Otherwise, dying a lonely old man was definitely in his future.
Chapter Thirty
Seemed like an eternity since they’d all done a cocktail thing in the mansion’s fancy-ass garden parlor, rather than only four months ago at that introductory-thingy, but now that Dev was standing in the middle of this room full of memories, eternity didn’t seem like long enough ago. He swore he could still catch traces of Marissa’s scent in here, and the memory of her looking like such a mega-biscuit in that slinky black cocktail dress was clear as day. Not that he knew what the hell day looked like, right? He took a hard swig of champagne.
Fucking champagne. It tasked like bubble-infused detox piss, and would forever be associated with his mother serving up his life to him on a Fuck-U Platter, but he’d choke it down anyway. This bonding reception for Gábor and Chelsea was a celebration.
The happy couple was standing next to a four-foot-tall white cake. Gábor was carving out a chunk from the top with what looked like a warrior blade, Chelsea watching him make a hack job out of it, laughing, a saucer glass of champagne in her hand.
Arc and Beth moved forward to congratulate the two, Arc careful to keep his body angled toward Gábor and away from Chelsea. A full seven days had passed since Gábor had bonded with his new wife, so his cells should’ve been solidly settled into The Change by now and the man chilled out. Still, considering how volatile Gábor had been the first seven days, Dev didn’t blame Arc for playing it safe in order to keep all facial parts in their proper place.
Thomal came over to stand next to Dev. He watched the two for a moment, then made a disagreeable noise in the back of his throat. “Chelsea has more than one glass of champagne, and I’m outta here.”
Dev snorted.
Together, they watched Chelsea daintily feed Gábor a piece of cake.
The rest of the crowd ooh’d and aah’d.
Gábor drawled something, and the spectators burst into laughter. Everyone was just jolly as pigs in poop.
Thomal shook his head. “Never in a millions years would I have guessed that guy would bond before me.” He slugged back a large mouthful of champagne. “Or you.”
Dev glanced slantways at Thomal. His friend sure as hell sounded grumpy for a guy who still had his woman around. Yeah, as it turned out, Hadley had decided to stay in the community and work on her relationship with Thomal. She still wasn’t sure if the Vârcolac life was for her, but she was crazy enough about Thomal to at least put some effort into finding out.
“Wake up on the wrong side of the hangover this morning?” Dev inquired blithely.
Thomal gulped his champagne. “I’m just sick and damned tired of everyone thinking I’m some nicey-nice, mellow dude because of the way I look.” Another gulp. “I’m not that guy.”
“Who the hell would think that? Certainly nobody who’s been in the gym with you.”
“Hadley.” Thomal’s mouth clenched tight. “I don’t exactly excel at tip-toeing around people on eggshells or however the hell you say that. And the way Hadley is about my fangs…” Thomal trailed off on a curse.
Hadley was going through something called “systematic desensitization” with Karrell, the community therapist, to get over her needle phobia, but it was slow going and Thomal was understandably frustrated.
“She’ll come around, Costache. Don’t sweat it.”
Thomal drew a deep breath, then exhaled it in a hard rush. “I know. I’m being a dick. It’s just that…hell, if I don’t get some shaboink soon, my tonsil tickler is going to fucking fall off.”
“Nice, man,” Dev returned in a dry tone. “It’s a mystery to me what Hadley sees in you, truly.”
“Um, well…” He felt Thomal’s sideways glance. “I guess you’re the last guy I should be bitching to about relationship troubles, anyway. Sorry.”
Dev stared down into his glass, watching golden champagne bubbles rise steadily to the surface of his drink. Everyone was sorry for him these days: his sister, his friends, his warrior buddies. Dev felt pretty damned sorry for himself, too. He couldn’t even muster anger anymore. Just a constant aching acknowledgement of how badly he’d screwed up his life. A thousand times a day he fantasized about chasing down Marissa topside…but for what? To unload all of his regrets on her while she was dealing with a gravely ill mother. That would fall under the category of “only thinking about himself”—as would pleading with her to come back to him, part two of his fantasy—and he was beyond ready to set aside that little character trait. If he’d been any other guy, he could’ve begged her to let him live topside with her while she fulfilled her dreams. But he was a sun-allergic Vârcolac, so that idea was a non-starter.
Which left him with memories of Marissa, three months’ worth of dating bliss he hoarded desperately close to his heart, and her scent, banking around inside his head like a lone pinball, destined never to settle into its proper slot. How he was supposed to survive that, he hadn’t exactly worked out in his—
“Something’s going down,” Thomal said tersely.
Dev looked up and saw what Thomal meant.
A grim-looking Toni had just re-entered the garden parlor, after having been called away from the party by her new assistant, Donree—a Stânga Town girl, of all things. Yeah, both Alex and Toni Parthen were turning Vârcolac culture on its ass.
Toni drew up right in front of Dev, wearing the same expression she’d worn a week ago when she’d shown up on his bedroom doorstep.
He stiffened, cold sliding against his spine like an ice cube tossed down the back of his shirt.
“I have some bad news about Marissa.”
He felt a muscle jerk in his cheek. A scorching knot formed in the middle of his chest. Oh, he was mustering anger now. His next question threaded past rage-tightened lips, although he already knew the answer. “Om Rău?”
Chapter Thirty-One
Dark shapes surged around Marissa, voices murmuring, low and incoherent. Strangers, so many strangers, except for one familiar stare, drilling into her with such hatred. Tears blurred Marissa’s vision, her mind silently calling out, I want to go home; a little girl’s innate desire just to be safe. But she didn’t even know where home was anymore. She swallowed tautly over that thought, battening down her emotions, so many that they threatened to spin out of control at the slightest moment of inattention.
Her tears retreated down her throat and slid into her chest, landing in that balled mass of feelings where she’d been keeping all of her stress this past week; the despair over caring for her sick mother, that bone-aching emptiness from leaving Dev, and the usual frustration and sorrow that came from her sister treating her with nothing but outright loathing…and during a time when they should’ve set aside their differences. Whatever those differences might be.
Marissa pulled a tissue from the sleeve of her dress and wiped her nose. Her hand looked a bit bony. Evidence that she’d lost weight over the last week, the inevitable result of rarely leaving a hospital bedside. Someone moved behind her, and she automatically stiffened. Anxiety was her constant companion these days. Her nightmares had even returned, those vivid, terrifying images of the night Murk and Teer had kidnapped her, what she’d witnessed Videon doing to poor Kendra. And now to top off one of the worst weeks of her life, she was here. Another nightmare. The biggest.
She flinched when a hand lightly patted her back, but then forced a smile for Dr. Livingstone, the oncologist who’d treated her mother. She needed to be more—
Shock tore the smile from her mouth.
There, standing in the kitchen doorway of her mother’s house was…was-was-was…. She pressed a hand to her chest.
Dev ducked through the doorway and came toward her, dressed in a black suit, charcoal dress shirt, and a black-on-black tie. Lines marred his brow, pain etching his face. Pain for her. Oh. God. A single tear made it past her defenses, seeping to the border of her bottom lid and catching in her lashes.
He’d come. She’d never thought to see him
again, but now, when she needed him most, he was here.
He came to a stop right in front of her, towering over her, as usual. The furrows in his brow lengthened, and his voice was a deep bass-note of sympathy. “I’m so sorry to hear about your mother passing, Marissa.”
Her body jerked. She muffled a cry. He was really here…
Behind him, Toni and Jacken entered through the kitchen door, too, Arc and Beth, all four of them dressed in dark clothes.
Her next few breaths stuttered out of her. She’d been living in a black hole for so many days now. Mother dead, father dead, a sister who hated her. No family. So alone. But now they were here, Toni and Jacken, Arc and Beth. And Dev. Not a one was probably supposed to be topside for something like a funeral wake, but they had come, to give her their love and support.
Marissa clawed a hand into the front of her dress, tears swelling from the deepest part of her, weird sounds coming out of her mouth, a buh-buh-buh of oncoming hysteria. “I-I’m going to lose it, Dev.” Muscles tore open in her chest and purged the balled mass of emotion.
“Oh, shit.” Dev leapt forward and hauled her against him, encircling her in a tight embrace, his strong arms providing, just as from the beginning, the only safe place in the world for her.
The floodgates opened. She pressed her face into the deep muscles of his chest, fisted her hands around the lapels of his blazer, and wept. Hard. Her knees wobbled, her ribs squeezed painfully, one sob after another lurching out of her body.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Dev murmured, stroking her hair.
She was probably scaring the bejabbers out of him, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it. She was a total mess.
“It’s going to be all right, Riss.”
She nodded her head against his chest, finally managing to quiet her sobs, then pulled back in his arms, just far enough to peer up at him. She reached up and lightly touched the rough velvet of his goatee. “I’ve missed you so much, Dev.”
He cupped her face, trying to wipe away her tears with his thumbs, but they just kept coming. “Me, too.” A muscle in his jaw shivered.
She hugged him again, then finally, reluctantly, stepped back to let the rest of her friends pass on their condolences. She embraced each one of them, even Jacken whose arms were surprisingly gentle.
“Thank you so much for coming.” She wiped at her cheeks with the tissue she was still holding. “Please, everyone…help yourselves to some food and drink.”
As her friends moved off to mingle, she took Dev around to some of the other guests, her arm locked securely through his. Lord, the middle of his shirt had a huge wet spot on it from her tears. She halfheartedly introduced him to Natalie, who eyed Dev with feline speculation, no doubt strategizing how to seduce yet another of Marissa’s boyfriends. Marissa had never loved Dev more than when he met the interest of a gorgeous woman—Natalie was definitely that—with nothing but cool politeness.
After that, she gave Dev a tour of her childhood home, finishing upstairs in her bedroom.
Dev glanced around curiously. “So this is where you grew up?”
“This is it.” She closed the door.
“Holy crap, what are these?” He crossed to a couple of posters on her wall. “LL Cool J? Vanilla Ice?”
“They were popular back in the late ’90s.”
“But rap?”
She sat down on her bed. “It was a temporary high school insanity.”
He quirked his mouth at her. “The rest of your room is pink.”
“Well, I was still a girlie-girl.” She smiled softly. “You’re learning all kinds of new things about me, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.” He ducked his chin and ran a hand over his hair. “I like it.”
“Okay, here’s something else. I bought my first bra when I was twelve, even though I didn’t have a boob in sight, and stuffed the cups with beanbags.”
His eyebrows soared. “With what?”
She shrugged. “I thought that would make them look bouncy.”
He laughed, his silver eyes brightening. “Shit, man, I’m so glad I’m not a chick.”
“Oh, come on.” She cocked her head at him. “You can’t tell me you never tried to make anything appear more impressive on your body when you were growing up.”
He slanted a wicked look at her. “Didn’t have to, sweetheart.”
She laughed, too, and it felt good. “You’re not going to start pawing the ground with your hoof, are you?” She leaned back on an elbow. “Okay, now you tell me something about yourself.”
“Hmm, okay, let’s see.” He scanned the books on her shelf. “Ah. Here we go.” He pulled out Treasure Island, glanced at the cover, then cast a look at her from beneath his dark lashes. “I can’t live without you, Riss.”
She blinked, taking a moment to process the switch in topics, then her chest clutched when she finally registered what he’d said. “Well, yes…” She straightened. “We were pretty great together until we messed everything up, weren’t we?”
“No, not ‘we,’ honey.” He set Treasure Island back on its shelf. “Me. You were just trying to tell me what you needed, Marissa, and I didn’t listen to you. I was too busy stewing in my own hurt, and so just brushed everything you had to say aside as if it wasn’t as important as my own stuff, and…I’m so sorry for that. Your dreams are important, okay? Very important, and I want you to know that I know that.”
Throat tight, she nodded mutely, warmth flooding her heart. Dev was gazing down at her with the most loving, caring eyes she’d ever seen in her life. “In all fairness, I didn’t give you what you needed, either.”
He shook his head. “What you wanted didn’t mesh with what I wanted, so you just weren’t able to.” He stuck his hands in his pockets, scrunching up the sides of his suit jacket. “So, listen, I have a proposition that will work out for both of us. I’ve asked the Council to foot the bill for a new topside restaurant for you now, Marissa, so you can get started on your dream right away. They’ve agreed.”
“I…” Her mouth hung open.
“That’s your side. My side is that, after you’ve had a chance to pursue your dream topside for a while, you’ll come back to me.”
She blinked rapidly. “But…” What was wrong with her brain and her mouth? She couldn’t get them to work in tandem.
“You can take as long as you want, too. Years if you need it.”
It was suddenly difficult to swallow. “You’d…you’d wait for me?”
“Yes.” He smiled again, although the expression looked like he was forcing some of his bravery. “I know it’ll be tough being apart from you—downright hell—but I can survive it if I know at some point we’ll be together again. I want you to be happy, Riss. That’s everything to me, so…” His smile reached his eyes now. “Knowing that you’re fulfilling your dream will get me through.”
A rush of aching tenderness filled her chest and pushed into her tight throat. “I can’t believe you’re saying this.” No one had ever offered her so much.
Warmth swept over Dev’s features. “The truth is, I don’t have a choice. I meant it about not being able to live without you. I love you, Marissa. Only you. Other Dragon women will come into the community over the years, but it won’t matter. You’re it.”
She pressed an unsteady palm to her cheek. “Oh, Lord, I think I’m going to faint.”
Dev took a step toward her. “You are?” His eyebrows lowered. “Do you want some water?”
“No. I’m…” She took a moment just to stare at him, overwhelmed by the strength of the love she felt for this man, her soul filling with sunlight, her heart taking flight. “And my answer is no.”
“Ah.” Dev retreated behind lowered lids. “Okay, well…”
“But ‘no’ in a good way, Dev, not in a bad way.” Her voice shifted down to a roughened thread. “I already have a successful restaurant. It’s called Marissa’s, and it’s not second prize to someplace topside.” She felt the pull of a smile. “It�
��s a great place—it’s my place—and it’s home, just like the people of Ţărână are my family.”
A glimmer of hope ignited in Dev’s eyes, a hope he quickly doused. “I don’t want you to end up feeling like you didn’t get your shot.”
“You just gave it to me. The offer is enough.”
He gave her a skeptical look. “Are you sure you’re not just saying that because of your mom?”
She smiled wistfully. “I’ve come to some realizations thanks to her, but not because she died. Well, partly, I guess, a tragedy like this shoves into your face what’s truly important in life.” She stood and crossed to her school desk. “I was going through some of my mother’s things, and look what I found.” She picked up a piece of paper from the desktop and held it up. “This is an award certificate, handmade by my mother, given to me as a prize for the first chocolate cake I ever baked. She presented it to me when I was thirteen to cheer me on, and…it made me believe I could do things for one of the first times ever.” She gazed at the certificate, the familiar scrolling handwriting pushing a lump into her throat. She looked up and found Dev’s eyes pinned on her. “I’ve struggled with a fear of failure complex for such a long time, Dev, starting with my back problems then continuing on with Natalie outdoing me. A Michelin-starred restaurant topside became a…this kind of tangible thing I could hold onto as a mark of my success. ‘I’ve arrived,’ it would say—I’ve made it. But seeing this”—she lifted the certificate—“reminded me that true success comes from within. That may sound like a cliché, but it’s true. It doesn’t matter what others think; you have to believe in yourself.”
She set the award back on her desk. “To paraphrase Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, if I can’t find my heart’s desire in my own back yard, I probably never lost it to begin with.” She looked deeply into Dev’s bright silver eyes. “Everything I want and need has been right in front of me all along.” She stepped up to him and placed a palm on his chest. “You and I, we fit, and I can’t live without you, either. This last week apart has shown me that in living color.” Her chin trembled. “I love you so much, more than I ever thought possible with another human being. I want to be your bonded mate, Dev, and right now, for the rest of my life doesn’t feel like long enough.”
The Community Series, Books 1-3 Page 55
