Stay (22 page)

Cain must have seen my answer in my face, because he did not hesitate to speak for me.

“I know that Liss
a and I have unresolved issues,” he said. “It’s not like we didn’t already know that. She works at my family’s nightclub and I see her almost every day. She lives with my cousin and uncle and that’s part of the reason I don’t make that many visits to the loft. But we’ve made it work so far. I know I need to forgive her and I promised you I would.”

“So play,” I interrupted with a soft smile.
“Nothing is stopping you.”

Cain exhaled and shook his head. “You aren’t letting up on this are you?”

“My love,” I softly said after pressing my lips to his, just to savor the taste, “this is about
you
learning how to feel again, how to heal. I will do whatever it takes to make you and Lissa whole.”

His chest heaved with some unspoken emotion. “What if that means bringing me and her back together again? What are you gonna do?”

I held his gaze, knowing I would regret it if I didn’t as I said, “You will both forget me, soon after I leave.”

“No, I wouldn’t forget you,” he argued.

“It is the way it has always been,” I began to explain.

Cain shook his head and moved so quickly I might have questioned his human status, had I not known him. I shivered when he pressed his face into the crook of my neck and rolled me so I was draped on top of him and the covers.

“I’m not like the rest of them, Rona.”

“I know,” I said. “But I am not li
ke anyone you have or will ever meet. I am immortal, Cain. Even if I stay with you, I do not know what will happen. He could end my existence for disobeying his orders. Or maybe…” I hesitated, not knowing if I should even mention it, dare to begin to hope. “I could remain with you.”

Until all of you have passed on, at least.

Cain’s shadow-drenched features were illuminated by a hidden light as he drew me closer and sighed. “I understand if you choose to leave. If it means you get to live, I’d let you go. But you need to know, I won’t ever regret a moment we’ve spent together.”

Guilt pressed over my shoulders
, reminding me that it was my choice to choose him for now, consequences or not. Now he might never know how happy he could have been with Lissa. And I reasoned, would anyone think less of me for following my heart? Could I not have this small moment of happiness, just till I had to let him go?

His assurances were identical to the thousands of other words I had heard men proclaim to their loves over time. Nothing in his declaration was original when compared to the history of his kind. I had heard and seen it all and never would have expected to be swayed in such a
way. Because he was telling these things to me, however, this made all the difference. And because he drew me closer, if that was even possible, and began to softly sing senseless songs of love, I knew he meant it.

That night I didn’t dream about Seid.

-anonymous

Chapter 20

Looking Again

When I woke the next day to the sound of rustling fabric against plastic I knew something was wrong. Cain preferred to watch me wake up and hold me until he was called into work each day. I frowned as I dropped my legs over the edge of his bed and stood to follow the mysterious sound.

In the living room, I was greeted by the smell of freshly cooked eggs and bacon. The antique stereo, identical to the one in his
uncle’s flat, was on and playing a melancholy tune of soft, breathy vocals. Bent over next to the frail coatrack was Cain. His black hair was still in its naturally wild state, with tuffs sticking up in conflicting directions. As usual, he wore a thin white shirt and sleeping pants. But I was surprised to see the upturned sacks at his knees and wrapped my arms around my chest as I approached him.

The wind was howling beyond the brick walls of the apartment and I thought of reaching out with my power to inspect the weather and then thought
better of it. Using the curse for leisure was not wise when I didn’t know who was watching me. Clearly, judging from yesterday’s reminders,
someone
was. The affliction that had ravaged me twice yesterday seemed almost personal. I needed to be careful now more than ever before.

For their sake
, Orona, or for yours?
my conscience taunted.

Mrs. Nguyen’s gifts had been tossed inside the apartment the other night and left in their bags. Grateful as I was
for her generosity, I hadn’t given much thought to them. Cain must have seen the bags and remembered. I reached up to hide my smile behind my fingers when I saw him pulling out lacy and shimmering fabrics, undergarments and dresses. He was muttering under his breath as he moved them from one pile to another and paused on a blood-colored dress.

He reached up to grasp his hair with his free hand and I leaned closer to hear him whisper, “—that crazy old bat is trying to kill me?”

“Why would a bat try to kill you?” I asked, genuinely curious.

Cain jumped and twisted around so quickly he began to wobble. Trying to hide the red dress behind his back was not helping him keep his balance. I laughed aloud when he fell onto his backside. He grimaced and held up the dress like it offended him at first. The lines about his eyes smoothed, however, when I crossed my legs beneath me and joined him among the piles.

“What are you doing?” I asked while resting a hand on his knee.

Cain’s mouth opened and closed. His eyes shifted back and forth between the piles of clothing and me, like an animal caught in a trap. Finally he held up the red dress Mrs. Nguyen had made me try on and trade
d paper for. “Finding something to wear for tonight.” He wagged his eyebrows at me suggestively.

I laughed when he held the dress to his chest and posed. “Cain, those were not meant for you!”
I protested and reached to claw it away from him.

He easily dodged me. “You sure about that? I think this is more my color than yours, babe.”

“Cain, please do not wear that. Mrs. Nguyen traded a lot of green paper for that one!” I cried and stood on my knees to grip his broad shoulders.

His composure finally broke then and a brilliant white grin split his face in two. “Well
, you sure ain’t wearing
this
to the club tonight, no matter how much green paper she spent. Those guys were salivating all over my girl last time. I’m the only one who gets to look at you like that,” he said with a wink.

Keeping a frown on my face was hard when his blue eyes lit up like that. I sank back and crossed my arms over my chest for emphasis
. “What do you propose then?”

After scooting back to better display his work, he held up a finger. “Before you judge me, try and see this from my perspective. I’m a slightly stronger than average dude, granted. But I’ve also got this really hot and sexy foreign girlfriend and while I’m appreciative of that fact, it also makes me a little bit paranoid.” He stuck his tongue slightly out the corner of his mouth while digging through the nearest pile in a childlike manner. “Here, I bring you Exhibit A.”

The dress he held up before my eyes was one of my few contributions to Mrs. Nguyen’s gifts. I had picked out the blue color while she chose the style. The neck scooped down, though not quite as dangerously as the garments piled together in the untouched heap.

I reached out to feel the fabric and smiled at him. “I love this one. But I am confused. Why are you so worried?”

He threw up his hands and the dress in the process as he said, “She doesn’t even know… Didn’t that woman pick at least one decent get-up? I’ve been going through all these clothes, trying to find something that isn’t going to distract me on stage.”

I scrunched my nose when he fingered his mother’s shawl and threatened to wrap me up in that instead. But then I remembered everything he had said and
all that was left unsaid. Hope and dread filled me as I asked, “On stage? Are you… did you…”

Cain shrugged as he reached for another sack and dug to reach the bottom. “I may have called Jude earli
er and told him to sign us up.”

“
What about your work at the site?”

His gaze traveled over me in a way that made me strangely self-conscious. My fingers began to tug at the tattered hem of one of his old tee shirts. Mrs. Nguyen had insisted on buying me many undergarments, but I was fond of Cain’s old concert
tees, as he called them.

“They don’t need me today,” he said. “We’re going to the club early to practice. I haven’t written much lately, so I’m going to wing it
mainly and see what happens tonight.”

His search at the bottom of the last bag halted
with the brush of fabric against plastic. Lifting a quizzical eyebrow, he tore his gaze from me and looked at the fabric he had just pulled out. The underlining of the dress was a smoky purple, the same as the skies after a storm, and draped with other sheer and glittering fabrics. When Cain shifted to his knees and leaned forward to drape it across me, his sea-blue eyes turned a smoldering gray.

“What about this one?”

“I like it,” I replied and closed the space between us to kiss him. His eyes seemed so young when I pulled back to assess them. It was then I realized the truth I had been pushing aside for days now. Cain was still a boy in so many ways, in spite of all he had been through. But because he wore Seid’s face, I had been able to ignore this fact.

Because you
wanted it to be him.

Unshed tears stung behind my eyes as I silently
agreed. Cain didn’t ask. He only pulled me in closer, messing his separate piles, and then lifted me to sit in his lap. He deepened the kiss. I felt as though I might melt away or simply fade. I wanted to lose myself in the person I was before we had met, to be an unfeeling and unchanging immortal. Was this what I wanted all along? What worried me was that Seid was allowing me to sabotage all my plans.

Perhaps Cain felt the change in me, because for a few moments he simply held me and kissed my tears away.

His attitude that morning was a forced cheerfulness. Between bites of eggs, during our dish washing and dancing before the stereo, however, Cain’s mask would fade. What I saw in those rare moments was a young man in desperate need of control over his life. Too much had been taken from him at too young an age.

And I was the lucky card, the ace in the stack. He didn’t know whether to embrace me and never let me go or toss me aside. The tragedy was that we both knew he could not throw me
away now. He was in too deeply, in this relationship we were too afraid to give a name.

A better person would have let him go long ago and let him forget. Or perhaps they would have taken their chance at happiness and held on to him just as fiercely? My arms squeezed reflexively around his waist and I pulled out of our kiss to bury my face into his solidity. As I listened to his heart race and slow, he breathed me in.

“Rona, you okay, babe?” he asked with a heavy sigh.

I squeezed my eyes shut, wanting the silence, wanting to hold onto him just a little bit longer.

Let me keep you always.

“Rona?” he persisted.
He pulled my chin gently from his chest and up to meet his blue gaze.

I almost cried to see his vulnerability and his tenderness. “I am just—happy that you are playing tonight.”

Cain’s mouth drew into a pensive frown, into a tug at the corner of his lips that pulled the scar on his face into a cruel angle. “I hope that you’re not worried about me and Lissa anymore.” His eyes pursued mine vainly as he searched for any hidden truths.

He was closer to the truth than he knew. Not only was I worried for that reason, but I had almost spoken a lie. I was forbidden to lie and as far as I was aware, it was physically impossible for me to utter
half-truths.

When I did not answer, he continued, “You think I’m gonna pretend you haven’t seriously thought about splitting.” His mood changed swiftly with his words and his eyes turned a darker, deeper shade of blue, like the rolling depths of the sea. “I know you aren’t so sure about us…” His voice cracked slightly and he breathed deeply before continuing, “But I think you have to start trusting people sometime, Rona.”

I reached up and pressed my fingers to the skin just above the collar of his shirt and whispered, “I
do
trust you, Cain.”

He dragged his hand from my chin to graze my cheek with his fingers and said, “Then trust me when I tell you that you may be some kind of goddess or whatever, but when it comes to this, I know best. I know that you were like a ghost when I first found you, but now you feel. I know you think about everyone before yourself and that’s why we’re in this hole together. And even though I know there’s so much you haven’t
told and probably won’t ever tell me, I love
you
.”