NOCTE (Nocte Trilogy #1) (7 page)

SEPTUM

Calla

He came.
 

I think I’m in shock as I linger near the
house, trying to seem like I’m casually sitting at the little table on the side
porch, like I’m
not
waiting with
bated breath for them to re-emerge.
 
 

I can’t believe he’s here.
 

It’s been days since he took dad’s phone
number, and I waited every day, but he didn’t call. I thought he wasn’t going
to, that I’d imagined the chemistry, the connection.
 
Maybe even that I’d imagined
him.
 

But he re-appeared in my dreams, again
and again. Smiling at me, staring at me,
being
with me
. My subconscious is definitely trying to urge me toward him, maybe even
toward living again. I don’t know.
 

All I know is that he’s here, out of the
blue today, with his dark eyes and British accent and on a motorcycle, no less.
 

Kismet
prevails.

My lungs feel fluttery, along with my
heart, my stomach and my ovaries.
 
All of it feels quivery, like a shaking ridiculous mess. It feels like
it’s meant to happen, that I keep bumping into him, and dreaming about him, and
now he’s here in my life.
 

It almost takes my breath away.

This feeling only grows more pronounced
when the Carriage House door finally opens and my father and
Dare
step back out.
 
They shake hands and
my father immediately heads back toward the house, a small smile on his
lips.
 
Halfway across the lawns, he
diverts his course and heads for me.
 

Stopping in front of me, he stares down.

“The last few weeks have been hard.
Too hard.
I’m not going to pretend to know what you’re going
through, because our paths are different and we feel our loss in different ways.
 
All I’m going to say is this.
 
Be careful.
 
You’re naïve and innocent and your
mother would know what to say right now, but I don’t.
 
This the first time you’ve seemed
interested in something in weeks. So all I’m going to say is
be
careful.
 
Ok?”

I’m utterly speechless because my
father’s expression
is so
knowing
.
 
It’s like he looked inside my head and saw the connection I feel toward
Dare, the interest,
the
intrigue.
 
He’s nervous for me, but yet he’s still
willing to rent the Carriage House to
Dare
because he
needs the money. And because he thinks
Dare
will
distract me from my grief.
 

I nod. “Ok.”

He nods back,
then
walks into the house without another word.
 
From behind me, I swear I can feel Finn staring at me, his gaze beating
between my shoulder blades from the windows, but I shake it off.
 
I’m not doing anything wrong.
 

Or am I?

Because as Dare looks up and meets my
gaze, he smiles a mischievous smile that makes me think I am.
 

Dare
me.
 

To do what?
  
That question makes me tingly.

Dare slowly walks across the yard, and
motions to the chair across from me.
 
“Is that seat taken?”

I roll my eyes. This game again?

“No.”

He doesn’t ask
,
he just sits in it, stretching his long legs out and crossing them at the
ankles and stares at me, like he belongs in that chair.
 
I raise an eyebrow, but he’s still
silent.
 

“So, you have a British accent, but your
last name is DuBray.
 
How does
that
work?” I finally ask, desperate to
make him stop staring at me.
 
His
mouth twitches.
 

“Is that your third question?”

Frustration bubbles up in me, regardless
of how cute things sound coming out of his mouth.
 

“Do I have to count every single question
I ask?
 
I’m only making polite conversation.”

He shakes his head, and smiles just a
bit.
 
“Fine. I’ll give you this one
in the name of polite conversation.
 
My father died when I was a baby and he was French.
 
My mother was British, so we moved
there.
 
I’ve lived there my whole
life, hence the accent.”

His beautiful, beautiful accent.
 
I nod.
 
“I’m sorry about your
father.”

He shrugs.
 
“He was a good man, but it was a long
time ago.”

I itch to ask him how old he is, but I resist
the urge. I can’t use another question already.
 
Besides, I’d bet money that he’s
twenty-one.
 
Or so.

“Can you speak French?” I ask hopefully,
because Lord have mercy that would be hot.
 

“Oui, mademoiselle,” he answers
smoothly.
 
“Un peu.
 
A little bit.”

Be
still my freaking heart.
 
I stare at him, enthralled.

“So,” he finally says, changing the
subject so very casually, as though he’s not the coolest, sexiest man alive.
 
“How do you survive living in a funeral
home?
 
Have you ever seen a ghost?”

I ignore my pounding heart and raise an
eyebrow.
 
“I’ll take this question
to mean that you did, in fact, have the balls to rent the carriage house?”

He chuckles, a raspy, husky sound that
vibrates right into my belly.
 

“The fact that I have balls of steel is
now unarguable,” he announces with a grin.
 
“And I’m never nervous.
 
Not
even about ghosts.
 
Also, since I
gave you one answer, turnabout is fair play, right? So… have you ever seen a
ghost?”

I’ve
not seen one, but the ghost of my mother is here… present in every picture,
pile of clothing and memory of this house.
 
But of course I
don’t say that.
 

I shrug instead.
 
“I’ve never seen one.
 
As far as I’m concerned, there is no
such thing.”

“Really?” he answers, sounding doubtful.
“That’s disappointing.”

“You’re going to be in the Carriage House
anyway,” I tell him.
 
“There aren’t
any dead people out there.
 
I mean
,
I assume you’re renting it, right?

Please
be right.

He nods.
 
“Yeah.
 
Thanks for letting me know about
it.
 
It’s just what I’ve been
looking for.
 
A nice little space
with gorgeous scenery.”

As he says the words
gorgeous scenery,
he stares straight at me, with purpose.
 

I’m
his gorgeous scenery.
 
I suddenly can’t breathe enough to even
try to ask him why he wants to be in Astoria in the first place.

“Kismet,” I manage to eke out.
 

He nods.
 
“Kismet.”

Dare stares at me, long and hard and
dark, and I manage to take one deep breath, then
another.

“So I’ll be seeing you,” he says,
abruptly ending our conversation by standing up.
 

“When are you moving in?” I ask, suddenly
panicky at the thought of him leaving.
 
He brings with him an air of comfort, of excitement, of something
charged and dangerous and new.
 
I
don’t want to let that go just yet.
 

He grins.
 

“Now.
 
I brought my bag.”

His bag?
 
I follow his gesture to see a duffel bag
strapped to the back of his bike. One bag.
 

“That’s it?”

“I travel light,” he answers, heading
back to the Carriage House. To his
home,
which
is now only a hundred feet from my own.

“I guess you do,” I murmur.
 
I watch the way his wide shoulders sway,
and the way the breeze flutters his dark hair.
  
He grabs his bag and ducks into
his new home and I realize that I forgot to ask him something.
 

How long he’s staying.
 

***

Dinner
feels different
tonight,
mainly because I know Dare is
a hundred yards away.

I serve up spaghetti, which is the
easiest meal on the planet to prepare, and garlic bread and corn.
 
My father eats with gusto, while Finn,
as usual, pushes things around on his plate.
 
His meds make him lose his
appetite.
 

We’re eating late, because my father
worked late.
 

At the thought of his ‘work’, I can’t
help but glance at his hands.
 
I
know he washed them several times when he came upstairs, but just the thought
of what he’d been doing with them, what he’d been handling, grosses me
out.
 
I know that a scant hour or so
ago, he was jamming a needle into a dead person’s neck and replacing all of
their blood with chemical fluid.
 

And now he’s eating with those same
hands.

It’s gross and it’s hard to swallow my
blood-colored spaghetti sauce.
 

“So, how was your day?” I ask Finn,
trying desperately to think of something else.
 
I hadn’t seen him all afternoon. He
shrugs.
 

“Good, I guess. I finished going through
my closet. I’ve got a few boxes for Goodwill, dad.”

My dad nods, but I see something on
Finn’s face, something flicker, and I widen my eyes.
 
Don’t
do it
, I try and tell him telepathically.
 
Don’t
mention mom’s stuff.
 
Don’t.
 

And he doesn’t.
 
Instead, he looks at me.
 

“Actually, I have something I want to
tell you guys.”

We both look at him, waiting.
 
My breath catches because he looks so
serious.

What the hell?

I see him swallow hard.
 
Not a good sign.

“I’ve decided to go to MIT after all.”

My stomach plunges into my shoes and the
silence in the room is heavy.
 
I
look at my dad and he looks at me, then we both stare at Finn while I try and
remember how to speak so that I can argue.
 

“No,” I manage to say.
 
“You can’t go alone.
Finn
.”

He feels the pleading in my eyes and
looks away, at the walls, out the windows.
 

“Please don’t try and talk me out of it,”
he tells us, but he’s mostly telling me.
 
“Cal, I want to go with you.
 
I do. But this is for the best.
 
It’s something I have to do.
 
I have to be alone, and figure out how to be alone.
How
to stay sane alone.
 
Do you
understand?”

No.
 
A thousand times No.
 
A millions times NO.
 

I’m shaking my head, but my father leans
over and puts a hand on my shoulder.
A warning to be silent.
 
I stare at him helplessly.

“I think that’s good,” my father says.
“Your mother and I…” his voice trails off like he’s in pain and he pauses for a
second.
 
“Your mother and I both
thought that was for the best.
Some separation so that you
can grow independently.
 
This
is good.”

My dad sounds so proud.
 
Like Finn is doing something heroic,
like he’s saving a kid from a fire or moving a tortoise off a
free-way
.
 
But
it’s not heroic because he’s being self-destructive.
 
I can see it in his eyes, and the way he
holds his shoulders and won’t look at me.

Put
me out of my misery.