was seeing what I thought was seeing. There was no possible way that my brother, the one who had begged me to stay away from Liam, would be inside his family’s home. And surely he wasn’t standing there, holding Grace’s hand so intimately. No, I thought. My eyes closed in the forced tightness of hope. This was only my subconscious mind trying to tell me something within my own dream. Not real.
I had to believe that. Yes, not real. I was nodding my head, fully expecting to find the darkness of my room. Just a dream.
“Emma.”
With Sean’s voice came a shattered hope. It was as if someone had suddenly dumped a bucket of cold water over me. Though my chin continued to lead my nod, I slowly opened my eyelids as if they were an opening-night curtain. There was much to fear in what I found on the other side. The voice in my mind changed. It is real.
My eyes caught sight of the rest of the Alexanders around the giant room. No one was moving, and like a silent movie there wasn’t even the smallest audible sound that could be heard; at least, not by me. Swiftly my attention was back on Sean. His body language was cautious, as if I were a bird that would fly away at the slightest movement. I said nothing. How could I?
My eyes met with Sean’s.
“There is a reason I have been so strange toward Liam.” I looked back to see Liam’s gaze on me with a guilty shame in his tense shoulders. There I was, stung at his silent confession. He had known about this. He brought me to this.
“There is a reason why some answers that Liam has told you don’t add up.” I felt my fingers twitching as I stared back to collide with Sean’s hazel eyes, eyes that glowed brighter with familiarity. Oh god, I thought. “It’s because of me,” Sean said.
I began to remember, of the oddities in Sean since I got back to Washington. It was as if I had been blinded by denial. But now, it was as if someone was throwing all these things at me: the golden honey glow of his eyes and the way he would refuse to look at me sometimes, the new strength in his muscles that lifted me from the bathroom floor too easily, the humor he found in my worry of him catching my illness, and his pinpoint observations. No, I pleaded. Those were only merely a coincidence. People change habits all the time. He wasn’t . . . that. He can’t be.
My eyes shifted from wall to wall as my stomach twisted in false knots. Liam’s words bounced in my mind. The coven territory becomes permanent once the final member is found. I wished to remember a different version of the words, wished I had simply heard him wrong.
But the chill that ran up my spine reminded me that I couldn’t be ignorant. It wasn’t just coincidence that the Alexanders were in Washington. They had collected the most recent member of their family. The last Alexander.
I shook my head in small movements. I still couldn’t admit that it was true, or let myself be aware of what it all meant. When my eyes moved away from the mansion walls, I again found Sean. But within my blink, he had moved away from Grace to stand only a foot away from me. I gasped with horrid surprise, backing a few steps away. When he began to move again, I placed my hand out for defense.
“Stop, don’t come any closer.”
“Emma,” he said.
I couldn’t deal with him speaking to me. I was trying to cope with his speed, the Alexander-like speed. I blinked three times as if to blame it all on my vision. It’s not true. My brother, my best friend, wasn’t eternally young. He wasn’t cursed with the occupation and duty to protect humanity. Not Sean. They couldn’t have him. You aren’t . . . immortal.
“I am.”
My eyes widened at hearing him answer my thoughts. My mind jumbled, stammering in confusion. I attempted to hide every thought, only to have them busted open all at once. I felt like a stubborn child; telling my mind to stop thinking only forced it to bring more thoughts forward. Though I called it my mind, it was as if someone else ran the controls. But I tried anyway. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
“Thinking of nothing never works,” Sean said.
“Stop it! Don’t read my thoughts.” My head shook. “How are you even . . . I mean, just don’t!”
My hands flew up in heated frustration. I shook my head more, unable to even produce a sentence, a thought, or even words. My brother had the gift of mind reading. No way that was real. But then, if being able to move things with your mind w
ere real, why couldn’t hearing thoughts from the mind be real?
Regardless, I couldn’t process it. In fact, I didn’t want to. I felt as if I had walked into a flea market and every jumbled thought had become a salesman calling my attention. It was an ambush, and I needed quiet to gain back some clarity.
“Em, just—”
I cut him off with my finger. “Just what? What exactly would you like me to say? What am I supposed to think?” My finger had become a fist as I paced back and then forward. I stared at him with a hard gaze. “Because all I know is that you are telling”—I crossed my hands angrily—“no, spontaneously ambushing me with the news of being something I have just learned to accept with Liam.” My shoulders shrugged in challenge. “Or am I supposed to be grateful that my brother is a hypocrite? That he is hiding a secret about himself, starting a life as the thing he wants me to avoid.”
“Emma, I was only trying—”
“Let me guess, only trying to protect me.” I grimaced at his silent eyes. “Well, do you realize that your protection did the opposite?”
“I was thinking of your future,” Sean said.
“Oh,” I said, clapping my hands together in sarcastic praise. “I should be more grateful that you disregarded my emotions and used my love for you as an ultimatum. And I’ll always appreciate you believing your choices are more important.” My brow lifted and my lips turned inward. “Well, my future-self thanks you for tearing me up inside, for making me wake up and wish that I could change how I felt about Liam for you.”
“Emma, just—”
“You know what, Sean? I don’t want to hear it. You purposely put me through hell, and now I’m not giving you the satisfaction of hearing you’re sorry.”
I turned to where I thought the other Alexanders were standing. It appeared that in my rant I didn’t see them disappear. Only Sean, Grace, and Liam remained.
“Lillian,” I said quietly. I watched her come from the swinging door of the kitchen with waiting eyes. “Will you give me a ride home?”
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