Rivulet (5 page)

His eyes smiled painfully at me. “I like the cold…always have.”

I let my exhausted stare fall to the floor as I leaned away from him. “I thought you and Jewls were on again?” He wasn’t coming on to me. He hadn’t dared to do that since we were sixteen. Nevertheless, I wanted to move the conversation on to him and his life instead of mine. I didn’t want to think about the reasons he never minded the cold.

He pulled me back against him. “On, off…I can’t tell the difference. I wasn’t hitting on you, Indie. I really do like the cold. It reminds me of…well, you know what it reminds me of.”

I felt a blush spread across my pale skin.

“On again, off again Jewls knows you’re here?” I asked, trying to change the subject once again.

“Maybe. She knows Gavin and I were out tonight. Your house is usually what ‘out’ means for Gavin.”

“Apparently, not lately. And don’t play coy with me. Cadence called the two of you and told you about the night terror. You’re supposed to come down here and act like you are giving them room to talk and in the meantime dig inside my head and make sure I’m okay—and if Jewls isn’t working out, Sophia told me she had a thing for you today.”

I heard him breathe a grin, and felt his arm tighten around my waist. I wanted to tell him to hold me tighter, to do something, anything, to fill the void I was feeling now that Skylynn had stripped me of the one thing that had kept me sane all these years.

“Okay, so maybe he called her, and
maybe
she told him you had a run-in with the queen of evil right after climbing the ceiling like a mad woman. And maybe we were only a mile away and decided to swing by for a nightcap. They still need to talk, and I still like hiding in this darkroom.”

When I didn’t respond, he leaned me back so he could look into my eyes. “Is it Wilder? Is he pushing you?”

“No, he learned the hard way about that last fall.”

“Which led to him vacating town,” he said, raising his brow to emphasize his point. “I was really rooting for the guy.” His grin spread across his deceivingly innocent face, meaning he wasn’t at all rooting for him. He always said Wilder didn’t sit well with him, but he could never tell me why. Mason kept Wilder close anyway, surely trying to figure out what it was about him that he didn’t trust.

“Yeah. He told me you gave him tips—starting with the Halloween mask,” I muttered as I thought of the day that happened.

When I’d broken it off with both Mason and Gavin, stopped it before it became too serious, they both asked me why, and I told them it was because I couldn’t feel the beats, that I wanted to feel two rapid beats in one. I wanted to feel that burn of life on the inside of me, the one I felt when Skylynn gave me my scarf, the one I felt in the North Wing. I told them that I wanted them to feel that for someone.

To be funny, when Wilder started to ask about me, when he was trying to find a way to introduce himself to me for the first time, Gavin and Mason told him to wear a mask, catch me off guard.

Of course, they were hiding outside my window, the one Wilder was perched on outside my bedroom. When the laughter stopped and I found my breath again, they asked me how many beats right as Wilder pulled his mask off. When my gaze met his, I wanted nothing more than to feel those beats. I didn’t, but like a fool I did try.

I was afraid Wilder was back in town to force me to try again. I didn’t want it to get ugly between us. I’d had enough permanent goodbyes in my life, and I had vowed not to add to that list if I could help it. I knew it would only take one word from me to cause Mason and Gavin to ask him to leave again. No doubt, Gavin shared Mason’s lack of trust when it came to Wilder. That hurt me, too. Wilder didn’t deserve to be an outsider, and that is exactly what I made him out to be.

“I heard he met someone. Not sure how solid that is,” Mason said under his breath as his hands danced across my back, reminding me of how awesome his touch had always felt. It was never forceful, and it seemed to hum to the music that was in him, the music he loved to play.

Without warning, my breath turned to fog. He leaned me back once more, pulling my chin up so my eyes were inches from his, which made my heart race.

“What?” I said in a foggy gasp.

“I just wanted to watch them change,” he whispered as his fingertips delicately traced my jawline.

My eyes were like Cadence’s, a pale green, but when my curse surfaced they turned deep blue, the color of ice.

“One day, someone is going to push past this cold, and when they do you will see that it was nothing more than a wall keeping you from being happy.”

“I am happy. I have the pleasure of calling the four most amazing people I have ever met my best friends.”

“And three of them are your exes,” he said with a smirk.

“That makes me a bad person, doesn’t it?
Keeping all of you in my life?”

“‘Keeping? Good luck kicking us out.”

He held out my arm so it would catch the dim light of the room. Along my shoulder and a few spots down my arm were bruises.

“What did you do?” he said with a gasp, sitting me up so he could see my other arm.

“I don’t know. Maybe climbing the bookcase,” I muttered.

“You may walk into things or stumble now and again, but you never bruise. Not like this.”

That was an inside joke. Every dare he gave me in the great outdoors, I matched and usually not gracefully. But I would never show a mark on my body. He would joke that that was a good thing, that someone might take him as a violent boyfriend if we came out of the woods with all the bruises I should have had.

“It was a wicked dream. I’ve never fought that hard for anything,” I said under my breath. “God, I’m so selfish. I couldn’t lose you and stay sane.”

“No one is going anywhere,” he promised.

“That is what my mom said the last time I had a night terror. She was wrong. I wish she was right, but she was wrong. I’m terrified. Rasure is going to do something to me—she is going to make sure I’m utterly alone.”

“I’m not scared of her. Neither is Gavin. You’re fine. We’re not going anywhere.”

“How fair is that to you? The both of you? You have your own lives to live. I shouldn’t be so dependent on you.”

He reached for my head and moved it from side to side.

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to see if you bumped your head during that climb.”

I elbowed him. Even though he was teasing me, there was truth behind his words. I’d always told them I was independent, that I didn’t need anyone, and now I was saying the opposite. I was facing one of my many demons and being honest with myself.

He laid me down along the couch and tucked himself against me. His eyes tenderly smiled at me. “We were each other’s first,” he whispered as his hand clenched my side. “I would be a liar if I didn’t admit that in distant, random daydreams, the thought of us being each other’s last has not crossed my mind, but I’m not a fool either. I know what we had was fleeting, and in its wake I found one of the best friends I could ask for. I don’t mind the cold, Indie, and if you ever just need to be held, you call me. You’re not going to lose me. Tell your nightmare to go to hell.”

I held my breath, then said, “I’m the reason you and Jewls are having so many problems.”

He adjusted the blanket, pushing it between us and around me at the same time. “I want a girl who is sure of herself, who knows no boundaries. If Jewls is too insecure to accept our friendship, then it’s just not meant to be.”

“Like you would be okay with her cuddling on a couch with some guy.”

“Some guy, no. A best friend that only sees her that way, yes. It was just a fling, one that I don’t have the energy to keep up with.”

“Then there was Sophia,” I said with a sleepy smile.

“We’ll see. She may be too innocent for my taste.”

“That makes me feel awesome, thanks,” I said as I playfully slapped his shoulder.

He laughed under his breath. “You were always my favorite sinner.”

“I have to be a saint until my birthday,” I murmured as I reached for the guitar pick that was on his necklace and flashes of our first summer came to me. Images of us in our youthful past began to haunt the room.

Mason had a way of daring me to step outside of my boundaries. When we met, even though it had been almost two years since I lost my family, it still felt like yesterday. He was in pain, too. He’d lost half of himself, his twin, and we both blamed ourselves for the losses we experienced. We thought the pain of grief was a justifiable punishment, but we also had no sense of self-preservation. If there was a rule that said we shouldn’t do something or were too young to do something—we broke it. On that list of broken rules was drinking. I think Mason drank to dull the pain, but that wasn’t my reason. I drank for the warmth. Not mine, but his. I wanted to be able to feel his skin against mine, his hands, lips…everything. But without the alcohol, my raging hormones would cause everything I touched, everything around me, to freeze. No scarf could shield the emotions of a young teenage heart.

That wild spree didn’t last long, Gran, my grandmother, was waiting up on me one night. I remember her sitting next to me for hours that night, waiting for me to sober up. She knew the exact second I did; it was when the room froze over and I began to cry with shame.

I could never lie to anyone. It’s an odd flaw I have. I either tell the truth or say nothing at all. So when she asked me why I was choosing that dangerous path, I told her.

As she embraced me, let me cry, very tenderly, with a gentle whisper, she told me that if I could not be myself with someone, then I wasn’t meant to be with them. She said that masking who I was would do nothing but bring me an early grave and more sorrow than I was already fighting to bury.

The very next day, she took me to the North Wing, and my life was never the same again. Usually I have to touch things in order to unlock the memories, but that wing was different. I was able to stand in any room and watch, from a safe distance, the life I was yearning for.

“And on that day, we will have the wildest party that ever existed,” Mason whispered as his hand cupped mine over his necklace. For a second, I would have believed that he could see the images all around us now, my memories that were inside out.

Back then, when he asked me why all of a sudden I was following all the rules, I told him. I told him about the cold. Even showed him. He didn’t care, didn’t judge me or call me a freak. He just said, “I like the cold.” I told him the next time I wanted to drink and let loose would be when I was my own person, sure of myself. We both agreed that would be the day Rasure left my life. We’ve been planning this party for a while. Too long.

“I saw your brother, Ben. He had me worried,” Mason said as he tensed, then squeezed his hand against my back, as if he wanted to assure himself I was real, safe and sound in his arms.

“Why is that?”

Ben was one of the first children the Falcons took in. He was almost twenty years older than me and one of the best lawyers in practice. He was helping me weave through all the roadblocks Rasure was throwing at me. It was his brilliant idea to have everyone in our rather large family write letters on my behalf. Considering that each of them were well known in their fields, leaders of the communities they lived in, it was a good play. The judge would be a fool to block me this time. I’m sure that judge was not only weighing my future, but also his. The Falcon children are peaceful—that is, until you cross one of our own. Then we only know one word. Vengeance.

“He doesn’t trust Rasure any more than you do. He found an amendment that states that if you perish, she will gain all of your inheritance. He said he was hiring security for you.”

“Yeah, he told me the same thing,” I said faintly as I thought of earlier today, when Ben told me if I died Rasure got everything. The sad part is, I wouldn’t put it past her to try something like that. “I told him I just wanted the house and my things, for him to get her out of here, even if he had to pay her.”

“And she said the same, according to him.”

“Why does she want my house?” I said, almost to myself.

Rasure had been trying to destroy it from the inside out for years. Not only did she add that addition on, but she kept adding other things, small and large. I hated that because it placed voids in the rooms. Instead of everything opening up a dream for me, there was nothing. I almost thought she was trying to make me insane, that she knew I depended on the memories I unlocked and witnessed over and over, each time finding something that I’d never seen before.

“I don’t know…was your uncle Jamison always a space cadet?” Mason said with a hint of disdain.

I had to think about that for a second. When I was a kid, he traveled a lot. Even though he had homes of his own, this was the one place he always came to for month-long stays. He used to be the fun uncle, the one that would catch us sneaking ice cream, and instead of telling on us he’d make himself a bowl and tell us stories about all his travels, with added details to keep our suspense. He had a medical degree and used it in third world countries. When he wasn’t off doing that, he was building schools or raising awareness and funds for the less fortunate. Typical Falcon.

That all changed when he came home with Mrs. Rasure. Apparently, they had eloped abroad, and at that point he no longer wanted to help save the world or travel. I knew my mother and grandmother were more than furious with him, but he was family, so they accepted Rasure. He was never the same after marrying her. Cadence and I called him a puppet behind his back. Since my grandmother’s stroke, I hadn’t really seen him. He stays in his wing and only comes out when social occasions demand that he does, when Mrs. Rasure does.