Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Words burst into ash. Anything he said fell away as soon as his lips met mine. They pressed, lenient at first. Tentative, like I might pull away.
A soft sigh slipped through my lips.
Then—more. More pressure, more urgency as our exhales knotted and his tongue pressed at the seam of my lips. I opened, needy and ready, as a grunt fell from his throat. The way it reverberated into my mouth made my knees week.
What kind of man would he have been had he lived in my time? Would I have frozen when our eyes met?
Would I have let myself fall in love with him?
My hands landed on the opened buttons of his shirt, slipped around his neck.
His skin felt cold at first, but then it flamed to life.
I reveled in the way his shoulders felt under my hands, how his body curled over mine.
How I leaned in, how he leaned over, how he was everywhere.
The kiss was life in an inhale, need in an exhale.
His free hand cinched my waist, pulled me close.
Every hard part of him pressed against the concaves of me.
In that moment, I’d never felt more beautiful and ugly all at once.
Did he feel the divots in my hips? Did he notice the way my shoulders had no cushion, how fullness didn’t live in the right places?
Gnarled warnings reared then. All those angry, snide comments.
Too skinny.
You look dead.
Why do you have peach fuzz on your arms?
Why does your face look like that?
Just as I felt myself stiffen, he murmured, “Divine.”
My hands stilled. The white-blond tresses tangled in my fingers.
He couldn’t be telling the truth. He might think he meant it—but it couldn’t be true.
Suddenly, I thought of the years he’d spent alone, isolated.
Breath by breath, I felt my hold loosen.
I was the first warmth he’d felt, the first body he’d cradled, and I warred with the idea. Of course, he would latch onto me.
Divine, he’d said. A visceral hunger lived inside that single word.
A single thought: A starving man would eat anything to gain satiety.
Would that same hunger, that rawness, been in his words for anyone else? Or was that admission only meant for me?
Because Hadrian wasn’t meant for this world, he wasn’t meant for this time, he wouldn’t stay here. Hadrian couldn’t stay.
He bit my bottom lip. It took every ounce of willpower to not give into the feeling, the rush of heat, the need. Suddenly, I was keenly aware of how fast my heart thrummed, how fast his matched mine. As if they were trying to tangle through our sternums.
“Hadrian,” I whispered against his mouth.
Immediately, he stilled. Our lips barely broke apart. When he opened his eyes, they were yellow.
Then, the single sentence wiggled its way to the forefront of my mind: I killed him.
My brain scrambled to gather itself; I was a basket that had been dropped, contents spilling in every direction. His mouth, still wet and pink, seemed too real. It was too much.
Slowly, I pulled away.
Hadrian let me go. His absence was stark.
“What did you say?” I couldn’t bring myself to adjust my shirt, my hair. Only stare at him in the nasty florescent lighting.
He looked me dead in the eye this time. Didn’t flinch when he repeated himself.
“I killed him.” He rubbed his jaw. “On my wedding day.”
A punch knocked my breath out of me. “You killed your father on your wedding day?”
“That’s what I said, is it not?” he asked, a bit fervent. Brick by brick, the wall came back up between us. He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“You mean—what did you think? That you shouldn’t have told me? Why?” I motioned at him, not sure what I was trying to convey. Maybe his shift, or emphasize my confusion. I didn’t know. “That’s kind of important, don’t you think?”
His jaw tightened. I’d crossed an invisible line, and I didn’t know how to back up.
“And you tell me everything?” he bit.
I startled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“No secrets in your closet? Nothing you failed to share with me yet, Landry?” For the first time, he bared his teeth lightly at me, as if out of instinct. “If you want to see so badly, go look. I am sure the room will show you. It showed me enough times.”
Where was this coming from? I understood being defensive, but this wasn’t as simple as making a mistake and lying about it. This was larger. It was a life. It would have been the same if I’d tried to off my mom or … But his father had taken his teeth and—no, I couldn’t justify it.
I couldn’t. And he’d hid it. On purpose.
Was this it? The moment the wool was torn away and I saw that he only used my emotions to further his own gain? I was the only one that could help him.
The thought splintered a part of my heart.
I’d known it was a possibility; but for that broken, heady moment, I’d let myself think that he felt that warmth, that tether, too.
“I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” I said, stern. “I didn’t—didn’t lie.” I straightened my shirt. Brushed my hair over my shoulders, and marched over to the floodlight, turned it off, then whirled to the doorway. But before I left, I caught myself.
I owed it to both of us to tell him. I might not have been hiding murder, but I surely hadn’t been completely honest.
Jaw clenched, I looked back. Hadrian stood in the dark, almost shaking.
“I have a whore of a father and an addict for a mother. I have an eating disorder that eats me from the inside out and I don’t know how to stop it because just eating doesn’t work.
Some nights I pray I won’t wake up because I know dying in my sleep would be easier than beating my way out of this godforsaken wet paper bag of a life, okay?
I was bullied so much in high school I tried to go live with my dad, but he sent me back to my mother.
CPS never got involved when I was a kid because she’d clean up just long enough to get them off our backs, get an okay job, before she’d start using again.
Even after she woke up in her own vomit because she’d almost OD’d the night before, no one cared.
You want to know what my dad said?” I pressed.
My hands balled to fists. “He said, ‘She’s a waste of life, Landry, what do you expect?’ And then he still wouldn’t take me!
” I shouted. All the blood in my core suddenly rushed up my neck and through my mouth.
“Are those enough skeletons, Hadrian? Because I can assure you, the last thing I’m worried about is you killing a man when you’re already supposed to be dead. ”
He flinched.
A gaping, screaming hole opened inside of me. I shouldn’t have said that. Too far. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
My motor skills worked on their own accord. Before I could think twice, I stalked through the door. I slammed it behind me, leaving Hadrian in the dark.
I didn’t sleep.
Whether voluntary or not, my mind raced.
Around four in the morning, I gave in. I didn’t care that Hadrian might see from the shadows.
I didn’t care that I was alone in the house—that if something happened, no one would notice for days.
If my aunt hadn’t wanted me to find what was in this house, to meddle in it, she wouldn’t have left it to me.
That realization spurred me forward.
I crawled out of bed and headed for the closet. If Hadrian wanted me to see, if that room still held the memories, then I’d go look.
The tug materialized as soon as I opened my bedroom door, like an urge that whispered, Once Harthwait grows dark, the monsters become real.
The tug hummed, the floorboards warmed against the bottoms of my feet, almost as if in invitation, excitement, as I stepped into the hall. A need—the same need I’d felt when I’d heard Hadrian crying that first night—teased up my throat, around my neck, and into my chest.
A shaky breath fell from my lips. The doorway—had it changed, too?
I paused at the edge, right where the frame had been pulled up. I didn’t know what I sensed on the other side, but the air felt alive, writhing and ready, when the latch released.
Without a second thought, I stepped through.
The room tasted different. Sharp and heavy, like a boot pressing on my esophagus.
Mingled, slurring voices tangled through the open windows of Harthwait House.
Furniture christened, what I could only suspect was a parlor now, but in my time was the living room.
Wallpaper hugged the ceiling. Wingback chairs faced a writing desk, while a separate seating area curled around a hearth to my right.
Outside, darkness encroached onto the property. Wagons rattled down what sounded to be a gravel drive. I leaned to look out the window—sure enough, hands flapped in farewell.
Out the other window, men and women sifted on the lawn like a school of fish, all bright colors and happy, ruddy faces and lifted glasses.
It felt like I was in a bowl, observing the outside world through a twisted lens that made the trees too green, too fluffy, the sky too bright.
Even the grass swayed in unison, despite being ankle height.
I had the strongest urge to step back, to press myself into the farthest corner away from the window, to revel in the protection of this room. What was it that Hadrian had said? If I came back next time, maybe the room would be different? More to my liking?
He was wrong. I wasn’t so sure I liked this.
A woman with inky hair, beautiful porcelain skin, and a rounded face nodded to a couple near a garden bench, her hands knotted delicately in front of her.
She wore a gown, closer to ivory or light beige than white, with ruffles along the bodice and rouching that waterfalled down the front of her skirt, giving it the illusion of layers, like peeling the skin from an apple.
It cinched at the waist, likely from a corset, and fanned out above the hips.
She was beautiful.
I knew a wedding gown when I saw one—even from many decades ago.