Waiting for Magic

by Susan Squires

  Kee nodded in sympathy. “He doesn’t usually talk much.”

  “Talking about you is how I got him to open up.”

  “Really?”

  “You’ve been a good friend to him, Kee. And you got him out of that house that night.”

  He didn’t call her a sister? That should be a relief, and yet… did that mean he… he might know how she felt about Dev? “Maggie helped, and well, most of the family. It wasn’t just me.” She scraped her courage up into a ball. This was for Devin. “I…I’m afraid he won’t forgive me for what I saw…and what Pendragon told Maggie and me.”

  “What part are you most concerned about?” The guy really had a face you could talk to, she’d give him that. “The rape?”

  That was just it. “No. That’s going to feel awful. But it isn’t your fault, you know?”

  “Some victims don’t feel like that.”

  Kee shifted from foot to foot. It was cold out here and a light drizzle was coming down. “I think he might be one of those, Doctor.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because… because I think Pendragon made him have an orgasm before he raped him.” There. She’d gotten it out. “He said Dev enjoyed what he did to him.”

  The doctor nodded slowly. “That would do it. Thank you for telling me, Kee. It will help me help him.”

  So. That was it? This was all she could do for Devin? Kee felt herself get smaller. “Well, thanks for talking to me, Doctor.”

  *****

  Devin pushed out the door to the Bay of Pigs and slammed it behind him. He was never seeing that God damned shrink again. The sound of Lanyon playing the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah faded as he strode, barefoot and squishing, over the wet grass to the bench at the edge of the cliff. It was raining. Good. At least Maggie would leave him alone. He wiped the back of his forearm across his eyes. No one would know it was anything more than rain, he told himself.

  Why had he told that parasite about…it when he’d vowed never to tell anybody? It was bad enough that Kee and Maggie knew. Didn’t matter that he’d told Dr. Farley, though. Maggie and Kee had probably already told everybody. The whole family no doubt thought Devin had wanted…that. He was some kind of sicko, as bad as Pendragon.

  He couldn’t sit on the bench. He stood, trembling, at the edge of the cliff, every muscle tensed. Waves crashed on the rocks fifty feet down in a chaotic jumble of foam and sand.

  He couldn’t do this anymore. He couldn’t wait for Kee to get her balance back after fighting for her life, finding out about Devin, confronting monsters. Every morning when he asked her how she was, he saw the pain in her eyes. He’d put her in a horrible position with his total failure. He had to leave. But he couldn’t do that either. He barfed up any food he managed to eat every time he even thought about it. Brina had accosted him this morning about losing weight, but he couldn’t look at the big breakfast she’d dished up for him.

  So here he was, stuck in limbo while the fucking shrink probed every wound. And now the bloodsucker knew the worst: that Devin wasn’t worthy of kissing his family’s feet. Or Kee’s. How not worthy? Let me count the ways, a sing-song voice in his head began. No Talisman, no Destiny, and a sicko who gets turned on by being tied up and manhandled. Oh, and don’t forget you put your entire family in danger….

  Brina knew his love for Kee had raised his power. Brina’s talk with him the night it happened proved that. Maybe. He wasn’t sure any more just what she’d said. Brian must not know, or he’d have thrown Devin out already. The others were still treating Devin like a member of the family. Kee was avoiding him, but she was tied up with Museum Guy. She’d been to see him twice and was going again tomorrow, according to Kemble. Her love for Museum Guy would heal her, eventually. Devin didn’t need to wait around. He shook his head convulsively against the thought and caught a flash of yellow slicker behind him.

  He turned on Maggie, panic rising up from his belly. “No more Calm.” Did that sound like begging or a threat? He wasn’t sure.

  “Okay,” she said carefully. “Why don’t you just come forward a little? Deal?”

  He looked behind him. His bare heels were so close to the edge that soft dirt was crumbling beneath them and careening down the uneven cliff face. No wonder she was treating him like he was made of glass. She thought he was going to throw himself off. Not a bad idea, actually. But he’d never hurt Kee like that. He took two steps forward. “Happy?”

  “Can’t say I’m happy. But that’s better, anyway.”

  “So, no Calm.”

  Maggie looked worried. “But…”

  “It’s like being drugged, Maggie. Not that it didn’t help,” he hastened to add as her face fell. “But now you need to leave me alone.”

  Maggie sighed. “Okay. But I’m here if you need me.” She turned and began trudging toward the terrace.

  That’s when Devin saw Jane come out the French doors and put up her umbrella. Sweet Jesus, can’t they leave me alone? He watched Jane approach, glowering. Maybe he could intimidate her. But she kept coming. “What do you want?” he snapped. “Did Brina send you?”

  “No,” Jane said in her quiet way. “In fact, they all tried to stop me.”

  What? Jane stood up to the family? That got his attention. “You must have something real important to say.”

  “Yes I do,” she said firmly. “You need to go surfing. Right now.”

  “Well, I don’t feel like surfing,” he said, feeling childish. “Besides, there’s a storm.”

  “That’s never stopped you before,” she snorted. “At least it’s not the dead of night.”

  Jane knew about that first time he’d felt his power? She seemed to know everything. Not how to put Devin back together again, though. “That’s what you came to say?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that supposed to change anything?” His voice sounded dead, hopeless in his own ears.

  “It will help you clear your head.” She turned back to the house.

  “That’s it?” he yelled after her.

  “Yes,” she called over her shoulder without turning around.

  Jane disappeared. No one else came out to try to “cure” him, thank God. He was alone in the rain, gazing up at the old hacienda in which he’d never really belonged. The waning light made the stormy atmosphere look sullen. Lights went on in the kitchen, their warm glow unable to chase the wet and cold away. Devin’s eyes strayed to the surfboards leaning against the fence that hid the garden shed. They seemed forlorn. Surfing wasn’t going to help anything.

  He hung his head, realizing that he’d already come to some kind of a decision. He’d stepped back from the cliff. He’d told the shrink what happened at Pendragon’s House of Horrors, how sick he was that he hadn’t been able to keep himself from ejaculating. And the reason he’d told Maggie he didn’t want any more Calm is because somewhere inside himself, he knew he had to man up and pull himself together, by himself. It had occurred to him this morning that maybe Kee’s look of pain might be because his pain was hurting her. It was time to face whatever horrible Hobson’s Choice awaited him. If she needed him to go, he would. If she wanted him to stay as a friend, he’d do that too, God help him.

  He walked over to the boards, splattered with the insistent rain. He reached out and touched one, a caress for an old friend. If Jane thought surfing would help, he’d do it. For Kee’s sake.

  *****

  It was long after dinner when Devin came back up to the cliff path. Kee was up in her studio. He could feel her. Heaving in a breath, he knew what he had to do. He put the board up in the rack, not just leaning it against the fence. Floating on the board out there on the choppy waves, what Brina said to him that night came back to him, clear for the first time. She hadn’t said she knew he loved Kee and it was okay. That was wishful thinking on his part. But she said you had to stand up and try to get what you wanted most, and she thought he had the courage to do that. As he came screaming down those storm
waves, then paddled out using the flow of the current, riding the power of the water over and over again, he began to think she was right.

  He made his way into the house through the Bay of Pigs to avoid the family members who were still in the dining room. Someone was watching television. Probably Tammy and Lanyon. He hardly remembered coming up the back stairs. But now he somehow found himself standing in front of the door to Kee’s studio.

  Brina had lied. He didn’t have an ounce of courage. The certainty he’d felt when he was on the water had evaporated. He felt like a tattered old blanket.

  So he just stood there outside Kee’s door. His cock was standing to attention with the nearness of her. His baggy surfer’s shorts were wet. Not helping conceal his problem. He felt lightheaded with wanting her.

  This was such a mistake.

  “Are you going to just stand out there?”

  Her voice was a little wavery. It made her sound vulnerable. That struck to his core like an arrow and just vibrated there. Bull’s-eye. She needed him. Maybe not the way he needed her, but as a friend for sure. That left him little choice.

  He saw himself from outside his body reach for the door. The first time she’d come to him, wanting, they’d both been drinking. She’d obviously thought better of that mistake. And yet here he was, stone-cold sober, with the same lust for her. Lust. Such a nasty word when used in conjunction with the word “sister.”

  But she wasn’t his sister. Brina had said that too. Did it make any difference when they’d lived like brother and sister for fourteen years? He took two breaths. Kee was his friend above all. Friends sometimes turned into lovers. She’d think he was creepy for wanting her that way. She was in love with Museum Guy. And he was tarnished goods after his session with Pendragon. But he couldn’t refuse to try just because she would deny him. Brina was right about that. Her veiled reference to the fact that he thought people would reject him or be taken from him if he let himself depend on them was true. She knew that was why he didn’t like to hug when he’d only realized it recently himself. She’d really been trying to tell him he shouldn’t fail Kee just because he was weak.

  And his friend needed him. Maybe he could keep himself from coming on to her.

  He pushed open the door.

  She sat on the daybed she kept in her studio. A full moon drifted over the ocean on storm-tossed clouds. This was the first break in the rain since that night at Pendragon’s. The big, west-facing window carved the moonlight into a glowing channel that lit Kee’s tumble of hair. She wore an old oversized t-shirt and skin-tight yoga pants over her long legs. They made her look delicate, feminine. She just stared at him with big eyes. Now that he was standing in front of her, he had no idea what to say.

  “You okay?” she asked in a small voice.

  He nodded convulsively. “Better,” he croaked. “I…I went surfing.”

  “So…that means you’ll be leaving.” She pressed her fingers to her lips. She looked ill.

  She looked ill! Just like he felt. Could that mean…?

  Devin felt something break apart inside him. It might be the wall he’d built around all the guilt and despair he harbored there. He couldn’t deserve her. He wasn’t really a Tremaine. But for the first time in his life, that might actually be a good thing. And he had the gene. He wasn’t just the orphan boy who had arrived on the Tremaine doorstep with nothing to offer. Maybe she agreed with the shrink and Maggie when they kept saying that what happened at Pendragon’s house wasn’t his fault. It was possible. His throat closed as if to choke off the hope that rose inside him. He just stood there and blinked, trying to open his throat enough to tell her.

  Well, not everything. Not till he knew how she felt. It took him a while to get started, but for a change, Kee didn’t push. She looked like she was holding her breath.

  “Brina told me we’re cousins twice removed.” God, that came out of nowhere. He sounded like a crazy person. Which he was. Had been?

  Kee raised her brows in surprise. That wasn’t what she had expected him to say. Well, who would? She turned her head to look at him from the corner of wary eyes. “Do you or do you not have a girlfriend who raised your power?” She sounded like a TV district attorney.

  He held his breath. Shook his head.

  She was blinking, really fast.

  “Right back at you,” he said. “Museum Guy?”

  The shake of her head was slow, as though she was trying to process this. She pressed her lips between her teeth. Was she as afraid as he was to ask the next question? Devin, you bum. She should take the risk because you’re afraid to take it? He cleared his throat. Brina said he had courage. Time to ante up. He couldn’t ask Kee if she loved him, but he could tell her how he felt.

  “I’ve loved you for a while, Kee.” There, he’d said it, well, almost. “I mean, I’ve loved you like a man loves a woman. I couldn’t say anything because it seemed like a betrayal of all the family has ever done for me. Of all you’ve done for me. You made me want to live again all those years ago. You talked for me when I couldn’t. You knew what I was thinking. You were my friend. You were like my sister. But we’re not sister and brother. I’ll never stop loving you, Kee, even if it grosses you out to think of me that way. You can send me away tomorrow and I’ll go, no matter how much it hurts. But I won’t stop loving you.”

  Devin took a couple of little, halting gasps. He hadn’t said that many words in a row, probably ever. And as far as not coming on to her, he pretty much sucked.

  Kee, who was always talkative, seemed paralyzed.

  She must be appalled.

  He’d made a huge mistake.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Kee tried to hold back the tears that threatened to close her throat. Devin loved her? That glimmer of hope Kee’s talk with her mother last week gave her flamed up and started burning her heart, her gut, the blood in her brain. Her throat closed. She couldn’t say anything. Because she was afraid. Yet, just like her fear of not being original had hurt her art, she truly understood that her fear of loving Devin would hurt them both too, if she didn’t let it go.

  So she got up and pushed past him. His nearness made her shudder. A frisson of sensation that sent her lust up to unbearable levels washed through her. He was not helping her here. She took the last painting she’d done of him and turned it face-out, then flipped on a tiny reading light next to the daybed and focused it on the picture. If she couldn’t tell him how she felt, maybe she could let him see it.

  They stood there staring at the picture together, not saying anything. Would he see the love she’d expressed in the way she saw him? He’d at least see the lust. It was in every sensual sweep of the brush that revealed his muscles, every dot of paint that showed the translucent drops of water caressing his skin. It was in the fact that she’d bothered to reproduce the thousand different colors of blond that streaked his hair and how she’d managed to achieve brown eyes that looked like bottomless pools. It was in the expression she’d captured. The painting said she knew him better than anyone and that she loved what she saw. Could he see it on a flat canvas daubed with colored oil?

  She felt his hand on her shoulder, sending that familiar electric jolt down to her loins. He turned her toward him and took her by her shoulders, gently. There was fear in his expression too, and awe. He bent his head, very slowly, as she raised her face. His lips brushed hers, feathering a kiss there. She ran her hands up over his bare chest and locked them around his neck, feeling his erection press against her belly under his wet board shorts. This couldn’t be wrong. It just couldn’t.

  “Oh, Kee,” he murmured, as he held her to his body so tightly it might break ribs. She didn’t care. The emotion in those two words was all she needed to sustain her. The next kiss was deeper and she met him with passion that matched his exactly. Just like they’d always matched. It seemed so natural to love Devin.

  They finally had to come up for air. “Will you marry me?” Devin never minced words when he had so few of t
hem. “I want to know you’re mine, no matter what anybody else says.”

  “Even if we have to run away to do it,” she agreed. “I love the family, Dev. But I love you more.” There. She was about as bad a girl as she could be, and not because she was drunk. She was making a conscious choice. Sometime in the last two minutes she’d apparently started crying because her cheeks were wet.

  The kiss he took was nearly ruthless in its intensity. He possessed her almost as much as she wanted to possess him. Kee’s body shuddered with need. Her yoga pants were wet. All she could think about was the fact that Devin loved her and, unexpectedly, she was going to get everything in the world that would make her happiest.

  She felt him go still. A little thread of worry crept into her head, only exacerbated when he pulled away slightly and took her shoulders, looking serious. “Do you think we’d better go down and tell the Parents?”

  Ugh. The worm in the apple. Or maybe not. “From something Mother said last week, I don’t think she’ll mind so much.”

  “It’s not her I’m worried about. She’s a forgiving person.” When Devin saw her expression he added, “Don’t worry. I’m not chickening out, no matter what.”

  “I guess we can’t avoid telling them.” She gave a watery chuckle. “Father would have the National Guard out looking for us if we just eloped.”

  “And he’d hang me from the coral tree when he found us.” He gave a big sigh. “Now?”

  “No. Not now. I can’t stand not making love to you this minute.”

  He blinked twice. Then gathered her into his arms and took up the kiss where he’d left off. She didn’t want him to think he had to be gentle with her. She wanted him. Hell, she’d wanted him nonstop from the first time they’d made love. She stepped out of his embrace and pulled her t-shirt over her head, leaving her breasts naked.

  “If you don’t pull those trunks down, I will,” she threatened, slipping her yoga pants over her hips.

  “I might like that, another time.” He slid them down over his hipbones, freeing his erection. He was hard as a rock. What had been a drunken, guilty pleasure the first time they made love was now a mutual commitment. It felt more important, but no less urgent. “I’m going to do everything with you, Kee. Every way there is to make love, we’ll make it.”