by Alessa James
When my dad pressed his lips together, I started shaking. Not because of what he had just told me, but because I was suddenly sure that I had gone completely—totally and completely—nuts. Then, with another painful jolt of adrenaline, I saw a flash of Tyler Pitt in the house on Kincaid.
“Oh my god! Tyler!” I gasped.
“Tyler Pitt?” my dad asked, clearly stunned by outburst.
“He was with me! Is he still alive?”
A monitor to my left starting going crazy, and a man in mint-green scrubs walked in.
“Sir? I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
My chest started heaving, air coming in sporadic gasps as I scrambled to separate fiction from reality and what I knew for fact from what might have been my imagination. Turning, I watched as the man took a syringe and injected something into my IV. Then my vision blurred. When I opened my eyes again, I saw Gen sitting in a chair next to my hospital bed.
“So what are the lies, and what’s the truth?” I mumbled. “Because you’re not Federal Marshals—unless I hallucinated everything from the time I first saw Will.”
Gen sighed.
“It was James’s doing … and believe me, the paper trail will be immaculate. No one, not even the Marshals Service, will know that we aren’t vetted Marshals.”
I had no doubts they had the resources and connections to pull off something like this, but it didn’t answer one question.
“Why?”
“Because there had to be a reason for us bringing an unconscious, badly injured teenage girl in prom attire into the ER in the middle of the night—unless we were simply to have left you here before disappearing by the next morning.”
She made it all sound so simple. Pretend to be Federal Marshals—hey, why not? But it wasn’t that simple—it changed everything.
“So … my dad knows Will is still alive, and he thinks Will is what?”
“To your father, Will is a twenty-four-year-old Marshal on a taskforce tracking a dangerous fugitive responsible for human trafficking and several unsolved murders. Your father believes Will survived the explosion at the restaurant and has been in hiding ever since. And he believes that we used you as bait in our investigation, prompting Vladimir Fidatov to snatch you from the dance and nearly killing you.”
“Bait? Then, my dad hates all of you … and he thinks Will is … a monster. Oh my god. Why would James do that?”
But I already knew the answer to my question. He had done it to protect me. From Will. From all of this. I shook my head, feeling my wrist ache through the layers of painkillers.
“Will?” I whispered. “Is he okay?”
Gen’s copper-colored eyes hardened.
“Yes and no.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that he is no longer out of his mind, and we have you to thank for that even if it nearly killed you—”
“He’s better, then?” I interrupted with a shred of hope.
“Aven, he remembers everything from that night. He remembers torturing you and nearly killing you—”
I looked down. Then my heart raced—no one had told me what happened to Tyler Pitt.
“Tyler!”
“In a rehab center in Northern California,” Gen said dismissively.
“I don’t get it, though. Why did Fidatov take him?”
Gen shrugged.
“He was watching you, following you. There may have been some reason for taking that unctuous boy. Now we may never know.”
I swallowed, trying to make sense of my memories from that night.
“What happened? I mean, I remember some of it, but the end is a blur.”
I looked down at my wrist, wincing as I remembered hearing the sound of the bone breaking in Will’s grip.
“At the last possible moment, Will pulled you and Tyler Pitt into the sarcophagus, which Fidatov had reinforced with solid steel. When the explosives detonated, the explosion degraded the house’s integrity enough that we were able to get inside and extract you. We stabilized you. Then we brought you to the hospital. Edmond took Tyler Pitt to a facility in California that wouldn’t ask questions. One of us has been here ever since to make sure that the danger is, in fact, over.”
“And my dad’s okay with you guys being here after everything you told him?”
Gen nodded carefully.
“More or less. He knows that you need protection.”
“What about Vladimir Fidatov and Grace?”
“Gone.”
“What do you mean gone?”
“Even if he didn’t reach his original goal—”
I shivered.
“Which was what? To have Will kill me?”
She nodded.
“I imagine it was the worst revenge Fidatov could think of in Will’s case, but it’s likely he achieved the next best outcome in his mind.”
“You mean my dad hating Will, and Will hating himself,” I said numbly. “Well, that is James’s fault.”
“He did it for your own good, Aven.”
“Ha! Every time people say something’s for your own good, they mean it’s for their own good—or they’re just trying to control your life to make themselves feel better,” I fumed.
Gen reached over and touched something behind me, and a few seconds later, I could barely keep my eyes open.
“Will,” I mumbled desperately. “I need to see Will.”
“Sleep,” Gen said softly, touching my hand.
***
My dreams remained dark. I would hear Fidatov’s voice echoing in the darkness … or see the smile on Will’s lips as he snapped my wrist … or watch as he crouched over Tyler Pitt like the incubus from The Nightmare.
In the days before I was released from the hospital, Gen and Edmond appeared in my room to coach me on what I was supposed to tell Sean or anyone else who asked what had happened on the night of the dance: a hit-and-run accident in front of the hotel.
To anyone but my dad, Will Kincaid would remain dead. And to my dad, Will had become the enemy—a young federal agent who had crossed the boundaries of decorum and duty and gotten too close to his teenage daughter. My dad reluctantly accepted James, Edmond, and Gen as semi-permanent fixtures in my life for the near future, but seeing—or speaking of—Will was off limits, something my dad and James had agreed upon.
On Thursday afternoon, I was sitting on my bed at home when the doorbell rang and my dad opened the front door. I heard Sean’s voice, and a minute later someone knocked at my door.
“Come in,” I said, watching as the door swung open.
Sean hesitated in the doorway with a miserable expression. I could feel his guilt from across the room.
“Hey,” he said as Darcy trotted over to him.
“Hey.”
He bent over to pat Darcy on the head.
“So, uh … I have all your assignments from the week, and I think your dad talked to your teachers.”
“Thanks.”
Looking at him, I felt a wave of relief that Vladimir Fidatov had taken Tyler Pitt instead of Sean. Everything could have been so much worse, and I was lucky things had turned out the way they did. At least that was what I kept telling myself over and over.
“Sean! I’m not going to bite,” I said in exasperation.
He dragged my desk chair across the room and sat down at the side of my bed, reaching out to pick at a loose thread on my comforter cover.
“Aven, damn. I’m so sorry. If I hadn’t been such a dumbass, then you never would have left the dance, and—”
“Sean! It’s not your fault that I ran out in front of a freaking car.”
“Yeah, but I should have come after you.”
“It was a bad night, no doubt, but worse has happened to me. This is nothing.”
“Really? It looks like a broken wrist.”
“Sean, don’t be a smart ass,” I smiled crookedly. “How was the rest of the dance?”
“Well, let’s see. Scott Adams got wasted, h
urled in the hotel lobby, and got suspended for a week.”
I couldn’t help laughing.
“Serious?”
“Yeah,” Sean laughed.
“And … After you took off, Megan ditched Jeff and hooked up with some random guy.”
“What a surprise,” I said sarcastically.
“Oh, and that friend of Will’s—James—was with some freaky chick. One dance and then they disappeared, too—probably to hook up. Later on, we heard all these sirens, and someone said a big old abandoned house on the hill caught fire and burned to the ground. The rumor going around is that it was arson … like the restaurant.” He looked down. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be such a jerk about … you know.”
I nodded.
“It’s okay,” I said.
“Are you coming back to school on Monday?”
“Yeah,” I nodded.
“So, Lizzie and Amy wanted to know if it was okay yet to come over.”
I nodded.
“Yeah, definitely.”
My dad appeared in the doorway.
“All right, Sean. Time’s up. Aven needs to get some rest.”
“Dad! Seriously?”
“It’s okay,” Sean said. “I should get going.”
“Thanks for bringing Aven’s homework, and say hello to your parents for me,” my dad said as he walked Sean out.
I fell back into bed, exhausted and annoyed by my dad’s newfound interest in micromanaging my life. When Lizzie texted a few minutes later asking if they could stop by, I said yes, hoping my dad would relax around female visitors.
“Dad! Lizzie and Amy are stopping by, so don’t go all crazy when they show up!”
But they didn’t stay long, either, mostly because my dad was right—I was exhausted. I slept again after they left and then woke up and started catching up on my homework. It felt good to concentrate on something normal. In fact, other than the pain meds and cast on my arm, my life felt suspiciously normal.
I fell asleep again sometime after eleven only to wake up in tears. I started shaking as I remembered a dream from before I had met Will. Which meant I had dreamt about him before ever seeing him … and I had dreamt that I lost him.
Rolling over, I picked up the bottle of painkillers. My arm was aching, and my palms were burning and itching like the thorns wrapped around the gate of the house on Kincaid had delivered a poison to my system. But I didn’t want to take another pill. Frustrated and annoyed, I threw the bottle across the room. I waited for the clatter of plastic against the wall, the sound of pills rattling. Nothing. Sitting up, I turned on the lamp as my eyes darted around the room. Will was sitting perfectly still at the windowsill, watching me. He stood up, and I jerked forward, which sent pain shooting through my arm.
“Will!” I gasped, louder than I should have.
Scrambling out of bed, I felt tears streaming down my face, the crushing sense of loss from my dream mixing with reality. Suddenly I was afraid that he was going to disappear before I could reach him—that I would lose him again. Rushing toward him, I gripped onto the front of his shirt the moment I reached him.
I tried, but I couldn’t stop crying. The tears just kept coming. Because it felt like I had already lost him. Finally, I looked up, and he smiled, his expression tender and sad as he touched my cheek with his fingers. He bent down, his lips brushing my forehead.
“I love you, Aven. Forever.”
But I heard the meaning behind his words.
Goodbye.
Chapter 27: Ever After
Sean got me a job at the bookstore, and my second home became the tiny, windowless stockroom. Sitting amid countless boxes, I began feeling like the miller’s daughter from the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale. Only rather than spinning gold from hay, I was left to inventory and catalog endless shipments of books. But I preferred it to working the registers, which required false cheerfulness that I couldn’t even fake.
When I wasn’t working, I stayed close to home. Study, listen to depressing music, run—repeat. At school, things were awkward, so I tried to tune out the distraction. Megan had stopped eating with us, and I couldn’t say I was disappointed. James, Edmond, and Gen were always around somewhere, but they didn’t bother pretending to be normal students. Sometimes I caught James at the edge of the cafeteria during lunch—soaking up the ambient energy of a large group of hormonal teenagers. But that was about it. There, but not really there. The truth was that I missed them. All of them.
But I craved Will.
Christmas came and went without any real acknowledgment. My mom had always been the one to spearhead holidays, and it felt weird even to try without her. Still, I made an effort to feel thankful, to focus on the positives. I was alive. Everyone around me was safe. But I felt alone, weighted down by a strange secret I could never tell anyone.
Then I had another dream. I was walking down the street slowly. I knew it was a dream, because when I looked into a store window, I caught my reflection in the glass. My hair was white, pulled back from my face, and my eyes looked bright against my wrinkled, pale skin. I was alone as I walked, and people seemed to pass by without truly seeing me. Up ahead, I saw someone coming toward me. My heart sped up as he approached. He was perfect, so perfect that my eyes began to sting with tears just at the sight of him. He smiled as he passed by, his blue eyes glowing as he looked down at me. Frowning, I searched, trying to remember his name. It was at the tip of my tongue, but I just couldn’t reach it.
“Will!” I gasped breathlessly as my eyes opened.
A sob choked me, and I sat upright in bed, flinching at the sound of James’s voice.
“For the record, I am sorry,” he said from where he was sitting in my chair.
“No, you’re not.”
“Let me clarify. I’m sorry I hurt you.”
I sighed raggedly.
“I don’t get it. Why save me and then take it all away?”
“Take it all away. It does feel that way, doesn’t it?” he asked pensively. “And then you find out that what you had wasn’t love at all.”
“Speak for yourself,” I snapped, my tone acidic and biting.
“Aven, don’t you want a normal life?”
I stared into the darkness in disbelief.
“Um … sitting in my room in the middle of the night talking to a hundreds-of-years-old pranic vampire. Normal? That ship has sailed.”
He laughed quietly, and I got the feeling he was enjoying this conversation a little too much.
“It should be Will here, not you,” I said icily.
“No. It should be neither of us. We never should have interfered in your life.”
“But you did, and you can’t take it back or change it.”
“No, I can’t change it.”
“Then stop trying to make my decisions for me.”
My dad was being overbearing enough lately. The last thing I needed was a preachy immortal babysitter. The door to my bedroom creaked open, and I saw Darcy nudge his nose through the crack. When I looked back toward James, I was alone again.
I woke up the next morning, relieved out of my mind that I wasn’t scheduled to work. It was even early enough to get a run in, the cast having come off two weeks earlier. Getting out of bed, I quickly gathered my clothes and stripped out of my tank top and flannel pajama bottoms. I put on a pair of black leggings and a fitted long-sleeve shirt, knowing I was going to freeze the minute I stepped out the door.
I whistled softly to Darcy, and he trailed behind me down the hall to the stairs. Stopping at the hall closet, I grabbed his leash and my running shoes before walking out the front door and locking it. The air outside was cold, but crisp rather than damp. Bending down to tie the key to my shoe, I rubbed the ache in my wrist, a lasting reminder of that night.
As I clipped the leash to Darcy’s collar, I looked around the quiet street. The black SUV parked across the street wasn’t a surprise. Actually, I was comforted by its presence. My thought process was simple, but probably
flawed: If they were still here watching over me, then Will was close, if out of my reach.
Putting in my earbuds and scrolling to the playlist I used for runs, I took off slowly, my destinations in the back of my mind. As I jogged toward town, I felt myself traveling back in time as I stopped in front of the storefront labeled only DELICATESSEN. Hanging forward, I stretched my hamstrings before taking off again. Darcy didn’t seem to mind, and I loved that about him. He didn’t judge me for being maudlin or crazy. He just came along for the ride, his tongue hanging out and his tail wagging.
A few minutes later, I stopped in front of the Winters Hotel and looked up at it. In my dreams, it was red-tinged and dramatic. Now, in the cold light of morning, it just looked like any other building. From the hotel, I traced the same path as I had the night of the dance, up the long hill to the top, stopping at the gate, which was partially torn off its hinges—from the fire department, I suspected. Yellow police tape crisscrossed the entrance, but even from where I was I could see the destruction at the top of the hill.
If I hadn’t come here that night, would Will still be entombed, frozen in time somewhere?
When Darcy nosed my palm, I turned and started to jog back down the hill, wincing at the ache in my wrist. I had one more stop left to make as I made my way back toward the house.
Sweating and panting, I stopped at my last destination: the park. I turned off my music when I reached the bench and sat down, staring at the play structure, like I could somehow make Will materialize. I had done the same thing with my mom, imagining fervently that she would just walk into my room, wishing I could will it into being reality. Eventually, I had realized that doing that hurt more than it helped. Yet here I was, again, wishing for a different reality than the one I had.
I sat for several minutes, feeling myself growing colder and colder. Soon I would be sitting across from my dad in the bakery in town, only months shy of my eighteenth birthday, sipping overly sugary Earl Grey tea and eating a pastry that would negate any benefit from the jog I had just finished. I would watch my dad work on his syllabus for the spring term. Maybe I would finish the book I had started about a man who travels through time and meets his wife as a young girl.