43. Chapter 43
Chapter 43
Cedric
I stand with a sigh as Delilah’s friends gather around her.
I suppose this interruption will give me some time to wrap my head around the fact I’ve sung in front of actual people. Someone pats me hard on the back, Marcus’s crooked smile sneaking up on me. “What have you done with my brother?”
I roll my eyes, pushing the microphone into his chest.
“Not another word,” I warn him.
“Ah, there he is,” he says as he toys with the microphone. Faye walks by us, her eyes passing briefly on Marcus before telling me, “Good job, lover boy.”
“Sooo,” my brother resumes while he watches Faye go, rather unsubtly. “How are you feeling?”
He doesn’t specify, but he doesn’t have to. I need to tell her everything regardless. Just thinking about her face, were she to find out what Marcus is, knowing I didn’t tell her while I was here? She might understand I couldn’t have if I wanted to, but it doesn’t matter. I’m already breaking the rules. If all I can offer her is the truth, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
“Does it matter? I owe her that much,” I say, glancing at where Delilah is busy cutting cake, her neighbors fussing as they hold their plates up. “Though I wish I could do better than that.”
At that, Marcus says nothing. We’ve both been avoiding the elephant in the room. After I board my plane, we truly have no idea when we’ll speak or see each other again.
I thought I’d been preparing myself, that what happened with our mother had honed me, but the truth is I don’t know how to be ready for this. The way I’m being forced to say goodbye to my family and the only person I have ever wanted to be with, all in one day, is on a different level of cruelty. But Marcus and I will bear it, somehow, as we always have.
I hope Delilah can do the same.
The sky is beginning to darken now, the boisterous laugh of Delilah’s guests dying down as the party gets to its end. One by one, Delilah’s neighbors and friends kiss her cheeks or hug her tightly, wishing her a happy birthday again. She seems a tad overwhelmed, though grateful. I am too, on her behalf. I am glad she has these people to care for her. To make her feel loved.
“Want me to help you clean up?” Faye asks her, taking in the mildly chaotic state of the backyard.
“You’ve done enough,” Delilah says. “I’ll worry about it tomorrow.”
Faye nods, and as Delilah eyes her with an expectant grin, her friend gives in and holds her in a brief hug. “Love you,” she says, and I can tell it costs her something, though Delilah is content to simply hold Faye close.
“Love you more,” Delilah replies as she lets her go.
“Come on, you,” Faye adds, nodding to Marcus. “You’re not being a cock blocker tonight.”
“I–” Delilah starts, though Faye is mistaken if she thinks snark is going to make Marcus waver. He eats that stuff for breakfast.
“Your order is my command,” he says before making fingers guns at me, the sweep of his light hair glinting in the fairy lights as he hops after Faye.
“Thank you for having me, give him back to me in one piece, if you can!” he calls to Delilah over his shoulder.
Delilah opens her mouth, though Marcus is mercifully gone before he can make any more damage.
“Ignore him, like I do,” I tell her as I walk up to her, my hands coming to rest on her hips.
“We’re alone,” she sighs happily.
“Fucking finally,” I huff, and she bursts into laughter as she collapses on my chest, her warmth seeping through our clothes .
She looks up at me, and though she looks tired, it’s mostly a sated kind of happiness tugging at her lips.
“Let’s go inside,” she says, both of us doing our best not to break contact as we walk back. Delilah checks in on Blaine, petting him as he snores softly on his cushion. I pour us two glasses of fresh water, somehow feeling like we might need it. I spot a stain of a red-pink liquid on the counter that looks like strawberry juice and chuckle to myself, grabbing the nearest rag as I bend to clean it up. When I look up, Delilah is leaning against the doorframe, smiling playfully.
“You’re staring,” I say, straightening as I deposit the rag back on the edge of the sink.
She lifts one shoulder in a small shrug, her mischievous expression making my insides heat up.
“I can’t help it. There’s this tall, dark, fascinating man standing in my kitchen.”
“Delilah,” I say, though it’s more of a warning to myself than to her.
“Cedric,” she says, stepping closer. Her eyes are brimming with something I’ve caught glimpses of before, something deliciously dark. She parts her lips, breath hitching in her throat, before she speaks and squanders my world. I have little to no control over my body as I instinctually pull her closer, lifting her chin to me.
“Yes?” I ask as she bats her lashes slowly.
“Do you think I could maybe… get another present?”
I swallow, and all the things I’ve been dreaming about doing to her pass in my mind like a film montage. I want to kiss her until we can’t breathe. I want to sink into her, make her eyes roll back into her head. I want to take her to the brink, and tell her how perfectly she takes it .
But we need to talk now, or I know I won’t find the strength to later. I feel awful for not giving her what she’s asking me, but perhaps, if everything goes well… there’s still some time.
“I’d tear down the moon if that would please you,” I say, caressing her arms, my voice coming out rougher than intended. “I just have to get something off my chest first. Would that be alright?”
She blinks a few times, as if stupefied, then takes a step back and nods. “Yes, of course,” she says, though the boldness from a scarce minute ago is quickly abandoning her features. “I wanted to talk to you too, so… now is good.”
“Hey, you know I want you. Do not doubt yourself.”
She looks up at me, the corner of her mouth ticking up as her eyes clear. “Yeah, I know. Force of habit.”
I wish I could destroy that habit and whoever put it in her head, but now’s not the time.
She hops onto the counter and says, “You first.”
Right. I wet my lips before speaking, nerves suddenly rattling me.
“I know I’ve been vague, for lack of a better word, about the trouble with my father and Marcus. And you believed the reason I came to Fern Port was a business deal, though you’ve figured out that’s not exactly it by now. I told you there were things I wasn’t at liberty to share.”
“It’s not business,” she says, not a question. Her expression is growing more apprehensive than upset, though not judgmental.
“It is, though not in the traditional sense I suppose.” I work the second button of my shirt free, needing more room to breathe. “Delilah, are you aware that Fern Port is… peculiar?”
“It depends on what you mean by that. I’m sure it’s different from what you’re used to,” she says with an odd smile .
“It is,” I confirm. I’m not sure whether she’s pretending not to understand what I’m talking about because she’s supposed to keep the secret or she genuinely doesn’t know. I worry it might not be up to me to tell her, were it the latter. But what else can I do? It’s the only way to tell her the whole truth.
“I was sent here on a reconnaissance mission of sorts. I was supposed to acquaint myself with the town, understand its workings… and make sure everything was in place.”
“In place,” she repeats.
“For my brother. For Marcus.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Is Marcus staying ?”
I sigh, stepping closer to her. “Marcus can’t be in Cambridge. He can’t be anywhere, in fact, but here.”
She shakes her head lightly, something like recognition flashing in her eyes–which shouldn’t make sense.
“What do you mean?” she asks, sounding nearly breathless.
“Delilah–”
“No, you have to tell me, Cedric! Why can’t Marcus be anywhere but here?”
“Swear to me you’re going to remain calm.”
“I am calm!”
I raise one eyebrow as I place my thumb to her wrist, her pulse beating wildly.
“I’ll be calm after you tell me,” she amends frustratedly. I’m sure now it’s two of us that are confused, but I’m deciding to hope it’s going to be alright.
“Marcus has to stay in Fern Port, because those are my father’s conditions to leave him be. Because he… he’s not entirely human. ”
Delilah
I think I might be having a heart attack.
Could it be? Is Marcus the person Myrta told me about? When I assumed there was no way for Cedric to know about–
“Please say something,” Cedric says, a desperate kind of urgency in his tone.
“Not human,” I say. “What is he, then?” I keep my tone as neutral as possible, not wanting Cedric to misinterpret my reaction. I’m not upset. I’m in shock.
“Have you ever heard about dhampirs?”
And because my life just got that much more surreal, and even though I’m sitting my legs are threatening to give out, I laugh.
“Are you joking?” I ask, terrified my alarm clock will go off, and I’ll wake up and realize none of this is real.
“You’re laughing. You are actually laughing.”
“You’re not joking then.”
“Who jokes about their sibling being a hybrid between a human and a vampire?”
“Faye, probably,” I say with another huff of laughter. “So this is your dark secret?”
He cocks his head, eyebrows scrunched on his forehead. “I’m sorry–were you imagining something darker ?”
“I don’t know what I was imagining, and it honestly doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t? So you do know, then?”
“Maybe I should tell you my thing now,” I say as I hop off the counter, emboldened by Cedric’s confession. I’m still a little nervous, because it’s not everyday that you say the words ‘ I’m a werewolf’ out loud, but Marcus being who he is… It has to change something, doesn’t it?
“But shouldn’t we discuss–”
“Can I say this, please?”
Cedric nods, crossing his arms somewhat nervously across his chest as his attention is wholly on me. I’m doing it. I am about to tell him the truth. I take a deep breath and say, “I get what you meant now, about Fern Port. I get why Marcus would be a good fit here, and, well, it might sound impossible, but I–”
And then I feel it. A call, a distant rumble echoing in my ear, one I’ve heard too many times not to recognize. One that can mean one thing, and one thing only.
No.
This isn’t possible. I move past Cedric, who says my name and follows me suit as I rush to the front door, frantically reaching for the handle and wrenching it open. I look up, my lips trembling, because there’s no mistaking the sinking sensation in my stomach, my quivering limbs, the fogginess about to overcome my mind.
The only source of light in a starless sky.
The full moon, at its brightest peak, shines down on me.