“We should go,” Gwen said, unable to hide the reluctance that seeped into her tone. “Morgan’s having a hard time. We should try to cheer him up.”
Cei groaned deep in his throat. “If it’s what you want.”
“I don’t know what I want.” She looked up at him, a blush beginning to form on her cheeks—she could feel the heat building. “Or maybe I do and I’m just a little afraid to give in to it.”
“Very insightful,” he whispered against her ear. “That’s what I love about you. You always know exactly what your every thought, your every action, means.”
“Don’t you?”
“Not everyone is as perfect as you.”
Cei pulled away, snatching at her hand as he followed Rhein and Morgan. Gwen nearly dropped the popcorn as she followed, her head spinning a little as she automatically analyzed what he’d just said.
Did he really just suggest that he loved her?
Had anyone ever said that to her before?
No. No one ever had. At least, not that she was aware of.
Gwen smiled so wide she thought her mouth might split into her cheeks. She must look like the joker in all those cheesy, ‘80s Batman movies, minus the clown makeup. Goofy didn’t even begin to describe the grin. She was just glad Cei didn’t turn back to look at her and see her staring at him like a teenager with her first…everything. Even if that was exactly what she was.
Chapter 8
“What’s she doing here?”
Cei looked over Gwen’s shoulder, his hand moving protectively over her waist as though the simple tone of her voice had set off warning bells in his head. She gestured with the back of her hand toward Melanie, standing at the edge of the bonfire with a group of kids, only one of whom Gwen recognized from her English class.
“I don’t know.”
“She doesn’t even go to this school.”
“Maybe she came with friends.” Cei slipped away. “I’ll go talk to her.”
Almost the moment Cei was gone, Rhein moved up behind her.
“Where’s he going?”
“Melanie’s here.”
Rhein glanced in the direction Gwen gestured, but he didn’t seem terribly interested. He turned instead toward the line of carnival games that were set up along the far edge of the football field. Morgan was playing the milk bottle game, trying to knock over a stack of old fashioned milk bottles to win a stuffed animal. He’d been at it for fifteen minutes and had only succeeded in knocking one or two over. But he’d spent about twenty bucks—all money that went to the school’s drama department, so it was probably a good investment.
“I don’t think he’s ever going to knock them over,” Gwen whispered, just as Morgan threw another ball and it bounced harmlessly off the backboard.
“No, but he’s working out a few frustrations, so it’s not all a complete loss.”
Gwen nodded, thinking of a few times in her past when throwing balls at a wall might have been quite satisfying.
“I think I’ll go join him.”
“Gwen,” Rhein said, grabbing her hand before she could get very far. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“If this is about the ritual and Annwn and all that stuff, I’d really rather not tonight.” She swung her arm, nearly hitting a girl who was walking to close to her, to indicate the area around her. “This is the most normal thing I’ve done…well, ever. I’d rather not ruin it.”
“It’s not,” he said, his blue eyes as serious as she had ever seen them.
She glanced over her shoulder at Morgan again, but he was oblivious to everything around him except for that stack of milk bottles. She moved closer to Rhein so that she could hear him over the growing crowd. The festivities would begin soon. She could hear the band tuning up for the pep rally, and someone was testing a microphone somewhere closer to the bonfire. She had always thought these things were stupid, but she was actually looking forward to it. To the game tomorrow night, too. And the dance afterward…
Funny how quickly a person’s perspective could change with new circumstances.
“You and Cei…”
She looked up at Rhein. “Not you, too.”
“Me too, what?”
“Morgan already asked about it. We’re we supposed to send out an announcement, or something?”
She smiled, but it didn’t seem to soften her words much in Rhein’s estimate. At least, the hardness in his eyes didn’t change much.
“Morgan has his own reasons for asking.”
Gwen’s eyebrows rose. She glanced back at him again, remembered the first time they met. He took a book she’d been reading out of her hands and insisted on knowing why she was reading before classes had even started. He was flirting with her; even in her self-imposed isolation, she knew flirting when she saw it. Was it possible Morgan was jealous because he had a crush on her?
Gwen bit her lip, a little regret wriggling in her chest. She liked Morgan. Just…she didn’t think she could ever feel that way about him. He was sweet, a little insecure, but one of the nicest people she knew. She didn’t like the idea that she’d hurt him.
“Gwen.” Rhein touched her cheek, the soft gesture pulling her attention back to him. “There are things you don’t know about Cei.”
“There’s a lot I don’t know about either of you.”
He sighed, his eyes softening with something she didn’t understand. Regret, maybe? But why would he feel regret?
“Just…be careful, Gwen.”
“What do you mean, be careful?”
The regret that had been playing in her chest was replaced with something else, a familiar heaviness that made her wish they hadn’t started this. She didn’t want to know whatever it was Rhein was trying to tell her. She didn’t want to believe that she couldn’t trust Cei, that she was bound to get hurt. Again. She’d been down this road before; it was because of this kind of thing that she had stopped making friends at each of the new schools she was forced to attend. She didn’t want to do it again.
Before Rhein could answer, Cei slid up behind Gwen and slipped his arms around her shoulders.
“Hey, what happened to the party?”
Rhein stepped back, tension immediately coming into his shoulders as he studied Cei’s hold on Gwen. He met her eye for a moment, and she felt like there was something he was trying to tell her, something else, something important. A trickle of fear ran down the length of Gwen’s spine as she fell into that gaze. And it didn’t disappear when he finally broke away, turning to jog over to where Morgan still played.
“What was that all about?” Cei asked, letting go of Gwen and moving around in front of her.
“Nothing.” She glanced over to where Melanie had been. “Did you ask her what she was doing?”
“She’s here with a couple of friends. Theresa and Tony are here, too, hanging out over by the snack booth with the twins and Anna.”
“Oh. So it’s a family affair.”
“Something like that.”
Cei waved to someone who called his name before he stepped in to Gwen again. “We should probably go find a place to sit. The pep rally’s about to begin.”
Gwen followed him across the parking lot, clinging to his hand as girls she knew from the hallways of the school stared at them. If looks could kill, Gwen would have been filled with flying daggers. She wasn’t sure what bothered her more, the implied cruelty in their looks, or the sudden attention. She was so used to being a wallflower that all this attention was almost suffocating.
They found a spot near the front. The football team was lined up beside them, and most of them seemed to be Cei’s best friend. He laughed and talked to them while they waited, holding Gwen against his side the whole time. But he never introduced her, never tried to draw her into the conversation. Not that she minded. She just liked to stand there and listen to the sound of his voice.
Until, of course, she spotted Bran standing on the other side of the fire.
He was impudent enough t
o smile and raise a hand in a wave to Gwen. She stiffened, every warning bell that could possibly ring inside of her ringing loud and clear. If Bran was here, wasn’t it possible that Branwen was nearby? It had been nearly a month since the last attempt Branwen had made on Gwen’s life. Surely she was getting stir crazy by now.
“Cei.”
He was in mid-sentence, but he immediately stopped and looked down at Gwen. She gestured across the way with a jerk of her head, afraid if she took her eyes off of Bran, he would disappear into the crowd. Cei followed the motion. She expected him to grow tense when he spotted Bran, but he didn’t. He shrugged, moving forward a little as though it would help him to see better.
“I don’t see anything.”
“It’s Bran,” she hissed under her breath. “He’s standing on the other side of the fire.”
“Are you sure?” Cei touched her face lightly. “Stay here. I’ll go check it out.”
Gwen wanted to stop him, but he was gone before she could move.
“Rudeness!” someone called after him. “Just ignore us.”
“Where’s he going?” another football player asked, sidling up beside Gwen.
“He thought he saw someone he wanted to talk to.”
“Hmm,” the football player said, more cynicism than there should have been in a teenager’s voice filling his tone. “No rest for the social elitist.”
“Listen to you. Did you swallow a dictionary?” one of the other players called, drawing the football player away from Gwen.
She’d lost sight of both Cei and Bran in the process of the brief conversation. She moved forward a little, but still couldn’t see anyone on the other side of the fire any longer. There was smoke, more smoke than there had been before. And the heat was beginning to press against her, making her cheeks flame like she was suffering a high fever. She stepped back and turned, searching the far corner where she had last seen Rhein and Morgan, but they were no longer where she had left them.
“Where did everyone go?” she muttered under her breath.
Danger, the wind whispered against her in a thousand voices that seemed to dance and jump around her like a playful puppy. But the warning was not playful. It was urgent, frightening.
Before Gwen could react, the fire seemed to leap out at her. She gave a strangled yelp as she jumped back, but it was like the fire was laughing at her…it actually had a face. And hands. It reached for her, drew her in until she could feel her arms blistering. She screamed, only vaguely aware that there were people around her, people who were trying to pull her out of the flames.
Suddenly, everything went silent. From chaos to nothing, from pain to oblivion. She thought for a moment she had passed out. But she was still aware—too aware. She could see her classmates staring at her, could see fear and shock on their faces. She could even hear their voices, could hear someone calling for some other person to call 911.
She even saw Rhein rushing to her side.
She was burning, like a witch at the stake.
And then she wasn’t.
Gwen stepped backward, knocking hard enough into the football player standing behind her that it pushed the air out of her lungs for a second.
“Hey, watch it,” the guy said, shoving her forward even as he caught her.
“Sorry,” Gwen managed to mumble as she ran away.
She ran and ran, kept running until she was far from the group of gathered students and alumni, away from the laughter and the games and the…normalcy. She ran until her chest burned with every breath, until her head pounded with each and every heartbeat. She ran until she simply couldn’t.
That’s when the tears came.
Who was she to believe she could be normal?
Chapter 9
Cei was pacing in front of the house when she turned up the driveway.
“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded as he jumped off the front porch and charged toward her. “We’ve been looking for you for hours.”
He took her face in his hands, turning her head this way and that so that he could see if there were any marks. She pulled back, taking his wrists between her hands in an attempt to break his hold, but he was too strong, too determined.
“I’m fine.”
“Where were you?”
She tried to shake her head, but his touch wouldn’t allow for even that little bit of movement. “Cei,” she said, running her hands soothingly over his arms. Her fingertips tingled a little as she did, a good kind of tingle, like the tingle that comes with the application of Noxema on a bad sunburn. Cei jerked back, his eyes widening as he stared at her.
“What did you just do?”
Gwen was suddenly just so exhausted. She leaned back against the side of Tony’s old Toyota and rubbed her face with the heels of her hands. All she could think about in that moment was her big, empty bed and how good it would feel to slip between the crisp, clean sheets.
“Gwen,” Cei said, yanking one arm until she was nearly standing straight again. He pulled her so hard that she could feel it all the way up into her shoulder. She twisted her arm, trying to break his hold.
“Let go!”
Instead, he squeezed.
“What’s going on out there?” The front porch light came on and Tony appeared in the dark rectangle of the doorway. “Gwen?”
“It’s fine,” Cei called back, stepping away from her with a big show of letting go of her arm. “She’s home, safe.”
Tony came down off the porch anyway, clearly intent on seeing for himself. Like Cei, he touched her face, but his touch was gentler, briefer.
“Where have you been?”
Gwen rubbed the spot on her arm Cei had grabbed, her eyes everywhere but on him. “I went for a walk. I needed to think.”
Tony hesitated, the look on his face suggesting he wasn’t sure if he should believe her or not. But then he stepped back, his gaze flicking off of Cei before he turned to study Gwen again.
“You can’t just go running off like that for so many reasons…I know I don’t have to explain them all to you.”
“No, you don’t.”
He nodded slowly. “We’ll talk about this in the morning.” He glanced at Cei again. “I suggest the two of you get some rest.”
Cei watched Tony walk back to the house. Gwen watched Cei.
“What really happened?” he asked in a low, quiet tone the moment Tony was out of earshot.
“The fire…” she began, but something in Cei’s expression brought back the warning Rhein had offered her. How much did she really know about him? How much did she trust him? Could she trust him at all? She ran her fingers through her hair, pushing it back from her face. “The crowd just got overwhelming. I needed to get out of there.”
“Why didn’t you come find me? I would have brought you home.” Cei moved close to her again, his touch much gentler this time as he caressed her cheek with his thumb. “There were all these thoughts running through my mind, all these things that might have happened to you. I was going crazy.”
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“You can’t just run off like that, Gwen. Not with Branwen out there looking to hurt you.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
He pressed his lips to the center of her forehead, his breaths washing over her skin as they stood there lost in each other for a minute. Was he really frightened? She wasn’t used to people getting upset over her, over where she might or might not have gone, over the possibility that someone might have hurt her. The people who were supposed to do those things—feel those things—were usually the ones hurting her.
She slid her arms around his waist, chastising herself for not trusting him. But, still, she didn’t tell him the truth.
There was time for that later.
***
Everyone was on their feet, yelling as the running back rushed down the field toward the in zone. Gwen was the only one not standing—Gwen and Morgan. She had no idea what was happening and was not eag
er to make a fool of herself by standing at the wrong time, or cheering for the wrong team.
She’d never seen a football game in her life.
She leaned over and touched Morgan’s thigh. “You okay?”
He grinned when he focused on him, the old Morgan back. “Do you understand what’s going on?”
She shook her head. “You?”
“No. My dad used to try to get me to watch football, but gave up when I kept calling the in zone the goal line.”
Gwen smiled. “I had a foster dad who was big on football once. He locked himself in his study every Sunday to watch as many games as he could find on his satellite system. His wife saw it as an excuse to set us kids in front of the television and sneak out to be with her boyfriend. Needless to say, I didn’t stay in that foster home very long. The state doesn’t appreciate divorcing couples.”
Morgan grinned. “Yeah, well, I think my mother might have considered the same thing—minus the boyfriend, of course—if my father hadn’t agreed to limit himself to one game a week.”
“Football widows.”
He gestured to Cei. “I feel sorry for whoever gets him to settle down. I don’t think he would ever agree to one a week.”
Cei certainly seemed to enjoy the game. He was screaming himself hoarse. But so was Rhein.
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