Lux (The Nocte Trilogy, #3)(37)

What the hell?

Sabine’s words come back to me You have to choose, You have to choose.

Last night before bed, I’d chosen Finn, over anything, over my own life.

Did I do this?

It’s not possible.

Did I do this?

Finn looks at me. “Why aren’t you dressed? You’ve got to go get ready.”

“For?” I arch an eyebrow.

He’s quiet and still, I remember the accident, and a heavy sense of foreboding slams into me right before he answers.

“For mom’s funeral.”

Oh.

God.

My mother is dead and my memory has holes.

I somehow trip down to my room and put on a black dress, and I somehow trip down the stairs with my brother and sit in the family section of the chapel, and my dad holds my hand.

The casket is white and there are star-gazers on it, and the lid is closed.

Someone reads a poem, then another.

Someone else speaks about angels and Heaven.

My dad cries silently.

Finn is stoic, and grips my arm.

I’m numb.

Because I thought mom was in the hospital and Finn was dead.

Only Finn is here and mom is dead.

You

Have

To

Choose.

Reality isn’t real.

Like always.

The music plays as they roll the casket out, down the long aisle, as if my mother is on parade, her last parade.

We stand and the funeral-goers file past us, one by one by one.

I’m sorry for your loss.

Heaven has gained another angel.

If you need anything, just call.

All trite words from people who don’t know what else to say.

And then someone new stands in front of me. His eyes are dark, his hair is dark, his body is lean. He’s wearing a black suit just like all of them, but he’s wearing a silver ring, and it gleams in the sunlight, and something something something ripples through me, but I don’t know what it is.

“I’m so sorry,” he tells me, and he’s got a British accent.

I feel the strangest feeling in the pit of my stomach as he shakes my hand, as he touches me and there’s electricity, but I brush it away because I don’t know him and he doesn’t matter. Only Finn matters. And mourning my poor mother.

The stranger passes through the line and I turn to the next visitor, and the next and the next and the next.

The day is exhausting.

The day is never-ending.

I lean my head on the family car window as we drive home from the cemetery. We’re surrounded by all things green and alive, by pine trees and bracken and lush forest greenery. The vibrant green stretches across the vast lawns, through the flowered gardens, and lasts right up until you get to the cliffs, where it finally and abruptly turns reddish and clay.

I guess that’s pretty good symbolism, actually. Green means alive and red means dangerous. Red is jagged cliffs, warning lights, splattered blood. But green… green is trees and apples and clover.

“How do you say green in Latin?” I ask Finn absently.

“Viridem,” he answers.

And then something else occurs to me, something out of the blue.

“What does Quid Pro Quo mean?”

Finn stares at me. “It means something for something. Why?”

“No reason,” I answer, but my heart is pound, pound, pounding. Over and over. Because something for something. Did I give something to get something?

ThumpThump,ThumpThump.

I trudge up to my room and drop into bed without even showering.

I feel a thousand pounds of guilt on my chest because I only have one thought, one thought that makes my chest tighten and constrict and pound.

I love my mom,

I love my mom

I love my mom.

But thank God it wasn’t Finn.

Quid pro quo.





Chapter Eighteen





I wait at the hospital for Finn to get out of Group, for him to converse and compare with the other patients who have SAD. Because for whatever reason, his thoughts are muddled now, not mine.

It’s nothing I can explain,

It’s nothing I can understand.

Ever since I thought he died, ever since we buried my mom, Finn’s mind has deteriorated, and mine has strengthened.

I don’t know why.

I’m just thankful that he’s alive.

So while I wait for him, because I’d drive him here every day for the rest of my life in gratitude that he’s alive, I read my book, I listen to my music, I close my eyes.

It’s how I can ignore the shrill, multi-pitched yells that drift down the hallways. Because honestly, I don’t want to know what they’re yelling about.

I stay suspended in my pretend world for God knows how long, until I feel someone staring at me.

When I say feel, I literally feel it, just like someone is reaching out and touching my face with their fingers.

Glancing up, I suck my breath in when I find dark eyes connected to mine, eyes so dark they’re almost black, and the energy in them is enough to freeze me in place.

A boy is attached to the dark gaze.

A man.

He’s probably no more than twenty or twenty-one, but everything about him screams man. There’s no boy in him. That part of him is very clearly gone. I see it in his eyes, in the way he holds himself, in the perceptive way he takes in his surroundings, then stares at me with singular focus, like we’re somehow connected by a tether. He’s got a million contradictions in his eyes…aloofness, warmth, mystery, charm, and something else I can’t define.