by Nichole Van
“I’m already dying, Tennyson. What does it matter?” My words were strong, but my delivery was shaky. He was still caressing my poor willing hand.
“But you’re not dying,” he replied. “Not really. Not if you stay away from the daemon. You should leave. Go back to eastern Europe where you’re safer.”
He moved his mouth from my fingers to my wrist as he spoke, like he couldn’t help himself. Like I was the air he breathed. I sagged against the door, my knees suddenly not up to the task of supporting me.
“I don’t want safer.” I want you. “Besides, you’re dying, too. Why are we pretending like we have a lot of time here? We should spend it kissing.”
I moved my wrist away from his lips and threaded my fingers into his hair, pulling his head toward me.
He came but pressed his forehead against mine, holding those delectable kissy lips back from me, expression pained.
“I refuse to hurt you.” His breath brushed against my lips. “But I can do this.”
He pressed into me and, bending his head to the side, kissed that sensitive spot on my neck, just below my ear.
My knees liquefied. But he didn’t falter. He simply supported my weight in his capable hands.
Neck, jaw, cheek . . . back to neck. He lavished me with kisses, making humming noises in the back of his throat in between murmured Italian.
“Carissima, dolcissima . . .”
It didn’t take more than five seconds for me to reciprocate.
Fingers in his hair, I kissed my way up his oh-so-fine jaw before moving on to his temple.
It wasn’t nearly enough.
I was desperate for more. I tugged on his head, forcing him to lift his head.
“It’s my life,” I whispered. “I want to kiss your mouth. Please. Let me decide.”
He didn’t reply. We were both breathing hard, lips just inches apart.
“Please, Tennyson,” I begged him. “Let me decide. Let me—”
His mouth closed over mine, swallowing my words.
I arched into him, fingers in his hair again, wanting to feel him everywhere around me.
If this would end me, I was going to ensure it was epic.
I poured myself into the kiss.
He didn’t disappoint. His arms banded around my waist, crushing me to him.
This. This was worth it. All of it.
His lips were heated and soft. He kissed me like a starving man, devouring my mouth like I was his last meal, his last breath, his last everything.
He was a warrior returning after years of battle. A desert desperate for rain.
But like he had not even an hour before, he suddenly froze and abruptly peeled himself off me, setting me away.
The loss of his body was instant and disorienting and devastating.
He turned away, shoulders heaving, breath harsh.
“I can’t.” He shook his head, over and over. “I can’t. I won’t.”
Anger washed in behind my hurt.
“I. Do. Not. Care!” My words were loud.
“But I DO!” He turned with a roar. Louder. Much louder. “I care too damn much to let my selfish desires kill you. So, yes! Hate me! Rage at me! But at least, when it’s all said and done, you’ll still be alive!”
Tennyson
The sound of our rough breathing hung in the room.
“My life, Tennyson! My decision!” Olivia jabbed a finger at her chest.
“No!” I shook my head. “No. I won’t live with your blood on my hands, Olivia. You can’t pretend this doesn’t affect me, too!”
She looked so stricken, her lips bee stung, her hair mussed.
Damn. I was such a selfish bastard.
What had I been thinking?!
Clearly, I hadn’t been thinking. I had kissed her.
I could still taste her on my lips, still vividly feel the warmth of her pressed up against me.
I missed her. She was only three feet in front of me and I already missed her.
I wanted to take her back into my arms. I wanted to apologize and beg her to never leave me. I wanted for her and me to become an us.
If I stayed, I wouldn’t be able to resist my feelings for her. Now that I had a taste of her . . . I would kiss her again and again. It was inevitable.
I would kiss her and I would kill her.
The horror of my vision rose, her blood spilling into the shadowy earth.
It was still only a possibility. It didn’t have to happen.
It wouldn’t happen, as long as I kept my distance.
I couldn’t watch her die. I refused.
“Please,” she whispered, hand extended toward me.
But . . . bastard that I am, I shook my head.
The image of her bathed in blood was too vivid. I had to protect her from myself.
Her life depended on it.
Something raw and scalding lodged in my throat.
“I am so—” My voice broke. “—so sorry, anima mia.” I hoped my eyes expressed everything that I felt for her. “I adore you and because I adore you, I refuse to do something that will hurt you like this. I couldn’t live with myself. Goodbye, Olivia.”
“No!” she gasped, holding her arms across her stomach, as if she could stop the pain from reaching her. “You can’t leave. What about the scars and the daemon?”
“Go somewhere safe, where there are no scars. Work with Chiara long distance. We’ll find a solution.”
She continued to look at me, so stricken, so utterly beautiful.
“What about . . . us?” She hurled the words at me. “How can you just give up on us?”
I ran both my hands through my hair. “I’m not giving up, Olivia. I’m simply doing what I should have done a week ago—removing myself from you before my lack of self-control where you are concerned gets you killed.”
“But you’ve kissed me TWICE—”
“YES! And that’s twice more than I should have!”
She flinched.
“Olivia—” I floundered. I was making everything worse.
She was standing in front of me and I already missed her. I already wanted her back in my arms.
I had to leave.
Now.
I shook my head, a sharp slice left then right.
“I won’t be the cause of your death—”
“Tennyson, don’t do this!”
“—I won’t kill us both. Forgive me, anima mia.”
The devastation on her face—
I had to go before I caved entirely.
“Tennyson! Please! Don’t do this!” She reached for me.
But I walked past her and out the door.
I made a few phones calls on my way to her parent’s house to retrieve my bag.
By the next afternoon, I was back in my bed in Villa Maledetti.
I didn’t get out of it for over two weeks.
TWENTY EIGHT
Olivia
Tennyson had left and returned to Italy.
For the first twenty-four hours, I was too upset and angry to do anything more than just shut myself in my room and rant to Langley about it. She was validating and supportive, just what a good BFF should be.
She had seen the whole thing go down live on national television. Her exact words: “I honestly think I had an aneurysm, I wanted to hurt Tennyson so bad. I’m still sending him mean, I-hate-you vibes. Do you think he’s feeling them? We’re hating him now, right?”
Ugh.
I wanted to hate him. I really did. But I had never been a good hater. Hate took too much energy. It bled off quickly, leaving me hollow and hurt.
How could Tennyson say he loved me, that I was his soul, and then abandon me?
My fair, logical side unhelpfully pointed out that his logic made sense. If I had seen his death—no matter how bizarre—I would react the same.
The logical, fair side of me was such a buzz kill.
I expected Tennyson to call or text or something, but after three days of not hearing from him,
I caved and called Judith.
“I’m so sorry, Olivia dear,” she said on a sigh, voice tired and worn out. “We miss you and wish you were here.”
“How is he?” I was desperate to hear his voice.
A pause.
“Tennyson is . . . not in a good place,” she murmured.
What did Judith mean by that? Was the madness progressing? All my remaining anger washed away.
“Will he talk to me?”
Another pause.
“I’ve asked him. But . . . he’s not really with us most of the time.”
Oh, Tennyson. My heart lurched into my throat. “Is he really that bad?”
“Yeah.” She stopped, breathing deeply, as if trying to control her emotions. “His visions are almost continuous right now.”
“But he had been doing okay with me—”
“Yes, he had been more stable lately. But his . . . illness . . . is a progressive, cyclical thing. He’ll do better for a month or even two, and then something will upset the tenuous balance, and he’ll go into a spell of uncontrolled visions.”
I swiped a tear from my cheek. “Maybe I can help. Let me come, let me sit with—”
“Olivia, you know you can’t be here.” Judith’s voice was gentle but firm. “The daemon . . . I don’t know how we could keep you safe.”
I swallowed back the ache in my throat.
She was right. I knew she was right.
But I was so desperate to help.
“I just wish there was something I could do,” I whispered.
“Loving a D’Angelo . . .” Judith went silent for a moment, clearly swallowing back her emotions. “ . . . sometimes loving a D’Angelo man is an impossible task. There is no correct, easy answer here. We’ll just take things one day at a time. I’ll be in touch.”
And that was it.
My own mom was less sanguine.
“First, Tennyson has a fit on national television,” she said over breakfast, three days after the convention. “Worse, some pundits are calling it a psychic episode, which has caused no end of problems for our media team. We’ve been in full damage control mode trying to spin this away from your past issues. Then, when it’s obvious that we’re all on to him, D’Angelo drops you like a hot potato and high-tails it back to Italy. Honestly, Olivia, you know how to pick them.” She shook her head, going back to stirring sugar into her coffee.
I closed my eyes and slowly counted to ten.
Matricide is against the law, I firmly reminded myself.
“Mom—” I waited until she raised her head, meeting my gaze. “—I love you, but please don’t say mean things about my friends. Tennyson did have a psychic episode on stage—”
“Olivia—” Mom threw down her napkin.
“I’m not going to talk about Tennyson—”
“He left you here without a backward glance.” Mom motioned toward me. “What kind of devoted boyfriend does that?”
Uh, the pretend kind?
I bit my tongue. Arguing with my mother wasn’t going to help Tennyson heal. Crying over Tennyson wasn’t going to change things.
“You deserve better, Livy-loo,” Mom continued, leaning toward me. “Your father and I have been talking with Michael. We all think it would be good idea for you two to be seen together, maybe go out to dinner. It will help the gossip die down. There’s a new, high-end place downtown that should do the trick. I’ll have Michael make a reservation.”
Whoa.
Who knew your vision literally could turn red?
I sternly warned my broken brain—
Don’t say anything. Don’t lash out at your mother.
But, of course, when had my brain ever listened to me?
“Mom, I’m not going to date Michael. Not now. Not ever.” I threw my own napkin down on the table, lurching to my feet.
“Olivia, Michael really wants to patch things up with you. You should give him another chance.”
The stress and emotion of the last few weeks abruptly boiled over.
“Give him another chance?!” I only barely stopped myself from shouting. “Mom, do you want to know why I broke up with Michael? Do you?!”
She nodded. “I’ve wondered for ages.”
“I overhead him telling someone else that I was a trollish hag! That I was the trial he had to endure to get you as a mother-in-law.”
To Mom’s credit, she flinched at my harsh words.
But I was too angry to care. “Of course, Michael wants a do-over! But, reality check, he still doesn’t like that I’m a necessary part of the whole package. That hasn’t changed. I’m the hardship he has to endure in order to win the prize. Not exactly the vibe I’m going for in a boyfriend, much less a husband and marriage—”
“Olivia, honey, why are you only now telling me this?” Mom wrinkled her forehead. “Why didn’t you tell me two years ago when it all went down?”
“Why?! WHY?! You don’t believe anything I tell you. Not about the Wriggles and daemon. Not about Tennyson. Why would what happened with Michael be any different? Besides, I was worried you wouldn’t care!”
My mom blanched, hissing in a shocked breath. “Olivia, of course I would care! I would never expect you to marry—”
“Please, Mom. You clearly want me to make a dynastic marriage to Michael before I die. From your point of view, it’s a great plan. You get public sympathy and no more awkward questions about your oddball daughter. Michael gets to play the role of grieving widower and heir apparent. Everyone wins. Except me, of course, what with the being dead and all.” My voice rose, becoming higher and whinier. “The worst part? Before meeting Tennyson, there might have been a small part of me that considered doing it—marrying Michael and then gracefully dying—if only to give you what you want”—I ticked on my fingers—“namely Michael as a son and me no longer a political liability. But I’ve changed my mind, so excuse me if I don’t sign up for that. I prefer to find a way to live!”
I stomped out of the kitchen at that point.
So . . . score one for my ability to still pitch a childish tantrum, I guess?
I seethed in my bedroom, knowing I needed to apologize to my mother but I was too angry to care.
My childhood bedroom hadn’t changed all that much over the past decade. Still the same traditional cherry wood furniture. The same brocade curtains. The same pictures and knick-knacks on the walls, mementos of trips past.
Of course, seeing photos of me with my parents wasn’t helping my temper. I knew Mom and I would both cool down and apologize eventually.
She would go back to her passive-aggressive attempts to control me. I would continue to turn myself into a pretzel to please her and always fall short.
Basically both of us enacting every mother-daughter relationship since the dawn of time.
In the meantime, I needed to help Tennyson. I had to cling to hope.
If we could resolve the D’Angelo curse—shut the scars down for good, save my life and his internal fracturing—I could get Tennyson back. Or, at least remove all his excuses for not seeing our mutual attraction to a more logical conclusion.
It was an insane long shot—like Justin-Bieber-getting-a-Ph.D-in-Quantum-Physics type of long shot—but it was all I had left.
So while brooding in my bedroom, I contacted Chiara. She set me up to continue transcribing the D’Angelo archive into searchable text. I still had over six weeks of my leave of absence. I intended to spend every last minute of it typing.
The transcription process was slow going—I would barely make a dent in it even working day and night full time—but it was all I could do at the moment to help.
I was in the middle of my second full day of converting Cesare il Pompaso’s scribblings into searchable text, when my mom knocked on my door.
“May I come in?” Mom poked her head inside.
“Sure.” I turned away from the monitor.
I mentally sighed. I knew we needed to say our apologies, but I wasn’t sure I was over bei
ng angry yet. But I also didn’t have the time or energy currently to drag this out.
Mom sat on my bed. “You’ve shut yourself up in here. Just wanting to see how you’re doing.” Her eyes fixed on my monitor.
Ah. I had Concerned Mom today. Lovely. Would this end with her suggesting medications and a psychiatrist again?
Yay. Just what my day needed.
Mom didn’t say anything for a moment. She just looked at my room and then came back to me.
I waited her out.
Finally, she swallowed. “I’ve been thinking,” she started and then stopped.
Silence.
I glanced at my computer screen. Time was ticking here. I figured I would jump the preliminaries and go right to the heart of what I assumed this discussion would entail.
Be an adult.
“Look, Mom. I’m sorry for the things I said over breakfast the other day. I was upset and shouldn’t have lashed out. What happened with Michael is old history, and I just want to move on from it. I know that you and Dad are concerned about me. I know you think I’m mental and unstable. But the scars in reality and daemon are very real. The D’Angelos are wrapped up in it all, just as I am. I’m not dropping my involvement with them, with or without Tennyson. They can help me.”
More silence.
I expected Mom to put on her exasperated face and spend the next ten minutes presenting a measured, logical argument as to why I was wrong.
I would insist that I was right and ask her to trust me.
We would then agree to disagree on our opinions and each continue on our merry way for another month or two until we did this whole song-and-dance routine again.
But Mom didn’t launch into her offensive.
Instead, she simply nodded and angled her head, studying me, searching my gaze for the first time in . . . forever.
She clasped her hands in front of her. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said over breakfast,” she began. “I know that your father and I have always put so much pressure on you. Too much pressure, truth be told. It’s like I took all the dreams and aspirations I had for ten children and heaped them on you.”
“Mom—”
“Please. Let me finish.” She held out a hand, tone gentle. “I just came in here to say . . . I’m sincerely sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I did the other morning. I love you. I love you without reservation. I want you to be happy. I had no idea about Michael, but for what it’s worth, I completely believe you. Would you like me to fire him?”
