NOCTE (Nocte Trilogy #1) (9 page)

“I’m sorry,” I offer.
 
“I guess it’s a hazard of living where I
do. Death is always present.”

“Death is big,”
Dare
acknowledges. “But there are things bigger than that.
 
If there’s not, then this is all for
nothing.
 
Life is worth nothing.
Putting yourself out there, and taking chances and all that.
 
All of that stuff is bollocks if it
can just disappear in the end.”

I shrug and look away.
 
“I’m sorry.
 
I just believe in the right here and
right now.
 
That’s what we know and
that’s what we can count on. And I don’t like to think about the end.”

Dare looks back at the sky, but he’s
still pensive.
 
“You seem rather
pessimistic today, Calla-Lily.”

I swallow hard, because I do sound like a
shrew.
 
A jaded,
ugly, bitter person.
 

“My mom died a few weeks ago,” I tell him
and the words scrape my heart.
 
“It’s still hard to talk about.”

He pauses and nods, as though everything
makes sense now, as though he’s
sorry
because
everyone always is.
 
“Ah. I
see.
 
I’m sorry.
 
I didn’t mean to open a wound.”

I shake my head and look away because my
eyes are watering and it’s embarrassing. Because God.
 
Am I ever going to be able to think
about it without crying?

“It’s ok.
 
You didn’t know,” I answer.
 
“And you’re right.
 
I’m probably jaded.
 
Being surrounded by death all the time…
well, I guess it’s made me ugly.”

Dare studies me, hard, his eyes
glittering in the light of the driftwood fire which reflects purple flames into
his black bottomless depths.
 
  

“You’re not ugly,” he tells me, his voice
oh-so-beautiful.
 
“Not by a long,
long shot.”

His words make me lose my train of
thought.
 
Because of the way he’s
looking at me right now…
like I’m
beautiful,
like he knows me
,
when
I’m really just Calla and he doesn’t.

 
“I’m sorry I’m so emotional tonight,” I
tell him.
 
“I’m not usually like
this.
 
It’s
just… there’s a lot going on.”

“I see that,” he answers quietly.
 
“Is there anything I can do?”

You
can call me
Calla-Lily
again. Because it seems
intimate and familiar, and it makes me feel good.
 
But I shake my head.
 
“I
wish.
 
But no.”

He smiles.
 
“Ok. Can I walk you back up to the house
at least?”

My heart leaps for a second, but the idea
of facing Finn right now isn’t one I enjoy.
 
So I shake my head.
 

“I’m not really ready to go back yet,” I
tell him regretfully.
 
Because it’s the truth.
 

He shrugs. “Okay.
 
I’ll wait.”

My heart thunders in my ears as I pretend
that I’m not thrilled with that.
 
We
sit in the sand, so close that I can feel the warmth emanating from his body,
so close that whenever he moves, his shoulder brushes mine.
 
I shouldn’t get so much pleasure from
that, from the accidental touches, from his warmth.

But I do.

We sit in such a way for an hour.
 

In silence.
 

Staring at the ocean and the sky and the
stars.

No one has ever felt comfortable like
this to me before, with silence that isn’t awkward.
 
No one but Finn.
 
Until now.
 

“Did you know that the Italian serial
killer Leonarda Cianciulli was famous for turning her victims into tea cakes and
serving them to guests?” I ask absently, still staring out at the water.
 

Dare doesn’t miss a beat.
 
“No.
 
Because that’s an odd thing to know.”

I feel the laughter bubbling up in me,
threatening to erupt.
 

“I agree.
 
It is.”
 
It’s something my brother shared with me
yesterday.
 

Dare smiles.
 
“I’ll be sure to work that in at the
next party I attend.”

I can’t help but smile now. “I’m sure
it’ll go over well.”

He chuckles. “Well, it’s a conversation
starter, for sure.”

 
I don’t move because I sort of want to
stay here forever, even though the dampness of the sand has leached into my
jeans and now my butt is wet.
 

 
But even though I don’t want this to end,
the darkness is so black now that it swallows us up.
 
It’s getting late.
 

I sigh.
 

“I’ve got to go back.”
 

“Okay,” Dare answers, his voice low in
the night, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think I detected regret in it.
 
Maybe
he wants to stay here longer, too.

 
He helps me to my feet, and then keeps
his hand on my elbow as we walk over the driftwood and through the tidal pools
and up the trail.
 
It’s that thing
that real men do, the guiding a woman across the room thing.
 
It’s gentlemanly and chivalrous and my
ovaries might explode from it because it’s intimate and familiar and sexy.
   

When we get to the house, he removes his
hand and I immediately feel the absence of his warmth.
 

He looks down at me, a thousand things in
his eyes that I can’t define but want to.

“Good night, Calla. I hope you feel
better now.”

“I do,” I murmur.

And as I pad up the stairs, I realize that
I actually do.

For the first time in six weeks.
 
 

OCTO

Finn

JumpJumpJumpJumpJumpJumpJumpJumpYouFuckingCowardJump.

“Hey,” Calla’s voice is soft
from my doorway.
 

I yank away from my open bedroom
windows as though the sills are on fire.
 
I’d seen Calla walk up the path with
him,
but I hadn’t realized she was
already
back
in the house.

“Hey,” I stammer, as I move far
away from the windows and try to tune out the fucking voices that taunt
me.
 
“About earlier. Are you mad?”

Calla sinks onto my bed, sitting
on her hands.
 
She stares at me
hesitantly.
 

“No.
 
I’m just worried. You know why.”

I do.
 
My journal. I also know that she still
hadn’t ratted me out to my dad. Because she knows my deepest fear… of being
locked away.
 

YouDeserveChainsChainChainsChains.
 

I grit my teeth.
 

“Don’t be worried, Cal. I’ve got
this.”

She takes a breath so shaky that
I can hear it from here.
 
“This is
the thing.
 
I haven’t told dad about
the things I read because I’m taking it on myself to make sure you’re fine.
That you stay safe.
 
That you get
better. If I’m not with you to do my job and everything blows up, then that’s
on me.
 
And I don’t want to live
with the guilt of something like that.
 
I carry enough guilt already.”

My heart feels like a concrete
block as I stare at her vulnerability.
 

“Calla, mom’s accident wasn’t
your fault.
 
You know that.”

Her eyes are so bleak as she
stares back at me.
 
“Do I?”

“We’ve told you a hundred times,
Cal.
 
You called. She didn’t have to
pick up the phone.
 
It was raining
so hard. She should’ve let it go to voicemail.
 
That was her choice.
 
Not yours.
 
She crossed the
center-line
.
 
Not you.”

Calla closes her eyes.
 
“Either way.
 
I wouldn’t be able to stand it if
something happened to you. Do you understand?”

I swallow hard.
 
“Yes. But I promise. I’ll be ok.”

She raises an eyebrow.
 
“Promise?”

“Repromissionem,” I assure her,
my entire being forcing out the lie.
 
It comes out sounding like
truth which
is fine
because honestly, I don’t know the true answer to this question.
  

Sound normal.

She rolls her eyes.
 
“Again.
 
Two syllables are easier.”

I smile.
 
“What did you need, anyway?”

Her eyes widen,
then
narrow.
 
“I
just wanted to check on you. I hate it when you seem off.
 
It makes me nervous.”

“Don’t be.
 
Nervous, I mean,” I tell her. “It’s ok.”

She nods. “Ok.”

But she isn’t convinced and
there’s nothing I can do to make her that way.
 
I know her better than the back of my
hand, so I know that.

“I just wanted to say
goodnight,” she tells me finally. “And that I love you.
 
And that if you change
your mind, even if it’s the last minute, it’s fine.
 
I hate the idea of being apart, Finn. But
more than that, I just want you to be ok. So if this is what you need, I’ll try
to be ok with it.”

Her eyes fill up with tears and
she looks away, but I reach out a hand and lay it on hers.
 
She looks at me, her chin quivering.

“It’ll be ok.”
 
My voice is assured. Confident.
 
“
I’ll
be ok.”

She nods.
 

“Reprommissionem?” Her voice is
still shaky.
 

“Promise.”
 

Lie.
 

NOVEM

Calla

The ocean breeze blows back his hair, and
Dare smiles in the sun.
 
His teeth
gleam and I giggle at something he said.
 

I
reach for him and he grabs me, holding me close.
 

“You’re
going to be the death of me,” he says against my neck, his lips brushing my
skin.
 

“Why?”
I manage to breathe, my hands splayed against his chest.
 
He smells like the woods.
 

“Because
you’re so much better than I deserve.”

I wake up in wonderment, because
hello.
I’m so not better than he
deserves.
 
My subconscious mind must
be on drugs, but regardless of that, my dreams are heaven.
 
  

I shower and make my way downstairs for a
late breakfast/ early lunch.
 
The
pickings are slim in the pantry.

“We’re out of lemons for lemonade,” I
tell my dad as we munch on cereal.
 
“We’re also out of sandwich meat, spaghetti sauce, bread, milk…
basically anything we can use to make dinner.”
  
He nods, unconcerned and I
sigh.
 

I feel like he’s been slipping.
 
Like he cares less and less about real
life issues every day, and more on his grief about mom. He cares about his job,
of course.
 
But that’s nothing
new.
 
He’s always been a workaholic.
In fact, that’s where he was the night mom died.
 
In town, picking up a
body.
 

I force my attention from that, onto
anything but that.

“I’ll go to the store today,” I tell him,
getting up and stretching.
 
“Do you
know where Finn is?”

My father keeps his face buried in his
newspaper, but still pulls out his wallet and hands it to me. “No.”

I sigh again.
 
“Ok.
 
Well, if you see him, tell him I’ll be
back later.”

I take his wallet and slip out the door,
grateful for a chance to be away from his blank expression.
 
I know we all cope in different ways,
but Jesus.

The mid-day sun gleams on the wet road as
I steer my car down the mountain.
 
The birds are chirping in the trees, and I roll my windows down to let
the brisk air in.
 
I take a deep
breath,
then
dance in my seat as a happy song comes on
the radio.
 

Thank
you, God,
I whisper in
my head. Happiness, in any form, is hard to come by these days and I’ll take it
where I can get it.
 
Reaching down,
I roll the volume dial up, pumping up the music, filling my car so that
happiness is all I hear and all I feel.
 

I only look away from the road for a
second.
 

For one brief moment.
 

When I look back up, a tiny animal is
sitting in the middle of the road. It happens so fast that I only see two green
eyes looking at me, and gray fur, and I yank the wheel hard to avoid hitting
it.
 

My car rumbles off the road and I slam on
the brakes, my wheels skidding in the dirty gravel on the shoulder.

I skid to a stop, at least a foot from
the edge, but still, I’m horrified and frozen.
 
I can’t breathe as I sit still, as I eye
the edge and suddenly, it seems very close to me.
 
Like I could’ve plunged over the side,
just like my mom.
 

My breath comes in heavy gasps, my heart
flutters in my chest as I hear her screaming, as I see the rain from that
night, the steam rising from the road, the sound of her shrieking tires in my
ear.
 
It all swirls around me like
stuttered pictures from a movie, re-living itself in ways I can’t stop.
 
I put my hands over my ears to block out
the screaming, and my chest contracts and contracts.

I’m
having a heart attack.
 

But I’m not.
 

It has to be a panic attack.
 

I’m panicking.
 

I can’t breathe.
 

I throw open the car door and the roar of
it is loud.
 
I scramble out, and
bend over, trying like hell to breathe, and failing miserably, my hands on my
knees, my mouth open, gasping impotently.
  

“Stand up,” a calm voice says
quickly.
 
“If you can’t breathe,
stand up.”

I do, arching my back with my hands on my
hips, my face turned up to the sun.
 

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.
 

By five, I can breathe a small breath.

By six, I take a large one.
 

By seven, I’m able to move my head, to
look and see who is with me.

Dare stands in front of me, concern
swimming in his dark eyes, his lithe form hovering by my car.
 
It’s like he’s afraid to approach me,
afraid that I’m a wild animal poised to attack.
 

“I’m sorry,” I tell him, my lungs still
feeling fluttery. “I don’t know what happened.”

He takes a step, his eyes wary and
concerned. “Are you okay?”

Am I?

I look around, at my car, at my open car
door, at the way I just melted down in the street. But I nod, because I can’t
do anything else.

“Yeah.
 
I just… there was something in the
road.
 
I almost hit it. I think it
might’ve been a kitten.
 
I might’ve
even hit it.
 
It happened so fast, I
don’t know.”

I bend over again, and Dare pulls me up.

“Stand up,” he reminds me.
 
“It opens your diaphragm up.”

Right.
 
Because I’m melting
down and can’t breathe.
 
For
a minute, I decide this must be how Finn feels all the time.
So
crazy, so helpless.

“I’m sorry,” I mumble, my hand reaching
back for my car fender to lean on.
 
Dare cocks his head, so calm in the face of my panic.
 

“For what?”

“For falling apart,” I whisper. “I don’t
know what’s wrong with me.”

He’s unfazed.
 
“Tell me what happened,” he suggests
softly, and his hand is on my back now, rubbing lightly between my shoulder
blades, reminding me to breathe.

“I told you... I was driving down the
mountain and swerved because of a cat.
 
I… don’t know why I panicked.”

“Maybe because your mom just died in a
car crash?” Dare prompts gently, more gently than I would’ve ever guessed he
could.
 
“Maybe it scared you?”

“I don’t know,” I admit.
 
“I just kept hearing her scream.
 
She… I was on the phone with her when
she died.”

I whisper that like a confession, because
I know I’m the reason she’s dead.
 
Dare doesn’t lower his gaze and once again, he doesn’t judge.
 

“That’s terrible.”

I nod.
 
“Yeah.”

I realize suddenly that the roar I’d
heard a minute ago wasn’t my car door, of course.
 
It was Dare’s motorcycle.
 
“Were you going to town?”
 
I ask him half politely, half truly
curious, but mostly just to change the subject.

He shakes his head. “No.
 
I was coming back. I returned a library
book.”

I’m not sure what I’m more focused on,
the fact that he reads, or the fact that he was coming up the hill and I was
going down, just like the night mom died.
 

She was coming up
,
someone else was
going down
.

“We could’ve hit,” I realize, a chill
running down my spine.
 

Dare looks confused, his full lips
parted.
 
“Pardon?”

I shake my head.
 
“I’m sorry. I was just…I’m happy I steered
over to the side, rather than to the middle. Or you might’ve hit me.”

It’s a morbid thought and what the hell
is wrong with me?

Dare stares at me, probably worried that
he’s with some sort of psychopath, but he hides it nicely.
 
“But I didn’t,” he points out.
 
“We’re both fine.”

Are
we?

“You’re shaking,” he says simply now.
 
And with that, he rubs my arms, and
somehow, I don’t know how, I fold into him.
 
It feels right, it feels normal, it
feels so freaking good,
it
feels like I’ve stepped
into one of my dreams.
 

He startles for a second, and then lets
me stand there, my forehead pressed to his shirt as he rubs my back.
 
His scent is so soothing… so woodsy and
masculine and perfect.
 
He smells
just like I dreamed he would.
 
I breathe
it in,
then
sniffle and that’s when I realize that I’m
crying.

I’m an utter mess today.

He must think I’m a lunatic.
 

“I’m so sorry,” I apologize finally,
stepping away from him.
 
“I don’t
know what’s wrong with me.”

“You’ve had a lot to deal with,” he says
understandingly.
 
“Anyone would be
edgy.”

Would
anyone be having a panic attack in the middle of the road, crying on a
beautiful guy that she’s only just met?

I look at him. “You must think I’m
crazy.”

He shakes his head solemnly. “Nope.”

“Because I’m not,” I insist.
 

His mouth twitches. “Never.”

I have to giggle now, at the
ridiculousness of this situation.

I look at him and somehow, he seems so
out of place out here among nature, with his slender, refined body and black
eyes.
 

“Did you see the kitten?” I change the
subject.

He shakes his head. “I just saw the dust
from your tires on the shoulder.”

I’m worried now because I don’t want to
be a cat killer on top of everything else. Dare takes one look at my expression
and rushes to assure me, probably because he doesn’t want me to cry on him
again.

“I’ll go look for it,” he tells me
quickly.
 
“Why don’t you go back up
to the house so you’re not standing on the side of the road?”

I hesitate.
 
“I should wait for you. I mean, you’re
doing it for me, after all.”

He smiles, a wide bright smile.
 
“You can repay me on a different day.
For now, you should get out of the road.”

“But the groceries,” I murmur, already
heading back to the car.
 

“We’ll get them later.”

We.
 

Dazed a bit, I start up my car, do a
three-point turn and head back up to my home.
 
I’m still dazed as I cross the yard and
sink into a chair on the porch to wait.
 

Twenty minutes later, Dare’s bike idles
back up the drive.

He’s empty-handed.

“I couldn’t find anything,” he calls out
as he climbs off the bike and idles towards me. “I think maybe you saw a
raccoon or something.”

I hesitate, trying to picture the animal
I’d seen.
 

“It seemed too small to be a raccoon,” I
offer.

“Maybe it was a baby,” he suggests.
 

Or
maybe I’ve gone nuts and it wasn’t anything at all.
  
But of course, I don’t say that.

“Thank you for looking,” I finally say,
my gaze dropping to his feet.
 
His
boots are covered in dew and tiny bits of leaves.
 
He really did trek out into the mountain
to look.
 

“Want to go get your groceries now?”

I nod reluctantly, for some reason
dreading the idea of driving down the mountain again.
 

Dare looks at me. “Want me to drive you?”

My head snaps up.
 
“You want to come?”

He grins.
 
“I need some shampoo.
 
I’ll be happy to drive if you want.”