Rites of Blood: Cora's Choice Bunble 4-6 (18 page)

But my blood still heated with Geoff, and he would never take away the life I’d worked so hard to save. That was the life that he belonged to—grad school, job, house, family. He slotted so nicely into that progression. He’d never make me want to give it all up. He’d never twist me into something else, someone else.

I squeezed Geoff’s hand and watched the cars go by.

When we got out at the parking lot nearest my apartment, I looked around surreptitiously with a sudden uneasiness that Cosimo would pop up again—that Dorian would step from the shadows and call my name and I would have no choice but to come into his arms. But there was no sign of either of them.

“Looks like your stalker’s disappeared,” Geoff said.

“Don’t say that,” I protested. “It’s not even funny to joke about.”

“You’re right. It isn’t.” He kissed my cheek. “Forgive me?”

I rolled my eyes at him but smiled. “Of course.”

I swiped my card to get us into the building. Geoff looped his arms around my waist in the elevator and kissed my neck. I unlocked my apartment door and muttered, “One moment,” and ducked into the bathroom, locking the door behind me. After washing my hands, I brushed my teeth and splashed water on my face. The teardrop ruby necklace, Dorian’s gift, winked up at me from the counter where I had left it before our date. It hadn’t seemed right to wear it.

I felt him. Dorian. I felt him all around me, the memory of his touch, his look, the shadow of his presence. I couldn’t escape it.

Except maybe I could.

I stared at myself in the mirror. My hair was a little tousled, my eyes unnaturally bright. Did I want to? Did I really want to give him up forever? He offered fabulous wealth, near immortality. The chance to feed a country, maybe. Surely what he was asking was cheap in return.

Especially since I would give it to him again for absolutely nothing except for what he did to me—and the light in his eyes when he looked at me, a light that couldn’t be love but might be something very close.

I took a deep, shuddering breath. That wasn’t me. It couldn’t be me. It was the bond talking, the insanity of vampiric influence that muddled human minds.

And mine.

I knew I would hurt him. I’d hurt him so much, and I shouldn’t care because it was my life, dammit, my future, and I had to choose what was right for me. I didn’t owe anyone all of myself. I wasn’t that noble, no matter what the bait for the trap.

“Cora? You okay in there?” Geoff’s voice came from the direction of the living area.

“Yeah,” I said. “Just flossing. I think I got some popcorn stuck in my teeth.”

Why couldn’t I seem to get through an hour without lying to Geoff?

I had never lied to Dorian. I couldn’t.

My hand shaking slightly, I dug in my basket of toiletries and got out the birth control pack I’d gotten from the Health Center a week before. I swallowed a pill quickly—just in case.

I toweled my face dry and opened the door. Geoff had pulled off his coat and was sitting on my Gramma’s couch. I hung mine up next to his.

“I used Chelsea and Christina’s bathroom. I hope they’ll forgive me,” he said.

“What they don’t know,” I said. I stopped in the middle of the room, suddenly self-conscious. Conscious of what I was going to do—with Geoff and to Dorian.

“So, got a movie or something you want to put on?” Geoff asked, breaking the silence.

“We just saw a movie,” I pointed out.

“There are others.”

“I think you’re just trying to get me on the couch,” I said, sitting down next to him. My limbs felt like tubes of sand. Ghosts of sensations danced over my body, echoes of words in my mind.

To the ends of the earth.

I shivered.

“Could be, could be,” Geoff said, not noticing. “Now you’ll never know.”

Before those phantoms could hold me back, I kissed him. Geoff kissed back, holding me against him, his hands at my waist, sliding against the skin of my back under my shirt. And Dorian was still there, filling my mind, crowding Geoff out with a sudden, keening need.

I pushed back without mercy, holding Geoff against me, holding onto the promise of getting back the life that had been stolen twice, first by cancer and then by the unwanted bond.

Geoff’s breath was coming faster. He kissed my neck, his mouth hot and impatient, and the thrill of visceral awareness went through me. Was I ready for this? Did I want this decision? Did I even want Geoff this much, right now, or did I just want the freedom he could give me?

Freedom—and loss. Dorian would never touch me again, never kiss me, never speak to me, never look at me with those sad eyes that seemed to see into eternity—

“No.”
The word was a gasp, and my heart contracted so hard that it hurt. “Geoff, no, I can’t do this right now. I’m sorry. It’s too fast.”

He sat back, releasing me suddenly, and let out a breath. “I know. It is. Something came over me, I guess. I hadn’t planned—” He broke off. “I don’t want to ruin this, Cora.”

“We’ve got time,” I said. I heard the echo of Dorian’s words as soon as I had said them, and I bit my lip. If Geoff and I had time, then Dorian and I didn’t.

And vice versa.

Why couldn’t I let Dorian go? Wasn’t that what I wanted—all I’d wanted?

“Sure,” he said. “I’ve waited three years already.”

“Don’t even pretend you didn’t date anyone else in that time,” I objected, relaxing.

He grinned. “Yeah. But they weren’t you, so it doesn’t count.”

I gave an incredulous guffaw and socked him, and then he started tickling me, and I tickled him back until we lay in a laughing, tangled, panting heap, the tension between us dissipated into friendly companionship again.

On the outside, at least, everything was fine. And on the inside, I was shattered.

We surfed Cracked and Distractify for the next half hour, but I don’t know what we saw even though I heard my laugh mingling with Geoff’s, just a beat behind, and I heard my words answering him. Geoff said goodnight with a final kiss at the door. I shut it behind him and leaned against it for a long time.

Three years, he had said. And Dorian had waited, what, many hundreds?

Was it any less real, what I had with Dorian, because it was arbitrary? Was human love so much more selective that I could condemn it? It was certainly less constant, Dorian had pointed out.

I closed my eyes, and I could almost feel him with me. I had the sudden, insane impulse to call him, to tell him to come and get me and whisk me away forever and end the war that raged within me and make me happy, happy despite myself.

I took a shuddering breath and opened my eyes.

Maybe it wasn’t really Dorian I distrusted so much.

Maybe it was me.

W
hen I turned off the alarm on my phone the next morning, I realized that I’d missed two calls. I hit the voicemail button before I got out of bed, rubbing at the tension in the center of my forehead—a side effect of a birth control pill in a cognate’s system.

I was still a cognate. Still bound to Dorian, because I couldn’t open my hand to let him go.

I’d messed up last night. I was sure of that much—but in which direction, I didn’t dare to let myself think.

The first message was from Lisette, demanding to know about the date. She’d called while we were still in the movie. I rolled my eyes. It was a good thing I’d turned my ringer off.

The second was from the real estate agent who was handling Gramma’s house.

“Hi, Cora. This is Beth Reid. I just wanted to let you know that I’d really like to do an open house next week. The market seems to be picking up, and the landlord finally evicted those tenants across the street and got the yard cleaned up and looking nice, so I think just a quick push might get a contract on the house. I’m going to relist it, too, so it doesn’t seem so stale. Anyhow, if you could maybe come by and just clean up a little so it looks just perfect, that’d be great. Looking to hear from you, and I hope you had a great Christmas! Bye!”

I sighed as I checked the timestamp. I hadn’t been able to do the fall yard pickup that year, and the leaves from the maple tree out front were probably six inches deep.

Well,
I thought to myself.
It’s something else to keep me busy.

Busy and not thinking about Dorian or about Cosimo or my date with Geoff.

I ate breakfast, packed a lunch, and called Beth back as I got into my car, telling her that I was going over right away. She thanked me and again hoped that I’d had a good Christmas, and then we hung up.

The drive to Glen Burnie was just short of an hour. I’d brought my earbuds with the mic so that I could call Lisette because I knew she would explode if she didn’t have the details of my date with Geoff right away. She, of course, took full credit for the date, having brought us both out to the mall the day before, and she just about crowed with self-congratulations when I told her that we’d both had fun.

“And did you kiss?” she demanded.

“Give me a break, Lisette. It’s not like it’s my first kiss ever,” I said.

“So you did!” she said.

“Actually, I’ll have you know that even Geoff and I have kissed before,” I said.

“Cora Ann Shaw,” Lisette said in a scandalized tone, “how dared you not to have told me?”

“Because it isn’t about you, Lisette,” I said. “It’s about me. And Geoff.”

“But I’m your best friend. You pretty much have to tell me,” she countered.

“I don’t think that’s anywhere in the best friend contract.”

“Did you have sex?” she pushed.

“Lisette! Really. No, we didn’t, and if we do, I’m not going to tell you,” I said.

“Dish, dish,” she urged. “So what did he do? What was it like?”

“We had dinner and watched a movie,” I said. “And it was nice.”

“That wasn’t what I was asking.” Her tone was reproachful.

“It’s all I’m going to tell you, though, so you’ll just have to be satisfied,” I said.

“Fine then, party pooper. So when are you going out again?”

“Party pooper? Seriously, do real people even say that?” I said as I turned onto 695, heading east along the southernmost edge of Baltimore. “And I don’t know. We didn’t talk about it. Maybe Friday. I don’t know. But I don’t know if it will work out.”

Those last words—I hadn’t meant to say them. But once they had been said, I couldn’t take them back.

“What do you mean?” Lisette demanded, her voice suddenly shrill. “You and Geoff are perfect for each other.”

He was perfect for my old life. And I loved my old life. I wanted it.

Didn’t I?

“I just don’t know, Lisette,” I said lamely.

“It’s that CEO guy, isn’t it?” Lisette’s voice dripped with disapproval. “Does Geoff know about him?”

“Maybe that’s part of it,” I said. “And not that it’s any of his business, but I told Geoff that I’d be going to the party of a friend from the clinic on New Year’s Eve. But maybe I’m also not entirely the same person that I was before I got sick. I had everything all worked out, but now.... I don’t know.”

I seemed to be saying that an awful lot.

“You didn’t get rejected from the University of Chicago, did you?”

“No. Actually, I just got accepted,” I said.

“Then what’s the problem? You’re going to Chicago. He’s going to Chicago—”

“He might be going to Chicago. He might also be going to UC Berkley.”

“So what’s the hang-up? Don’t tell me the rich douche has swept you off your feet,” Lisette said.

Off my feet. Out of my mind.

I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. I hated fighting with Lisette—if for no other reason than she almost always won.

“His name is Dorian. And we’re not dating,” I said.

“He kind of gave you a necklace worth a king’s ransom, or so you said,” she said. “I think that qualifies as dating.”

I sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“You’ve known Geoff for three and a half years,” Lisette said. “You don’t really know this guy at all. Don’t throw Geoff over just because this Dorian guy’s dazzled you.”

Dazzled. If only she knew.

“God, Lisette, please don’t preach at me. I don’t want to hurt Geoff. And I like him—I do. I just don’t know what I’m going to do right now. I feel like everything is changing under my feet.”

“Nothing’s changed except you,” Lisette snapped. “You haven’t been yourself since Christmas Eve. Look, I know you’ve gone through a lot, and I’m sure that knowing that you’re going to be okay is a huge relief and everything, but you can’t let that change who you are. You didn’t let the cancer beat you. Don’t let getting better mess with your head, either.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, deflated. The exit for I-97 loomed ahead, and I took it south to Glen Burnie. “I know I’ve been weird and I’m really sorry. A lot of stuff’s come up recently, and I just don’t know what I’m going to do about it.”

“Well, whatever you do, don’t forget your friends. We’ve been here for you for a long time,” she said.

And Dorian wanted to be there for me forever....

“Yeah,” I said aloud. “I know. Look, I’ll talk to you later.”

“Sure. Don’t forget to keep in touch,” Lisette said, a touch of accusation in her tone.

“I won’t,” I promised. “Bye.”

I hung up, and my mind went back to the circles that had already worn grooves into my brain.

What did I want? If only I could answer that question. I’d thought I wanted a way out. I’d been fighting the bond with every bit of strength that I had since I’d woken to discover what Dorian had done to me.

And now the door was open. I had a way out. And once out, I could never come back.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to go.

Why not? What did I feel toward him, really? My heart went wild at the brush of his fingers, my body tuned to his every desire. He terrified me, his power over me as well as the cold political calculations that ruled his life. His ideals were almost as frightening, as was the place that they demanded that I fulfill. I had no doubt that what he felt for me, whatever name I gave it, was deep and real.

And I knew that, right now, if I had to, I would die for him.