Lux (The Nocte Trilogy, #3)(31)

Keep his ring. It will hold you to the ground, and make you always remember where you are. Eleanor’s words echo through my head and I focusfocusfocus on them.

I’m here.

Dare’s here.

Yet a minute ago, as real as anything, I wasn’t here. I was somewheresomewheresomewhere else.

We go home, back to the funeral home, and the days inch, fly, swirl past. They turn into weeks, and the weeks turn into months, confusing wonderful beautiful months.

Dare spends my birthday with me, then two. He spends Christmas. He spends every day in between. Every day, he becomes more and more unsettled.

Because he’s not real.

Because I don’t know what he is.

“If I could fix everything, I would,” I tell him one day as we stand on the cliffs. The wind whips at my hair and I shove it away. Dare stares at me and there’s sadness in his eyes.

“I know, Calla Lily.”

He’s so vulnerable, and sad, and he’s seventeen now and I’m fourteen.

I lean up, because I need to kiss him more than anything in the world.

“Kiss me,” I whisper, looking hungrily into his eyes. He looks away and the warmth the warmth the warmth. It warms my belly and floods my heart.

“I shouldn’t,” he answers, low and husky, and he’s unsure because he might be a figment of my imagination, or we might be related, and he shouldn’t he shouldn’t he shouldn’t.

But he wants to. I can see it see it see it. His eyes are cloudy and tormented.

“Do it anyway,” I reply, hoping, praying, holding my breath.

So he does,

He lowers his dark head and his lips press into mine, hard, warm, firm, real.

My first kiss.

Kissing him is like taking a fresh wintry breath. It gives me life, it fills me up, filling all of my darkest, most emptiest places.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” Dare mutters, yanking away, and I don’t want him to leave, but he does it anyway.

He stalks away and I trail behind, my fingers on my lips, still in too much wonder to care that he’s regretful. I know why… because I’m fourteen and he’s seventeen and he’s my cousin and he thinks that creates a chasm.

But it doesn’t.

It’s not a chasm,

It draws us closer together.

He’s mine. He just doesn’t know it yet.

After dinner, I find him down at the woodshed, punching at it like a machine.

“Dare, stop!” I plead, holding onto his hands, trying to prevent him from injuring himself further. There is blood on his shirt, blood gushing from his knuckles. His face is so tormented, so pained.

“Do you know what it’s like not to be able to change something?” he asks, and his voice is so ragged, so painful to hear that it tears my heart into ripped pieces.

“Of course,” I tell him. And I lead him to the Carriage House where I clean up his wounds.

He strips his shirt off and muscle ripples from the top of his back to the bottom, and LIVE FREE is bold and strong. I can’t breathe because he’s beautiful and warm and vibrant, and he’s right here.

So close.

So close

So far away.

He studies me, my face, my eyes. And when he sighs, it’s such a lonely sound. “You don’t know what it’s like,” he says and he’s resigned. “Not like I do. Because you don’t remember everything, but I do.”

I open my mouth to reply, but he doesn’t allow it.

“I’ll be sleeping here in the Carriage House,” he tells me. “Instead of in the funeral home. It’s for the best. Maybe things aren’t going to change after all, this time. Maybe this will always be how it is, and if that’s the case, then I just want to let go, Cal.”

“Let go?”

He nods and I’m dying dying dying inside, because he can’t do that. I need him.

He won’t let me argue because he thinks it’s the right thing. My soul is crushed, but I leave anyway, because that’s what he wants. For now.

But my room is empty and I’m empty and I want nothing more than for him to come back and sleep on my floor where I can wake up in the night and make sure he’s safe.

I curl onto my side in my cold sheets, and again, I press my fingers to my lips where his glorious mouth had been just hours ago.

I’d give anything for him to be back. In my room, in this world. Just here.

I fall asleep and my slumber is restless and dark.

The dreams

The dreams

The dreams.

The boy is back, in his hood, and he stands in the middle of the road.

“You weren’t supposed to give the ring to him,” he tells me. “You were supposed to give it to me. I could’ve saved them, Calla.”

“Saved who?” I demand, but then I know.

“You know who,” he nods. “You must change it. You must change it. You must change it so I can have the ring.”

Because if I don’t, there is water and burning rubber and fire. There is screaming and it’s my mother, I think. There’s sand, there’s a white sheet, there’s sobbing, wailing, dying.

My mother’s eyes are lifeless

And Finn

Finn

Finn.

A voice is whispering, chanting.

St. Michael the archangel, defend us in battle.