Chapter 33 #2
“Lucia, my next-door neighbor’s first real boyfriend broke her heart, so she keyed his brand new car. It was really expensive, which is why he tried to get her arrested for criminal damage.”
“You want to key my car?” He furrows his brow. “It’s not that expensive or brand new, but I guess you could…”
I’m not sure why the thought of him standing silently beside me while I key his car in a mad fury is so funny, but my smile makes Callum's voice trail off.
“What is it?” he asks, his own lips turning up.
I shake my head. “Nothing. I wouldn’t want to key your car, even if it were expensive.
Lucia said she called her best friends over for Chinese food and a movie that would make them all cry.
Nothing helped her feel better than that.
I don’t know why Chinese food that gave them all food poisoning the next day, and a terrible movie they all hated became a memory she says she’ll cackle about when she’s gray-haired and old, but I’d like to try it. ”
His eyebrow shoots up. “Food poisoning?”
I look away so he won’t see my smile. He’s so confused and has no clue what I’m rambling about, but is still determined to give me what I want. Even if it’s food poisoning. “Chinese food and a shitty movie we’ll all hate.”
When he doesn’t respond, I peek up at him through my lashes.
He’s not smiling, but there’s a little less tension in his shoulders than there was a second ago. “If that’s a memory you want, then we’ll give it to you.” He frowns. “Though I’m going to be honest, I’m not looking forward to the possibility of giving you food poisoning, even accidentally.”
I ponder what could be the first step to letting him back into my life when I’m not sure if I should. “This doesn’t mean I trust you or forgive you.”
“Trust is slow to build. When you’re ready, and only when you’re ready, let me know when you want this new memory to happen. One month or even ten years from now.” He holds my gaze. “I’ll wait forever for you, Juniper.”
“Okay.”
He pulls his hands from his pockets and turns to leave, then stops. “I didn’t want to bring this up because I know it will upset you, but this feels too important not to ask. I have a question.”
Curious, I cock my head. “What’s the question?”
He walks over to me and sits on the edge of the coffee table with his palms flat on his thighs. His expression is so serious that I worry. “The day you left us, you said something about a book.”
Wiping all expression from my face, I get up, more upset than I thought I would be. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Your expression says it matters a lot.”
With the comforter—and sheet—wrapped around my shoulders, I wander over to the same window Callum was standing at, and I lean against it, debating if I want to tell him.
Then I turn around, hugging my comforter.
There’s a draught from these old windows, but that isn’t why.
I hug my comforter not knowing if I have a sister alive to hug.
“When we were kids, I used to crawl into my sister’s bed with her and read her my favorite book.
We had a nanny we both loved, and she did read to us before bed, but when it was late, it didn’t seem fair to wake her up because she already worked so hard.
Our parents expected a lot of her. Andrea did those things, and more, because she loved us. ”
“You brought the book with you?” Callum asks, his expression impossible to read.
“The Secret Garden was my favorite book before it became River’s. I gave it to her when I left for Haven Academy, and she gave it back to me when I was packing my stuff to go to your house. She said that if I were ever homesick or I couldn’t sleep at night, I’d have it to remember her by.”
“What happened to the book?” His voice is quiet.
“You know what happened to the book.” My voice is not quiet. It’s hard. It vibrates with pain and anger. So much that I can’t even look at him.
I turn to peer out of my window. A man in a suit is hurrying down the street, probably to work. I called in sick yesterday and told my boss I didn’t think I’d be well enough to go in today, but at some point, I do have to call him. Right now, I can’t find it in me to care.
The creak of the wooden coffee table warns me that Callum is standing. The soft squeak of the floorboards is a sign he’s moving toward me. He stops beside me, hands in his pockets, eyes pointed outside, and our shoulders almost brushing.
“I was nine when my mom died,” he says. “My dad pushed her down the stairs when he overheard her telling a maid that she planned on leaving him and taking me with her.”
Shocked, I snap my head toward him.
He keeps talking, looking down at the quiet streets.
“She found some disturbing photographs and discovered he was a member of Asylum. She was an omega and wanted nothing to do with it, but she was afraid he would try to involve me. I never heard her raise her voice, and she let my dad have his way about most things, but she would have died before she let him take me to his secret club. He killed her, and he destroyed everything that she had ever given me, sometimes right in front of me when I refused to do what he wanted.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I whisper, horrified.
He looks at me for the first time since he told me something so awful, I don’t want to believe it’s true.
The bleak look in his eyes is all the proof I need that it is true.
“So you’ll understand that when I tell you I know what it is to have someone destroy something that means everything to you.
If something happened to your book, it wasn’t me.
Torin can say cruel things, but he doesn’t destroy.
He knows what my dad did to me, and he has his own stories about his mom. ”
“Archer?”
He shakes his head. “Archer grew up with nothing. He wouldn’t destroy your book, Juniper. None of us would.”
I believe him. For most of the year that I was with them, they shut me out. Destroying my book wasn’t something I believed any of them could do, but who else would have?
“I was reading in the library,” I tell him eventually. “And I left my book on the desk. I asked Veronica about it when I couldn’t find it the next day. She said one of you had probably put it away, but it would turn up soon.”
“I gather it turned up.” A quiet rage burns in his eyes as he puts the pieces together sooner than I could have.
“Yes. With all the pages ripped out and shredded. I thought it was you. But it wasn’t you, was it?”
He shakes his head.
“Who?”
“The only person it could have been,” he says with a bitter smile. “Veronica, my father’s best and most loyal spy. Your book…”
“It doesn’t matter.” My book is gone; there’s no point crying about it anymore.
He hesitates.
“What?”
“If I wanted to hug you, would you be tempted to push me out of the window?”
I swallow my inappropriate smile at the thought of shoving him out of my apartment window. Lucia absolutely would have, but I’m not sure, even with the things he did to me, that he deserves to die for it. “Probably not.”
“Then I’d like to risk it,” he says somberly, opening his arms.
I step into his warm embrace and stop swallowing my smile. He can’t see it with my face pressed against his chest. I inhale his warm ginger and vanilla scent. His arms feel so perfect when he wraps them around me that I never want to move.
“Your book matters to me,” he says against my hair. “I’m sorry you lost something so precious in a place it should have been safe.”
Long ago, my instincts told me I could trust him. I told Jack that my instincts were wrong. I couldn’t trust my scent matches at all. But maybe I can. Maybe they were right after all.