Unfaithful (36 page)

I still couldn’t speak.

“Come on.” Evan strode over. “I have to get you out of here.” He picked me up from the ground gently as though I were made of crystal.

A metallic groan caught his attention, but his angry expression didn’t alter. He turned toward the noise just in time for another loud creak from the Ferrari, which appeared to be teetering. A second later, it slid over the edge of the bridge and crashed into the water, sending a spray of droplets as brilliant as diamonds into the air.

The wind lashed at my face, leaving me breathless, and I buried my head in Evan’s chest. He was already running, a silent missile darting through the trees like a ghost. I inhaled his scent and forgot everything else for a long moment—a single, comforting moment of relief before my body began to shake uncontrollably again at the memory of Evan’s devastating remark.

They’ve found you.

I could think of nothing else. Someone was after me again, someone who wanted to kill me. I was on the run again. I was being hunted down again. Though I attempted again and again to drive it away, one thought filled my head incessantly:
would I survive this time?

The wind stopped. I’d been so lost in my obsession I hadn’t even wondered where we were headed. What could it matter now? No matter where I went, no matter where I hid, they would find me. I couldn’t escape death. Evan couldn’t protect me forever.

The air was cool and I was sure the sky would soon be shedding tears for me. I wished I could cry, but terror had paralyzed my senses and not even my tears could find a way out to help ease the pain.

Evan knelt down and laid me on the damp ground, then turned his back to me, his fists clenched at his sides. I reached out and stroked his arm. For some reason, it felt like I was the one who needed to comfort him. Guilt emanated from every inch of his body.

“Evan,” I said, my voice barely audible and my eyes brimming with tears.

“How could I have let this happen?” His voice was a whisper of pain. “It’s all my fault.” His expression made me cringe with terror. I’d already seen that look in his eye. It only took a second for me to realize I’d seen it just once before: when Evan was leaning over my lifeless body, mangled from Faust’s torture. When he thought he’d failed.
When I was dead.

Was that what he saw in me now—a body already dead? Was there really no hope for me?

I wanted to squeeze his hand but my strength was gone. Unexpectedly, he took mine and looked up. “Come with me,” he murmured.

I looked around for the first time and instantly recognized our hideaway, the lake house, a few yards ahead. Evan led me through the trees to the shore. Letting go of my hand, he walked out onto the strip of land at the water’s edge and sat down on a rock covered with large roots that snaked all around it. Without a word, I did the same and sat down at his side on the rock. Neither of us said anything for a long while.

I focused on the harmonious movement of the water stirred by the breeze and tried to overcome my fear. Evan stared into space as I looked absently at a dry leaf floating on the water. It rocked gently like a feather borne along by the wind.

The lake was a mirror that reflected everything upside down: the sky, the clouds, the trees, almost as if another world existed under the water, a parallel dimension beyond its surface. I wished I could hide there. A raindrop rippled the surface right before my eyes, distorting that perfect image and reminding me there was no reality other than this one. Concentric circles formed around the place the raindrop had landed, growing wider and wider until the water returned to its former mirror-like state.

A second raindrop stirred the water. All around us, silence reigned. A third hit the surface, followed by a fourth, until the surface of the lake was dimpled by countless raindrops, making the upside-down image tremble.

I felt frozen inside, as if something had emptied my body and filled it with ice that stung painfully. The tree branches hung low, right over our heads, their dense leaves forming a canopy over us as the rain came down even harder, seemingly wishing to wash away the pain afflicting us both in that desperate silence that paralyzed my soul.

I opened my mouth for a second and then closed it. Choosing silence, I reached over and rested my hand on Evan’s. He squeezed it, then raised it to his cheek and closed his eyes. He appeared to be devastated—so devastated that my desire to console him made me forget the reason for his torment.

Unexpectedly he exhaled in a barely perceptible sigh. “I’ve failed miserably.”

“You haven’t failed, Evan. I’m still here with you. You saved me,” I said quietly, hoping to convince him.

He squeezed my hand even tighter as if afraid I would slip away from him. “No. That’s not true. It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have let it happen!” he hissed.

“I was the one driving the car, Evan. Why do you want to take the blame?”

He snorted as if I’d said something ridiculous. “The car has nothing to do with it. It could have happened any other way.” Finally his eyes rested on me. “Don’t you see? It’s my fault they came back for you. I should have been more careful and instead I lowered my guard. I let myself get carried away by my feelings for you.” He seemed to be struggling with himself. “I was too reckless.”

“What are you talking about, Evan?” I asked, confused.

His face grew grave. “I shouldn’t have broken the rules. I should have protected you and instead I took you into my world.” He looked miserable. “I put you in danger. It was a mistake. Forgive me.”

His words left me astonished. I finally realized why he felt so guilty. A series of images flashed before my eyes: the crazed horse, the falling tree trunk, the out-of-control motorcycle. They hadn’t been coincidences. The events had begun right after that afternoon. And the shadow I’d seen . . . 

I went ice-cold. So I hadn’t imagined it. Was this the price I was going to have to pay for visiting his world: my life? My instinct had been right. It had been risky to challenge fate like that.

“They tried before too,” I whispered, still caught in my memories.

“Huh?”

“They tried before.” The faint voice that issued from my mouth was as cold as the blood in my veins. “This morning, and also before, when I was out in the woods with the others. Luckily I was with Ginevra. My God . . .”

Evan clenched his jaw as if that hadn’t occurred to him yet. “When I think of what might have happened to you—” He looked away, beside himself with anger.

“You said they wouldn’t notice my presence.”

“They shouldn’t have, but something went wrong. I don’t understand. No one should’ve noticed, damn it! How could I have been so stupid?” he growled, raising his fists to his forehead. “We could have gone on living our lives without any problems, but I went and complicated everything. I shouldn’t have run the risk.”

“Evan, it wasn’t your fault,” I said, but my attempt to reassure him failed utterly. He barely seemed to have heard my voice.

“I put your life at risk on an idle whim!” He clenched his jaw, furious with himself.

“That isn’t all it was for me, Evan.” I took his hands and moved in front of him. Finally he looked at me. “I wanted to do it and it was worth it, because now . . .” I closed my eyes, struggling to voice my thoughts. “Now I know what’s waiting for me. You gave me a gift.” A tear slid down my face. Soon I would be dead. I would lose Evan forever.

“Don’t even say it,” he hissed. What I’d just said almost seemed to have made him angry. Then his tone softened. “If I lost you, I’d—”

“Evan, you think there’s still hope that—”

“Hope is for people with no certainty.” His eyes burned into mine, his tone adamant.

“How do we stop them?” I asked warily.

No matter how hard Evan tried to lie to me, no matter how hard he tried to lie to himself, I could sense his torment and it wasn’t difficult to interpret it: he was afraid of losing me. “I don’t care how,” he snarled. “I’m going to exterminate them all. No one is getting close to you. What happened today caught me off guard, but it’s not going to happen again. He’s alone, but we’ve got Ginevra on our side. That’s a huge advantage. It won’t be hard.” His eyes glittered as he laid his plans, his tone ominous.

I wasn’t so sure it would be that easy. Given what had happened the first time, they were bound to send someone more skilled, more cunning, and more powerful than Faust. Now they knew who they were dealing with and to what lengths Evan was willing to go to protect me. It was stupid to think they wouldn’t have an ace up their sleeves this time.

After a moment of silence, I turned to Evan and asked in a tiny voice, “Was it really about to happen?” He frowned and avoided my eyes. He already knew what I meant, but I had to say it aloud before it exploded in my head. “Back there, I—I was about to die.” Unable to phrase it as a question, I let the statement hang in the air. Evan didn’t reply. “It was you that brought me back.” It was a confession, but he didn’t know it.

“I know. I healed you. You’d smashed your head against the glass.”

I gulped.

“No one else could have done it.”

His words skimmed my consciousness, leaving a shiver on my skin, but that wasn’t what I’d been referring to. “No. I wasn’t talking about that.”

Evan looked at me, puzzled.

“It was your voice. I held on for you. In a sense, it’s like I
chose
to. I could have let myself go, let myself slide into the darkness that had enveloped me, taking away the pain. For a split second I almost wanted to. But then I heard your voice.” I sought his gaze. “
You
brought me back, Evan.”

He laced his fingers with mine, squeezing my hand as his face darkened into a mask of torment. “You have no idea what I went through in those five minutes. I was deathly afraid of losing you. You have no idea how much I suffered, Gemma.”

Now it was me who squeezed his fingers. All at once a doubt surfaced in my mind, clouding my certainty. I sat down again next to him. “There’s something I don’t understand. The last time it happened, when I died, you were afraid you wouldn’t be able to bring me back in time because you weren’t there to protect me. This time you were with me, so you could have saved me no matter what, right?” I studied his expression.

“I wasn’t sure I could heal you all on my own. Your condition was too serious.” My stomach lurched. How was that possible, if I was there now without even a scratch? “I only succeeded because you didn’t give up. As long as your heart continued to beat I had a hope of healing you.” Evan swallowed, his gaze empty. “But if you had died . . . I don’t think I could have managed to bring you back all on my own.”

I shuddered. “You didn’t sense his presence?” I made myself ask in a steady voice.

“No,” he said, frustrated. “My guard was down. I was too focused on you, on protecting you from the other dangers, the normal ones. There was no way for me to know he was there until it was too late.”

“I shouldn’t have gotten behind the wheel,” I said guiltily.

“It would have happened anyway. I tried to keep the car from crashing, to stop it by controlling the air, but I couldn’t. Under normal circumstances I would have been able to take control of the car before it even risked going off the road. You weren’t in any danger. I didn’t expect to meet with resistance. That’s when I realized what was going on, but it was already too late.”

“What do we do now?” Fear had gripped my stomach.

“Gemma, listen carefully. From now on it’s important that you always stay near one of us. You need to be under our constant supervision, otherwise we can’t protect you. If I can’t be there, someone else has to stay with you—Simon, Ginevra, or Drake, it doesn’t matter who. You’ll be safe with us. But you can
never
be alone. Is that clear?
Never
.”

“Okay,” was the only word I could utter.

“Let him try now.” Defiance glimmered in his eyes. “I’ll be here waiting for him.”

I looked at Evan for a moment, digging my fingers into the earth. The rain fell slowly in a steady rhythm. From time to time a raindrop slid off the leaves near me, almost in slow motion, and sparkled through the air.

Our absent gazes were lost beyond the lake. Evan reached for my hand and smiled, as if for a moment he’d banished every thought, as if he wanted to forget everything and move forward, pretending it had never happened. But the problem wasn’t what we’d been able to overcome or what I’d managed to survive. The problem was what we had in store for us.

What should I expect from that moment on? I decided it didn’t matter. Whatever it was I had to face, Evan would be there at my side, every minute. Even if it was my last one.

That was enough for me.

“What’s your favorite season?”

Evan’s question surprised me. We’d never talked about the weather before. I looked at the foliage above us. The trees were still green but in a few weeks they would turn into bouquets of warm colors. I wondered if I’d survive long enough to see them again. As early as October, the leaves of the sugar maples in the forest turned to an array of red, orange, and yellow, framing Lake Placid and painting a stunningly colorful picture around the lakeshore. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, trying to engrave the image in my mind forever.