by Rachel Jonas
—Chapter Fourteen—
Nick
“You’re pretty quiet for a guy getting ready to throw a party.”
I looked up to find Roz staring as she opened a bag of chips to set on the dresser. We didn’t have bowls to pour all the snacks into and couldn’t exactly go to the dining hall and ask to borrow any, seeing as how we didn’t have anyone’s permission to have guests over. So, this was us making do.
“Not looking forward to it anymore?” she added.
There was no straight answer to that. “Just thinking.”
Chris, Lucas, and Theo took a trip down to the vending machines with two empty duffle bags to fill with drinks before people started showing up. So, for now, it was just Roz and I. Calling this a party was the wrong term. Mostly, it was just a chance for those of us who came in from Seaton Falls to get together and restore some sense of normalcy. I was sure I wasn’t the only one feeling overwhelmed by all the new faces to go along with our new surroundings. So, tonight, it’d just be members of the Seaton Falls clan.
Roz set out a bag of popcorn and I wasn’t surprised when she started asking more questions.
“Thinking about … her? About having to be in the same class, I mean?” She wouldn’t look at me, which was strange. Her behavior was borderline timid when the question left her mouth, and Roz Chadwick was never timid.
“I noticed you seemed uncomfortable through the session today,” she went on.
I got started shoving all the boxes the guys and I still had to unpack into the closet for now, just so they were out of the way.
“That’s part of it,” I admitted, deciding to tell the whole truth because I trusted her with it. “That and the fact that I can’t pretend to love who our instructor is for this module.”
Roz could be incredibly callous about, well, everything, but she was one of the most honest and trustworthy people I knew. Turned out the pesky girl I was once constantly trying to get rid of was quickly becoming one of the best friends I ever lucked up on by accident.
“I hate the guy,” I admitted, gritting my teeth as I envisioned Liam. “And, yeah, it’s gonna suck a little having to sit there, listening to his voice for two hours a day.”
“And I’m sure listening to all the girls going on and on about him isn’t helping either.” Roz grinned before glancing up to find me glaring at her. “It was just a joke. Chillax.”
The explicit comments from the ones who sat behind me were hard to forget. By the end of class, I’m sure both needed a cold shower and a cigarette. My next thought was one I kept to myself…
Did Evie look at him that way, too?
Did she see in him what the other girls did?
I hated that I even cared. Hated that it mattered.
“If you ask me, he’s kind of overrated,” Roz said in her usual, uninterested monotone. She casually scrolled through the music on my phone before settling on a song and placing it aside.
“I mean, yeah, he’s nice to look at, but he’s a bit too much of a brute for my taste,” she added. “Take what Beth brought up, for instance. The whole ‘Reaper’ thing. I haven’t had a chance to look into it yet, but sounds to me like this guy has gallons of blood on his hands from the lives he’s taken. I’m talking like … thousands of lives.” She held her hands out and stared at them as she spoke, as if imagining warm, red liquid covering her own.
I zoned out listening to her speak, not realizing I’d completely stopped shifting boxes. We didn’t really have time for standing still, so I went back to multitasking.
“I get that war is necessary sometimes, but you’re not supposed to enjoy killing people. Not even if they deserve it,” she went on, pushing her long, dark hair behind her shoulders. “If you ask me, when someone crosses that line and actually gets off on the kill, that’s when they become a monster.”
Monster … that word rung in my ears.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she added, “the dude’s past is like a goldmine to a researcher like myself. I’d jump at the opportunity to sit down and pick his brain for hours, but that’s about the extent of any type of allure he has in my eyes.”
A huge grin made all her teeth visible. Happened every time she had something witty to say.
“Whoever wants him for his body can have it. All I want is a conversation.”
Something about her tone left me without a doubt that these were her true feelings. She wasn’t just saying this because she knew I hated him, wasn’t just humoring me for the heck of it. Protecting my ego had never been high enough on her list of priorities for that to have even been a possibility. Actually, she’d made it a point to knock me down a peg a time or two when she thought I was full of myself, so there was that.
Of all the things I liked and respected about Roz, at the top of that list was the fact that she was one of few people who saw beyond a person’s outer shell and straight through to the heart.
“Which brings me to my next point,” she blurted.
I peered up. “What next point?”
She smiled again, but this one was kind of reserved, like she was unsure about going on.
“Well, you and I have a ton of questions, right? Questions we’ve been trying to find answers to for weeks now, and I was just thinking … why don’t we bring them to him?” she suggested, quickly amending her statement. “Well, I’ll bring them to him. He seemed pretty cool about letting us ask him stuff at the end of class. Maybe I’ll ask a few of the most pressing ones the next time he opens the floor.” She shrugged while struggling with another bag. “He could be a shortcut to the info we’re after.”
As much as I hated to admit it, Roz was right. We could definitely use Liam’s help, but there needed to be boundaries.
“He can’t know about the rings my grandfather was looking for,” I blurted. “We can keep looking into that on our own for now.”
I didn’t want a conversation about them to lead to how we came to know they existed—the journals. Those were far too personal to have just anyone thumbing through the pages. For now, I only trusted Roz with that.
She shrugged again. “Whatever you’re comfortable with.”
“And questions about me being … whatever I am,” I added. “Those are off limits, too, seeing as how I’m the only one that exists.”
Roz’s eyes found mine and softened. “Agreed.”
I wasn’t completely comfortable with the idea, but it could give us too much of a lead to dismiss her suggestion.
We went on with setting up, but the room was eerily quiet now, other than the low hum of the music she selected. Her usual, endless stream of questions had ceased.
“Now who’s being quiet?” I asked with a smile to lighten the suddenly heavy mood.
She took a deep breath before plopping down on the edge of my bed. Her eyes were trained on the closed door that led to the hallway and it took her a moment to speak. Seemed like that kept happening lately.
“So, I saw how upset you were after talking to Evie and it got me to thinking.”
I focused on the raw nerves still exposed between Evie and I and stopped with the boxes for a moment, bracing my shoulder against the wall. “What about it?”
Roz’s lips pressed into a tight line while I waited for her to finish.
She blew out a breath and blinked before looking at me. “We’re friends, right?”
I chuckled. “Uh oh. That’s never a good place to start.”
She loosened up and smiled faintly. “Just … answer the question.”
I checked out her stiff posture when I nodded. “Yeah, we’re friends.”
Her cheeks tinted red. “Good. Because friends can be honest with one another, right? Even when what they have to say is, technically, not their business?”
I nodded again. “Sure.”
She hesitated like before and, as she agonized about sharing, I questioned whether I should have given her the okay.
“Just seems to me that, if being around someone makes you so … u
n-you, why not keep your distance? You broke things off, so you’ve got a free pass to ignore this girl when your paths cross. So, why not take advantage of that? Why not avoid the awkward conversations and the sick feeling I’m sure you have in your gut afterward?” she asked. “I only mention it because it sucks a little seeing a friend, one who’s a pretty decent guy about seventy-eight-percent of the time, getting upset over a situation that should be water under the bridge.”
Hearing what Evie and I once had being referred to as ‘water under the bridge’ was a little sobering, but I couldn’t argue with Roz’s wording. Evie and I were over.
Something else Roz said hit me about ten seconds late and I chuckled. “Wait … I’m only a decent guy seventy-eight-percent of the time?”
She shrugged and I wasn’t surprised she didn’t sugarcoat her response. “It’s touch and go when you’re stressed, but the more I get to know you, the less I want to throat-punch you when you snap at me.”
The chuckle turned into a full-on laugh.
“I’ve come to learn that you’re just kinda intense,” she reasoned. “Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it just takes some getting used to.”
Her words trailed off and she didn’t look away when I thought she would have. Instead, she blinked at me with a look behind her eyes I couldn’t quite place. And then, just like that, it was gone.
“So, yeah. That’s pretty much all I had to say.”
I didn’t respond for a while, giving her suggestion some thought. Truthfully, I think I’d given her the wrong impression, somehow leading her to believe this break up—or whatever you call it when two people aren’t actually in a relationship—was easier on me than it was. It was heart-wrenching, to be honest.
“So, in your opinion, I should just cut ties altogether?”
Roz took a deep breath and then went on to give an answer I wasn’t expecting. “That’s not really my call,” she reasoned. “I’m not the one who had feelings for her, so that’s something only you can decide. I guess I’m just thinking that, if I were you, I’d try to avoid the pain. And if being around her, seeing her, brought me pain … I’d steer clear.”
She had a point. It was sort of insane to keep revisiting my source of agony. However, it was a little too late to avoid Evie completely, seeing as how she was coming tonight. Now I felt obligated to give Roz a heads up, knowing she’d probably think I was crazy. Weak.
“You’re a few hours too late with your advice,” I blurted, realizing I was actually stalling to tell her what I’d done. I couldn’t really explain what I was feeling, but I believe I didn’t want to … disappoint her maybe?
“One of the things Evie and I discussed in the hall this morning was her coming tonight.”
Roz’s expressions were usually pretty vague, giving very little of what she was thinking or feeling away. However, when I shared that I extended an invitation to Evie, her eyes nearly doubled in size. She was at a loss for words. Twice, her mouth opened and, both times, it snapped shut again.
“You think I’m an idiot, don’t you?”
I was completely okay with her saying yes, because she’d be right.
She blinked hard, chewing her bottom lip before answering.
“No, not an idiot; you’re just really hung up on her, I guess,” she rambled, sounding casual, but … not. All at the same time. “I guess I just didn’t realize you were still so on the fence. When you told me everything, I was under the impression you’d already made up your mind to let go.”
Gravity caused her body to shift when I sat beside her on the edge of my bed.
“My mind is made up,” I shared, keeping my eyes trained on the striped pattern on Chris’s bed beside mine. Doing so gave me something else to focus on besides Roz’s blank stare. It was time to come clean about the other reason I let Evie go. It wasn’t all just because we needed to find ourselves, wasn’t all because of Liam.
“My feelings for her haven’t changed,” I shared. “The cause of the distance is about one-fourth the stuff I already told you.”
“And the other three-fourths?”
The word monster crept into my head again, hearing it spoken in Roz’s voice, and I hesitated. I usually didn’t hold back from telling her things like this, but for some reason, I did tonight.
“Fear,” I breathed.
She was silent, watching me.
“I’m scared of hurting her,” I confessed. “Because I don’t trust myself anymore.”
I could see her shoulders rise with each breath she took, watching me with so much intensity I felt it. I knew I was being cryptic and it wasn’t until this moment that I realized Evie wasn’t the only person I didn’t want to think I was some bloodthirsty beast.
I didn’t want Roz to think it either.
“There’s something I haven’t told you.”
The start of my confession made her stare intensify. Throughout this whole thing, we’d been honest with one another, minus a few minor trust issues in the very beginning. But, since then, the air had been clear.
Until now.
I hadn’t shared the revelation Liam gave the night with the mutts. The term ‘Liberator’ Roz knew, but she had no clue what it meant for me. However, I believed the time had come to bring her up to speed.
“I know what I am.” The words were a struggle to get out. Yet, there they were, hovering in the air between Roz and I, waiting for her inquisitive side to kick in.
“You’re a lycan.” There was the slightest hint of hesitation in her tone when adding, “Like me.”
I wanted so badly to agree, to pretend there was nothing more to it; however, I needed to be real with her right now. There weren’t many people I had that privilege with, so I wouldn’t taint our friendship by thinking she couldn’t handle this.
“Yes, I’m a lycan, but I’m more than that.”
Intrigue and concern marked her expression.
“More than that … how?”
Liam’s explanation was engraved in my mind, so I knew exactly how to break this down, but that didn’t make it any easier.
“I’ve figured out what it means to be the Liberator. Or rather, I’ve figured out how legend says it’ll affect my future. And Evie’s,” I added, causing Roz to tilt her head when I guessed confusion set in.
“Evie? What’s any of this got to do with her?”
Air surged from my lungs when I exhaled sharply. “Everything.”
The silence that entered the room was stifling.
“The legend says I’m supposed to kill her,” I blurted, thinking I’d feel better once I did.
I was wrong.
“Why … her? Why not anyone?”
I shrugged, having no earthly idea what the connection was.
Beside me, Roz clasped her hands together tightly in her lap. She was uncharacteristically quiet, so I took this time to help her understand.
“I hear her heartbeat,” I admitted. “Only hers. All the time when she’s close enough. That’s part of it.”
A flash of Liam’s furious expression flickered inside my head as I recalled him explaining this very thing.
“It’s so I can always find her, kind of like a beacon. So she can’t hide. So she can’t get away.”
This sounded terrible, sadistic, but it was real. No, I didn’t want to think or talk about it either, but thinking and talking was the only way to find a solution.
“Now you see why I asked if there’s a way to fix me.”
Roz took a moment to answer. “There’s nothing wrong with you; therefore, there’s nothing to fix.”
I smiled at her attempt to make me feel better, but I think we both knew that wasn’t true. There was something very wrong with me.
“I couldn’t live with myself if I hurt someone, Roz.”
Her gaze was compassionate when it met mine. “Then we’ll have to make sure that doesn’t happen. I won’t stop looking until I find some way to control it.”
I nodded and felt like a load ha
d been lifted off me.
“Is there anything else?” she asked. “Anything I might need to know that could help?”
I thought about that for a second. “Well, I’m not sure how useful this will be, but I’ve been losing time.” The words left my mouth in a rush because I knew the only way I’d get them out was to force them.
In my peripheral, I saw Roz’s head tilt again and I knew that was the moment her brain flooded with questions.
“What do you mean ‘losing time’?”
“As in, sometimes I wake up from these … trances, I guess, and I’m not where I last remember and have no recollection how I got there.”
She looked away again, taking a breath before asking something else. “How much time are we talking?”
I shrugged. “I don’t always know. Sometimes it happens while I’m awake and it’s almost like I freakin’ teleport from one room to another. That’s how seamless it is. Once, while at my grandfather’s place, I was in the living room sitting on the couch. Then, the next thing I knew, I was in the kitchen sitting at the table,” I shared, despite feeling incredibly hesitant. “The only time I can actually say how long it’s been is when it happens after I’ve gone to bed. Like last night ... I laid down around eleven, then woke up, standing in the bathroom mirror at around four—covered in dirt and grass, no memory of going topside or coming back.”
I turned toward Roz now, just needing to see her face, needing to be certain she wasn’t judging me.
Wasn’t afraid of me.
I found neither of those things there—judgment, fear. Only curiosity, which I was okay with.
“What do you think is causing it all of a sudden?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know exactly, but the thought crossed my mind that it’s part of my natural evolution. Something that goes along with being the Liberator. For all I know, it’s while I’m in one of these blackouts that I’ll be capable of hurting Evie. It’s not like I could stop myself.”
Roz took another deep breath. She sat there, silent just like I was, proof that she was just as perplexed.
“We’ll work on figuring it out,” was the only conclusion she could offer short of making promises we both knew she couldn’t keep.
