Lux (22 page)

I stay suspended in my sleepy dark 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.

Opening my eyes, 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.

He’s muscular, tall, and wearing a tattered black sweatshirt that says
Irony is lost on you
in orange letters
.
His dark jeans are belted with black leather, and his fingers are long and bare.

Dark hair tumbles into his face and a hand with long fingers impatiently brushes it back, all the while his eyes are still connected with mine. His jaw is strong and masculine, with the barest hint of stubble.

His gaze is still connected to mine, like a livewire, or a lightning bolt. I can feel the charge of it racing along my skin, like a million tiny fingers, flushing my cheeks. My lungs flutter and I swallow hard.

And then, he smiles at me.

At me.

His eyes are frozen on me as he waits in line, so dark, so fathomless. This energy between us… I don’t know what it is. Attraction? Chemistry? All I know is, it steals my breath and speeds up my heart. I feel like I’ve seen him before, but that’s so stupid. I would remember something like that.

Someone like him.

I watch as he pays for his coffee and sweet roll, and as his every step leads him to my back booth. There are ten other tables, all vacant, but he chooses mine.

His black boots stop next to me, and I skim up his denim-clad legs, over his hips, up to his startlingly handsome face. He has a slight stubble gracing his jawline and it makes him seem even more mature, even more of a man. As if he needs the help.

I can’t help but notice the way his shirt hugs his solid chest, the way his waist narrows as it slips into his jeans, the way he seems lean and lithe and powerful. Gah. I yank my eyes up to meet his. I find amusement there.

“Is this seat taken?”

Sweet Lord.
He’s got a British accent. There’s nothing sexier in the entire world, which makes that old tired pick-up line forgivable. I smile up at him, my heart racing.

“No.”

He doesn’t move. “Can I take it, then? I’ll share my breakfast with you.”

He slightly gestures with his gooey, pecan-crusted roll.

“Sure,” I answer casually, expertly hiding the fact that my heart is racing fast enough to explode. “And I’ll take a bite. I’m starving.”

“Perfect,” he grins, as he slides into the booth across from me, next to Finn, ever so casually, as though he sits with strange girls in hospitals all of the time. I can’t help but notice that his eyes are so dark they’re almost black. He cuts his roll into two and offers me half, and I chew the bites.

Finn barely even glances up from his book because he’s so absorbed, but this strange boy doesn’t seem to mind.

“Come here often?” he quips, as he sprawls out in the booth. I have to chuckle, because now he’s just going down the list of cliché lines, and they all sound amazing coming from his British lips.

“Fairly,” I nod. “You?”

“They have the best coffee around,” he answers, if that even
is
an answer. “But let’s not tell anyone, or they’ll start naming the coffee things we can’t pronounce, and the lines will get unbearable.”

I shake my head, and I can’t help but smile. “Fine. It’ll be our secret.”

He stares at me, his dark eyes shining. “Good. I like secrets. Everyone’s got ‘em.”

I almost suck in my breath, because something is so overtly fascinating about him. The way he pronounces everything, and the way his dark eyes gleam, the way he seems so familiar and I swear to God I know him. But that’s impossible.

“What are yours?” I ask, without thinking. “Your secrets, I mean.”

He grins. “Wouldn’t
you
like to know?”

Yes.

“My name’s Calla,” I offer quickly. He smiles at that.

“Calla like the funeral lily?”

“The very same.” I sigh. “And I live in a funeral home. So see? The irony isn’t lost on me.”

He looks confused for a second, then I see the realization dawn on him as he glances down at his shirt.

“You noticed my shirt,” he points out softly, his arm stretched across the back of the cracked booth. He doesn’t even dwell on the fact that I’d just told him I live in a house with dead people. Usually people instantly clam up when they find out, because they instantly assume that I must be weird, or morbid. But he doesn’t.

I nod curtly. “It stands out.”
Because
you
stand out.

The corner of his mouth twitches, like he’s going to smile, but then he doesn’t.

“I’m Adair DuBray,” he tells me, like he’s bestowing a gift or an honor. “But everyone calls me Dare.”

I’ve never seen a name so fitting. So French, so sophisticated, yet his accent is British. He’s an enigma. An enigma whose eyes gleam like they’re constantly saying
Dare me.
I swallow.

“It’s nice to meet you,” I tell him, and that’s the truth. “Why are you here in the hospital? Surely it’s not for the coffee.”

“You know what game I like to play?” Dare asks, completely changing the subject. I feel my mouth drop open a bit, but I manage to answer.

“No, what?”

“Twenty Questions. That way, I know that at the end of the game, there won’t be any more. Questions, that is.”

I have to smile, even though his answer should’ve annoyed me. “So you don’t like talking about yourself.”

He grins. “It’s my least favorite subject.”

But it must be such an interesting one.

“So, you’re telling me I can ask you twenty things, and twenty things only?”

Dare nods. “Now you’re getting it.”

“Fine. I’ll use my first question to ask what you’re doing here.” I lift my chin and stare him in the eye.

His mouth twitches again. “Visiting. Isn’t that what people usually do in hospitals?”

I flush. I can’t help it. Obviously. And obviously, I’m out of my league here. This guy could have me for breakfast if he wanted, and from the gleam in his eye, I’m not so sure he doesn’t.

I take a sip of my coffee, careful not to slosh it on my shirt. With the way my heart is racing, anything is possible.

“Yes, I guess so. Who are you visiting?”

Dare raises an eyebrow. “I’m visiting a grief group. My grandmother died recently, and my mother wants me to attend group therapy.”

“That’s what we’re doing too,” I tell him, surprised and excited by his answer. Surely we’re not attending the same group.

“You’re going to a grief group? Is yours in the Sunshine Room, perchance?”

My heart slams, because it is.

“Is that your first question? Because turn-about is fair play.” I suck at being flirty, but I give it my all.

Dare smiles broadly, genuinely amused.

“Sure. I’ll use a question.”

“Yes, we’re going to a grief group in the Sunshine Room. Our mother died recently.”

“I’m so sorry,” Dare says, and his voice is soft and I can tell that he is… sorry. He nods like he understands, and somehow, I feel like he does.

He takes a drink of his coffee. “What are the odds that you and I would be going to the same grief group? I think it must be kismet.”

“Kismet?” I raise an eyebrow.

“That’s fate, Calla,” he tells me. I roll my eyes.

“I know that. I may be going to a state school, but I’m not stupid.”

He grins, a grin so white and charming that my panties almost fall off.

“Good to know. So you’re a college girl, Calla?”

I don’t want to talk about that. I want to talk about why you think this is kismet.
But I nod.

“Yeah. I’m leaving for Berkeley in the fall.”

“Good choice,” he takes another sip. “But maybe kismet got it wrong, after all. If you’re leaving and all. Because apparently, I’ll be staying for a while. That is, after I find an apartment. A good one is hard to find around here.”

He’s so confident, so open. It doesn’t even feel odd that a total stranger is telling me these things, out of the blue, so randomly. I feel like I know him already, actually.

I stare at him. “An apartment?”

He stares back. “Yeah. The thing you rent, it has a shower and a bedroom, usually?”

I flush. “I know that. It’s just that this might be kismet after all. I might know of something. I mean, my father is going to rent out our carriage house. I think.”

And if
I
can’t have it, it should definitely go to someone like Dare. The mere thought gives me a heart spasm.

“Hmm. Now that
is
interesting,” Dare tells me. “Kismet prevails, it seems. And a carriage house next to a funeral home, at that. It must take balls of steel to live there.”

I quickly pull out a little piece of paper and scribble my dad’s cell phone on it. “Yeah. If you’re interested, I mean, if you’ve got the balls, you can call and talk to him about it.”

I push the paper across the table, staring him in the eye, framing it up as a challenge. Dare can’t possibly know how I’m trying to will my heart to slow down before it explodes, but maybe he does, because a smile stretches slowly and knowingly across his lips.

“Oh, I’ve got balls,” he confirms, his eyes gleaming again.

Dare me.

I swallow hard.

“I’m ready to ask my second question,” I tell him. He raises an eyebrow.

“Already? Is it about my balls?”

I flush and shake my head.

“What did you mean before?” I ask him slowly, not lowering my gaze. “Why exactly do you think this is kismet?”

His eyes crinkle up a little bit as he smiles yet again. And yet again, his grin is thoroughly amused. A real smile, not a fake one like I’m accustomed to around my house.

“It’s kismet because you seem like someone I might like to know. Is that odd?”

No, because I want to know you, too.

“Maybe,” I say instead. “Is it odd that I feel like I already know you somehow?”

Because I do. There’s something so familiar about his eyes, so dark, so bottomless.

Dare raises an eyebrow. “Maybe I have that kind of face.”

I choke back a snort.
Hardly.

He stares at me. “Regardless, kismet always prevails.”

I shake my head and smile. A r
eal
smile. “The jury is still out on that one.”

Dare takes a last drink of coffee, his gaze still frozen to mine, before he thunks his cup down on the table and stands up.

“Well, let me know what the jury decides. If we don’t get going, we’ll be late for our grief therapy.”

And then he walks away.

I’m so dazed by his abrupt departure that it takes me a second to realize something because
kismet always prevails
and I’m
someone he might like to know.

He took my dad’s phone number with him.

“Cal? You ready?”

Finn’s voice breaks my concentration, and with it, the moment. I glance up at my brother, almost in confusion, to find that he’s standing up, waiting for me. It’s time to go. I scramble to get up, feeling for all the world like I’m rattled, but don’t know why. It’s this moment, it’s this place, it’s…the same.

“Do you feel like you’ve been here before?” I ask Finn in bewilderment as we walk through the doors of the Sunshine Room. He glances at me and grimaces.

“Yeah. Every week since Mom died.”

That’s not what I meant and he knows it. The sense of déjà vu is strong, almost overwhelming, and I feel like I almost know what will happen next.

But I don’t.

Because Dare DuBray is across the room and his smile is brilliant and new.

When our eyes connect and the sparks fly and the air sizzles between us, he holds up my father’s phone number and winks.

Warmth rushes through me because

Kismet always prevails.

The jury has decided.

I feel it in my bones.

I
know
what you’re wondering.

Was it real, or not real?

Was Calla crazy, or not?

Well, dear reader, let me ask you….

What do you think?

That’s the beauty of stories. Sometimes, the ending resides in you. If you don’t like an ending, choose another.

I’ve always been a person who believes things happen that we can’t understand, that the energy we put into the world comes back to us. There are lots of different cultures, including the Romani, who believe the same.

Is it possible to be cursed, to re-live time, to change it? Do ghosts exist? Is there a reason for déjà vu?

I have no idea.

But I’m open-minded enough to think that anything is possible.

And because of that,
to me,
Calla’s story was real. Her ending was real, and she saved Finn, and she’ll live happily-ever-after with Dare. Because I love a good Happily-Ever-After story. Calla managed to change time and prevent the curse.

But if you don’t like to think about mysticism, or supernatural elements, or things we can’t explain,

Then you can choose to believe that Calla was crazy all along and none of this happened, and that she and Dare met and fell in love in a psych ward.

It’s entirely up to you.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this story.

I know it was a twisted journey, where the end was the beginning and the beginning was the end. I know that, and I did it on purpose.

I wanted to try to take you down a path where your mind wasn’t your own, just like Calla’s.

It had to happen in order.

And it did.