NOCTE (Nocte Trilogy #1) (10 page)

“Weren’t you wanting to read or
something?”
 

He rolls his eyes.
 
“I read at night when I’m trying to go
to sleep. I’m perfectly free at the moment.
 
In fact, I’ll be free tonight, too.”

The mere thought of Dare in his bed,
sprawled out, naked, his muscles gleaming in the moonlight, it spreads heat to
my cheeks and I yank my eyes back up to his, focusing on reality, not on Dare
in his bed.
 

He grins.
 
Dare
me.
 

“Perhaps we should focus on the
now,
” he suggests lightly, as if he
knows that he was just undressed in my mind.
 
I internally combust, then
nod.
 

“Yeah.
 
I’d better get some groceries.”

I toss him my keys and we drive down the
mountain.

We.

Dare and me.
 

It’s an exhilarating thought, and one
that for the moment, distracts me from sadness.
 

That’s a miracle in itself.

DECEM

Finn

You’reAMiserableMiseraleMiserableExcuse
, the voices hiss and I clench
my teeth and draw around them, drawing faces and then scratching them out every
time a voice says something.
 
Before
long, the page is covered in scribble.
 

Calla’s gone and I don’t know
where she is, and for the first time in weeks, I’m alone.
 

I don’t like it.

I don’t like it.
 

A motor roars through the yard and I go
to the window, looking down.
 
The
new guy stands on the edge of the grass.
 
Calla stares up at him, her hand so close to the guy’s chest.

GetAwayFromHer.

GetAway.

I watch, enthralled, horrified as my
sister smiles.
 

It’s like she knows him.
 
Like she belongs there, smiling with
him.

I’m alone and she’s there.
 

It’s
wrong.

It’s
wrong.
 

I grit my teeth again, because it’s not
wrong.
 
My sister is an adult and
she can do what she wishes and obviously it’s normal for her to smile at a guy.

But not him, the voices protest, so many
of them that I can’t tell them apart.
 
There’s
something about him, something wrong, something he’s hiding.

He’s hiding.

YouCan’tTellHerSheWon’tBelieveYou.
 
For the first time, I agree with them.
 
Calla would never believe me if I voiced
this reservation, because I don’t have any proof.
 

All I have is a feeling.

And we all know I’m crazy.

UNDECIM

Calla

I
sort through the million different kinds of pasta sauce, picking one, before I
find Dare in the shampoo aisle.
 

I’m halfway to him when my eye falls on
Dove, the kind of shampoo my mother used.
 
I can almost smell her hair as she hugged me, and my throat clams up and
I pointedly look away, because that’s what I have to do when something reminds
me.
 
I have to ignore it and put it
away for later.
Because I simply can’t deal with it now.

“Are you ready?” I ask Dare.
 
He nods,
then
eyes my heaping cart.

“Good thing we brought your car and not
my bike,” he observes.
 
I have to
laugh, but I don’t want to explain how my father is sliding, how we’re out of
every imaginable thing in my house. So I don’t.
 

Instead, we check out and load our stuff
into the trunk and get on our way.

But once we’re on the road,
Dare
turns to me.

“I could use a drink. Could you?”

I’m giddy that he thinks I’m old enough,
but I shake my head. “I’m not twenty-one,” I tell him sheepishly, but honestly,
why am I embarrassed?
 
My age is not
my fault.
 

Dare grins, unaffected.
 
“I meant a soda, young one.”

“Oh.
 
Well, I know a coffee house.
 
And they have sodas.”

“Let it be so, then,” he announces
theatrically, like he’s at the helm of the Starship Enterprise.

“You’re not a Trekkie, are you?” I ask,
scared that I might finally be finding a fault in this seemingly perfect guy as
I turn the car down a narrow city street.
 
He glances sidelong at me.

“What’s that?”

“You’re from England, not Mars, right?” I
demand. “A trekkie.
 
Someone who
watches marathons of star trek and goes to star trek conventions dressed as an
Ewok.
 
You’re not that.
 
Hopefully.”

“I take offense to that,” he says
seriously. “First, an Ewok is from Star Wars, not Star Trek.
 
Any good trekkie would know that.”

He pauses and I’m appalled because oh-my-gosh
there’s no way.
 
 

“And also that you’d think so little of
me.
 
I’m not a trekkie. I’m a die-hard
Whovian. I don’t think I can be both.”

Dr. Who, England, of course.
 
I smile limply and pull into a parking
spot.
 

“I just admitted a guilty pleasure,” he
tells me, with his hand on the handle.
 
“It’s your turn.
 
What’s one
of yours?”

Honestly, I haven’t thought about
any
pleasures in six weeks.
 

“Um.”
Daydreaming
about you.
 
“I like the Arctic
Monkeys.”

He barks out a laugh as I name the
British band, and gets out of the car, coming around to open my door while I’m
still fiddling with my seat belt.
 
I
look up at him, mesmerized by his manners.
 

“I’ll try and look past that,” he says
solemnly as I brush past him, inhaling his cologne on my way.

He opens the coffee house door for me,
too, and we wait in the trendy line for our turn.
 
He looks at me.

“And this is what I’m afraid the hospital
café will turn into,” he says quietly, like he’s sharing a secret.
 
I nod, completely serious.

“Yeah. I can see that there’s a need to
worry.”

I picture the sterile hospital
environment, shrouded with the screams from the Psych Ward and giggle.
 
“Tons of need to worry.”

Dare raises his eyebrows.
 
“I’m glad we agree.”

We get our sodas, but instead of heading
to the car,
Dare
heads for a table.
 
“Do you mind if we sit for a minute? I’m
sure our food will be fine for a few minutes in the car.”

“Ok.”

I sit across from him and play with my
straw, and we stare at each other.
 
After a minute, he smiles and I decide that his smile might be my new
favorite thing.

And then I promptly feel guilty for
having a favorite anything.

My mother is dead and I killed her.
 
I’m not allowed to enjoy things
anymore.
 

I stare at him as flatly as I can,
ignoring the way little fingers lap at my stomach, urging it to flip over and
over as Dare looks at me, as his silver ring glints in the sunlight.

What is it about that one motion, that
one tiny
thing, that
always sticks in my head?
 
It’s so stupid.
Such a
silly thing to focus on.
 
 

“As me a question,” Dare finally says,
breaking the silence.
 
“I know you
want to.”

“I don’t,” I answer evenly.

“You lie.”

I sigh.
 
“Maybe.”

He grins wickedly enough to send a
nervous thrill through me. “So ask me.”

“Um, let’s see.
 
How long are you staying here?” I ask
conversationally, like I’m not dying to know the answer.
 

He shrugs. “I’m not sure yet.”

I stare at him. “That’s not an answer.”

“It has to be, because that’s the truth.”

“But sometimes the truth is deceptive,” I
fling back at him, and this sobers him right up.
 

“What do you mean by that?” he asks,
somewhat defensively.
 
Hmm.
 
Interesting reaction.

“I just meant that sometimes, the truth
is so crazy that it doesn’t seem true.
 
Like you saying you don’t know how long you’ll be here.
 
You have to know how long you’ll be
here.”

He stares at me, amused now.
 
“But I don’t.”

“You’re frustrating,” I tell him.
 
He grins.
 
“Guesstimate, then.”

“Fine,” he says, sounding satisfied.
 
“If you’re worried about me leaving,
I’ll guesstimate.
 
I guess… I’ll be
here as long as it takes.”

“As long as what takes?” I ask.

He shrugs.

I want to throat punch him.

“You’re
seriously
frustrating,” I answer. He laughs.
 

“I’ve heard that before,” he admits.

“I bet,” I grumble.

He’s laughing and the sound of it
vibrates my ribs, filling my belly with warmth.
 
It’s
a warmth
that I don’t deserve to feel.
 
I try
to shove it down, try to shove it away, but the guilt keeps coming back,
present in everything I do.
 

No matter what.

I shouldn’t be sitting here enjoying
myself, that’s for sure.

I shouldn’t be fantasizing about this
sexy man, dreaming about him, wishing I could be with him.
 
I don’t deserve it.
 
I squeeze my eyes tightly shut, and when
I open them, I notice something on Dare’s boot, mixed with the grass from the
mountainside.
 

Blood.

“Um. What’s that?” I ask stiltedly,
because I already know.
 

He follows my pointing finger,
then
meets my gaze.
 

“It’s blood.
 
I didn’t realize it was there.”

“What’s it from?” My words are calm, much
calmer than my racing heart.
 

“From a raccoon,” Dare sighs.

My eyes meet his.
 
“I hit it, didn’t I?”

He nods slowly.
 

“I killed it?”

He nods again. “It’s dead.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” My voice
is shaky now, and I fight to control it.
 

His dark gaze doesn’t waver.
 
“Because there’s nothing we can do about
it.
 
It’s dead, and I’m sure it was
instantaneous.
 
It didn’t suffer and
I didn’t want you to feel bad about it.
 
I’m sorry.
 
I should’ve just
told you.”

Oh
my God.
 
I’m a menace to society.
 
I know it was just a raccoon, but it had
a life, and then it came into contact with me, and now it’s dead.

“We should go,” I say quietly, pushing
away from the table and heading for the door without waiting for him to
respond.
 
He does follow me, though,
and when we reach the car, he turns to look at me in confusion.
 

“Did I do something?”

“Of course not,” I tell him tiredly.
 
“Nothing at all.
 
I should just be getting back.
 
I’m sure my brother is wondering where I
am.”

I haven’t left him alone this long in
forever.
 

I drive this time, because I’ve got to be
normal.
 
I’ve got to put what
happened this morning out of my head.
 
You fall off a horse
,
you get
back on
.
 
Your mom dies in a
crash, you have to drive again.
 

When we’re sitting in front of the
funeral home, I kill the ignition, and Dare hops out, grabbing eight bags of
groceries while I carry four.
 

“You don’t have to cart these in,” I tell
him as we tumble in through the back door.
 
He doesn’t reply
,
he just heads straight to the
kitchen, as though it’s his house, as though he’s been there before.
 

Curiously, I follow him, watching him
begin to unload the items, putting the milk in the fridge and going straight to
where the sugar belongs, sliding it into place.
 

“How do you know where everything goes?”
I ask stupidly, watching him put the bread away. “You don’t seem the type to
know your way around any kitchen, much less mine.”
 
He pauses, lifting his eyebrow.
 

“It says Bread Box,” he points.
 

I flush.
 

“And the rest is common sense,” he adds,
opening the cabinet above the stove and putting away the salt.
 

Still.
 
He moves around with such
familiarity.
 

I’m…
imagining things
, I
decide.
 
Of course I am.
 

When everything is done,
Dare
leans back against the counter.
 
“Today was fun,” he tells me, his eyes
gleaming, his body stretched out.
 

I nod.
 
“Thank you for taking me to town.”

He smiles.
 

“Anytime.”

He starts for the door, then pauses and
turns.
 
“I mean that,” he adds.
 
“I’d like to do that again.
 
Go have a soda with you, I mean.”

He’s so beautiful as he stands bathed in
the sunlight in my doorway.
 
I gulp
hard, trying to swallow the guilty lump in my throat. With everything that I
am, or ever will be, I want to say yes.
 

But I can’t.
 

“I…uh….
”
 
I don’t deserve to.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to. My brother
needs me.”

I turn around, because my eyes are watery
and hot, and I’m ridiculous and I don’t want Dare to see me cry again.
 

Dare’s voice comes from right behind me,
six inches away.

“Calla, look at me.”

I stare pointedly at the walnut cabinets,
trying not to let the hot tears spill, because as much as I’m trying to hold
them in, the tears keep welling up.
 

One escapes, slipping down my cheek.

Dare pulls me around,
then
drops his hand, staring me in the eye.
 
He’s so intent, so serious.
 
He wipes my tear away with a thumb.
 

“You deserve to have a life, too,” he
tells me, his voice even.
 
“You can
take care of Finn and still take care of you.”