Stay (17 page)

What would he say if he could see me now? Centuri
es of pretending I do not care and then captivated by a man who wears his face.

Lissa had grown even more agitated when I offered no answer.
My cares went far beyond her or the man we loved. I watched her, mystified, as she sank to the empty seat beside me and crumpled into herself. Tears of frustration washed the paint around her eyes into ugly streaks.

“I can’t believe he told you
,” she said morosely, glancing bitterly at me. All kinship she had claimed with me earlier seemed to have evaporated into thin air. This broken shell of a young woman held no kindness in her eyes, no sparks of mirth or joy. It had all been a farce.

Perhaps Cain was right and she only wanted to be close to him by using me.

The thought might have enraged me a thousand years ago, when all I remembered of my past was anger. Now I observed her with the tempered echoes of sorrow. Curiosity stole away my ire as I watched the silent tears drip from her chin and soil her dress. She rubbed her palms against her cheeks and turned to the mirror to wipe the last of the coal streaks.

“I have to sing another
number after the girls get done,” she said numbly. Cursing, she murmured, “Can’t believe I trusted you.”

Trusted me?

She paused to glance at me and to my confusion, smiled. “Maybe it’s ’cause you’re different from them other hookers. That’s why he picked you, huh?” Gradually, she faced her reflection and touched the fading bruises her tears had revealed. Her hands grasped for several small cases and she rushed to hide the evidence again.

“He wanted someone
pure
and smart. Fine with me,” she said with a shrug and dab of a brush to her cheeks. “You can keep him.”

I frowned. Her reaction was not what I expected.
Leaning forward, I studied her. I waited until she could no longer ignore my stare before I said, “You had a chance at true joy, Lissa. Why did you destroy the child, when you long for a family more than anything?”

She sucked in a breath, quickly masking her pain with a cutting look. “I suppose that’s what he told you. But it was a lot more complicated than that.” Absently
, she rested a hand to her womb and breathed in shakily.

“Cain did not tell me about your child,” I said.

You did, sort of,
I thought.

“But Cain’s the only one who knew for sure… How can you—”
Lissa’s eyes widened fearfully at my words and underneath her fierce mask I could almost see the girl she still was.

“I just know,” was my reply. W
e observed one another, she with her fears and judgments and me with the shocking realization of a truth I had ignored for so long.

What made them human was the very reason I was cursed in the first place.
Our immortality alone did not make us inhuman. It was our fear of opening up again, of learning to love again. This made Seid and I the most human of them all. Loving me had made Seid unable to be the ruler over the waves and storms. For that short span of time in the ancient past I grounded him, made him lose control.

Lissa needed more from me than the selfishness I had given her
thus far. In my line of work, I couldn’t afford to be a covetous immortal. I had the choice to either snap their connection forever, or make the harder choice.

I covered her hand with mine and
said, “I do not condemn you for the choice you made without him.” This detail I knew instinctively, without prying into their emotions. It was obvious she had made her choice and driven him away after.

W
hy couldn’t I see all of this clearly in the beginning?

The
answer to my question chose to burst through the dressing room door just then, shocking both of us with the pent-up fury in his face.

Seid’s face,
I reminded myself.

“Lissa!” Cain practically growled out her name before rushing toward us. What frightened me was not
his anger but the fact he hadn’t looked at me since he walked in the room.

-sandy

Chapter 15

Land
of Wandering

“What was that?” Cain shouted.

Lissa hissed
, “What’s what? You’re gonna have to be a little more specific, genius.”

“You know exactly what
I’m talking about,” he retorted and crossing his arms over his chest. “Jude just told me you’re the reason my girlfriend just danced like a—” He stammered and his eyes finally fastened to my silent frame.

“Like what, Cain?” Lissa snapped back
. She stood in her high heels and cocked her hip into a defensive stance as she clenched her fists. “Like a stripper? You got a problem with the way your
girlfriend
dances? Not her fault you make a habit out of finding lost chicanas like us, huh?” Laughing, she turned her back to him, acting as though she wasn’t miffed, as if his attitude did not strike deeply into her heart.

I knew better. I could feel it clearly as
I could see her rosy aura encased in a dusky gray sheath. I watched with wonder when she pulled a silky, shimmering fabric from the sack beside her dresser and put it in my hands. Her shining eyes were still red around the rims, the only evidence left of her tears. 

She had my cloak hidden away all this time?

I knew it wouldn’t work for humans, so she could not have discovered my secret.

Cain watched the exchange through
suspicious eyes. “Lissa, you don’t get to talk to me about my relationships, not now, not ever. Fact is I didn’t want Rona around you. She made the choice to reach out to you. If it were up to me, you’d never get to ruin anyone else’s life ever again.”

Lissa s
ucked in a deep breath and with the faintest tremor, replied, “I guess I would be really upset if I cared. But I don’t, Cain. I broke up with you, remember? Maybe I’ve grown up since then and want to make sure she don’t get hurt. Someone needs to tell her all your secrets.”

Cain laughed, unfazed by her empty threat. “
Grown up? Since when? Judging from what I saw the other night, you’ve gone right back to the same bad habits.”

“Shut up!
You don’t know what it’s like for me, Cain. You never understood. If you did, you’d be thanking me for getting your foreign girlfriend a job.”

“What
?” Cain huffed, setting his stormy eyes on me. “Did you even ask Rona what she wants?” He held up his hands and his mouth twisted into a hard, unpleasant expression when she couldn’t answer. “That’s what I thought.” Nodding to himself, he brushed past her and reached for me. “Come on, baby, let’s go home. We’re done here.”

Now that Cain was here, hand outstretched, dark eyes caressing and pleading and turbulent at once, I could feel his pull on me. Seid had been the same way, an enthralling and unavoidable snare.
My fingers were tangled in the bunched fabric in my lap. I held onto it like a lifeline and tried to listen to the voice of reason.

He ignored Lissa pointedly and she tried desperately to act like it didn’t matter. The fact was they were very much aware of one another still. Th
eir connection hummed with life before me, a living, golden cord binding them together. For a moment I had the fleeting thought of how different my feelings might be had he not looked so much like Seid, had he never seen me to begin with. It would have been another mission, another failed attempt at rescuing true love.

The lo
ok in my beloved’s eyes shifted and I could sense his uncertainty. And I had the strange and fleeting thought that if I was given the chance to do this over again, would I still have chosen to know Cain?

Standing
on the heels Mrs. Nguyen bartered for me, I was soon almost eye-level with him. Both of us stood, twin giants beside Lissa, and I made sure to hold her gaze as I placed my hand in his.

No sooner had we left the underground level of the club and headed for the exit through the abandoned office, than Cain pushed me into a corner. I gasped when he shoved me against the wall and filled the space left between us with his solid frame. And then his lips were hungrily trapping mine in a merciless dance.

I kne
w I should have pushed him away. I should have run back into the club and then hid while he went to ask Lissa for help searching for me. A dozen scenarios flashed through my mind of ways I could force the two of them together. But I didn’t.

You made your choice the moment you stood beside him and took his hand.

His fingers brushed a trail up the curve of my waist. His lips elicited a sharp moan from me when they began to trail lower. Caged by his heat and lingering passion, with his forehead pressed to mine, I realized this was all that mattered. I didn’t even have a second name anymore, nothing to claim for myself. The only real things I had left in this life: Cain and a two-thousand-year-old cloak
.

“I’m sorry I got angry back there. I don’t think you’re a slut, baby. I could never think that.
And I love watching you dance,” he said, clasping my waist firmly and moving away from the wall so my legs were forced to wrap around him. “But those guys don’t see you like I do. They look at you and they see sex. And it was killing me because…”

I slanted my mouth against his to silence him and then pulled back.
I faced his bewildered expression with a half-hearted smile. “I love you,” I whispered, too afraid to say it any louder, lest Seid hear me. “I may never have the chance to tell you again, so never doubt that I—”

A
deeply rooted sound escaped his chest as he crashed into me and claimed my lips again, like a sob or maybe laughter. Either way, the moment I uttered those fateful words, I knew it was the ending rather than the beginning my traitorous heart longed for. My mind never failed to remind me that the only beginning Cain and I could have was the promise of eternal farewell. Never had I felt such euphoria because of another human’s joy. It was infectious, this perfect rightness of being, of belonging in one moment in time.

When I placed my feet on the ground
, he only tightened his hold on me, burying his face in my neck and breathing me deeply in. He was murmuring things against my skin and the flush of his breath sent shivers down my spine.

Tell him. Tell that you can’t stay with him
before you break him completely,
my inner, callous and immortal self, demanded. But I couldn’t, at least not now and especially after snippets of his senseless murmuring met my ears.

“—love you
, until my last breath, forever.”

I expected for it to end then. Surely Seid would intervene and I would open my eyes to another location, another mission. I had broken all the rules. My whispered declaration was unforgivable, even if it was my way of saying goodbye. We were using borrowed time, either way, I realized.

Time that belongs to her
.

We walked back to Cain’s apartment
instead of “hailing a cab,” as he called it. His spirits were so high I couldn’t help but laugh at his childishness. Every time a snowflake came fluttering down from the skies, he tilted his head back to try and catch it with his tongue. When the wind continued to thwart his efforts, he made me attempt it.

I never missed.

“Not fair when you use your superpowers, Wonder Woman,” he said.

My feet were aching but I cared little, because his smile never left his face. To see someone so burdened by the hand life had dealt them exude so much joy because of me was thrilling. And just then, the memory of the look in Lissa’s eyes as she told me about their child flashed before me.

“I want to know everything about you, Rona,” he
said. Keeping his arm secure around my shoulders, he added, “I want to know more about where you come from and how you ended up in Brooklyn, of all places. I know you feel like it’s got to be some big secret, but you can tell me.”

“I do not think you will like this tale. I have never been good with words,” I confessed.
Cain shrugged and sidestepped, bringing me with him, to avoid the grating in the sidewalk releasing a constant pulse of billowing steam.

“Oh
, I see. Don’t want to try and one-up a poet, eh?”

“A poet?” I asked and wrinkled my nose at the idea. We had many poets in my time, people who proclaimed their thoughts to the public from the streets.

“That’s right. Didn’t you know I’m like the heir to the Dr. Seuss fortune?” The mirth in his eyes took away from his gravity.

Obviously he was teasing me and I had no clue who this doctor he spoke of was. “If you were rich, you would not be working as a bodyguard at that club,” I said with a grin.

Cain cracked his knuckles and raised a dark eyebrow. “I can see I’m going to have to prove it to you, then. How about we make an even trade? You show me what it’s like to be you and when we get home, I’ll show you what I can do.” A smile broke through his bravado, his gaze conveying an entirely new meaning to his promise.