by Patty Blount
“One day, I saw this guy who just looked wrong to me. Suspicious—like a terrorist. I started in on him, he got up in my face and next thing I know, I’m in handcuffs and covered in his blood. I fractured his skull, Elena. I beat him almost to death—and I think I would have if somebody hadn’t stopped me.” He dropped his head back, squeezed his eyes shut. He hated remembering this part—hated that he was capable of hatred, of violence—of being the very thing he despised most.
“I was arrested, charged with assault, attempted murder.”
She shifted. He lifted his head, met her gaze, thumbed away the tears that still shimmered on her lashes.
“All I kept thinking was my mother was right. She was right and I hadn’t listened to anything she’d taught me. She’d have been so disappointed. She forgave me before she died and I went and –” He couldn’t say it. Her arms came around him, stroking his head.
“The guy I hurt testified in court—he described every word, every punch. I puked right there in front of the judge. They had witnesses, they had evidence—they could have given me the harshest sentence, put me in prison.”
“But they didn’t. You’re here,” she whispered.
“Only because my victim asked for leniency.”
Through his tears, he flashed her favorite smile. “He told the judge that he understood my actions had been based on fear, that he could see the remorse and regret in my eyes and asked if instead of a prison sentence, the court would order me to volunteer my time with an organization that promotes healing. The judge agreed and at seventeen years old, I started working with people who were just like me. Suffering, dealing with loss and unimaginable fear.”
He shifted across the sofa, Elena pressed to his side. “Few months later, he came in to see how I was doing. And I lost it. Just went down to the floor and sobbed like a baby about how sorry I was. He taught me how to find the love and joy in life again. It was always there…I just didn’t know where to look.”
He tucked a finger under her chin, lifted her face to his. “Elena, every time I see him, that guilt’s there. But he taught me how to redirect it. Make it useful. Constructive. Something that’s not based on fear and hate.”
“So all your good deeds—”
He waved a hand. “Just a way for me to channel my guilt, to wish I could go back and, and not have tried so damn hard to deny what that touch to my face really was.” He stood up, crossed to the huge window and stared down at the city – always busy, always so alive. “I have a lot of regrets, Elena, but that one’s the hardest to deal with.”
She was silent for a long time and he hoped she was considering everything he’d told her. He almost flinched when her hand touched his back. He turned, folded her into his arms and held on, held tight.
“Oh, Lucas. I’m so sorry. Every time you did something I thought was too good to be true, all I could think was there was no way I could possibly hold onto you, when I’m not good.” Her voice was rough.
“You are good, honey. You came when your sister needed you.”
He felt the sob build inside her and tightened his arms. “Listen to me. You and me? We were both just being the cliché teen. Believe me, I know how much it sucks that we didn’t get to fix things but you have to let it go so you don’t become me.”
She huffed in frustration. “Hell, Luke, it’s not that easy. I push everyone away. I hardly talk to my closest friends and my sister—I’ve done nothing but make her cry.”
He lifted her face. “They don’t know, do they? What you just told me?”
When her face crumbled again, he had his answer. “You have to tell them, Elena. You have to trust them. From everything you’ve told me about your circle, I have to believe they’ll all rally around you.”
She shook her head. “They’ll hate me.”
He sighed, shifted her again until they sat face to face. “Elena, the guy I beat up said something I never forgot. He said, darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” He waited a beat for that to sink in. “Recognize it?”
She shook her head.
“Dr. Martin Luther King said that. And it hit me like a steel boot to my head that I was hate—I’d let it fill every cell in my body. That was the day—the moment when I promised myself I’d spend the rest of my life looking for the light and if I couldn’t see it, I’d be it, even when I couldn’t feel it. You look at me like I’m some sort of perfect being, but I’m not. I’m not a hero, Elena. I just believe in trying, that’s all.”
Slowly, she shook her head, her eyes never leaving his. “You’re wrong, Luke. You are good. You are so, so good.” She leaned in, forgot why she had to protect her heart, forgot why she needed to leave, forgot it all except the compulsion to comfort him. She pressed her mouth to his—a sweet, gentle whisper of lips that moved him.
Broke him.
On a gasp, he pulled her to him, kissed her with all that he was. “Stay. Stay with me. Love me,” he whispered against her lips, already pulling her toward him.
“Yes,” she whispered, overcome.
They spent what was left of the day making love, whispering in the growing darkness, healing each other. Lucas turned on the Christmas tree lights, grabbed some pillows and blankets and they made love on the floor in front of it.
* * *
It was dark when they separated, stretched out on the sofa with nothing but the tree lights to see by.
Lucas kissed her hair. “Al is a hundred percent convinced that my mom is working with yours to set us up.”
“My friends are just as bad—Cass and her bag of presents, Kara arranging our dates.” Frustrated, Elena sighed heavily. “Don’t you wonder maybe all these signs are some kind of, I don’t know, an illusion?”
“They led us here, didn’t they?” He countered with a sweet smile.
Maybe they did.
It hit her then with all the force of a two-ton blast.
His smile. That smile.
“Hey, hey, you okay? You look like you just saw a ghost.” Frowning, he tilted her face up to his.
Not a ghost. An angel. “Lucas, I need to tell you a story so you can tell me I’m not completely insane.”
Still frowning, he rolled to his side and propped his head on his hand. “Tell me.”
She swallowed hard once, then twice. When she could talk, she blurted out the first thing that hit her—that mattered to her. “The way you smile at me. Oh, Luke, I love it, love it so much. It—you—remind me of this boy I met. It was the first Remembrance event.”
“I remember it. I was there.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, shook her head. “Standing on the ramp, leading into the pit. I was staring down, down into that pile of rubble and thinking about… about the darkness and the destruction and there was this boy, a boy who was so, so tall. He smiled at me and put something in my hand.” She was rambling now because the more she talked, the more she knew she was right. “He had terrible skin and braces on his teeth and he was the most beautiful boy I’d ever seen and he saved me and I think I always knew and that’s why I was so afraid—I think he might be you and I—I just don’t know what to do with that.”
Luke’s dark eyes, round with shock, closed. “What did this boy put in your hand?” he whispered.
“A snowflake. A crystal snowflake.”
He made a noise like he was choking and her eyes snapped to his in alarm. But his no longer held any light. He got up, walked to the tree and pulled off an ornament and held it out to her. She knew without looking what it was. A cold dread grew and spread and sucked all the hope from her like a collapsing star. She forced herself to face her sentence. She looked down, saw a snowflake ornament identical to the one that a beautiful boy had given her all those years ago. The one that even now was carefully wrapped in the bottom of her suitcase.
His voice sounded miles away. “…part of a set. There’d been six—my sister has three but I only have two. I gave away m
y third back in ’01, at the first holiday event to this girl who looked like she wanted to jump into the pit at Ground Zero.”
She didn’t move—she couldn’t. Oh, the pain was vicious. She could barely hear his words over the blood rushing in her ears. She stared at the crystal snowflake—saw but refused to believe. Lucas—he—ah, hell, he was the boy who’d—who’d saved her. Could fate be this cruel? She turned and looked at him—truly looked. The braces were gone, the pimples were gone. But that smile was the same—how had she not seen it?
“Why?” She croaked out the question.
“I needed her to know there was still light in the world. She was so lost and I was afraid…afraid she was going to do something terrible. I told her—you—to hold it up to the light,” he said, still looking at the ornament.
Elena said nothing. She remembered doing just what he’d said and the snowflake in her hand caught the light, sparkled and shimmered. And while she stared at it, he’d disappeared and she’d thought she’d imagined him, thought he was an angel sent from heaven to stop her from doing the most selfish thing she could have done. She’d hated that boy for saving her—for years, she hated him, when the pain in her chest grew to unbearable levels. And yet she would pull that crystal snowflake out from its box and stare at it until she could get her bearings once again, and it worked every time.
Lucas was that boy—her angel. Her savior. But as the years piled up, she’d cursed him for making sure she could never forget, never close the hole, the gaping pit in her soul, never get a moment’s peace from the words she’d screamed in a child’s temper tantrum.
She lifted her eyes to heaven and cursed her mother for punishing her like this.
She turned and fled upstairs for her clothes.
Lucas watched her run, his heart in splinters.
Chapter Eleven
‡
Lucas was a smart man.
When Elena went white and turned for the stairs without a word, he knew—knew as sure as he knew his own name that even though she had the crystal snowflake he’d given away all those years ago, even though she was the girl he’d spent the last thirteen years worrying about, even though she was the woman he loved, she would only ever see this as a sign she’d been damned.
Instead of bringing them together, that stupid snowflake would be the wedge that split them apart.
He didn’t have a clue how to stop her, how to convince her she was wrong.
He crossed to the sofa and sat, his hands curling into fists when the ceiling over his head creaked. It took her a few minutes and then she was back, dressed. She grabbed her outer gear and her bag and without a word, moved to his door.
A tidal wave of panic rose up in him. “I always figured I’d find that girl with my snowflake someday,” he began. “Al’s signs drive me nuts, but deep down,” he slapped a hand to his heart. “Deep down in here, I believed, Elena. I believed if I kept looking, one day I’d find that girl and she would be in my life. But that’s impossible now because you refuse to see. You want me to believe my mother hates me and is punishing me—punishing us—and I can’t do that. She forgave me, Elena. I won’t believe she sent you here to punish me. I called you a cab. You can wait for it on the curb. Want the rest of that cocoa to go?”
It was cheap and childish but damn it, he was raw and he’d needed to make her hurt the way he was. When she flinched, he figured the barb had hit the target. And then he cursed himself for hurting her, cursed her for hurting him.
She opened the door.
He threw her another spiteful parting shot. “I want the snowflake back. Since it’s clear it and I mean nothing to you, I want it back.”
She nodded, refusing to look at him. He watched her shoulders move like she had to force them to hold her body up. Finally, she turned. “I’m—”
“Do not say you’re sorry or I will lose it, I swear. If you were sorry, you’d stay. We’ve already established that you’re scared so you go on back to Kara’s, eat some cookies and curl up in a ball. After you tell your circle what’s been going on with you all these years—after they tell you what a coward you are, give me a call. Maybe I’ll pick up.” He stood, stalked to the door, cursed when she stepped back and through it. He wanted to grab her and shake her senseless and because he knew, too well, what could happen when he let his fury rule him, he slammed and bolted the door between them.
And threw his fist at the wall beside it.
* * *
Kara and Cassandra were waiting for her at the door.
“Laney? Lucas called us. I’m so, so sorry, honey.”
When Elena didn’t—couldn’t—answer, it was Cass who wrapped an arm around her, and took her in. The tears fell and the sobs shook her body while her sister and closest friend held her, rocked her, murmured soothing words to her.
It was a long time before she could talk. And when she started, she couldn’t stop. She told them all of it, every unbelievable, heart-shattering word.
“It was him?” Kara whispered, her own eyes damp. “You’re positive?”
“Kara, he has the other snowflakes and besides, he knew.”
“Knew what?” Cassandra prodded.
Elena straightened up, wiped the tears off her face, and prayed for courage. “Knew what I was thinking. I never told you this—I never told anybody this, but that day, walking down the ramp to the pits, I thought about—” her voice cracked. “Thought about—”
“No.” Kara’s eyes popped.
“I thought about throwing my leg over that rail and—”
“No, damn it, Laney, no!” Kara cried, grabbing for her, but Elena leaped up and walked away, to the tree Lucas had found for her—for them.
Cass cleared her throat. “Laney, honey, I know—we all know how hard it was to lose your mom, but you have to know she’d have hated—”
A laugh bubbled up from her chest—hysterical and raw and not the least bit joyful. “Oh, that’s not all of it.”
Kara grabbed her phone. “I’m calling the girls. I’m calling Gigi and Enza and Joann, too. You need help, sweetie. You—”
Cassandra gently took the phone from Kara’s hand, shook her head. “No. No, Elena doesn’t need to be smothered right now. Laney. Tell us all of it. Tell us why.”
Elena’s knees went weak. She sat on the floor, right by the tree, and just stared at all the lights and ornaments. There was one ornament not on that tree. It was wrapped in a box and hidden deep in her suitcase. “Curtis Fox. Curtis Fox is the reason why.”
Kara cursed. “For heaven’s sake, Elena.”
“I remember this guy. You were in—what, ninth grade?” Cass put in.
“Tenth. I was head over heels for him. We cut class to—ah, you know.”
Kara made a sound that made her disgust clear.
“Mom found out, grounded me. We had a huge fight. I told her I hated her guts. That I wished she’d drop dead.”
When neither girl said anything, Elena added the last straw. “That was the last thing she heard from me before she died.” The silence pressed on her like a weight. She stared at her sister, at her friend.
Waited for it.
Braced herself for it.
“Well?” she demanded. “Say it.”
Kara and Cass exchanged a look. “What, honey?”
Elena blew hair from her eyes. “Laney, you always ruin everything.” She waited a beat, her heart thundering in her ears. “I’ve heard those words so many times and I’ve been waiting, just waiting, for you guys to say it now—now that you know.”
It took her a few minutes but then Kara gasped. “Oh no, Laney! This is why you stayed away—because you were afraid of some stupid bratty I told you so I said when we were little?”
Elena flung up her hands. “It’s not just the words, Kara. It’s the look. Every time I ruined something special you and Mom had going on, you said that and looked at me with all this pain and disappointment and I swear, that hurt more than anything. And every time, I swore, I vow
ed I wouldn’t be bad again and somehow, I always was.”
Kara shook her head. “You were a kid, honey. Challenging and difficult, but a kid. None of us blame you for what happened to Mom.”
“Maybe not. But how can you not blame me for letting her die angry?”
Kara bit her lip and Elena knew she had no words to explain that away because it was true.
“Elena,” Cass finally said. “I still don’t understand why or how this affects you and Luke.”
At the mention of his name, her tears began all over again. “Because of the signs. She’s punishing me. She’s punishing me and I deserve it, I deserve every bit of it, and I’m sorry! I’m so, so sorry, but I’ll never get to tell her that. She’ll never forgive me.”
Why hadn’t her mom found a way to speak to her—to forgive her—like Luke’s had? She’d had a moment, a second, really, when she’d thought he was right—that finding each other so many years later was a sign. But when he told her how certain he was that he’d felt a touch on his cheek, she knew it was nothing more than wishful thinking and she had to leave. Immediately. It was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. And even Lucas—who understood more than anyone ever had—looked at her with that same expression of disappointment and fury she’d experienced most of her life.
You ruin everything, Laney.
She sobbed until she fell into an exhausted sleep, only dimly aware of Cassandra and Kara trying to comfort her.
* * *
The next morning, Elena woke to a rude nudge. “Get up.”
She bolted upright to find Cassandra standing over her with her arms crossed and her face tight.
Blinking swollen and hurt-filled eyes at her, she groaned “What?”
“I said get up.”
“Cass, for the sake of my sanity, leave me alone.”
“Read my lips.” She leaned closer, her expression fierce “No. Way.” Elena’s lip quivered and Cassandra sighed. “Oh, Laney. You’ve had way too many years to deal with this alone. Now, you’re going to have to deal with all of us.”
All of them? Wonderful. Elena scrubbed her hands over her bleary eyes and climbed to her feet, found the whole crew gathered in Kara’s living room. Strong and steady Sabrina sat next to Elena’s hormonal and broken-hearted sister, both of them wearing similar expressions of outrage and pity. Elena snapped up both hands and shook her head. “No. I cannot do this right now.”
