Inspire (33 page)

Too late. Too far. Too much.

There was never anything about my relationship with Wilder that fell within normal levels. It was always bigger than it was supposed to be. Scarier. Harder. Better.

The band starts removing their instruments for what I assume is a break, and I panic. What if they come this direction? Back to the bar to get a drink? I abandon all thoughts of catching the Watcher’s attention, and just try to escape Wilder’s notice again. I glance back once. Maybe to make sure he’s not watching. Or to get one more look. He’s looking in my direction, but I don’t know if he sees me. I don’t stop to find out, breaking for the stairs as fast as I can.

I make it downstairs, and through the long room, but there’s a back up of people at the door.

Damn
. It’s pouring outside.

“Kalli!”

I don’t look back. I don’t have to. I would recognize his voice anywhere. But there are half a dozen people in my way, and two more have just stepped inside, trying to escape the rain.

“Excuse me,” I say, not bothering to wait before I start squeezing my way through people. “Excuse me, I need out.”

I hear my name again, and I give up being polite, pushing my way through. Someone calls me a bitch, but I couldn’t care less when my hand reaches the door enough to push it open. I throw myself outside, and the wind hits me so hard I stumble back. The rain pelts sideways, and the bouncer reaches out to tug the door closed. My clothes are soaked through to the skin in seconds. I try to wipe my eyes, but it’s raining too hard to make much of a difference. It runs over my eyelids and into my nose and mouth, and it’s like I’m drowning on land. So I put my head down, and start walking, trying to cover my face enough to see my feet. I don’t even know what direction I’m walking, if I’m getting closer to my car or farther away.

“Kalli! Damn it, come back inside.”

I don’t know whether I loathe or love his persistence.

Love
. Where he is concerned, the answer will always be love. But that doesn’t mean I want to face him. Not yet. I just need to get the Watcher first. Maybe then. When I hear his feet slap through puddles in the pavement behind me, I start to run. My sandals slip on the rain-slicked concrete, and I can hear him gaining on me.

I can’t survive another run-in with him where all I can do is lie and avoid. I’m tired of hurting him. Tired of pushing him away. Tired of not knowing what to do. All I can do is run. If I can just reach the corner, I can turn north. The street slopes uphill, and maybe I’ll be able to run faster without the puddles of standing water. I look over my shoulder. He’s so close. Soaked to the bone just like me.

I face forward again, just feet away from the corner, and I see something dark in my peripheral vision moments before it plows into my shoulder. It’s a man, jacket held above his head trying to stave off the rain. Maybe running toward one of the bars for cover or trying to find his vehicle. He reaches a hand out to me, but my feet can’t find purchase on the flooded ground, and I’m falling too fast. Too hard. I try to twist to catch myself with my hands, but before they even reach concrete, my head connects with something hard, and the storm,
everything
,
disappears.

Pain comes back first. Sharp and bright. I can’t feel anything beyond the throbbing too-fullness of my head, like the rest of me doesn’t even exist. I groan, and my whole body jerks of it’s own accord.

“Shit.”

Something presses hard on my head, and I try to push it away, but my arms don’t listen.

“Hang on, Kalli. We’re on our way. You’re going to be okay.”

I force myself to drag open my heavy eyes, but everything is shadowy, indiscernible shapes.

“W-What?”

“You’re awake. Thank God. Oh thank God.”

Something pushes on my head again, and this time I manage to jerk back from the pain. My body lurches forward against something I hazily identify as a seatbelt. Then the pressure is back on my head.

“Don’t, baby. You’re bleeding. I’m taking you to the hospital.”

“What? No.”

“I couldn’t wait for an ambulance. It was pouring outside and you were soaked. And there was all this watery blood around the lamppost where you hit your head. I was so goddamn scared. Tell me what you feel. Can you see all right? Can you move everything?”

My vision sharpens, revealing the inside of Wilder’s vehicle, and the dashboard clock that reads 11: 51 P.M.

“You can’t take me to the hospital.”

I can’t walk into the emergency room with a bleeding head wound only for it to heal right before their eyes.

“What? Don’t be ridiculous.”

The car jerks again as he tries to keep one hand on the wheel, and the other pressing what I now realize is his wet shirt against my head.

I push his hand away, taking hold of the shirt myself. “Listen to me, Wilder.
You can’t take me to the hospital.”

“I don’t care about whatever the shit is you’re running from. I don’t know if you’re in trouble or scared or what, but none of that is worth your life, Kalli.”

“I’m not going to die. I promise you. Take me home, and I’ll be just fine.”

“No—”

“Take me home!” I yell.

His wild eyes snap to mine, and I can see how afraid he is. We’re both drenched, and he’s shirtless. There is blood on his hands and some smeared on his cheek, and I’m sure I look far worse.

Softer this time, I say, “Take me home, Wilder.” I glance at the clock. “And in seven minutes, you’ll get all the answers you’ve been wanting from me. I’ll tell you everything.”

I can see him warring with himself.

“I’ve kept things from you. But I wouldn’t lie to you. Not about this. Take me home, and I promise I’ll be just fine. You’ll see.”

“I can’t lose you.” His voice is gruff. Raw.

“Things are … complicated. But you’re not going to lose me. Well, not unless you decide you don’t want anything to do with me after you hear the truth.”

He reaches over to grip my thigh, his fingers desperate against my flesh. “That will never happen.”

“Then trust me and take me home.”

With a sound somewhere between a sigh and a growl, he switches lanes, abandoning his route toward the highway, and instead turns left toward my place.

That immediate catastrophe avoided, I sink back into the seat and close my eyes. I hadn’t realized how much the streetlights and passing cars had been paining me, until the relief of darkness washes over me.

“Kalli?”

“Hmm?”

“Don’t fall asleep on me.”

The ragged terror in his voice makes me open my eyes. I hold his shirt against my head with my right hand so that I can reach over and lay my left on top of his forearm. He immediately shifts to lace his fingers with mine, and I close my eyes.

He squeezes my hand every few seconds as he drives, and I squeeze back. And I can’t bring myself to feel anything but relief at feeling this close to him again. I must fall asleep even though he asked me not to, because I come to with my door open and his hands on my face.

“Damn it, Kalli. I’m taking you to the hospital.”

“No. I’m up. Sorry. Just … just take me inside.”

He helps me from the vehicle, his arm wound tight around my waist, and I lean my weight into him. Even through the rain, he smells familiar. Like Wilder. I fish my keys out of my pocket and hand them to him, and he pushes through the front door and leads me straight to the bathroom that sits across from my bedroom.

“What time is it?”

“Midnight.”

No, not quite.

“What time is it exactly?”

He glances at his watch. “Two til.”

One look in the mirror reveals his white shirt is tinged pink by water and blood. I drop it in the sink, knowing it’s well past its usefulness.

“Hey!” Wilder grabs a hand towel off the holder by the sink and tries to press it over the wound on my forehead, but I put a hand out to stop him. It’s still bleeding, but just a slow trickle. The rain washed away most of the blood from before, but there are still a few marks and stains.

Two minutes.

I kick off my shoes and hold out my hand to Wilder.

“What’s going on?”

“We’re getting in the shower.”

“Kalli.” He still doesn’t take my hand, so I turn and push aside the curtain instead. I step in the tub, still wearing my dress, rust-colored stains splotched down the front. It’s a barbaric replay of our first night together, but this time we’re at my apartment, and instead of kissing him, I’m about to change everything about the way he sees me. About the way he sees the world, too. I start the water, letting the faucet run and the water warm up for a few moments, and Wilder steps inside. I turn to face him, and I mentally estimate, “One minute.”

I pull the knob to switch the showerhead on. I wait, letting the water run down my back, and I know the second it hits midnight. The dull throbbing in my head disappears, and the overhead light in the bathroom no longer makes my eyes water from the sensitivity. I lean back, letting the water run over my head. I lift my hands, intending to rub away at whatever blood is left on my now healed forehead, but Wilder grabs my arms and pulls them away before I can do more than smudge it.

I meet his eyes, pulling one wrist free from his grasp, and with him watching, I rub my fingers over the spot where my head had apparently hit a lamppost earlier as I fell. I don’t just hear him suck in a breath; I feel it too. His grip tightens around my arm, and his body locks up next to mine. He starts to step away, but it’s my turn to grab hold of him this time.

“Wait. Don’t go.”

He stares at me for a long moment, and I can feel tears welling at the corner of my eyes. This could be it. This could be the moment he walks away from me.

His fingers graze my cheek, and he steps in closer. His height puts him looking down at me, and he rubs his thumb across the skin just above my eyebrow, just below my former injury. His eyes dip down to mine briefly before returning to my forehead, then he tilts my head back, leaning me into the line of the water again. It sprays against my hairline, smoothing through the knots and clumps left by the rain and blood. He runs his thumb over the unblemished skin there—back and forth, back and forth—as if he needs to touch it to believe his eyes.

“How?” he finally breathes.

Here goes.

“I’m—” Not human. Not like you. Not normal. “Immortal.”

He doesn’t react. He doesn’t call me a liar or crazy. He doesn’t ask me any questions. He doesn’t say anything at all. So I keep going.

“I’m a muse.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Wilder

I can’t stop staring at the smooth olive skin on her forehead. There was a cut there. Not just a cut. The skin had been
broken
, and it had bled and bled.

It bled so damn much.

But now there’s nothing there.

I can’t decide if I want to be afraid or worried for my sanity or to pinch myself to wake up. Maybe that was it. Maybe I missed Kalli so goddamned much that this was some elaborate fantasy dream gone wrong

“Wilder, say something.”

Her arm smooths over my bare bicep and presses hard against my chest.

“You feel real,” I mumble, more for me really, than her.

“Of course I’m real.”

She’s always felt too good to be true. How beautiful she is. The pull I felt to her from the very first moment I saw her. The way we both fell so quickly and so hard.

Am I crazy? Is that what’s happening here?

“Wilder, did you hear what I said?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.”

How the hell is this happening?

I touch her forehead again. “How?”

“I told you. I’m immortal.”

The word doesn’t really register in my head. And if she told me, I must not have heard her. Maybe I really am going crazy.

“Immortal … like live forever immortal? Like a vampire or something?”

She grabs my wrist, pulling my arm down in front of her. Her index finger traces over my forearm, down the form of Atlas tattooed on my skin.

“Like this. When I told you that my name is Kalliope, you mentioned that you remembered a goddess by that name.” She pauses, her eyes searching mine. “I’m her.”

Water is still spraying around her head and shoulders, and maybe it’s a trick of the light or maybe it’s part of my delusion, but she does look ethereal all of a sudden. The spray creates a halo effect around her head, and the water sluices down over her perfect skin. Her clothes cling to her form, and she’s a modern day statue. Fabric draped against her breasts, revealing beautiful curves and lines.

One second I’m standing up looking at her, and the next my knees have given out and my back is slamming into the shower wall as I fall down into the tub.

“Wilder!”

Kalli kneels over me, cupping the back of my head, easing me down until I’m laying back against the wall and my legs are stretched out in front of me.

Everything feels like it’s spinning out of my control, and as often as I look at her, as I touch her, there’s a shrill, shouting fear in the back of my mind that this isn’t real, and I’m going to lose her all over again. But it will be so much worse because I won’t be able to win her back, to find her. She just … won’t exist.

I clutch her waist, pulling her closer until her knees are over my thighs and she’s straddling me. I take hold of her neck and pull her face down to my level. Her forehead rests against mine, and she feels so solid and good in my arms. But there’s still a spot of blood on her neck, and more on my hands, and
I don’t fucking understand.

“How is this real?”

Her fingers drag through my hair, holding me tight.

“It just is. I was born several thousand years ago. I’m the daughter of Zeus, the god of gods, and Mnemosyne, the deity of memory. The rest of the gods have withdrawn from the human world, but my gift as a muse, my ability to inspire artists, is just as much of a curse. I
have
to use it.”

She starts talking about poisonous energy and influencing humans and the madness she’ll experience if she doesn’t do it.