Charade (Heven & Hell)

by Cambria Hebert

  His mouth kicked up in a crooked smile. “I’m fine. It’s you that almost drowned. I’m not leaving you alone today.”

  My hands fell to my sides. “You’re skipping work for me?”

  “I won’t be able to concentrate anyway.” He grabbed up the sandwich and took a huge bite. He groaned in appreciation. I couldn’t blame him. I made a good sandwich.

  I couldn’t say that I was sorry he was skipping work. I would get to spend an entire day with him—something that had only happened once or twice since we met. I was sorry, though, that the reason was because he was afraid for my life. “Maybe Gemma could teach me to fight too.”

  He paused in chewing to look down at me. “No.”

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s a good idea. Then I would be able to take care of myself. You wouldn’t have to do it.”

  “It’s my job.” He shoved yet another insanely huge bite into his mouth. He was going to have that sandwich gone in like three bites. I shook my head and began to make him another one.

  I knew that Sam loved me. I felt it every day but how much of his love came from responsibility? How long before he tired of me and all the trouble I caused him? “I’ll ask her tomorrow.” I went back to finishing the sandwiches.

  “You’ll get hurt. Gemma’s tough. The answer is no.”

  “You’re not the boss of me.” Why did he think he could tell me what to do? I muttered beneath my breath while I shoved everything back into the fridge and slammed the door. When I turned, I ran right into a solid wall of Sam.

  “You scared me today,” he said quietly. “When I pulled you to shore you weren’t breathing, your lips were blue…” I laid my palm against his chest. “All I could think about was that if it weren’t for me, none of this would have happened.”

  “This is not your fault.”

  “I’ve brought a lot of evil into your life.”

  I wrapped my arms around his waist. “You’ve brought a lot of love.”

  “I have to do this. I have to be the one to train with Gemma. I’m the one who brought the evil. I’m going to be the one to take it away. Your job is to stay alive.”

  Learning how to defend myself would make that a lot easier, but clearly he wasn’t going to listen, especially after I almost drowned and was standing here wanting pain relievers. I tipped my head back to ask, “Want to walk up to the orchard?” Maybe a change in scenery would do us good.

  He pressed a kiss to my forehead. “First, make some hot tea for your throat. We never did get anything.”

  Hot tea did sound good so I heated the water and added a generous amount of honey. Sam offered me a bite of his sandwich but the thought of eating made me queasy. When he wasn’t looking I quickly downed a few pain relievers because my head was still pounding. The pressure on the back of my skull was uncomfortable. A vision of beady red eyes flashed before me and I gasped, dropping the bottle of pills.

  Sam was at my side immediately. “What?”

  “Nothing,” I said, scooping the pills up and shoving them in the cupboard.

  “Maybe you should lie down.”

  “No! I’m fine. I want to walk with you.”

  The orchard was showing promise for bountiful apples in the fall. Sam and I worked hard these past couple of weeks to get it where it needed to be and the work was paying off. The twisting apple trees were full of leaves and blossoming fruit. This spot was special to Sam and me, our haven where we could come to be alone and get away from all the drama in our lives. But right now, it was hard to appreciate its full beauty because Sam was scanning everywhere with his eyes. I hated that we could never relax, that danger seemed to stalk us at every turn.

  “We should talk,” I said, stopping at the top of the hill to look out upon the rows of trees. The only way I knew to make things any easier would be to come up with some sort of plan. If I could convince Gemma to train me, then it would be one more line of defense.

  “Don’t want to,” Sam murmured behind me, his hand releasing the band that held back my hair. Soft strands fell around me, brushing my cheeks. He took my hand and we walked farther into the orchard. About halfway in, he stopped and sat beneath a tree pulling me down with him.

  “This has to stop, all this worrying,” I whispered. His warm breath against my neck was intoxicating, making it hard to think.

  “I’m not worrying right now,” he breathed the words against my neck, his lips grazing me ever so lightly.

  I had to stay focused.

  “I want to train with you and Gemma.” My voice wavered, not sounding as strong as I wanted it to.

  I was tucked as tightly as possible between his thighs with every inch of my back pressed against his front. His knees were drawn up, making a cocoon for me and his arms were wound tightly around me just beneath my breasts. Sam drew one hand up to brush the hair farther to the side, exposing even more of the sensitive flesh on my neck. “Sam.” I tried to be firm.

  “No,” he said, like that was the end of it. Then he pressed a gentle kiss just behind my ear. “You’re the one that said we need to relax more; that’s what I am doing…”

  “You can’t turn my words around on me.”

  His hair had grown longer these past short weeks and now the messy locks tickled my cheek. He pressed his face into my neck and inhaled. When he blew out the breath, he scraped his teeth over the back of my neck.

  I groaned, frustrated that he wasn’t really listening to what I was saying, but was briefly distracted because I sensed a small rush of anxiety and adrenaline pumping through him, but then it was gone, and he turned my face to the side and began kissing me. I turned completely around, folding my knees into my chest and faced him.

  “Closer,” he urged, tugging me even closer.

  When our lips met again, he moved suddenly, grabbing me, swiftly tucking me beneath him and lowering his body to brush against mine. The grass was soft against my back and it was warm, heated from the sun. The scent of him, strong, heady and deep mixed with the fragrant sweet, budding apples overhead acted as a balm to everything that had happened that day.

  I loved this boy. More than myself. More than life. More than anything. Tears leaked from beneath my lids because my feelings were so intense that they had nowhere else to go, there just wasn’t room in a single body for how I felt for him.

  He kissed me fiercely, his lips slanting over mine with deep hungry aggression. Our bodies moved against one another… searching. Just as Sam was relaxing, his head snapped up. He was breathing hard, his chest rising and falling rapidly. He rose above me with his eyes closed and jaw locked.

  “Hey,” I murmured, stroking the side of his unshaven jaw.

  He tilted his head down and his eyes popped open. They were pure gold, flashing brilliantly.

  I gasped.

  Before I knew it, he was beneath the apple tree next to me, and the breeze from the trees was brushing against my fevered skin. I watched him blink several times and take a deep breath before looking up at me. The shocking gold of his eyes was gone.

  “I’m sorry.” He sounded like he swallowed gravel.

  “What happened?” My heart was still thundering in my chest.

  “I—That was intense. I didn’t mean…” He swallowed. “My emotions and your emotions were bleeding together and…”

  “It’s all right.” I held my hands out palms up. I wanted to go to him, but I was unsure if that’s what he wanted. “A lot has been going on.”

  He shook his head as if he was trying to clear it. He looked up at me, puzzled. “You’re feeling all right?”

  I nodded.

  “You’d tell me if anything was wrong?”

  “Yes.” Like I’d have to. He would sense it, just like earlier with my throat.

  “Your throat is sore–that’s all?”

  “I have a headache too.”

  “Heven? Did that demon…” His jaw clenched and anger swam over me. “What did it do to you?”

  Red eyes flashed before my face. Where i
s it… it had spoken to me. I hadn’t remembered that until now. It wanted to know where the scroll was. It hurt me, tried to make me tell it. I shuddered.

  Sam took me by the shoulders. “Heven!”

  I looked up, my thoughts clearing at the sight of his whiskey-colored eyes. “It didn’t touch me, except to drag me down…”

  Sam’s face drained of fear. “That’s good.”

  “It talked to me, though. Asked me where the scroll was.”

  “Did you tell it?”

  “No.”

  He nodded and settled himself next to me once more, but seemed reluctant to pull me into his arms. I tried not to show my hurt and settled beside him, reaching for my mug and cradling it in my hands. I sipped at my tea while we watched a few squirrels running through the grass. A short while later I asked, “Sam? Why would you ask me that, about the demon hurting me?”

  His brow creased and I knew his mind was turning, trying to formulate an answer that I would understand. “When we were close—just now, our emotions were bleeding together and I felt something… sensed something.”

  “What?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. I just felt a jolt of darkness.”

  I took stock of my body. I didn’t feel any different than before.

  “Forget it.” He scooted closer and laid his hand on the back of my neck. Pain shot through my skull, but I ignored it. “I probably just sensed some left over fear from when you were… drowning. Add that to the hot and heavy kissing we were doing, and I guess the hound in me got a little too worked up.”

  I let it go like he asked. It was probably nothing and I wasn’t about to let anything get in the way of our afternoon together. I snuggled closer and he accepted me without reserve into his arms. I tried to dismiss it, except my brain wouldn’t let it go. Sam and I were no strangers to danger, and our make-out sessions got hotter every time, but this was the first time that the hound in him couldn’t handle it. In fact, sometimes he seemed too good at separating the hound from the human. So why not this time?

  Sam possessed good instincts, so if he sensed darkness in me, maybe it was there.

  * * *

  When we entered the kitchen, Gran was there cooking up a storm. “What’s all this?” I asked, surveying all the food.

  “I thought it was a good day for a cook out,” She said, not looking up from the fruit she was slicing.

  “Great! Sam actually has the night off from work.”

  Gran paused and looked up, a strawberry plopping onto the mountain of already cut fruit. “Well, that’s wonderful. The more the merrier.” Her cheerful words and voice did not match her aura, which was suddenly flaring with a shade of brown I rarely saw around her. She was worried… which I thought was very odd.

  “Gran, do you mind if we went and picked up Logan to join us?” I asked, trying not to give away that I was staring a little too hard at her.

  “Sure, honey.” Again another brown cloud. It was so unlike Gran to be unsettled or worried about anything. And why would she be worried that Sam and Logan were coming to dinner? Clearly, she was making enough food and they ate here a lot anyway, but was she starting to tire of having us all around so much? Was I wearing out my welcome?

  “Can we pick anything up at the store while we’re gone?” I asked.

  Her aura smoothed back out as the usual blue, green and yellow bloomed around her. Still, she seemed somewhat distracted. “No. But thank you. Hurry back so we can eat.”

  I glanced at Sam who was standing in the door. He lifted an eyebrow at me. I shrugged and followed him out the door.

  “Something wrong?” he asked as we slid into the truck.

  “Nope.” Why voice my thoughts when it was probably nothing anyway?

  Logan wasn’t upstairs in the apartment. But that wasn’t unusual. Logan made friends with the landlord’s son Brent, and they spent a lot of time downstairs playing an Xbox in the back room of the consignment shop that the landlord ran during the day. It was really great that Logan had already made a friend, and I know that Sam felt a lot less guilty about working so much since Logan had someone to hang out with.

  Sam cast a quick glance around the little efficiency before turning to me. “Ready?”

  I shook my head. “I saw that longing look you gave the bathroom. Go take a shower. I’ll go get Logan.”

  “I can wait.”

  “You could, but you don’t have to.” I walked over to the single dresser near the bed and pulled out a clean orange T-shirt and a pair of khaki cargo shorts. “Here.” I held them out.

  He hesitated, then sighed, taking the clothes and reaching around me to grab a pair of boxers. “I’ll be quick.”

  “No hurry,” I said, straightening the blankets on his bed and fluffing the pillows.

  As Sam passed through the bathroom door, he paused and looked over his shoulder. “Hev? Will you wait for me before you go downstairs?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  He didn’t say anything more as he pushed the door around without latching it. I sighed and tackled the dishes in the sink. I hated that Sam worried about me so much. How awful it must be for him to carry such a heavy responsibility. I didn’t want it to be that way with us. I didn’t want to be someone he had to take care of all the time, a hindrance to his life. I couldn’t really be part of his life if he spent all his time protecting me. Where would his life be? There had to be a way that I could somehow, someway, ease some of the pressure on him, some way that I could make him see that I was stronger than he thought.

  I was so deep in thought that I didn’t hear Logan come in. He just appeared right beside me out of thin air. I jumped and a small shriek escaped my lips. The bowl I was washing landed in the sudsy water with a hard thump.

  “Logan, you scared me!” I gasped, sliding a look to the bathroom door as I calmed my racing heart.

  “Sorry,” he said innocently, however, his eyes were anything but. It’s like he did it on purpose.

  “It’s all right.” I fished the bowl out of the water and rinsed it off. “We were going to come down to get you in a few minutes. Gran is having a barbeque tonight we wanted you to come.”

  “Great,” he muttered.

  I looked over at him sharply. “What?”

  He stared back at me and I fought the urge to shudder. There was something about him that just didn’t seem right sometimes. “I said it sounds like fun.”

  “That’s not what you said.” Why did I feel the need to argue? Keeping the peace with him was important.

  Logan stepped closer, so close that his shoulder bumped mine. “Maybe not,” he whispered, “but we both know it doesn’t matter. You won’t tell Sam anyway.”

  I stared at him in shock, forgetting about the dishes. I chose not to tell Sam about my concerns about Logan. I didn’t want to get between him and his brother. But, maybe, by not telling Sam the way I feel about Logan, I was actually giving Logan more power over us. While I thought about that I said, “I want us to be friends, Logan.”

  He smiled, but it was not friendly. The hair on the back of my neck actually stood up. “You only want to be friends because you know that if it came down to it, Sam would pick me over you.”

  His eyes, a hazel color similar to Sam’s, were not the eyes of a fourteen-year-old boy. Sometimes they looked so old and so wicked. It wasn’t often that I saw the look he was giving me right now because when Sam was around he was completely different. At those times, he was the fourteen-year-old boy who worshipped his big brother, the love he held for him was clear. Sometimes, he stared at Sam with a desperation that I found alarming. It was those times that Sam spent extra time with Logan, sensing the boy needed to know that he was there for him.

  I cleared my throat, not looking away. “I wouldn’t ask Sam to choose.”

  “I might.”

  My heart began thumping again as I considered his words and the malevolent way he said them. I didn’t want to antagonize him and make our relationship worse, but
I didn’t want him to think he could threaten me this way, either. Turns out, it didn’t matter because Sam came out of the bathroom. I stared at Logan, wondering if he would show his bad side to Sam for once.

  Of course he didn’t. He transformed himself in seconds. It was like flipping a switch inside him. He turned into the sweet, devoted brother in a flash. It almost made me wonder if I had been imagining the cold way he looked at me.

  Almost.

  “Everything okay?” Sam asked, his eyes going between Logan and me. Could he feel the tension in the space?

  I turned back to the sink, finishing up the dishes.

  “Sam!” Logan said. “Gran’s having a cookout.”

  “Cool, huh? Hey, why don’t you go grab the football? We’ll bring it with us and throw it around.”

  “Awesome.” Logan went over to the far corner of the room and began digging through a plastic laundry basket filled with odds and ends.

  Sam came up next to me, his eyes appraising as I dried my hands on the dish towel and hung it to dry. Are you okay?

  I’m good. I wondered if I should tell him what Logan said.

  You can tell me anything.

  I know. Really, I’m fine. Instead of staring into his sincere honey eyes, I wrapped my arms around his neck and hugged him. The feel of his arms was reassuring and I closed my eyes. When I opened them again I saw Logan standing there, staring at me. The innocence in his eyes once again vanished. In fact, I thought I saw a shot of an orange color— kind of like the first lick of a flame.

  I looked away. I love you, Sam.

  I love you, too. He pulled back and looked into my eyes, searching.

  I smiled.

  “Ready?” Logan asked, jogging to the door, clutching the football.

  “Let’s go,” Sam said.

  “Let me just put this away,” I said, stacking the dried dishes and opening the cupboard.

  “You don’t need to do that,” Sam said, coming back to my side.

  “I don’t mind.” I lifted the bowls and slid them into the cupboard. For a split second, my vision seemed to change and instead of the inside of the cabinet I swear it looked like I was reaching into a nest of snakes. I jerked back my hands and a bowl crashed to the floor, shattering.