Forsaken (6 page)

“
Oh, I’m not trying to
temp you into bed with me. Yet,” I added as I gave him a half
smile.

“
Close your eyes for a
second,” he said as he unfolded a pair of pants. I did as he said
and less than two seconds later he told me to open them. He stood
there in just a pair of jeans, his beautiful and perfect chest
still exposed.

“
Come here,” I said with a
smile and ushered him toward me with a finger.

A sly look crossed his face as he
walked slowly across the room to the bed. He lay next to me and
briefly pressed a kiss to my lips. He then took the picture from me
and studied it.

“
You looked so amazing
that night,” he reminisced as he stared at it. “It’s too bad Cole
had to come and ruin it,” he joked.

“
Yeah, too bad,” I only
half joked back. I studied Alex’s face as he continued to look at
the picture. “Cole told me you were going to ask me a question that
night,” I suddenly blurted. As I did, I felt Alex instantly
stiffen. “Was he telling the truth?” I knew Alex knew exactly what
I was talking about.

Again Alex was quiet for a long
moment. I felt him relax a bit and he wrapped his arms around me,
giving me a light squeeze. “Yes, he was telling the
truth.”

The tension I was feeling inside
threatened to cause me to spontaneously combust as Alex didn’t say
anything more after that. “And now…?” I barely managed to
whisper.

“
Now…” his voice was very
quiet but he kept his embrace tight and secure around me.
“Everything has changed now.”

I felt my heart sink as I heard his
words and I suddenly felt like I might vomit. I think I might have
even felt worse in that moment than I had when I had been sick and
dying just a few months before. “Oh,” was all I managed to get out
in a hoarse whisper.

“
Oh, no, Jessica,” Alex’s
voice sounded panicked as he pulled me tighter into his chest. My
emotions whiplashed as I realized with relief that I had
misunderstood him. “That will never change. My feelings for you
will
never
change. They seem to grow more intense by the day. There are
days I worry they just might overcome me. I promise you that I will
love you for forever and even longer than that. Don’t ever, ever
question that.”

“
But…” I said, feeling
slightly comforted but not understanding what the problem
was.

“
But, as I said,
everything has changed. I’m dead, Jessica. I know you don’t like it
when I say that but it’s true. I’m not even human anymore. It’s
painfully obvious in pretty much every aspect of my life. I have no
idea what is going to happen in my future.”

“
But the council, they
said you could stay with me,” I said, suddenly feeling panicky and
oddly uncertain. I had never questioned the council of angel’s
graciousness to let Alex return to me but my head was suddenly
filled with doubt. It had been a
very
gracious move. I knew what most
angels were like. They weren’t the kind and giving beings most
people believed them to be.

“
I can’t be certain about
anything anymore,” Alex said in a whisper as he released me and lay
back on his back, staring blankly up at the ceiling.

I didn’t like the fear, no, the
terror, that was suddenly ripping through my body. My hands started
shaking and my stomach was in knots. I propped myself up on an
elbow and took Alex’s jaw in my other hand, forcing him to look at
me.

“
You’re not going
anywhere,” I said in a low but firm and steady voice. “I won’t let
them take you from me. If you have to go back, I’m going with
you.”

Alex’s eyes hardened just slightly at
this as he looked back into my eyes. “Don’t say that. You’re going
to be walking this Earth for a long time. I made sure of
that.”

“
This Earth isn’t worth
walking if you’re not on it anymore,” I said, feeling a loose tear
fall from my lashes onto my cheek.

Alex pulled me into his chest again,
pressing his lips into my temple.

“
Please,” I cried softly.
“I’ve thought about this every day since Cole told me. It tortures
me, feeling the anticipation and the anxiety that you never will
actually ask it. I don’t care about everything else, all the other
complications. You’re exactly what I want, exactly as you
are.”

He absentmindedly ran a hand down my
hair, pausing briefly on the back of my neck where he knew the
branded X was. “I can’t make any promises or guarantees right now,
Jessica, other than that I love you more than I can possibly tell
you.”

Despite his words, my insides finally
crumbled and I hollowed out.

CHAPTER FOUR

ALEX

I coughed as a cloud of years and
year’s worth of dust billowed around me. I was thankful this was
the last of the carpet as I carried it out and threw it onto the
flatbed trailer I had rented. It was a good thing I didn’t need to
breathe or I would probably be getting very sick. If I could still
get sick that was. Who knew what kind of stuff was living or had
lived in the thirty-year-old carpet.

The blank walls stared back at me as I
walked inside and I felt an odd sense of excitement. I was enjoying
myself a lot more than I ever would have expected. I’d patched all
the walls since Jessica and I had gotten home. Now with the old
carpet removed I was ready to move onto the next phase of the
remodel.

My mind wandered as I applied gallon
after gallon of paint to the walls. It had been a mistake to go
down to California. It had changed everything.

I felt completely torn, now knowing
that Jessica knew I had planned on proposing. I was relieved that
she knew. She should never doubt how much I loved her. And yet it
made me sick that she did know. She would always think about what
was supposed to happen but now never could.

Jessica would hardly talk anymore. She
moved about her daily activities. She still went to work, still
attended Emily’s yoga class, still checked in on Sal. But she
wasn’t there. She’d checked out and I didn’t know where she had
gone to. But I knew I was the one who had sent her
there.

I thought back, to where this had
really all began. It was amazing how astronomically your life could
change in just one day. It had come crashing down the day I had
gotten the phone call while I was in Africa. The two most important
people in the world to me were dead, their lives gone out in just a
blink of an eye.

There had been hundreds of faces at
the funeral. Endless faces came up to me and gave their
condolences. Some I knew, and yet I couldn’t specify a single
person who had been there. They had all been a blur. And all I
could think about was how I was finally alone. A true orphan. My
mother had abandoned me as an infant, my father long dead, and now
my grandparents were gone too.

I couldn’t stay in that house. I saw
them all everywhere. My grandfather sitting at his desk, my
grandmother in the laundry room. My dad laughing from his bed. The
lake had called to me.

And then I met this crazy girl on the
stairs. I’d actually been a little worried she really was going to
hit me with the baseball bat.

There was something about Jessica,
even from that very first moment. She was so different from anyone
I had ever met. I wanted to be with her constantly but didn’t want
to come off as a creep. And then I heard her scream that
night.

She told me about the nightmares,
about angels.

I had been filled with such
conflicting thoughts after I left the next day to go back to
California. I couldn’t really believe the things she had said. What
she had told me was impossible, or so I thought. It sounded crazy.
Angels and nightmares, and about them being more than that. I hated
to admit it but I had thought she really might have been crazy.
Those kinds of things didn’t exist; angels weren’t real, despite
how convinced she seemed otherwise.

But I also knew I was starting to
develop these intense feelings for her. I wanted her company again.
I needed to see her, to make sure she was okay. I wanted to protect
her. From what, I wasn’t really sure.

After I had come home and found out
what had happened to Sal, the scale had been tipped. I couldn’t
help it, seeing her so broken and open. I still wasn’t sure what to
think about the whole angel/nightmare situation but I knew my life
would never be the same again without Jessica. When she showed me
her scars I knew I would never love another person as much as I
loved her. I knew the amount of trust and faith it had taken for
Jessica to tell me the things she had, and even more so to show me
the things she did. I was forever hers from that moment.

I also knew then that everything she
had told me wasn’t crazy. It was all real.

I loved her more than I could imagine
it was possible for someone to love another. And now I was hurting
her. It was killing me.

I had just hammered the lid back on a
can of paint when my cell phone rang. I wiped the drips of paint
off my hands onto my work pants and pulled it out of my
pocket.

“
Hey, beautiful,” I
said.

“
Hey,” she said. The voice
of a dead person. “I was going to stop at the store after work and
grab a few things but my wallet isn’t in my purse. Would you check
and see if it fell out in the truck?”

“
Yeah, hang on a second,”
I said as I stepped outside. “It’s here. Do you want me to bring it
over? Maybe I could take you to an early dinner when you get
off?”

“
Uh, I’m not really hungry
right now.”

“
Maybe some ice cream?” I
hated how desperate I felt.

“
Sure,” she answered with
a hint of a sigh.

“
Okay, I’ll be there in
twenty minutes.”

Exactly twenty minutes later I pulled
the truck into the bookstore and walked inside. I looked around for
her but only saw Austin working.

“
Is Jessica still here?” I
asked.

“
She’s in with Rita.
They’re talking about trying to get some author to do a signing,”
Austin said as he walked around the counter and leaned against it,
his arms folded across his chest. He looked at me with a faintly
arrogant look, though his eyes were hard and cold.

“
Oh, okay. I’ll just wait
for her,” I said as I leaned against a table and mirrored his
stance. He just stood there and stared back at me.

I couldn’t take the way-beyond-awkward
silence for long. “So you and Jessica work together a lot now?” I
blurted out. I had a bad habit of babbling when I felt
uncomfortable.

“
Most days,” he said as he
chewed on the inside of his cheek.

The uncomfortable silence stretched on
again for a few minutes.

“
Jessica’s been different
lately,” he said as his eyes hardened even further.

“
Oh yeah?” I said, my eyes
finally dropping away from his. Austin – 1, Alex – 0. “How so?” I
didn’t see how letting on that I knew things were off would
help.

“
She’s been kind of
depressed.”

I just gave a little nod as I kept my
eyes glued to the floor just to the right of his feet. I wished
Jessica would hurry out here so we could go.

“
Maybe she should be with
someone who would make her a little happier. Someone who would do
anything for her.”

I finally snapped. All the
tension that had been threatening to burn me up since Jessica had
brought up the fact that she knew I was supposed to propose came
flooding to the surface. In a movement that was too fast, I had
closed the small gap between us and had bunched up his shirt in my
left hand. My nose only an inch away from his, I hissed, “You have
no idea what we’ve been through together. What I
have
done for
her.”

Austin’s eyes grew wide and I saw fear
consuming him from the inside out. He didn’t seem to be able to say
or do anything. I knew how I must look when I was angry. It would
probably be the most terrifying thing a human would see in their
life.

I counted to five and let out a slow
breath as I released the boy that was trying to be so tough and
heroic for a woman who wasn’t his.

“
I’m sorry,” I muttered
faintly as I stepped away, resuming my stance against the table.
“But you really shouldn’t say things like that to me. Or to
Jessica. It might be bad for your health. You shouldn’t put your
nose where it doesn’t belong.”

Eyes still wide, he just nodded his
head and walked toward the back of the bookstore and tried to look
busy. Less than thirty seconds later, Jessica came walking out of
the office with Rita.

“
You ready?” she said with
a smile that was half forced.

“
Yeah, let’s go,” I said
as she grabbed my hand. I glanced back at Austin who quickly looked
away. I was starting to get a little tired of all the guys who
looked at Jessica like she was a piece of meat.

X

The next day Jessica was pulled into
work when another girl had called in ill. She hadn’t even said
good-bye when she left. I felt sick. Our ice cream trip had ended
up in a huge fight. She had actually slammed her bedroom door in my
face. She tried telling me she didn’t care what happened, that she
just wanted to be with me and I tried to tell her that we couldn’t
have that anymore.