Black Bird of the Gallows(78)

His gaze slides over my face. Pain tightens his features, quickly disguised. “Yes. All those things and more.”

A tear slides down my cheek. He wipes it away with his thumb. “Right. Well, how am I supposed to do that if I can’t stop being in love with you?”

His hand stills. “You’re in love with me?”

Seriously? I press down the urge to hit him. “And you called Deno dense?”

“Deno’s right—I do feed off the dead. I’m unnatural. Disgusting. An abomin—”

I shut him up by closing the space between us and pressing my fingertips to his lips. “Say one more nasty thing about yourself and I’ll clobber you.”

Reece pulls me up against his bare chest. There aren’t even words for this feeling. It’s need and longing and a hearty dose of desperation. Thoughts spill away as he lowers his head. His lips brush against mine in the whisper of a kiss. It’s different from any other. It tastes of certainty and sadness and promises that can never be made. It drags me under, like floodwaters from a broken dam.

Too soon, he eases back, breath harsh against my cheek as his hands slide to my hips. Then, with what looks like colossal effort, he pushes himself away from me.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, shivering with rejection.

He rests his forehead against mine. “Everything. Your friends are downstairs. Rafette is on our heels and I—” He leans back, rubs tense hands over his face. “I’m up here kissing you like we have all the time in the world.”

I draw in a deep breath. Downstairs, I can hear Lacey playing the piano. A long, plaintive melody rising above the hum of the generator.

I should be thankful he’s so flipping considerate, but with my heart beating out of my chest and my head spinning like a top, I can’t quite manage it. “Right.”

He edges past me, into the hall. A flush rides high on his cheeks, and he doesn’t meet my gaze. “Go ahead and wash up. I’m going to borrow some of your dad’s clothes.”

My lips move and sound comes out. I’m not sure how. “Yeah. Sure.”

I close the bathroom door and dunk my head under cold running water until my face is numb. Now, with water burning my sinuses, I see his wisdom in stopping our kiss. It just pisses me off that there is never a good time for Reece and me. Probably never will be. And I’m so tired of remembering that little fact.

I peel off my filthy clothes like they’re a layer of rotting skin. I ball them up and stuff them in the wastebasket. I definitely don’t smell like my clean towel. The shower beckons me to blow through the fuel in the generator and take a long, hot one. Instead, I use a washcloth and cold water to scrub off what filth I can.

After, I pad down the hall in a towel to my room. Reece isn’t in there. I look around my room in a state of disorientation, but not because it’s different. It’s so much the same, I don’t know what to make of it. The pile of laundry lays half in, mostly out of the hamper. A knotted mess of headphone wires and power cords I’ve been meaning to untangle sits next to my bed. Necklaces hang off my cluttered vanity mirror. It’s all so very much the same.

But the owner of this room is not the same.

I put on clean underwear. Jeans. A black sweater. Warm socks and the hiking boots I wear on the trails. I lay back on the bed, sighing as my body sinks into the mattress and exhaustion smashes me across the head. The bed is a cool purple paradise, and I’m so tired. The thought of crawling under the rumpled covers and sleeping for a week makes my body ache with a very different kind of longing than it had a few minutes ago in Reece’s arms.

He appears in my doorway, composed and dressed in a pair of my dad’s designer jeans and a snug thermal shirt. “I didn’t stop kissing you because I wanted to. I hope you know that.”

I gaze at the ceiling. “I know.”

“Maybe one day…” He shakes his head. “I don’t know—”

I hold up a hand. “Stop. Just…stop. Don’t pretend we’ll ever be together. You know we won’t.”

He comes forward and sits on the mattress next to me. His hands close on mine, tightly. “I remember those times we spent together when we were little kids. I thought—no, wished so hard it hurt—that I could be a normal boy and see you every day. That I could walk to school with you and sit with you at lunch. Watch you change. Grow up with you.” His lips curve gently, at the corners. “I’d give anything to be a normal guy for you, Angie.”

“You did get to go to school with me,” I say.

“That’s true,” he says with a smile. “I’ll carry these memories with me for the rest of my existence, however long that is.”

I sit up with a strangled sob and wrap my arms around him. His arms loop around me and pull me close, and his heart beats firm and steady against my cheek. The rise and fall of his breathing, so ordinary. So human. But he’s not. I must not pretend otherwise. Not when a short while ago, I watched a crow transform into this boy I’m embracing.

This boy I cannot keep, no matter how much I want to.

With effort, I sit up and shift away from him. I wipe at an errant tear with rubbery fingers. “Let’s go. We need to go.”

Downstairs, the piano stops abruptly. Outside, a chorus of crows begins to shriek.