Shattered (14 page)

“You think Kamon did this?” Dad asked.
Our eyes caught in the rearview mirror. Dad wouldn’t understand the truth, and I
couldn’t think of a reason not to blame Kamon, so I nodded. “Call Sophia. If
Kamon is close by, we’re going to need backup.”

As he sped down the dark street, I dialed
her number and held my muddy phone to my face. Her voice was heavy with sleep
but sparked to life as I told her what I’d just told Dad.

“Pull over!” she yelled. “I’ll get to you
in a second!”

“Dad, she wants you to pull-” Sophia
appeared in the front seat and cut me off. Dad swerved the car onto the
shoulder of the road, and I held Nate’s head firmly in my lap, fearing the
slightest disturbance would wake him and make his bones go nuts again … in
front of everyone. Or worse. What if he turned into the angry version of
himself, the wild dog I’d hauled into the tub? My dad would never get over
that. We would be so far beyond getting him to like Nate.

Sophia’s phone rang, and she answered in
a panic. “Lydia. Yes. Now. Nathan’s room.” She hung up and turned to Dad. “The
car will drive itself to the condo in case you were followed,” she said.
“Christine take Nathan’s hand and touch me with your other. Christopher, hold
on tight.”

She snapped and yanked us out of the car
and to the pool house. I imagined what the M3 looked like speeding down the road
on its own.

When we landed in Nate’s room, he nearly
dropped out of my arms. I smiled slightly as my dad helped me steady him and
pull him towards his bed. A sheet appeared there just as we lowered him down. I
assumed it was to shield his bed from blood and filth. “Let’s clean him up,” I
said. “That way you don’t need the sheet.”

“I don’t think he would appreciate us
undressing him,” Sophia said. “He’s breathing fine. He can shower when he wakes
up.”

“Christine!” I jumped at the sudden sound
of my mother’s voice. I’d seen her twice in one day. I would’ve smiled if not
for the circumstances.

Like she didn’t see anyone else in the
room, not her ex, Sophia, or my unconscious boyfriend, she ran to me and kissed
both of my cheeks. She brushed dirt off of my dress, picked leaves out of my
hair, then gasped as her inspection led her to my wrist. “This looks broken,
baby.”

I’d forgotten to feel the pain until
then. Her words made it scream at me now.

“What happened?” Dad asked, as he
encroached on Mom’s territory, pulling my throbbing wrist out of her hands. She
came around to my other side and touched the swollen and tender skin, her hand
next to his. Their silent battle continued as I told Mom the abbreviated
version of the story. In my tale, Kamon was the villain and had attacked
Nathan.

“Did you see Kamon?” Mom asked. “No, you
didn’t.” Psychic mothers don’t need to wait for answers. I prayed to God and
all of the saints that she didn’t ask her powerful mind the right–or
wrong–questions. “It wasn’t him, Christine. I swear.”

Dad sighed and rolled his eyes at her. “I
don’t want to talk about Kamon. This is about her. Christine, how did you break
your wrist?”

My eyes darted to Mom, waiting to see if
she was going to arrive at an answer before I spoke. “I can’t see,” she said. “It’s
jumbled. What happened?”

Thank God. She couldn’t see Nathan accidentally
breaking it, and I couldn't imagine telling her the truth.
My shifter boyfriend is having trouble shifting, and he snapped my bone
in his hand.
She'd kill him before I finished the sentence. And I didn't
mean
kill him
in the figurative
sense. She would literally kill him, take him from me and cast him into the
land of the dead without a second thought.

Taming creatures was her job. She was
famous for it. And a woman who would freely give her soul to her child for
protection wouldn't take Nathan's current problem lightly. She wouldn’t see an
accident.

“I fell,” I said. “Running to
him. I tripped … on a tree.” Suspicion flashed across my father’s face. I
guessed it was impossible to trip on a tree. “Root,” I added. “I tripped on a
thick root and fell.”

“Then it’s sort of his
fault!” Dad said. “What was he doing outside anyway? When he gets up…”

“Christopher,” Mom
interrupted. “Don’t blame Nathan for this. If he went outside, I’m sure he had
a good reason. He’s incredibly responsible, and he wouldn’t want anything to
happen to Christine.” Sophia stepped in and stopped my Dad from firing off a
comment. He looked like he was about to tell Mom where she could shove her
opinion of Nathan.

With a few whispers over the
bone, Sophia cooled the pain and healed my accidental injury. Then, she gave me
a glass of the potion. I probably would’ve forgotten it tonight.

I downed the whole glass and
watched Nate’s chest rise and fall under his bloody shirt. He didn’t budge as
Sophia inspected him. Luckily for him, and possibly the lie I’d told, only his
right elbow and left ankle needed her healing magic. The rest of his bones had
found their natural places.

I lay next to him and
burrowed close to his side, completely disregarding that my parents were
watching.

Mom surprised everyone by staying
for nearly half an hour, coming up with theories to explain Nate’s attack,
before jetting off to a meeting. Dad refused to go to Chicago for the second
night in a row, but he left the pool house after giving up on getting me to go
to my room.

Sophia continued inspecting
Nate with me at his side.

“It’s just a few broken bones,”
she said. “You look like you’re about to cry. Don’t. He’s fine. He should’ve
shifted during the attack to prevent injury, but he has so much control. He
probably stopped it because he was in public.”

“But what if he’s not?” I
paused to catch my breath so I wouldn’t cry like she expected me to. “What if
he’s not fine?”

“We would know if something
wasn’t right, dear. He’s a shifter. If he had a problem, it would be obvious. His
shifts would be off. His mood too. You’d know. We would all know.”

I bit my lip, trying not to scream.
I knew Nate had a problem. A big one.

“And if he did,” I said. “…how
would we help him? How would we make him better?”

She sighed. “You are worrying
for nothing. This is an isolated incident. There is no way this attack will
cause him that much distress. Okay?”

I nodded, but I was far from
done. “And if it did?” I said, again. “Or if anything caused him distress and
he was in trouble … what would happen?”

“If I tell you this, you must
promise me not to dwell on it and worry like you always do.” She narrowed her
eyes at me, and I nodded. “Okay … shifters are delicate creatures. A lot of
them don’t handle stress well. Normal things are fine, but when something
really gets to them, they get off. Your mother and I watched him closely after
the incident with his parents. We made sure he was shifting and eating and
sleeping. He didn’t miss a beat. But if he had or if this attack were to spur
something...” She paused for an eternity. I almost shook her. “His shifting
would become erratic. Finally, he would stop shifting altogether. Whatever form
the cycle stops on, is what he will be. Most get trapped as an animal, but I’ve
seen some … in-betweens.”

I shuddered and covered my
mouth. What had he done to himself? What had I made him do to himself?

“And how would we help him if
… if that happened?” I asked.

“First, we’d get him out of
the house. Away from you. If he was having a hard time, I wouldn’t feel
comfortable leaving you alone with him. Shifters can be very dangerous to
themselves and others.” I suddenly remembered Nate biting into his own arm.
Then my mind flashed to him breaking my wrist. “Depending on how severe it is,
he may need to be detained.”

Detained? My confession drew
back inside of me. I wasn’t sitting with my pretend grandmother. My caretaker.
My friend. She was much more than that. She was my mother’s right hand, and my
mother was insane.

“Good thing he’s okay, then,”
I said. “I don’t want him taken from me.”

She leaned across Nate’s body
and kissed my forehead. “Relax,” she whispered. “He will be fine. You worry
more than your mother, and that’s saying a lot.”

She disappeared in a flash of
light and left Nate covered in blood. I couldn’t stand the sight of it. I
couldn’t stand the thought of leaving him uncared for.

I braced his limp body
against my chest and inched to his bathroom. “I can’t let you stay like this,”
I said. “No one has ever taken care of you. I will, Nate. I will.” I made
promises to him like he could hear me as I peeled off his clothes.

The only other time I’d seen him fully
naked, I was in the same place, doing the same thing–caring for him after
his magic turned volatile. We were seriously in need of some romance. My view
of his naked body, while utterly perfect, had been associated with pain and
blood and gore. Not tangled in sheets as we kissed and laughed.

I laid him in the tub as
gently as I could, horribly out of breath, and started the shower. Memories
intruded of him breaking and healing in the woods.

 
“I’m sorry,” I said, as I squeezed his
shampoo into my hand. I lathered it in his hair, untangling leaves and mud clumps.
“I’m sorry I made you take care of me. I’m sorry I didn’t see it happening.”

He was so focused on me that
he’d completely neglected himself. Maybe now that I knew, he would get better.
I needed to tell him I knew the truth, thank him for sacrificing so much, and
demand him to do whatever he needed to do to get his life in order.

As I scrubbed the blood from
his back, he made a cute noise that made me think he’d woken up. But he stayed
slouched over my arm, eyes still shut, until I cleaned him up.

I wrapped a towel around him
and hauled his ridiculously heavy body to bed. To avoid seeing my father, who’d
apparently moved in, I showered in Nate’s bathroom and borrowed some of his
clothes.

I wasn’t going anywhere
tonight. I wanted to be here as soon as he opened his eyes. I needed to
practice what I would say so it wouldn’t come out in a scream or a pitiful cry
and stress him out even more.

I felt around for the end of the wooden
chair I was supposed to be sitting on and found soft sheets. Before opening my
eyes, I wondered if today had ever happened. It could’ve all been a dream–sleeping
time away, Mr. Gavin thrusting himself into danger, almost shifting at the open
house. All of it.

For some reason, the scents in the room
hit me before thinking to open my eyes. It smelled amazing, which meant Chris
was probably mad about something. I opened my eyes and lost all sense of time
and space and life in general. The scene made absolutely no sense. My
incredibly beautiful girlfriend was pulling a pair of boxers over my legs.

“What the…”

“Hey,” she said. I threw a pillow over myself.
“It’s not like I haven’t seen it.”

“Chris!” She smiled and continued pulling
up my boxers. I tumbled out of bed and she laughed, not at all in the mood she
should’ve been in–shocked or at least upset as the scents in the air
suggested. I took another whiff to see if I’d misread something. She smelled
like my soap and shampoo. And … she was wearing my t-shirt and a pair of my
shorts. “What’s going on? Why are you wearing my clothes?”

“I showered here, and I didn’t want to go
to my room. My dad is still here, and I didn’t want him to make me stay inside
with him.”

For a wild second, I thought about the
ways I would die if I’d made love to her without knowing it. I considered
jumping off of something high–a building, a cliff–if I’d missed our
first time.

“You don’t remember anything?” she asked.
I shook my head, finally getting the boxers to my waist. She closed the
distance between us. Her eyes seemed to peer right into me, past the underwear,
into my soul. “The woods? Leaving Trenton?”

 
“No. Who was in the woods?” I asked.

“We were. You ran out there. I followed
you.” She pressed my knuckles against her lips, then kissed all the way to my
wrists, then my arms. Her journey led her to my chest, then to my neck, and
finally, she brushed her lips against mine. It was almost too faint to qualify
as a kiss. “We need to talk, Nate. I know you’re not shifting right.”

My first thought was to lie. Just
flat-out deny it. My second thought was more rational. It was to skim the
truth, give her a little and hold back the rest. As I shuffled through more
options, Chris put her hands on my cheeks and forced me to look at her.

“I’m going to make this easy for you,”
she said. “You don’t have to lie to me. I saw it with my own eyes and you told
me you’ve lost control.”

Oh, God. Again, my first thought was to deny
it, tell her she was crazy. But I’d obviously been unconscious for a while.
Life had moved on without me, and Christine was in on my secret.

“So … um … what happened?” I asked.

“You don’t remember anything, do you?” I
shook my head, and terror wafted from her skin. She didn’t speak for a long
minute, her bottom lip between her teeth. I pulled her tight against my chest,
as if I could shield her from fear. I knew what she was thinking. Remi Vaughn.
That was why I didn’t want to tell her in the first place. I wasn’t anything
like Remi. Not yet at least.

“You’re stressed,” she said. “Because of
me, you’re not okay. Your bones were breaking. You were bleeding.”

I groaned. That explained why my body
hurt so much. I must’ve tried to change back or stop a shift without her or cold
water. From the sound of it, it wasn’t a pretty sight.

“I’m sorry,” I said, then gasped. “D-d-d-”
I swallowed to stop my stutter. “Does Sophia or your mom know?” She nodded. “Both?”
She nodded again. “Did they say anything about a violation. Statute Fourteen?”

“I don’t know what that is, so … no. But
they don’t know about the shifting stuff.” I sighed, incredibly relieved. “We
can keep this between us. They think you were in a fight. I won’t say anything,
but we have to figure this out Nate. Things could get worse. They could take
you from me. They would be afraid you’d hurt me.”

I frowned and inspected her from head to
toe. If we were in the woods, she could’ve tripped and hurt herself. I would
die. “I would never hurt you. And trust me, no one would need to take me away if
I did. There would be nothing left for them to take.”

She exhaled loudly and slumped like my
words had taken all the energy she had. “Don’t worry,” I said. “This will all
be over soon. I don’t know how, but in twenty-three days, your Mom is going to
kill Kamon and there will be nothing to worry about. I’ll go back to normal.”

“In twenty-three days you could be a dog
forever!” she screamed.

“I won’t. I still have some control. I
can change back. Everything’s fine.”

She leaned her head on my chest and let
me wrap my arms around her. After a long minute of silence, she said, “How do
you know that?”

“Know what?”

“That in twenty-three days, my mom will
kill Kamon. That’s very specific.”

Since this was turning into a night of
confessions, I answered honestly. “She told me.” She pulled away and glared at
me. Her eyes said:
spit it out
. “She
told me because … we talk sometimes. Okay … all the time. About you.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry. Can we stop talking about
this?” I asked.

“No. We can’t. That’s what we always do.
We never talk about you. We never talk about the things we really need to talk
about! I refuse-” She paused and sucked in a long breath. She held it there
while dragging her hands to my head. Her muscles and her scent relaxed as she
toyed with the ends of my hair. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to scream. Let’s just
calm down. It’s just me and you and no one else right now. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

“Then if it’s just me and you and no one
else … you should be able to talk to me. Talk about what’s bothering you. Say
it. Say something. Say anything.”

I felt like a useless pile of goo. She’d
melted me, burned me down to the core where the truth was.

“It’s me and you and no one else?” I
asked, just to clarify. She nodded. “And we don’t have to talk about it to
anyone else?” She nodded again, still playing with my hair.
 
“Okay. I’ll talk if you, one, promise not
to get upset and do something crazy. And two, if you tell me the rest of what
happened tonight,” I said.

“I promise not to do something crazy.”

“And?” I said. “About tonight?”

“I noticed you were missing,” she said. “I
checked the bathrooms and the basement. I heard you and followed you outside.”
She paused for a second, flittering through contrasting emotions, then started
again. “By the time I found you, you were … incapacitated.”

The word, or the way she’d said it,
didn’t sit well. It bordered on a lie, or part of the truth. It wasn’t a word I
thought Chris would use naturally.

“What do you mean? I thought you saw my
bones breaking and we talked,” I said.

“I … did. They were moving. And you did
talk to me, but not me. Look, you’ve been through a lot today, and you’re
already so stressed. Let’s just get in bed. We can talk about this tomorrow.” I
pulled the end of my t-shirt that she was wearing and stopped her from walking
away. “Fine,” she said. “Your bones were shifting, but you weren’t. You weren’t
aware of it or me. My dad and I dragged you out of the woods. I broke my wrist
in the process. Don’t freak out. It’s already healed.”

Too late. I was freaking out. I grabbed
her wrist and held it to my lips, pissed with myself that I’d let it happen.

“Nathan, I’m fine,” she said. “Look at
you. This is your problem, how much you worry about me, and your body can’t
handle that. You have to stop.” I shook my head, still kissing her wrist. “It
barely hurt. Sophia fixed it when we got here. She thinks someone connected to
Devin might’ve hurt you. And that’s it.”

She left my arms and turned off the lamp.
She waited until we were huddled under the blanket to speak again.

“Your turn,” she said.

“I haven’t been feeling myself since the
thing with Kamon, or really … when your mom asked me to help her.” She popped
up in bed and yanked the string on the lamp. Oh, boy. Here we go.

“With what?” she asked.

“You.” She glared at me, a silent demand
for me to elaborate. I didn’t really see a way out of it. “I’m immune, babe. Think
about it. She feels comfortable with you going to Trenton because I’m there and
I’m immune to psychic powers. She even taught me a few things to make me more
immune than you even know about. The thought that it’s only me between you and
your enemies is kind of putting a lot of pressure on me. Well … not kind of. It
is.

“Why didn’t you say something?” she said.

“Because … I just wanted you to be happy
and feel safe. And your mom does too.” The look on her face said: I thought I
was
safe.

“Did she make you work there?” she asked.

“No. That was all me, but she appreciated
it. It made things easier. It makes Trenton work.”

“Protective charms and my mother tracking
Kamon makes Trenton work,” she said, still hanging on. I contemplated letting
her stay there, dangling on the ledge of not really knowing anything, but this
honesty thing felt nice.
 

“If that were true, and magic and
technology could take care of everything, they wouldn’t need me. Sometimes the
triplets follow us. Sometimes they’re at Trenton. They haven’t tried anything
big, at least not big enough to get past me, but magic is inferior to their
powers. You know that.”

She nodded. “I do. I guess I just didn’t
want to think about it. I just wanted to be normal.”

“That’s not a bad thing to want. And you
have it.”

“You give it to me,” she countered.

“I help. I help make you happy.”

“But you’re not happy,” she said. I waited
too long to comment. “We promised each other, Nate. We promised to be happy,
and you’re so stressed out that your magic is acting up. And you’re hurting
yourself for me. But it’s over. You’re done with Trenton. You’re done looking
after me.”

I shook my head and pulled her down to my
chest. She looked like she was on the verge of tears and I really couldn’t
handle it. Not tonight.

“As long as you’re at Trenton, I’m at
Trenton,” I said. “We don’t have much time left. It’ll be okay.”

She didn’t say anything else for the rest
of the night. She lay on my chest in silence after our confessional without another
comment or a single tear.

In the morning, I helped her sneak into
her room, tiptoeing past her father who was knocked out on the sofa. An hour later,
she texted me and asked me to meet her in the kitchen. Her father was cooking
breakfast like he lived here. Before I could put my foot in my mouth and ask
him what he was still doing here, he said, “What time is the meeting starting?”

“What meeting?” I asked.

“Christine has called a family meeting. At
least that’s what she said this morning. Are we still on?”

She nodded and hopped up on the counter,
as happy as ever. I guessed last night wasn’t the end of the world.

“Surprisingly, Mom can come,” she said. “She’ll
be here in a few minutes. Sophia too.”

“What’s it about?” I asked.

“You’re not invited, so don’t worry
yourself with it,” Mr. Gavin said.

Chris hopped down and smacked his
shoulder. “Of course he’s invited,” she said, and winked at me.

Sophia arrived for Christine’s impromptu
family meeting before Mr. Gavin finished the meal and joined him at the stove.
Chris kept her distance from me, but she smelled nervous now.

In the dining room, Christine sat at the
head of the table and clasped her hands in front of her. The three of us took
our seats around her and waited for Lydia.

For the meeting, I presumed, Chris had
brought the
iPad
she barely used. She propped it up
next to her plate like she was preparing for a presentation.

“Sorry I’m late,” Lydia said. She kissed
Christine on the top of her head and took the seat at the other end of the
table. Instead of her usual black dress, she had on hunter clothes–all
black spandex and long boots. She looked beautiful and terrifying, like an
angel of death. Mr. Gavin noticed the beautiful part. It now smelled like
someone had doused the table in wine.

“No worries,” Chris said. “Dad made
breakfast for our first official family meeting. Isn’t that nice?”

“It is,” Lydia said. “It isn’t breakfast
for me, though. I’ve been on the other side of the world all day. But I’m sure
it’ll be great.”

“Don’t eat then,” he said. No one said
anything for a while. These two should kiss and get it over with before the
tension killed us all.

Chris cleared her throat and sat up in
her chair with a perfect posture I’d never seen her use. “I asked everyone to
come here so we can talk. All at once. Well, not at once, but together. You get
what I’m saying. It’s about last night.”