by Brown, Tara
“But you could hurt me just fine.”
“I had no idea, O. I swear it. Laertes was always going on about the French and Italians you’d meet on vacation. All the guys you were stringing along.” He stopped, hearing himself. “Now I think he did it because he knew I was obsessed with you.”
I folded my arms, annoyed at the way my brother had portrayed me.
“I thought only I would end up hurt.” He stepped forward, his hands up, surrendering. “I swear on my worthless life, I didn’t know it was your first time or how you felt. You hold your cards so close, how could I?”
When I didn’t react, he stepped closer.
“And then afterward, you were so cold toward me. You avoided me. I saw it.” He walked to me, taking my hands. “It killed me.”
“You broke my heart. You treated me like some random girl in your dirty bed and broke my heart.” I pulled my hands free. “You really think I’m going to believe you were dying while escorting all that new fresh meat around?” It was cruel but I didn’t regret it. Not even when he reacted ever so slightly with a twitch.
“I love you,” he whispered and something burned inside me. An old piece of coal belonging to a fire I thought had gone out. “I’ve never been cured of it. That night made everything else worse. I had the person I am meant to be with, in my arms for one night. And every night since then has been empty. Without you I am empty.”
Fear and lilacs told me to run. This was a trap. An old scary trap that I’d fallen into once before.
But he was right.
That night together had been the single night I didn’t feel empty.
“Forgive me,” he pleaded.
“No,” I muttered.
“Please,” he begged, dropping to his knees so we were close to the same height.
“Never,” I said so unconvincingly that even I didn’t buy it.
“You said you still love me.”
“I lied,” I lied.
“No, you’re lying now. You’re bad at it.” He took a deep breath. “I’ve waited years to hear you say it.”
“I take it back,” I snapped.
“You can’t.” He leaned in.
“You told me I was nothing.”
“You’re everything. Are you going to make me use the excuse that we might be dead next week?” He cracked that grin and my stomach tightened. I melted as he reached for me, cupping my cheek. “I love you.”
The warmth of his hand made me shiver. I closed my eyes and leaned into it. The emptiness receded as light and passion began to take its place.
“Let me love you,” he said softly, standing up and lifting my chin, lowering his face and pressing his lips so hard against mine, I thought he bruised them.
The kiss was a trembling line, broken and releasing the moment my hands lifted to his chest. I didn’t push, I caressed, and it was silent permission.
He scooped me up into his arms, carrying me to the bed. He laid me back and crawled over top, hovering there for a second with a few strands of his hair falling over his eyes. “Is this real?”
“I don’t know,” I answered, sensing I was in a dream. But my dreams always turned to nightmares, so I decided to live this one to the fullest. I was never going to get my happily ever after, this might be it.
That unleashed me, which in turn set him on fire.
He didn’t go slow or cherish me. I didn’t feel every part of him or notice the changes. We ravaged one another. His hands slipped into my shirt, popping the buttons and touching my skin at the same time I pulled his shirt over his head. The warmth of his skin against mine made me moan as my body started to warm up.
He trailed his fingers down my stomach to my jeans, unbuttoning, and sitting back to drag them off. I caught glimpses of tattoos I’d never seen as he came back down, kissing me and my neck as I unbuttoned his pants, dragging them back.
We slid against each other, his firm body against my supple one. Kissing and touching until we were both naked.
He reached between his legs, grabbing himself and sliding the head of his cock against me, rubbing in the moisture our kissing had produced. “Is this okay?” he whispered as he slid just the head in.
I nodded against his shoulder as he pushed, kissing my cheek and mouth, moving in and out until he was all in, filling me up. I’d forgotten the intensity of being stretched by Lucas Jacobi’s cock. He rocked a little, slowly but grunting with each thrust, allowing me a moment.
But I didn’t need it. I moved into it, pushing my hips and butt into his strokes, forcing him to fuck. His hands slid up and down my body, finding a grip on my ass as he lifted and thrust harder.
I gasped, clinging to him with one arm as I slid a hand down between my legs, rubbing myself as he picked up speed.
“Jesus,” he groaned, keeping the pace I’d forced on him with my body. The waves of pleasure crashed inside me, each one taking me a little higher. I clung to him, riding him as much as he was fucking me. My hand rubbing to keep up with the needed friction until my orgasm shot through me, making me spasm. He pumped into me harder, fighting against the tightening of my rocking body.
We fucked hard. Lucas sat back, lifting my ass and pounding until he was also groaning with an orgasm.
He grunted and thrust as his body crashed on top of mine. He was gasping for air and scowling as he rolled to the side, shaking his head slowly. “What the fuck was that?”
“What?” I managed to catch my breath.
“That’s not how I remember sex.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve had some practice since that night,” I joked, closing off to him as I got up. I didn’t know how to handle this situation with him. I retreated for my bathroom as I struggled out of what was left of my clothes. I needed to be alone with the eventual disappointment this would bring. It was inevitable how our story ended. He was the king of one night stands, and I was the princess of self-flagellation.
I started the shower, not bothering with the fluids running down my legs but wondered if Dr. Graves had a morning-after pill at her disposal.
“Practice? With who?” Lucas asked as he followed me into the shower.
“You can have the shower after me.” I scowled at his forwardness.
“We just had sex, I’m pretty sure we can shower together.” He narrowed his gaze. “Stop stalling and answer my question, who have you been practicing with?”
“Guys, girls. I don’t know, it’s none of your business.” I shrugged to torment him, hoping this put us on at least the same playing field. I wasn’t exactly truthful, but I also wasn’t kissing and telling.
“What?” He had the strangest look on his face. “You’ve been in love with me for all these years, but you had sex with other people?” He was moody now, which for some awful reason gave me pleasure. I had low expectations that this would go beyond this moment, but I decided to enjoy the after sex part this time. Less me crying alone and more him worrying.
“I don’t think I need to tell you that sex and love are not mutually exclusive. You can have either one without the other.”
“You said girls?” He gulped.
“I’m in college, Lucas. What have you been doing in England for the last four years?” I raised my eyebrows. “What were you doing for the five years before we hooked up in your gross fuck loft?”
The words made him clench his jaw and he took several breaths before speaking, “Okay, I deserved that.” He nodded, conceding, but I could see he was hurt. “But this is different. I love you.”
“Why?” I glanced at him, feeling a lot of hurt slinking back in postcoital. “You don’t even know me. Like you said, I have a demure act. I might be an awful liar but I’m good at pretending I feel nothing.”
“I know that better than anyone. And I also know you.” He furrowed his brow more. “Better than anyone. You love insects and animals. Your favorite day is Sunday, and you like watching weirdly sad movies about teenagers who are dying. You prefer indie music and being buzzed but not drunk. Yo
u don’t like drugs. You hate your mom, but you love your dad.”
“Everyone loves my father more,” I scoffed.
“You suck at lying but you’re right, you’re good at keeping secret who you are. I bet Paige was the only person who knew your heart, and perhaps not even her. I remember you always wanted to go into creative writing and maybe screenplays, probably because you play a side character in your own life. You wanted to write about the main characters. You’re a poet.” He turned over his arms, revealing the tattoo I hadn’t seen in full light. It was a sentence drawn in ink and flowy font: You cannot know a story if you only have one truth.
It was a line from a poem I’d written for a paper last year.
My jaw dropped. I didn’t know how Lucas could possibly know this.
He flashed his grin, adding a little extra smugness to it.
“I like absinthe, that’s a drug,” I said, trying to suggest he might be wrong about one thing.
But he wasn’t.
Lucas Jacobi had been watching and paying attention. Maybe even more than I had.
Chapter 12
I woke with a start.
It was dark. I ran my hands across the bed, searching for Lucas before recalling when he left for his own room. We’d done the one thing that was forbidden here. And lingering to get caught was a mistake we couldn’t risk. Not now with so many balls in the air.
A chill in the room, more than just the air conditioning, made me shiver. It crept into my bones unnaturally and even curling into the blankets didn’t seem to keep it at bay. I rolled onto my back, seeing my breath in the moonlit room. The curtains were open, though I swore I had closed them.
My heart started to race, pumping like it was straining to get going after being asleep. I didn’t dare to move again, the sensation that I wasn’t alone was too strong. I sniffed for the lilacs, but there was something else in the air, a strange and foul smell. Rotten lilacs and seawater.
I held my breath, listening, but there was nothing.
Not at first.
Then a sound caught my ears, a repeating whisper.
“Run. Run. Run.”
My skin crawled and my eyes widened so large they ached and begged to close.
“Runnnnnn,” the whisper came again.
A moldy green and silvery face flashed in front of me, hovering there!
I tried to scream but my voice was frozen in my lungs.
Dark eyes and greasy hair. Black lips with stale water dripping from her onto me.
She floated over me, our bodies lined up perfectly.
I closed my eyes, praying for the first time in my entire life, though I didn’t know who I prayed to.
When I opened them, she was still there, staring at me. Her eyes glistening with water that seemed trapped inside them.
“Paige?” I asked as the rotten lilacs tried to choke me.
“Runnnnnnnn,” she hissed again.
And I didn’t wait.
I jumped off the bed, grabbing only the burner phone and shoes, running to the door. I turned back, and Paige was there, in the room, standing and floating. She pointed at the door then flickered.
Pins and needles vibrated my skin. Even my hair twitched with fear.
I opened the door and listened, but no one was there. Paige appeared down the hall to the right, toward Lucas’ room. I hurried out, following her into the darkness, terrified of her but terrified to stay. What had happened that she was so desperate she made herself seen?
She vanished and reappeared, glowing with the dirty silver light, leading me like rotten breadcrumbs.
At Lucas’ room, I knocked on the door, not a single knock but a nonstop thumping until he opened the door, his eyes bleary as he rubbed them. “O? Did you miss me?”
“We have to leave. Now! Get whatever you can carry.”
“What?” His eyes popped open.
“Something’s wrong!” Paige was in his room, standing at the window. It opened to the field. She flickered and appeared outside. “We’re going this way.” I walked past him to her, opening the window as he closed the door.
“O, you have to tell me what is happening. Did you hear someone?”
“I saw someone.” It wasn’t a lie. I pushed the bug screen out onto the ground and climbed out, seeing Paige in the tree to the left. I hurried to it. My mouth was dry but fight-or-flight was hitting me hard, and I was a flight sort of girl.
I waited under the cover of the massive tree with bushes in front for Lucas to come. Unlike me, he didn’t sprint from his room in his pajamas. He was in clothes, carrying his cell phone, and stuffing his wallet into his pocket.
“Close the window and fix the screen,” I whispered loudly.
He turned back and did it quickly before he walked over, whispering also, “You have to tell me what is going on.”
I glanced at Paige who lifted a finger to her lips.
The eeriness of it made me move closer to the tree, hiding more. “Hide,” I just said the sentence, pulling Lucas into me and the cover of the tall willow, when small lights darted about his room.
“Are you psychic?” he said so softly I barely heard it.
“Paige is with us.” I honestly didn’t how else to explain it.
The lights moved around. They had to be flashlights. One shone out the window, but the tree and bushes protected us.
“Paige is with us?” he asked as the lights vanished.
“I woke to her.” I snuggled into the warmth of him. “She was there, telling me to run. She led me to your room and out the window. And she’s right next to you, staring at me.”
He lifted his gaze from me, following mine to the right of him. “I’m sorry for everything, Paige.”
She ignored him and stared at me. Her watery eyes would haunt me the rest of my life, I was sure of it. She vanished and reappeared at the crest of the hill, a terrifying apparition in the moonlight. At this distance, I saw the way her clothes floated as if she were stuck in the water.
“Are you seeing her now? I can’t see her. I don’t feel anything.”
“She’s on the hill over there. She’s telling us to come.” I swallowed hard, scared of what he might think.
But he cupped my cheeks and lifted my face, placing a soft kiss and whispering, “Everything’s going to be okay.”
I didn’t know if he could know that or not, but I chose to believe it.
He slipped his hand over mine and strode quickly in the direction I had pointed. Nerves must have struck us at the same moment because about midway up the small hill, we began to run. We didn’t stop until we reached the fence line.
He dialed Horatio as we neared the road.
“Hey, it’s me. You have to come get us. Someone came in the night to my room. O and I managed to get away before they saw us.” He left out the part where Paige helped us. “We’ll be waiting at the rock—okay—yup.” He hung up and stared at me, his stormy eyes glistening in the moonlight. “I’m going to need the whole story. When this started and all the details. Because I can’t help but feel you’re keeping things from me.”
“Okay,” I agreed and sat on the flat rock by the roadside. “I had a dream,” I paused and recalled the image. “I was on the lawn at your parents’ house. It was burning. I walked across the ashes and found your family portrait, the one you caught me looking at the day of the funeral.” I turned to face him. “Your faces were all burned off, but your bodies were pristine.”
“Jesus,” he whispered but said the last thing I expected, “I’d followed my dad’s ghost into that hallway. And I found you there. I saw him that night again. That’s when I asked my mom to come here. She came when her brother died a few years ago.”
“That is odd.” I considered the king leading him to me or the portrait and wondered what the ghosts knew.
“Did you tell anyone about the dream?”
“Paige and my—” I cracked a smile as I said it, though I didn’t feel like smiling, I couldn’t fight the shame. “My
psychic, Madame Esmeralda. She told me the dream was death warning me. And either I was supposed to save myself and choose to not be around you. Or save you. She didn’t know which but choosing the wrong thing might end my life as well.”
“I see.” He bit his lip, also fighting a grin. “You have a psychic?”
“Shut up.”
“No, it’s cute. Our lives are at risk. Ghosts are haunting us. Friends and family are dying. This is a nice reprieve for a moment, scary warning, and all.” He laughed but there was no heart in it.
“Then Paige died,” I continued into the grim. “And like I said before, I could smell her lilac perfume. Sometimes leading me, other times warning me. She showed me where my phone was in my mom’s office.” I realized she might not have wanted me to see the stupid texts. “I think she might want us to solve her murder. And Horatio might be right, there’s more to the story than just trying to get you and me together.”
“You think that was her smokescreen? Divert your attention to that, lock you away here, so you’re not looking into things?”
“I’m starting to.”
Paige appeared in front of me, rushing me like a violent wind. I shouted and jumped back, falling off the rock and scrambling back as she swooped up. The stench of rotten seawater clouded me.
“What are you doing?” Lucas gasped.
Paige hovered over me, her eyes wide, staring at me and then darting to the hill above us.
“Someone’s coming!” I guessed and grabbed his hand, pulling him off the rock too. He fell on top of me, his face hovering over mine. His eyes wide and scared, likely mirroring my own.
We held our breath as the sound of a slow-moving vehicle became audible.
“This is super fucking creepy,” he whispered.
The bushes and rock protected us from the road, but I’d never been more afraid in my life. I was confident whoever was coming for us was going to kill us, so I took my chance. “I love you too,” I whispered silently. “I have always loved you.”
The fear muted in his eyes, softening the storm. He cracked that grin. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited to hear that.”
“If we die, I want you to know.”
