by Dean Murray
Chapter 7
The rest of school flew by. For the first time in recent memory, I was able to watch people pass notes and whisper without worrying they were talking about me.
Actually they were talking about me, but this time I featured into the rumors in only a very small way. Sandra's bizarre confession was the talk of the entire school, and more than one person wanted my reaction to everything that was happening, so I got a blow-by-blow account over the next couple of hours as Sandra was marched to the assistant principal's office where she underwent a series of presumably uncomfortable meetings with Assistant Principal Snyder, the school counselor, and ultimately her father, who apparently arrived at the school in his Rolls Royce looking like storm clouds had followed him the entire way.
I enjoyed what was happening. Being the center of attention in PE was nice, and there was no denying the fact that Sandra had had it coming, but a tiny part of me kept pointing out that I shouldn't be enjoying this.
Reveling in Sandra's unhappiness would make me no better than her. I could be glad that justice had been served, and hope that it would teach her a lesson, but that was as far as things should go.
Likewise, all of the attention from my peers was pretty worthless when you got right down to it.
They were floating around me like planets pulled into orbit around a star, but the truth was they weren't going to stay. Sooner or later—probably much sooner than I was prepared to admit—they were going to latch onto someone else. A friend who wasn't your friend until you had something that they needed wasn't any kind of friend at all.
I probably should have come to that realization sooner, but at least I came to it before the school day ended. About five minutes before class ended I shook myself free from the cluster of girls who had been following me around and made my way over to Kat, who had stayed close but who hadn't interfered with me talking to all of the gossip girls.
"I thought maybe we'd lost you."
I nodded. "Yeah, that was pretty heady, but deep down I knew they didn't matter. You and Jace were there for me before you made Sandra look like an idiot. I'm not going to abandon you two for that group of mindless lemmings."
"Plus you want to know how I did it, right?"
"Yeah, I guess so."
"You don't sound as eager as you did a little while ago…"
Even as she said it I realized she was right. "I guess I'm starting to worry about what it all means. I have the feeling that once I know what you and Jace are doing, there won't be any going back."
Kat gave me a sad smile. "You're right, but it's already too late for that. You've crossed the Rubicon, Selene. From here there are only two ways forward."
"I don't want to die."
"I don't blame you. I didn't want to die when it was me standing in your shoes either." Kat looked down at the archaic wrist watch and sighed. "I promised Jace I would keep you here until school ended, but I just can't stomach this place any more. You want to get out of here?"
I couldn't get my voice to work; I settled for just nodding.
"Great. Go grab your clothes. I'll meet you out by your car in five minutes. Don't worry about changing—you can shower at our place. Trust me, it's way better than the locker room here at school. I'll go make sure that we don't get into trouble."
Kat turned and started off toward Ms. Stacker before I could ask her what she meant. I watched her for a second, jealous of her confident stride, and then turned and started toward the girls' locker room.
I grabbed my jeans, sweater, shoes, and everything else from my PE locker, but it was kind of a lot to carry, so I ended up just putting Jace's jacket on over my regulation Cold Springs t-shirt and then picked everything else up and slipped out the side door into the hall.
I felt a little self-conscious in my navy PE shorts. Ironically they weren't too short for PE class, but they violated the dress code once I left the gym. I figured that Kat would magically take care of that too though if push came to shove and headed back towards the parking lot.
I arrived at my car exactly five minutes after separating from Kat, but there was no sign of her…until I turned back towards the school and realized she was standing less than two feet behind me.
"Holy crap! I swear you weren't there just a second ago."
"You're not wrong. Also, that is a nice look on you…"
Her smile said that she was enjoying teasing me, but it was hard to get angry with someone who'd just stood up to a bully for you.
I blushed at the reminder that I'd once again ended up wearing Jace's jacket. I started to shrug out of it, but she stopped me, cool hands on mine, before I could complete the action.
"I was serious. Leave it on, it's not like Jace minds, and you've already pissed off Sandra as much as you're going to piss her off. Oh, that reminds me, you should probably see this."
Kat reached inside of her sports bra and pulled out a note that had Megan's name on it in Sandra's handwriting.
I took it hesitantly, although I couldn't have said why. It wasn't like it was going to explode in my hands or anything.
S. is totally going to pay. Get Todd and slip away from your last class. It's time to send a message that she can't ignore. Key her car. If she doesn't break up with the new guy then we'll see how she likes replacing her windshield.
I came back to myself with Kat's arms wrapped around me in an effort to keep me from going back into the school.
"It's not worth it, Selene. She's already going to be in deep trouble with the administration here at the school and with her dad at home. If you go after her directly you'll just give credence to her claims that somebody is out to get her."
There were so many things I wanted to say, but none of them really mattered. Kat already knew that Sandra was the worst bi-otch in the world. Me screaming it at the top of my lungs wouldn't help matters at all. Besides, I suspected that Kat didn't really understand what my car meant to me.
Kat obviously wasn't poor. For her a car was just a car, and if something happened to her car she paid to have it fixed and never thought twice about it.
For me, my car was more than that. I'd never gone to the factory and watched my dad at work, but I didn't have to see him there to appreciate what he was doing for us. I saw the effects every morning when I woke up and on the afternoons when I made it home in time to see him before he headed off to work again.
I saw him wake up to see us off, so exhausted it was all he could do to keep his eyes open. I saw him standing at the door, psyching himself up to go to a job he hated, a job that was slowly draining the life out of him, so that he could continue to put food on the table for Ari and me.
The two hundred dollars' worth of tires that Sandra had so casually destroyed was less than a couple of weeks' worth of allowance for her, but for me it was days and weeks of my dad's life. A new paint job would have been out of the question and a new windshield would have set us back months. It felt like Sandra and her dad were slowly killing my dad.
I still hadn't regained control over my anger, but I didn't want to put it back on a leash. I forced myself to breathe again and then looked at Kat. "Okay, I won't go after her. Why did you show me that note if you weren't going to let me do anything about it?"
"I told you because you deserve to know. You deserve to know what she had planned, and I figured if I told you back at our house that Jace would overreact and help you bury the body. He always caters to your temper more than he should. I think it's because you remind him of… Never mind. The important thing is that you need to know that my little trick today probably just delayed Sandra rather than stopping her permanently."
"Great, that's exactly what I needed to hear."
The bitterness in my voice could have etched steel, but it just made Kat smile. "It is what you needed to hear, but you're going to have to trust me on that. You needed to have time to work through your feelings towards Sandra now while you're less likely to kill her."
"I don't think there's ever
been a time when I was more likely to kill her. She's a spoiled brat who needs a healthy dose of reality."
Kat gave me a surprisingly fierce hug and then released me. "You never know what the future may bring, Selene. But in the meantime, just remember that Jace and I aren't going to let Sandra put you in the poorhouse."
It was less reassuring than she'd meant it to be. I didn't want to be beholden to the two of them any more than I wanted my dad to continue being beholden to Sandra's dad, but even I wasn't so far gone as to say anything. I managed a smile as I climbed into my car and reached over to unlock the passenger door.
Kat's laugh was surprisingly kind. "I've got my own ride, Selene. I'd tell you to just leave your car here, but there's no need to provide an even bigger temptation to Sandra and the rest. I'm right over there."
I looked over to where she'd gestured and finally registered the presence of the fastest-looking motorcycle I'd ever seen. It was black and pink and had absolutely no manufacturer's logos on it anywhere, but that wasn't what made it look so fast. It was low-slung and had tires that were even fatter than the ones on my car.
"That bike?"
"Yeah, she's a beaut, isn't she?"
"I guess you'd better give me directions to your house. There's no way I'm going to be able to keep up with you."
Kat laughed again. "Don't worry, I'll go slow—I promise."
I shook my head at her as I took in the bare skin revealed by her shorts and t-shirt. "Slow is a relative term. Here, you'd better at least take Jace's jacket. It won't do anything to protect your legs, but at least it will keep the rest of you from getting as cut up."
"That's sweet, but I don't get in wrecks—at least not on my motorcycle. I'll be fine."
Kat shut my door for me and then jogged over to her bike. She fiddled around with a key at the back of the bike, popping open some kind of cargo area where she'd stored a pair of sunglasses, and then straddled the bike, which roared to life with an only slightly higher-pitched growl than the Viper had the day before.
I started my car as she backed her bike up, and then I followed her out of the parking lot at a sedate pace that I figured had to be making her chomp at the bit.
The ride out to their house ended up being much less crazy than I'd feared it might be. Kat still opened her bike up with a high-pitched whine that left me in her dust on two different occasions, but she always slowed back down within a mile, so I never actually lost sight of her.
Their house ended up being all the way out on the north side of town on an unassuming lot that looked like it was just part of the forest that butted up against that side of town. The driveway was gated, and wasn't even asphalt until after it curved around a line of trees and was no longer visible from the road.
I wasn't Ari by any stretch of the imagination, but I still flinched when I thought about what the gravel driveway would do to Jace's Viper if he drove over the rocks at any kind of real speed. I followed Kat past the gate, which closed automatically behind us, and then once we were on the pavement, she shot away like a bullet.
By that point she must have figured that it didn't matter; it wasn't like I could get lost on the driveway. Only I was actually starting to wonder if I'd gotten lost by the time I'd driven for five more minutes without any sign of a house.
When the house finally came into view my jaw dropped. I'd never seen anything like it before, not even in the movies. It was all the gray, nondescript rock that was everywhere in our particular part of Colorado, which meant that parts of the house almost seemed to blend into the countryside.
That meant that my first impression was that the house was huge, and my second impression was that the house was enormous. I counted six garage doors on this side of the building, but that wasn't the full story, because one of them was open and Kat was waving at me from inside of a garage that was five or six times as deep as a normal garage. They had room for an entire fleet of cars.
Kat seemed to want me to park inside next to her bike, but I shook my head and started to park out on the asphalt. I looked away from her for just a second as I brought my car to a stop, and when I looked up she was standing at my window.
"Selene, come park in the garage."
"No, my car has an oil leak and I don't want to get it all over your floor."
Kat smiled. "Don't be silly. We've got entire bays in there that aren't being used. I'll open up the shop bay and you can park in there. Fair warning though, I think he's going to try to talk you into a new set of rims at some point over the next few days."
"Yeah, because that's subtle enough that my dad won't notice."
"In case you haven't noticed, Jace isn't always the most subtle guy. Here, pull forward into the far door, I'll go open the garage."
A couple of minutes later my car was parked inside of the 'shop' bay and I was following Kat through the garage, towards a heavy door that presumably led into the house itself. The garage was cool enough that I was glad I still had Jace's jacket on. I honestly didn't know how Kat was enduring the walk through the cavernous building with nothing more than her shorts and t-shirt on. Actually, come to think of it, she'd probably been even colder on her bike.
It was one more question that I'd have to ask once they started telling me what was really going on.
The door turned out to have some kind of fingerprint reader on it. Kat ran her finger over the sensor and then held the door open for me.
"Sorry about this. The previous owner was a paranoid nutjob. Remind Jace and he'll get you entered into the database later so you can come and go as you please. Oh, by the way, can you please take off your shoes? Jace had the entire place re-carpeted before we moved in; he's kind of a freak when it comes to carpet."
Whatever I was planning on saying in response evaporated when I stepped inside and saw their kitchen. Saying it was big didn't even begin to do it justice. The entire back wall was nothing but glass, and beyond that was a solarium that looked like it was set up for indoor-outdoor living. Right now the back of the solarium had been opened up so that Jace could cook on the grill that took up the far corner of the area, but I could tell that once the solarium was closed back up it would make the perfect sun room for the winter months.
I didn't know if Jace or Kat either one were readers, but assuming they were still inviting me over once it got cold, I was definitely going to curl up in one of the hammocks with a good book.
There was a lot more to the solarium, but that was all that I managed to notice before I realized that Jace was cooking with his shirt off.
Wow didn't even begin to cover it. You don't always expect blond guys to tan, but Jace had the tan of a surfer combined with the lean, tight muscles of a gymnast. I could feel myself starting to hyperventilate and had to close my eyes in order to get control of myself again.
"Down, girl."
I opened my eyes and glared at Kat. "You could have given me some warning."
She snorted. "Like I know whether or not he's got a shirt on at any given moment? Please girl, there are days when I'm lucky if I know whether or not I've got a shirt on. Nobody could reasonably expect me to keep track of him."
The door between the solarium and the kitchen was closed, so Jace hadn't realized we were there yet. He opened up the grill and flipped the hamburgers that were cooking there with the sure hands of someone who was no stranger to cooking.
I tried to look away from him again, but my eyes refused to budge. The wind had tousled his wavy hair. He looked perfect, like a Greek god, like he'd been carved out of marble.
I let my eyes drop down to his shoulders and biceps, and for a split second my sense of déjà vu was so strong I had to put my hand out to catch myself against the wall. The setting wasn't right—not even close—but him standing there cooking with his shirt off, the sun illuminating his muscles while I watched from a little ways away, that felt right in ways that I couldn't even begin to describe. It felt like something I'd done hundreds of times before.
"I was ori
ginally planning on showing you the rest of this wing, but I guess I could just leave you here if you want—you know, let you take in the…scenery. We aren't due back for a little while still, so he probably won't even realize that you're here…"
I opened my mouth, uncertain how to respond to that. In that moment Kat didn't sound very sisterly, but by the same stretch she didn't sound jealous or anything.
"I'm not sure whether I should be grossed out that you're talking about your brother like that or if I should just bow before the inevitable and admit that any girl would think Jace was hot."
"Yeah, well, there are brothers and then there are brothers. Don't think that I haven't noticed that you didn't answer my question. You're going to want to hurry up and decide though, Jace gets testy when dinner doesn't go as planned."
I took one last long look at Jace and then sighed. "I'd love to see the rest of the house, but you mentioned a shower. Can we start with that? I'm suddenly feeling like the ugly duckling. A shower and changing clothes won't magically put me in Jace's league, but maybe it will keep him from running away screaming for a few more days."
Kat raised her eyebrow suggestively. "Oh, I don't know—I think seeing you in those shorts might convert Jace to being a butt guy…"
My face went hot and I wished that I could make myself invisible, but the universe stubbornly refused to grant my wish.
"Can you please just show me to a bathroom? I don't want Jace to see me like this."
"He's seen you in a lot worse, but whatever. Let's get you showered."
That didn't make sense considering that Jace had seen me a grand total of twice before now, but by that point I was already following her through the house and the great room was so impressive that it took my breath away.
There was a huge water feature on one wall, a torrent of water that disappeared down into the floor, presumably cascading on into the basement before being pumped back upstairs. The décor had an almost industrial feel to it, all black, white and silver, but it fit the massive open space perfectly, as did the tall bay windows that looked out over the front of the house and the skylights that let additional light in.
"Sorry, I told Jace to leave that stupid waterfall off, but apparently he was determined to pull out all of the stops. He still doesn't believe me when I tell him that it's beyond pretentious."
"No, it's fine. It's spectacular—how did you guys end up with this place?"
"It belonged to some dot-com billionaire who ended up losing his shirt when the economy took a turn for the worse a few years ago. Like I said earlier, he was super-paranoid, so he built this place outside the town boundaries and managed to keep it a secret by importing a building crew from outside of the state."
"Wow. Just wow. It's amazing, but not very much like what I would have envisioned a paranoid billionaire building for himself. It doesn't feel very secure."
Kat grabbed my hand and pulled me into a hall that was wide enough for six people to walk abreast. "Yeah, don't let all of the glass fool you. It's all bulletproof—much thicker than it looks until you get pretty close to it. More than that though, the house is built in zones."
Kat waved at our surroundings, taking in the heated marble floors as if it was nothing out of the ordinary.
"This is one of the low-security zones. When you get to the bedrooms things are even more secure—thicker glass set inside a steel cage and all that. The coolest part is that there are hidden passages from the rooms down into this super bunker underground. It would take an army to dig you out from there if you locked yourself in and refused to come out."
She led me into a large room on the left that was full of every kind of exercise equipment imaginable. "This is the gym—just in case you were curious how Jace manages to keep his figure so studly."
The space had windows along two walls, mirrors on the other two, and a massive skylight that let in even more light than I'd seen in the great room. There were more than twenty different speakers hanging from the ceilings at various points, and half a dozen big-screen televisions mounted on the walls.
Kat gave me a second to take it all in, and then resumed talking. "It's wired for sound and temperature-controlled with a separate thermostat. There is a locker room back over there and as you can see we're looking out over the back of the house again, so the hot tub is just down that path and the lap pool is right here, less than twenty feet away from the exterior door."
"I think I might actually convince myself to work out if I had access to all of that stuff."
"I know, you'd think. Our exercise facilities were almost this good in the last place where we lived though and I gave up after a week or two. I keep telling myself that the exercise bug is just something that you're either born with or you aren't. If I say it often enough I can almost drown out the little voice that tells me I'm just lazy."
This time it was my turn to roll my eyes at her. "You can't seriously tell me that you stay that skinny without working out."
"Yep, sorry—I guess I just have good genetics. Don't worry though, your bod is just as slamming—trust me, it's come up with Jace a number of times already."
I managed not to blush again, but it was a near thing. "Speaking of Jace, I'm just about due for that shower. Do you just want me to use the locker room here?"
"Right, I'll stop showing off and we'll make a beeline to the bedrooms."
We passed more than two dozen more rooms over the next couple of minutes and I nearly stopped her a dozen times despite my desire to make sure I got cleaned up before I saw Jace again. It was like they'd purposely tried to make it hard for me to hold to my resolution.
For everything other than the bedrooms and the bathrooms, the doors to the various rooms were made out of glass, which meant I caught glimpses of the rooms as we passed. It wasn't enough to really get the full effect of the massive home theater that was upholstered all in black leather. It was just enough to whet my appetite and make me want to stop.
The same went for the large office space on the front side of the house and the library that adjoined it. The wood shelving in the latter ran from the floor all the way up to a second story and had one of the rolling ladders that I'd seen at the Cold Springs library before they'd started transitioning to electronic devices rather than actual physical books.
Some of the bedroom doors were open, which meant that I saw a guest bedroom that was almost as big as our entire house and which Kat casually mentioned had multiple sets of bunk beds built right into the wall.
It was the massage room with its raised table and folded privacy sheet though that really made my knees weak.
"Oh, you should ask Jace to give you a massage some time. He's forgotten more about rubbing knots out of someone's back than most people will ever know."
The idea of stripping down to nothing and having Jace's hands on my bare body brought back my earlier blush with a vengeance. Kat looked back at exactly the right time to catch my reaction and she laughed again.
"I can stay in the room if you want—you know, just to make sure that the two of you behave yourselves."
"I think my dad would kill Jace and then kill me if he found out that I'd let Jace give me a massage—regardless of who else was in the room."
"Oh, well, it's your loss."
Kat let us through another biometric reader and heavy glass door and then we went up a set of stairs that opened into a large central area that had only two doors leading off of it. The open area didn't have any windows, but the top was nothing more than one huge skylight. I was so shocked that I stopped moving and Kat had to grab my arm so she could tow me along towards the door on the far room of the area.
"The one back there is my room, but I need a shower too so you're going to be using Jace's room."
"Hold on—I just wanted a shower, any of the guest rooms would have been just fine."
"Sorry, Selene, we just moved in yesterday. We had the movers arrange most of the furniture that we had shipped in, but we haven't had time to r
e-stock every bathroom in this place. Right now the only bathrooms that have toiletries and towels are the two up here. Of course you could always just go back downstairs and wait with Jace while I shower—I'm sure he wouldn't mind what you're wearing."
"That was a low blow, Kat."
"I know, but you'll thank me for it later."
"All right, lead on."
Jace's room continued the same 'glass as far as the eye can see' theme that had been so prominent in the sitting room at the top of the stairs. Kat had said that the bedrooms were heavy glass inside of a steel cage, but so far I couldn't see very many places that weren't glass, so I wasn't sure where the steel came in. In fact, the baseball-diamond-shaped room was nothing like I'd been expecting.
The door we'd just walked through was set into a wall that was made up of something more substantial than glass. That wall butted up against another wall at right angles which contained a door to the bathroom and closet, but everything else was nothing but open space and a beautiful view.
"The glass all polarizes if a current is run through it, so if Jace wants some privacy he just hits a button on his phone and this all goes opaque."
I nodded, but I was only partially listening. The wooden bed was huge—three people could have slept on it and never bumped elbows during the middle of the night—and it dominated the center of the room. There were small tables on either side of it, but no lamp. I guess that made sense when your entire room was wired and you could turn your lights off from your smartphone.
There were a couple of chairs and a small table almost directly across from us. It looked almost like a little breakfast nook. Off to our right there was a desk and rolling office chair that formed a tidy workspace which featured a computer that looked like it could power all of the space shuttles at once.
Next to the desk was a large bookcase that held a number of slender, leather-bound books. I started towards the bookcase, curious what books Jace valued so much that he kept them in his room rather than down in the enormous library, but Kat grabbed my arm and tugged me towards the other door.
"You're going to run out of time if you don't hurry. Remember, you didn't want to do any more sightseeing until after you were clean and presentable."
I reluctantly followed her. It was one more thing that didn't make sense, but the longer I looked at the bookshelf the more convinced I became that it was somehow important. The carpet was more than amazing. It cradled my bare feet in ways that I wouldn't have believed were possible. If I'd lived in this house I would have never put on shoes again. I could see why Jace was so protective of it.
"Is your room like this?"
"Yeah, mostly. I mean the carpets and furniture are all different and I have a TV, but they are almost the same size. I let Jace have the bigger one because mine has the better bathroom."
I started to ask her what her bathroom was like, but then I stepped into Jace's bathroom and the question lost all meaning.
I'd expected the bathroom to be impressive given the sheer size and luxury of everything else I'd seen up to that point, but I'd still somehow managed to be too conservative in my expectations. The bathroom and closet combined were almost as big as Jace's bedroom, which was as big as my entire house.
Everything from the floor to the sink to the gigantic bathtub was done in black granite, or something that looked like black granite but which was probably several times as expensive. It should have given the bathroom a dark, forbidding look, but the plentiful skylights and the frequent lights kept it looking bright and cheery.
The floors were warm, apparently heated, which was good because Jace hadn't put down much in the way of rugs. The fixtures were all elegant brushed silver, but I took that in as an afterthought as I continued past the giant mirror and further into the room.
I'd initially thought the bathtub was gigantic, but I wasn't sure that I'd done it justice. It was a jetted, multi-level masterpiece that probably would have taken hours to fill if not for the fact that there were four separate spouts.
There was a separate shower that was frosted glass that seemed designed less with privacy in mind than it was to tease. I very carefully avoided thinking about Jace in there all wet and soapy. Given my record so far with blushing, that would probably cause me to spontaneously burst into flame.
The closet portion of the bathroom was set behind a set of double glass doors that Kat opened with a hiss of equalizing air pressure.
"The closet is designed to be temperature and humidity-controlled so that you don't have to worry about long showers ruining your clothes."
I just nodded. I'd never seen so much space for clothing outside of a department store. There were racks and racks of shirts, drawers filled with socks, shelves for jeans and sweaters, and an entire section filled with suits that looked like they'd never been worn before. Jace had more clothes than Ari, my dad and I combined, but he still only filled up a quarter of the available space. There were bags and boxes in piles on the floor still waiting to be unpacked and racked, but I couldn't believe that they would be enough to finish filling up the remaining space.
"Your closet is bigger than this?"
"Oh yeah, almost twice as big."
"And I'm guessing that yours is full, isn't it?"
Kat had the grace to look a little embarrassed. "No, not quite, but it will be once the next load of stuff arrives from our last place."
"Unbelievable. What did you say your parents used to do?"
"Our family is in precious metals." She chuckled, but when I gave her a confused look she just waved my question away. "You'll understand later."
"You do know that's getting to be really old, right?"
"Yeah, don't worry though, you're not that far from understanding it all." She checked her watch and then frowned. "Hmm, this has all taken a lot longer than I realized. I need to get going if I'm going to get showered in time to go back and get Ari. Everything you need should be here. Soap and shampoo are in the shower, towels are in the closet right over there."
"You said there is some kind of secret passage down into the basement from here?"
Kat nodded and pointed at one of the shelves inside the closet. "It's in there, but you don't need to worry about it. It's got a biometric lock on it too. Oh, that reminds me, you're not going to want to close the bathroom door all of the way. It's designed to lock too and then you'd have to wait for Jace or me to come get you out."
"Wow, this place isn't very visitor-friendly, is it?"
"Not up here it isn't. The lower levels aren't like this, but like I said, the former owner was crazy paranoid. Don't worry though, Jace is a perfect gentleman, he won't walk in on you or anything."
That last bit was said over her shoulder as she headed out the door. I stood there in astonishment for several seconds before realizing I was running out of time if I wanted to be done before Jace came looking for me.
I stripped off my shirt and rolled it up so that I could use it as a doorstop. It was probably unnecessary and I felt a little silly kneeling down on the floor in my sports bra to place it between the door and the frame, but I was determined not to get locked out of the bedroom.
My shower went just fine. I'd never actually had a shower with that much water pressure. It was like standing under a waterfall, and I got the feeling that the hot water was the next best thing to unlimited.
In fact, the shower was so nice that I lost track of time and ended up staying in there for a lot longer than I'd meant to. By the time I finally got out, my fingers looked like prunes and even then I only forced myself out of the shower because I was worried that Jace would end up accidentally walking in on me if I didn't.
I hadn't thought to get a towel out of the linen closet before I got into the shower, so I ended up having to cross over all of that black, gloriously slick granite dripping wet before I could pull the largest, fluffiest white towel in the world out of the closet and finally start toweling off. The trail of water puddles was regrettable, but I couldn't just
stand there in the shower and wait to drip-dry.
Once I was dry, I wrapped the towel around my body and headed back over to the counter where I'd left all of my clothes. I'd just picked up my underwear when something green and glittery shot through the sliver of space between the bathroom door and the frame and bounced off of me.
I'd never seen anything like it and my natural inclination had been to get away, but it was moving too fast, so all I managed to do was throw myself dangerously off balance on a slick surface that had entirely too much water on it.
My arms had already started flailing; I probably would have fallen over even if nothing else had happened, but the impact from the glittering green spark sealed my fate. Something that small, even moving so fast, shouldn't have been able to hit me hard enough to overbalance me, but there was an odd sense of weight to the spark when it hit me, and I was already so off-balance.
I felt my legs fly out from under me with a flash of panic that superseded all concerns about modesty or anything else. My panties went flying through the air, forgotten as I made a mad grab for the counter.
I didn't realize that I'd screamed until my butt landed on the hard black floor and the green, glittery spark that had caused me so many problems disappeared with a pop.
"Selene! Are you okay?"
I once again wished that I could just disappear into a hole in the ground and pull it closed after me. I wanted nothing more than to just sit there and nurse my wounds, but Jace sounded like he was in a near panic—if I didn't respond soon he was going to come charging through the bathroom door.
"Stay out! I mean I think I'm okay, but please don't come in here."
I could hear Jace shifting around just outside of the bathroom door, but it didn't sound like he was getting any closer.
"Are you sure you're okay? What happened? It sounded like you fell…"
"Yeah, some kind of crazy green insect charged me and it kind of freaked me out. I tripped over my own legs and just about cracked my head open on your beautiful, dangerous floor."
"I'm sorry, Selene. I really should have put down some bathroom mats. I was going to, but all of my old stuff was the wrong color so I didn't even bother having the movers pack it up. I've got some new mats arriving tomorrow, but that's not very useful right now. Are you really sure you don't need any help?"
I double-checked that my towel hadn't come off during the course of the fall, and then shifted around gingerly in an effort to figure out how much I'd hurt myself.
"No. I mean, yes, I'm sure I don't need you in here while I'm sprawled on the floor wearing nothing more than a towel. I don't think that I broke anything. Just a second and I'll try to stand up."
I grabbed ahold of the cabinet with both hands and then slowly pulled myself back up to my feet, wincing at the pain in my butt. I probably hadn't broken my tailbone, but I was going to have some spectacular bruises—at least nobody was going to see them.
"Yeah, everything but my dignity is intact. You can stop worrying. How long have you been standing out there, by the way?"
"Not long. I'd just walked into my room when I heard you scream. I saw your shoes downstairs when I came in to grab some stuff from the kitchen and then I passed Kat on my way up here."
I looked around the bathroom searching for my underwear and then felt my heart sink. They had landed in the single biggest puddle from my trip over to get a towel. I hobbled over and picked them up off the floor, but my suspicions turned out to be right—they were soaked through. There was no way I was wearing them anytime soon.
"Selene, what's going on?"
I closed my eyes and wished with all my might that everything that had just happened was nothing more than a bad dream, but when I opened them again I was still standing there in a towel in Jace's bathroom.
"Nothing much. I dropped my underwear in a puddle, so I'm basically just wishing that I'd never been born."
Jace was silent for several seconds. "Wrap a towel around yourself—I'm coming in."
"What? No, you can't come in here!"
This was already embarrassing enough—the last thing I needed was for him to see me looking like a drowned rat.
"Are you covered up?"
"I've got a towel on, but you're not coming in here."
"If you've got a towel on then you're more covered up than you would be in a swimsuit."
When his hand appeared on the edge of the door I squeaked. "Jace, no! What if it falls down?"
"Hold it up. You're going to have to trust me, Selene."
I opened my mouth to try to come up with another argument, but it was too late. The door was open and he was standing there in nothing but a pair of old jeans that hung from his hips like they were barely winning the war against gravity.
"You're not wearing a shirt…"
"Yeah, sorry about that. I spilled stuff on it while I was marinating the steaks and I didn't want it to soak through and ruin my jeans—these are my favorite pair."
"They are very nice jeans."
What I really meant was that his warm, chiseled body made them look nice, but thankfully I wasn't quite so far gone as to just blurt that out. Jace smiled like he knew exactly what I'd been thinking.
"Thanks—all of the rest of my shirts are in here though so I was waiting for you to finish before coming in to get a replacement."
His eyes briefly traveled down my towel-wrapped form and I inched the towel a little higher around my torso as I valiantly fought off the blush I could feel trying to ambush me.
"How exactly are you planning on saving the day this time, Superman?"
"Follow me and see."
Jace skirted the worst of the puddles as he made his way over to the closet, opening the door with a hiss of pressurized air. I followed hesitantly, worried that my towel was somehow going to slip despite the fact that my arms were pressing against my sides nearly hard enough to leave bruises.
By the time I made it over to the closet, he'd already let go of the door and started moving boxes around. I was going to have to lift an arm up if I wanted to open the door and join him in there. It was just one arm, but it felt like playing Russian roulette. I almost didn't do it, almost just stayed out there in the bathroom rather than going into the closet, but I couldn't resist the lure of being in his presence.
I took a deep breath, grabbed ahold of my towel with my left hand to augment the death grip my left arm had on it, and pulled the door open with my right hand. Jace looked over at me for just a second before returning to his search.
A few seconds later he turned around with a big box in his arms. "This is it. Sorry, I just didn't know how to direct you to the right one."
"So the contents of that box will save me from embarrassment? I didn't realize that they'd come up with portable time machines that small…"
"Ha, ha. Even when mortified you still manage to hold onto your sense of humor."
"Really? How do I let go of that? I could really use another hand to hold onto my towel."
That time I got nothing more than an absent nod—Jace was already focused on something else. "Look, Selene, I need you to promise me that you'll hear me out, that you won't freak out until after you know the full story."
"Wow, that's ominous—I'm not sure that I want to know what's in that box now."
He shrugged. "That's fine with me—it would make things a lot easier if I don't have to have this conversation now. You can always just go commando. I'll leave so you can pull your pants on."
Jace started to walk around me, box still in his arms, but I suddenly couldn't let him walk out on me without finding out what was in the box. The last two days had been filled with nothing but secret after secret and this was the first time that anyone had offered to explain anything.
I grabbed Jace's arm. "Stop. I'm not going commando, so go ahead and just come clean about the fact that you collect women's underwear."
I'd said it mostly in jest because I couldn't come up with any other explanation for how he was go
ing to solve this particular problem. The sickly grin I got in response seemed to indicate that I struck uncomfortably close to the mark.
Jace set the box down and then looked back up at me again before he started to open it. "Remember, you promised to let me explain everything before you freak out."
I watched as Jace opened the box and revealed something that looked like a time capsule. Rather than the box of frilly underwear that I'd been afraid he had stashed in there, I seemed to be looking at a random collection of…well, junk.
Jace started pulling things out, stacking them on a nearby box. A leather-bound book similar to the ones I'd seen on his bookcase was first, handled with the reverence of a true bibliophile. That was followed by a couple pairs of jeans, and a toiletries bag.
There was a sense of familiarity to it all, an inexplicable feeling of déjà vu. I didn't know any of this stuff, hadn't seen it before, but I felt like it was familiar in some way.
I reached over to the pants and fished them out from the bottom of the pile. I'd actually wanted to go after the journal first, but something told me that Jace wouldn't have let me read it—not yet, not until after he'd finished explaining.
I unfolded the jeans and shook my head in confusion. It was a designer brand from my mom's era, something I recognized solely by chance. The cut was timeless, but there was no question in my mind but that the clothing I was looking at was older than I was.
Jace had paused for a second while I examined the jeans, but now he pulled out a heavy leather jacket that was a smaller, more feminine version of the one that I'd been wearing for the last two days, the one that he'd loaned me. The jacket was followed by a bunch of tops, one of which caught my eye.
I pulled the blue fabric off of the top of the pile and my heart sped up as I got my first good look at it. Jace pulled several bras out of the box, which should have made me blush and stutter, but I was too focused on the shirt to give anything else much attention.
My sweater had been my unconscionable splurge from last year, the thing I couldn't afford and which I shouldn't have purchased, but which I bought anyway. The year before I'd purchased a blue top that was completely unremarkable other than the fact that I liked the color and it fit me perfectly, making it look like I actually had boobs without hugging my stomach so much that I looked like a fatso.
I'd had to borrow an extra twenty bucks from Ari to buy it and had spent the next three months babysitting and doing other odd jobs to pay her back. I'd worn it so often that it was nearly falling apart. It would have been my go-to outfit this morning instead of the sweater if not for the fact that the last time I'd worn it my dad had told me it wasn't decent any more now that parts of the material had become nearly see-through.
That shirt was still sitting at home in my closet, but this shirt, the one in my hands, was an exact match. Despite my inner turmoil, my hands weren't shaking as I gently placed the blue shirt down and picked up one of the bras.
It was my size—exactly my size—just like the shirt, just like the pants, and just like the panties that Jace had finally pulled out of the box. He at least had the grace to look embarrassed as he offered them to me.
"Here, they are all brand new. They've been laundered, but never worn—there are more in here that are still in the manufacturer's packaging if you'd rather. I don't know what you—"
I cut him off as I reached into the box and pulled out a package of brand-new underwear. "How long have you been in town, Jace?"
"We told you—we arrived yesterday."
"Tell me the truth! You didn't just arrive yesterday, you've been here for years spying on me—it's the only way you could have a box of clothes that was obviously intended for me." I grabbed the blue shirt with my other hand and shook it in his face. "Did you follow me to that store two years ago? Is that how you ended up with this?"
I wanted to close my eyes and slam my head into the wall. I'd been so stupid. Of course any cute, rich guy who was interested in me wasn't going to be well-adjusted. Of course Jace was secretly some kind of stalker pervert. I didn't know how he'd managed to follow me around all these years without me seeing him, but maybe he'd been hiring people to do it.
All I knew for sure was that I needed to get away, needed to get somewhere safe before he realized how big of a mistake he'd made by telling me.
I jumped up to my feet and started towards the closet doors, cursing myself. I should have pretended to be fine with everything so that he wouldn't realize that I was going to run away as soon as his back was turned.
"Selene, it's not like that. Hear me out."
"You're right, it's not like that. I'm sorry, I think my shower was too hot and it's been too long since I had anything to eat. I'm just a little light headed."
I was through the doors and I headed directly towards the counter. I grabbed my clothes—everything but my gym shirt, which I kicked out of the way so that the door would swing shut behind me—and made a beeline through the bedroom.
"Selene, where are you going?"
"It's just so hot in here, Jace. I'll be right back, I just need to step out and cool down a little."
As soon as I crossed into the bedroom I broke into a sprint.
I've never been much of an athlete, but I surprised myself at just how fast I managed to get going across the soft, springy surface of the carpet. As surprising as that was, it was nothing compared to the shock of having Jace appear in front of me less than five feet before I would have arrived at the door out into the sitting area.
When I say appeared I don't mean that he ran really fast and caught me by surprise. There was literally nothing but empty space in front of me, and then he was there filling it as though he'd teleported.
I tried to stop, tried to change direction so that I wouldn't crash into his waiting arms, but I was moving much too fast to have a prayer of doing either. I half expected to knock him over when we collided, but he absorbed all of my momentum without even grunting, and then grabbed me by the shoulders.
I dropped my clothes and tried to hit him, but it was like watching a child try to hurt an adult. I wasn't fast enough or strong enough either one. He grabbed my wrists as my fists headed towards him and immobilized them with a vice-like grip that was only a hair's breadth from being painful.
"You promised to hear me out and that's what you're going to do, Selene."
"Let me go!"
I threw myself toward him, trying to bite him, but he flipped me around so that my back was pressed up against his chest, my arms crossed in front of me and my wrists down next to my waist. It was like he'd put me in a strait jacket.
I lifted my foot to slam it down on Jace's instep, but he jerked me to the side, throwing my balance off, and then tripped me and took me down to the floor. I'd never fallen that fast before. Somehow I landed on the carpet on my back, with Jace straddling my hips and my arms pinned above my head. I never would have expected my towel to weather that kind of rough-housing, but somehow it had stayed more or less in position. That only lasted until I struggled though. The first time I tried to pull my arms free my chest nearly popped free of the towel.
It was probably silly that the imminent threat of nudity was what finally broke through my panic, but that was what did it. I was still scared, but I was now thinking clearly enough to realize that there was no way I was going to get away from Jace.
The sun wasn't setting yet, but it was low enough on the horizon that it cast Jace's chest and abs into stark relief. I'd grown up wrestling my dad and even the occasional neighbor boy until after I turned nine and they couldn't take being defeated by a girl, but that was all years ago and it had never felt like this.
My heart seemed to be skipping every other beat and tendrils of warm energy seemed to be working their way down my arms from my wrists where Jace was holding onto me. I was suddenly aware in ways that I hadn't been before just how big his upper body was. He was so much bigger than me that I'd never had even the slightest chance of throwing him off me even
if my towel hadn't been threatening to come off.
The knowledge that I couldn't win combined with the addictive feel of his skin against mine finally calmed me down. It was uncanny the way that he always seemed to know exactly what I was feeling. As soon as I'd calmed down Jace let go of my arms and then he sat back as I reached down and adjusted my towel. There wasn't a ton that I could do while he was still sitting on me, pinning my towel against my body, but I managed to make it so I wasn't in quite such immediate danger of exposing myself.
"Are you finally ready to listen?"
"Do I have a choice?"
"You could put your fingers in your ears and yell at the top of your lungs to drown me out."
I shook my head. "You'd just pull my fingers out of my ears."
"Knowing that you couldn't succeed doesn't always stop you."
I didn't understand how Jace managed to do that. Between one heartbeat and the next he'd changed how I felt. He'd gone from being scary psycho-stalker back to being the guy I'd been so busy falling for.
"Fine, I'll listen. Are you going to let me get up?"
Jace considered the question for several seconds before finally shaking his head. "Sorry, I'd like to, but you might freak out again and I don't think your towel would survive another takedown like that."
That made me blush again, and this time I could feel the heat spreading down to the broad expanse of exposed skin that my towel wasn't up to covering.
"I promise not to run again."
"Sorry, Selene, that ship has sailed. You're going to just have to lie there while I explain things."
My exasperation was strong enough to cut through even the haze his good looks threw over me.
"Fine, please proceed. Explain why you've been following me around for the last few years. Explain why you've been stockpiling underwear for me. What can you possibly say to make it sound like you're not some kind of creep?"
Jace sighed and then took a deep, bracing breath. "I haven't been following you around, and I wasn't stockpiling those clothes. Everything in that box was already yours. You gave it to me a long time ago."
I wanted to laugh in his face, wanted to tell him that he was delusional, but something inside of me refused.
"Do you know how crazy that sounds?"
Jace laughed bitterly. "Considering that this isn't the first time I've had this conversation? Yes, I'm very much aware that it sounds like I'm a lunatic."
"I don't remember meeting you before yesterday, Jace. I might not be the sharpest crayon in the box, but I'm pretty sure I would have remembered meeting you sometime over the last couple of years."
"It didn't happen within the last couple of years. You gave all of that to me a lot longer ago than that."
"That makes even less sense. I was a late bloomer—I wouldn't have even fit into most of those clothes before a couple of years ago."
"I know. You told me that when you gave me the box, told me that if we found you before you turned fifteen I needed to keep my hands off of you until you'd had time to grow up a little more."
I giggled at the thought of me of all people telling Jace to keep his hands off of me. The old me would have told any boy to keep his distance, but meeting Jace had changed all of that. In fact, lately I'd had a hard time thinking about anything other than Jace's hands touching me.
There was more than just a touch of hysteria to my giggle, but I figured that could be excused given the circumstances.
"So what are we talking about, time travel?"
"No, not even close."
"What then?"
Jace refused to meet my eyes as if second-guessing the decision to tell me. Part of me was tempted to tell him not to worry. My earlier concerns notwithstanding, I wasn't entirely sure that I was still capable of disbelieving anything he told me.
Talk about scary. I wasn't sure that I would ever be comfortable with that kind of blind adoration, but deep down inside of me something was convinced that Jace would never do anything to hurt me.
"Do you believe in reincarnation?"
"Like people coming back as cows?"
"No, not exactly. More like the idea that some people come back again and again, reborn each time they die."
"I don't know. I guess I never really thought about it. Are you trying to tell me I gave you that box in a past life?"
Jace looked down at me with those gorgeous eyes that I trusted despite everything, and nodded. "That's exactly what I'm saying."
I shook my head, part in disbelief and part in confusion. "That's impossible, Jace. The other version of me would have had to give you that box before I was born. You would have been an infant—you wouldn't be able to remember any of that unless—"
"Unless I'm a lot older than I look."
I licked my lips, unsure if I really wanted to know.
"How much older are we talking exactly?"
"I don't know, not exactly. Can we just leave it at a lot and move on? I'm not done blowing your mind and I'd rather not stretch your ability to believe any further than I have to."
"No, I want to know. If you're going to tell me stuff then I want to know it all. How old are you?"
"My best guess is that I was born about five hundred years ago, but it's not much more than a guess, so you should try to avoid getting fixated on that particular number."
I closed my eyes, partially in an attempt to let myself process what he'd said, and partially because I suddenly felt a strong need to protect myself from seeing his face. It was too hard to be skeptical when he was this close to me.
"Okay, let's just say that I believe you for now. You're five hundred years old, give or take a few decades. So what does that mean? Did you find the fountain of youth, or…?"
I trailed off, unable to finish the question. Jace shifted forward, almost as though he wanted to comfort me, but in the end he settled back on my hips without touching my face.
"There is no such thing as the fountain of youth, Selene."
"So you're not human then."
The words were ash in my mouth. It figured that the universe couldn't let me be happy for more than a day or two. I was now faced with the dilemma of trying to decide whether I wanted Jace to be a delusional stalker or if I'd rather be dating outside of my species.
"No, I'm not. I'm something else."
"So what, you ran into me a few decades back, fell in love with that version of me, and then once I died you thought that you'd try to recreate the magic by hunting for me among all of the billions of people in the world?"
Jace cupped the side of my face, not answering until I opened my eyes. "Is that really so hard for you to believe?"
"Well, I did start off by saying that you fell in love with me. Granted, it was previous-life me, but still, that's pretty hard for any rational person to believe…"
Jace opened his mouth to respond, but didn't get a chance to get any words out before Kat's voice drifted up to us.
"I hope you two love birds are decent. Not only do I not want to see that, Ari is here with me now, and I'm not sure we should be corrupting her like that quite yet. Oh, also the burgers seem to be burning…"
Jace swore, looking back and forth between the door and me. "Seriously, Kat couldn't have worse timing."
I gave him my best crooked smile in response and waved for him to go downstairs. "Go ahead. Kat said that you're particular about dinner and I don't want my sister to see us like this. I think that she's on board with keeping all of this a secret from our dad, but there are limits even to what she'd be willing to keep from him. This wouldn't be easy to explain away."
"I owe you an explanation…"
"No, it's fine, Jace. I won't run away. You'll have a chance to explain later. Go take care of the food and tell Kat to stop implanting ideas in Ari's head. I'll stay here and get dressed. You can even lock me in with those fancy locks if that is what it will take for you to feel you're going to get a chance to finish explaining everything."
Jace looked at me, b
ut it wasn't just a look. It was like he'd peeled back the illusion I usually presented to the rest of the world and looked straight into my soul.
"I don't need to lock you up. This time I believe you when you say that you'll hear me out."
"Good, because I really mean it."
