Lips searching my skin. A warm body sliding against mine, entangled in a sea of cloth.
“Nulala, I love you.”
Dark eyes, dark pools of black expanding outward to swallow the world.
It couldn’t be true. But it was.
I dropped the phone and ran.
The Makings of a Very Long Night
Wednesday, October 31st & Thursday, November 1st
NUALLA
I dropped to my knees in front of the toilet a heartbeat before I threw up. I could barely see, barely breathe, my head hurt so bad. I squeezed my eyes shut, but even that didn’t stop the pain. Didn’t stop the memories. They just flooded in like a wave. Soft and unfocused at first, but then searing and painfully raw. Like a monster of razor wire trying to rip itself free from my mind. Like it had just happened. Like it was happening right now. The memories screamed at me so loud they drowned out everything else.
“No,” I choked out. No, it wasn’t true—couldn’t be true. But it was. The memories were blazing too brightly in my head for it to all be lies. But how could I have forgotten this? How could I have gone years and not remembered that we had…
I couldn’t even say it to myself, within my own head. But that didn’t stop the truth of it. Because there was only one person—one person in this world—who called me Nulala. Travis Centrina.
“Why the hell do you look so surprised? You’ve been here before.”
Travis had known I’d been to his apartment before. So why hadn’t he said something? Why had he kept this from me? Why had he pretended like there had never been anything between us. Why had he lied to me?
Why?
TRAVIS
My phone started ringing and buzzing its way across the coffee table. I picked it up, and slid my finger across the screen. “Hello?”
I was assaulted with loud booming dance music, and I pulled my head away from the phone to see who it was. Shawn? I could probably count on one hand the number of times Shawn had ever called me.
“Hey, Travis—”
“Where are you? I can barely hear you,” I asked as I cupped my hand over my ear to hear him better.
“At Happy Hallow After,” he replied and I could tell he was practically yelling into the phone.
“Okay… So what’s up?” Technically speaking, me and Patrick should have been there too right now, but…well…yeah.
“Look, I know you’re already managing one of them, but…”
I sat bolt upright when I realized what he was saying.
Nualla.
I shot Patrick and Connor a quick look, but they both still seemed to be engrossed with the movie that was playing on the TV. I watched them a second longer before I launched myself up onto my feet, and quickly retreated down the hall to my bedroom.
After I closed the bedroom door quietly I slumped against it, my heart thudding against my ribcage. “How bad is it, Shawn?”
There was a long pause and then he answered, “Bad. I’ve never seen her like this.”
“Is she dancing on a bar?” I asked, running my hand down my face.
“Not…exactly,” Shawn said in an uneasy voice.
“Shawn, what is she—?”
“She’s been sitting in the bathroom crying for over twenty minutes and…well…we don’t know what to do.” He sounded so unbelievably defeated as he said it—so desperate.
“She’s…crying?” I repeated, taken aback.
“Yeah,” Shawn answered with a heavy, disheartened sigh.
“Text me the address. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Twenty tops,” I said quickly before swallowing hard. Nualla crying in the first place was never a good sign. But Nualla crying in public, well…that was a hundred times worse.
PATRICK
Travis came back into the room as he pulled on the long brown trench coat he had been wearing earlier.
“Going somewhere?” I asked, arching my eyebrows.
Travis paused and I could see a slight panic in his eyes. “I uh…have to go deal with an emergency at the lab. I’m not sure when I’ll be back,” he answered uneasily in a way that told me he was lying. And really, there was only one reason he would lie about where he was going. Which meant, for whatever reason, he was going to see Nualla.
I looked back at the TV, at the holiday themed movie I wasn’t actually watching and took a sip of my pumpkin ale. “’Kay.”
Travis made a sound like he was going to say something and then changed his mind. “Well, there’s more pumpkin ale in the fridge, and feel free to finish off the pizza.”
“’Kay,” I replied again, not looking at him.
Connor and I sat in silence for a few minutes after Travis pulled the front door shut before he said, “You know he was totally lying, right?”
“About going to the lab?” I asked with an arched brow.
“Yeah.”
“Yep,” I agreed before turning back toward the TV, and taking another sip of my ale. “Because The Embassy labs don’t reopen until Monday.”
“So where do you think he’s actually going?” Connor asked, the curiosity nearly overtaking the suspicion in his voice.
“To see Nualla,” I answered, my voice devoid of emotion.
“Oh,” Connor said in an uneasy voice. A few long moments passed in awkward silence before he asked hesitantly, “Uh…Patrick, are you okay?”
I’m not sure how he had managed it, but Connor had spent the last several hours not asking about the fact that I wasn’t living with my wife. But apparently, that was only because Travis had been here too.
“Connor, I stopped being ‘okay’ somewhere between my parents being murdered and stabbing my wife,” I answered deadpan.
“Oh…” he replied nervously before taking a sip of his ale. A second or two passed and then he spit it out. “Wait! You did what?!”
I didn’t look at him, I just kept my eyes fixed firmly on nothing and tipped the rest of the ale down my throat. I looked at the empty bottle in my hand for a moment before I said in a quiet voice, “If you’d like to stop being my friend now, just say the word. I won’t hold it against you.” And then I finally looked at him.
Connor looked back at me for a long moment before he stood. “I think you need something stronger than crappy ale, because you are going to tell me what the fuck has been going on.”
“The good tequila’s in the first cabinet on the left,” I said as I leaned my head back on the top of the couch. Tonight was going to be a very, very long night.
We Need to Talk
Thursday, November 1st
NUALLA
I slumped against the bathroom wall and smoothed my hair back. I was shaking badly and my shirt was drenched with sweat.
Gods, I didn’t think I had been drinking that much lately. Maybe I had the stomach flu or something, because this had been the third time in the past week. Weeks. Nine weeks…
“Oh fuck!”
I counted backward in my head, but I was nearly one hundred percent sure. It had been nine weeks since we had been in Hawaii and—
Someone moaned softly from the other room.
I turned my head slowly toward the bathroom door. This couldn’t be happening. It was like a bad dream.
Please wake up. Please wake up. Please wake up. I said over and over again in my head, but the biting coldness of the stone against my legs told me I was already awake.
“Oh double fuck!”
I gritted my teeth, and stood up on shaking legs. Because hoping that the rest of the world would disappear if I just kept sitting here wouldn’t make it happen.
I crept out of the hotel bathroom and through the bedroom. Please don’t be that dark-haired guy. Please don’t be that dark-haired guy. Please don’t be that dark-haired guy
.
I peered out the bedroom door into the front room, my heart thudding so hard against my breast bone I thought I might throw up again. But the person passed out on the couch didn’t have dark hair. Instead, a tangle of pale golden-blond hair spilled across dusky dark blue horns and cream colored skin with just a tinge of warm honey to it.
Travis.
“Oh thank the gods,” I breathed as I slumped against the door frame of the bedroom door.
Travis suddenly sat bolt upright so violently he nearly fell off the couch. He looked around the room with startled eyes, breathing heavy until he saw me, and then he visibly relaxed.
“Hey,” he said in a breathless huff like he had been running a marathon.
“Hey,” I replied in a shaking voice, equally startled.
“What time is it?” Travis asked as he ran both his hands down his face.
“Early.”
“What time is ‘early’?” he asked, as he peeked at me through his fingers.
I glanced back into the bedroom at the nightstand clock. “Before six,” I answered as I sat down on the edge of the couch arm mostly because I had spent the last half hour throwing up and I was scared to death I was— Well, I was fairly sure if I kept standing, my knees were going to give out on me.
Travis groaned and flopped back into the pillow.
“Where are Nikki and Shawn?” I asked as I scanned the small front room. It was an older style hotel, probably from pre-1906 Earthquake era, but it had been recently refurbished in red and gold.
“Next room over,” Travis pointed with the arm that wasn’t flung over his face.
“Is…uh…” I started, but couldn’t manage to finish. I wasn’t ready for this. Not right now. Not like this.
Travis removed his arm from his face slowly as he turned to look at me. “No, he’s hopefully still over at my place, where I left him and Connor.”
“Oh,” I replied, swallowing down the awful taste in my mouth.
Travis’ eyes slid shut again as he settled back into the pillow. “So what’s up, Nualla?”
“What do you mean?” I asked as I smoothed the wrinkles in the shirt I was wearing. Which I realized with a start wasn’t even mine, and I had absolutely no frakkin’ idea where it had come from.
Travis eyed my general state of disheveledness skeptically. “I might be mistaken, but I’m fairly certain I drove halfway across the city at nearly one a.m. to carry you out of a rave.”
I looked at the floor and lied. “Nothing. I’m fine. Everything’s completely fine.”
Travis reached out, and gently gripped my wrist. “Hey, don’t shut me out,” he said in a quiet voice. That one that made me want to do anything he asked, because something about it just broke my heart a little.
I dug my toes into the plush red rose-colored rug under my feet, my big toe poking through a hole in the left foot of my white tights, and bit my lip. I didn’t want to speak my fear, because somehow that would make it more real. And there was something else the two of us really needed to talk about first.
“I need to ask you something?” I asked, pushing my toe farther out of my tights.
“Okay,” Travis said encouragingly.
I stared fixedly at the rug, tracing the golden patterns on it with my eyes. “Did I…did I ever spend the night at your apartment, like back during freshman year?”
“Why do you ask?” he asked uncertainly.
“Because I remember that night.”
TRAVIS
“What night?” I asked, swallowing hard. I was afraid, so very afraid that I already knew where this was going.
“That night four years ago.”
I froze, unable to let the air out of my lungs. Nualla looked up into my eyes, searching for something. And I just looked back at her, terrified of what she would find there.
“It was real, wasn’t it?” she asked with pleading, frightened eyes.
I swallowed hard, because I couldn’t bring myself to lie to her. Not her—never her. Not to her face. Not ever. “Yes.”
“We…we slept together, didn’t we?” she asked in a shaking voice like she wasn’t a hundred percent certain herself.
Every fiber in my body told me to lie to her. That the truth was so far in the past and that bringing it up now was only going to hurt everyone. But I just couldn’t do it. “Yes.”
Nualla’s jaw dropped and she stood up quickly, backing a step away from me. “We slept together and you never said anything?!”
“I…uh. I tried.” Because I had tried. I just hadn’t tried hard enough.
“Tried? You tried? You can’t try to say something, Travis. You either did or you didn’t!” Nualla spat as she took another step back.
I reached out for her desperately. “Nualla, let me explain—”
“You had four fucking years to explain, Travis! I mean, what the frak were you thinking?! How do you not tell someone something like that?” she shouted at me before turning on her heel.
I lunged, grabbing her wrist and whipped her back around to face me. “Because I thought it was a fucking dream!”
She just kinda blinked at me for a second before she opened her mouth. “What?”
“The next morning when I woke up, you were gone. And when I asked you about that night you didn’t remember anything. Not what happened at the club, not what happened after that, nothing. I mean, what was I supposed to think, Nualla? I loved you so fucking much. So much I could have drunkenly made it all up in my head. And you were my best—hell you were practically my only friend—and I couldn’t risk losing you.”
She looked at me with tear-filled eyes, and I let go of my hold on her wrist.
I looked down because I couldn’t bear to continue looking at the look of betrayal in her eyes. “If you had remembered—even the tiniest bit of it—I would have said something, but…”
“You’ve thought this whole time that that night was all just in your head?” Nualla asked in startled disbelief.
“Yes,” I whispered, because my voice was caught by the lump that was forming in my throat.
She took my hand in hers—the hand I had broken punching the mirror—and slowly ran her fingers over it. “I can remember all of it now, you know. I couldn’t before, but I can now. I remember the way you said my name. The way you ran your fingers over my—” she finally looked up at me.
I tried to get my breathing under control, because even though I was certain that someday soon I would finally be able to let her go, today wasn’t that day. But still, I made myself say the words. “The universe where you and I were meant to be together is out there, so very far away.”
“I know,” she said in a small voice. “So what do we do now?”
“If you’re coming to me for answers, we’re both frakked,” I said with a self-deprecating snort.
“Look, I need to go get ready for work, but if you need anything—anything at all—you call me, okay?” I couldn’t tell what was more unsettling, that someone had waited until now to leak those pictures, or that they had sparked long-buried memories in Nualla. Or worse still, that the person who posted them didn’t care about violating the Minors Privacy Act.
“’Kay,” she promised as she reached out to me for a hug.
I pulled her close and wrapped my arms around her, resting my chin on the top of her head. I had missed this—missed being close to her—missed seeing her. Because of The Embassy closure, and the fact that Patrick was living at my apartment, I hadn’t had that many opportunities to see her in the last few weeks. And I wasn’t afraid to admit that without her, it still felt like a piece of my soul was missing.
“I’ve missed you,” she said softly, beating me too it.
“I’ve missed you too,” I agreed with a small smile.
We stood l
ike that for awhile before she pulled away and looked at me appraisingly. “By the way, why are you wearing a suit?”
“Halloween costume.”
“Ah,” she said as she leaned back into my chest. “You look good in it.”
“Thanks, Nulala,” I said as I pulled her close, and kissed the top of her head. I waited for her to correct me or protest, but she didn’t.
“Hey, you didn’t yell at me.”
“Yeah, well, you never listened anyways.”
I grinned mischievously at her, but then it faded just as easily. “Look, Nualla, I know I have no right to ask you this but…will you please at least talk to him? This staying apart is destroying the both of you, and I’m stuck here in the middle feeling like I’m watching you both slowly drown.”
She looked at me for a moment before she looked at her feet. “I’ve picked up the phone to call him a dozen times but…I just can’t seem to make myself hit the buttons.”
“Will you keep trying, for me at least?” I pleaded.
After a long moment of consideration she bit her lip and nodded.
“And I’ll get to work on a program to search all the instances of those pictures and delete them,” I promised.
“You’d do that for me?” she asked as her eyes darted up to mine.
“Nulala, you should know by now that there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you.”
“Except to stop calling me that.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Apparently.”
Bollixed
Thursday, November 1st
The Other Side of Truth (The Marked Ones Trilogy Book 3) Page 4
