Solstice (23 page)

M
y mom is home. The second I walk through the door, a giant burden lifts from my shoulders. She’s not dead. I can voice this concern in my mind now that I know she’s okay. The cold feeling in my gut I’ve been carrying around since the day she was supposed to come back dissipates. I didn’t even realize it was there, weighing on me.

She moves around in the Botanical Haven, cutting dead leaves off plants all over the place. And she’s taken the calla lilies Reese gave me and set them on a table at the front of the store. The glass vase shimmers from the sunlight coming through the windows. I’ll have to explain why I have illegal flowers. Maybe I can lie and say I cut them myself.

“Hi, Mom.”

She gives me a sideways glance and then looks away. Snip. Snip. More leaves fall. Some aren’t even dead.

I walk in and decide to go ahead upstairs. Let my mom have her time and then come talk to me when she’s done. After all, if either of us should be angry about something, it’s me. My mom should have been home on Monday. She didn’t call. Didn’t give an explanation. Didn’t do anything except not show up. Yet, even with all that, my stomach is clenched in fists of guilt.

“Did you miss me?” she says.

I turn, halfway up the steps. She’s at the bottom looking up at me, scissors in hand.

“You said you’d be back on Monday.”

My mom sighs and pulls off her gardening gloves, tossing them onto the counter by the cash register. “Things got complicated.”

My heart skips a beat. “With my father?”

She nods, and I notice her eyes glance to my tattoo. I look down at it and focus on the bumps faded from redness into just the black of the ink.

“Who is he?” I haven’t asked in years. A lifetime. Not since I got over the dream of living a normal life with a normal family.

My mom turns away and walks to the door, locking it from the inside. It’s early. No one who went to Randy Conner’s funeral went back to school afterward, but if my mom knows about the funeral, she doesn’t say anything.

“Who is he?” I repeat my question, wondering if I’ll ever know.

“It doesn’t matter, Piper.”

I throw my backpack to the ground, watching it tumble down the five steps I’ve already gone up. “Yes. It does. You spin me some story about how he’s some escaped terrorist and then you spend almost a week with him? And then you come back here and tell me it doesn’t even matter who he is. It doesn’t add up, Mom. If he’s so bad, why have you been gone so long? What’s complicated anyway? What complications could there possibly be?”

My mom’s eyes meet my own, and it’s like she’s begging me to drop the subject. To stop asking my questions. I don’t want to stop. I’m sick of living a life filled with her mysteries. Or lies. They seem to blend together.

I start up the steps again, leaving my backpack lying at the bottom.

“It’s about custody, Piper.”

Her words freeze my feet in place. “Custody?”

“I can’t lose you, Piper. Not now. Not ever.”

“He wants custody?” How could a father I’ve never known want custody of me? I’m eighteen now. Custody shouldn’t even be a concern. Not to mention an escaped criminal could never even take the case to court.

“He wants to take you away from me.” My mom’s voice is coarse as sandpaper. “And I’ll never let that happen. I won’t share you.”

Share me? It seems such an odd thing for her to say. Sharing her adult child with an estranged father. The father who’d left me a note in my room. The father who’d said we’d have all the time we need to get to know each other.

“Why did he do it?” I ask. “Why did he leave?”

My mom laughs. “He never wanted to be a part of your life from the very start. We were nothing to him. So he left and got himself in trouble and escaped from the burdens of a family.”

My father never wanted me?

“So why now?” I whisper the question, but she still hears it.

“Why now indeed?” My mom walks toward the counter, shuffling through the dead leaves on the ground. More drop off around her as she walks. I glance at them in passing but then move past them in my mind. “Because we haven’t been careful enough.” She laughs. “I haven’t been careful enough.”

“Careful? How much more careful could we have been?” I suppose if we completely removed ourselves from the grid that would have been more careful. But even my mom hasn’t been that extreme. At least not yet.

“We’ll have to move again.” She pulls out some junk from a drawer and begins shuffling through it.

“No.”

She ignores me. “Yes, that’s the only answer.”

“No, Mom.”

My mom swivels her head and stares through me. “No what?”

I look to her eyes, but she won’t meet mine. “No, I won’t move again.”

She turns back to the stuff from the drawer and flips thought it like she’s looking for something. “Yes, you will.”

I won’t. I tell myself this over and over in my head. I have a life here. I have Chloe. And now there’s Shayne. I don’t have to live with my mom forever.

The bell rings. Someone’s trying to come in. The knob shifts, but it won’t open since my mom’s locked the door. I look through the glass to see who’s visiting.

Reese.

I look at my mom, and she’s staring right at him. He’s looking right back at her.

“I wondered where the flowers came from.” My mom’s voice is so calm it sounds crazy. Each word drawn with perfect precision.

“Open the door,” he says. It’s a command. And I know this is so very bad that my worlds are about to collide.

My mom faces me again, and I am compelled to walk down the steps until I’m at the bottom, near the counter.

“Think we should have a little fun?” She uses her crazy calm voice again. And more leaves drop from plants.

I only want her to get rid of Reese, not kill him. “Mom, it’s no big deal.”

She thrusts her finger out and points at the door. “He is a big deal. How dare you try to tell me he’s not?”

Reese knocks again and twists the knob. I hear the metal crunching inside it.

I throw up my hands. “He’s nothing. I swear it.” I tell this to my mom and myself at the same time. Reese is nothing. It’s Shayne my mom should worry about.

Or am I lying to myself? Should my mom be concerned with Reese, also?

“He gave you these.” And in a single move, she grabs the pink flowers from the vase and throws them down on the tile.

When she turns back to the door, her mouth twists into a frown. Reese stands there in the door frame.

“Look who it is.” My mom narrows her eyes at Reese, and I realize she knows him. They’ve met before. Maybe he came by when I wasn’t here or something. But she can’t possibly know he’s really Ares, the god of war.

He takes a step toward her. “Did Piper tell you about the great time we had Friday night?”

My eyes almost fall out of my head. I can’t believe he’s gone and said this.

My mom turns to me, and I know she’d like to lock me away. Forever. Somewhere no one will ever come. “Piper has told me nothing of the sort.”

“Do you want me to tell you all about it?” Reese takes another step, and his foot smashes the pink petals of the calla lilies.

My mom picks up her shears, and if they were only bigger, I know she’d cut his head off. “I’d like you to leave,” she says.

“How do you know each other?” I say, but neither of them looks at me. It’s like I haven’t even spoken.

“You can’t stop it,” Reese says. “You know Piper and I are going to end up together.” And he looks at me, and all at once, our eyes lock, and his intoxicating smell pours into my nostrils. God, I could die in that smell and be happy. I totally remember his kiss.

He can tell I remember it; it must be all over my face, and he smiles.

I want to make the thought go away. To force Reese out of my mind. But his scent flows through me like the wine we also shared on Friday. It reaches into the parts deep inside me that tell me how much fun life can be and settles. I try to force myself to look away from him but find I don’t want to. So I take a step back to increase our distance and get the smell out of my nose.

“I think you must have misunderstood.” My mom’s voice sounds certain. She has no idea what’s going on inside my head. I don’t either.

Reese won’t take his eyes off me. Won’t free mine. “I didn’t misunderstand anything,” he says.

My mom moves closer to me and settles her hand to my shoulder before answering him. “Piper is going to stay with me,” she says.

I decide they’ve both gone nuts. I squeeze my eyes shut, breaking the contact. “Would you both just leave me alone?” And I run for the door before either Reese or my mom can react.

I
run out of the Botanical Haven, past the greenhouses, and into the trees, pushing deeper and deeper until I can’t see anything but a forest of bark around me and branches high overhead. Even then, I keep running, trying to put as much distance as I can between myself and the craziness of my life. Chloe is totally freaking me out. My mom and Reese know each other. And Tanni claims I’m responsible for Randy Conner’s death.

I stop when I see a Spanish Oak in front of me; one of its long branches twists so low to the ground I can rest against it. It’s only then that I catch my breath, letting the hot, clear air around me replace the smell of Reese. He’s like a drug. I want to run toward him even though I know I should run away. I let the heat of the world soak into me to erase him from my thoughts.

“Shayne,” I whisper, praying that wherever Tanni sent him, he can hear. In seconds, he’s there next to me.

“I was afraid Tanni killed you,” I say.

“Fate can’t kill me that easily,” he says.

We stand there staring at each other, neither of us moving. I feel like I’ve betrayed him. I feel like I’ve been with Reese. But I haven’t. I’d run away from the Botanical Haven before I got too close.

I take a small step, and this is all it takes. Shayne pulls me to him, and I bury my head in his neck. I can feel him breathing in my hair.

“Reese came to visit,” I say.

Shayne stiffens. “When?”

I shudder amid the warmth of the world around me. Reese and my mom. Have they started after me yet? Will they even follow? “It’s like they know each other,” I say. “How can that be?”

Shayne rubs my back but doesn’t answer, and then he tenses up, and I know why. I smell Reese. He’s followed me from the Botanical Haven.

“Look how precious.” Reese’s voice sizzles in the air. Taunting.

Shayne lets go though I desperately want to cling to him. “Go away,” he says.

Reese puts his hand to his chest is mock surprise. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Go away now,” Shayne says. “I don’t want you anywhere near Piper.”

Reese looks at me and catches my eyes, locking them in place. “Piper doesn’t seem to mind.”

As soon as he says it, his smell amplifies. I fight, with every muscle I have, to stay rooted in place. I lean back on the Spanish Oak and pray it will grow limbs and hold me so I don’t go to him. But like it has some power over me, his scent draws me forward.

Shayne turns to me, and I want to die when I see the hurt in his eyes. He’s watching the struggle inside me. I don’t want to be anywhere near Reese; I want to be with Shayne.

I want to be with them both.

Shayne opens his mouth, his beautiful lips pulled back in a snarl around his teeth. “Piper wants you to leave.”

Reese laughs.

“What’s so funny?” Shayne says.

“Everything’s funny, Shayne.”

I hear the bite when Reese says the name.

“What?” Shayne takes a step away from me. A step closer to Reese. And his hands are tightened so hard into fists they’re white.

Reese sneers. “I was just thinking how funny it’ll be when you’re trapped in your own tortures. A suitable end for the ex-Lord of Hell.”

Shayne takes another step toward Reese, and I want to reach out and pull him back. The last thing I want is for the two of them to start fighting. I want to run to Reese, but I also want to grab hold of Shayne and leave this place now. The sooner the better.

But Shayne’s such a freaking guy. He wants the fight. “Stay away from Piper. Go away now, or I won’t wait for permission from the assembly. I’ll set Prometheus free and give you his place. Let the birds eat your liver for a few millennia. We’ll see how you feel then.”

Another wave of Reese’s aroma hits me. I turn my face away, trying to block it, but it’s not like I can stop breathing.

“Such a delicious punishment. Piper might like that.” Reese’s teeth gleam under the smile which forms on his mouth. “Not that your threats matter.”

“Watch and see,” Shayne says.

“The assembly backs me.” Reese flexes his fingers and then relaxes them. “But of course you’d know that if you ever came to any assembly meetings.”

“I have more important things to do,” Shayne says. “Like run the Underworld.”

Reese laughs at this. “Maybe you’re not doing such a great job. I’m sure you’ve heard I’ve been to visit.”

Shayne glares at him in reply.

“It’s true,” Reese says. “But I can tell you want to deny it. I’ll tell you what.”