Twenty-six
I was turning into the school parking lot when the bell rang, but that was just as well.
Now that I was officially late, I had an excuse, however flimsy, not to bother going to first period at all.
I wasn’t remotely prepared to face Mason.
One peek in the visor mirror confirmed that I looked like I had been crying. I still was a little.
He had called a few minutes ago, and I had let it ring. Now, seeking a distraction, I grabbed my phone, only to immediately drop it into the cupholder when I saw that he had texted me too. I didn’t pick it back up, resigned to the next fifty minutes of silence.
I left my seat belt on, finding comfort in the restraint of it. There was a distant, featherlight feeling in my head, like I would float away without it. The strap dug into my throat when I jumped at a knock on my window.
My shoulders hiked up to my ears. Staring at the center of my steering wheel, I unlocked the passenger door.
“Feeling rebellious today?” Mason asked as he climbed into the car. “You’ve got the leather jacket on and everything.”
“I wear this, like, every other day.”
“Cool your jets, bad boy.”
“Why didn’t you go to class?”
“We sort of have a thing?”
“Clearly it wasn’t going to happen today,” I said. “We can’t hang out before class if I’m not here before class. There’s no reason you should’ve waited. You don’t make any sense.”
It was hard to believe that not that long ago, lashing out at him had felt good. I wanted to grab my harshness out of the air before it could touch him. But it was the only protection I had.
Back then, Mason would have lashed out right back. Now, he said, “You didn’t answer my call or texts. I waited because I was worried, asshole.”
There was no real bite in it. “What if I was skipping class today?”
“You would’ve told me not to wait on you because you’re not normally an asshole.” I still hadn’t looked at him, but I could hear him grinning. “Not to me, at least. Or not in any way I don’t enjoy.”
“I could’ve forgotten to set my alarm. Or slept through it.”
“You have your alarm set on a schedule, and your body is engineered to be awake while it’s dark. You don’t ‘sleep through’ early-morning alarms. Are we going to keep playing this game of hypotheticals, or will you tell me what’s wrong?”
He finished gently, but it filled my head with too much pressure. Mason placed his left hand just above my knee, and suddenly I couldn’t stand his touch.
“I’m fine.”
“You haven’t looked up since I got here, and you’re hunched like one of those stoopy witches in the movies casting evil spells into her cauldron of—anyway. You didn’t even notice me coming.”
“You should go to class,” I said. “She’ll mark you absent.”
“What about me made you think that would be a strong convincer?” said Mason. “Aren’t you coming with?”
“I’m not feeling it today.”
“All right. Let’s go somewhere. You know I love a car date. We can park by that big dog park and judge them like show dogs again, but you have to promise to take it easier on any huskies, because we really don’t look all that different and it hurt my feelings how you—”
“Stop!” I cried. “We’re not going anywhere.”
The sun wasn’t up yet. I didn’t think Cedric was bold enough to leave the house so close to sunrise, but I didn’t know anything about him anymore.
It felt suddenly like he was everywhere, like he had become my shadow.
I mistook a crow perched on a distant parking curb for a raven and lurched, snatching Mason’s hand from my lap and moving it to his.
The crow wasn’t nearly large enough, its talons too narrow.
“Okay . . .” said Mason. “Um. Cool.”
“Sorry, I’m sorry, I . . .” I cradled the offending hand. My wrist was sore, a vague, internal throb. “Go to class. I’ll come find you after class. I just. I need a minute.”
Mason was quiet for a while. “Yeah. Sure. Can you just, like, tell me you’re not breaking up with me, so I don’t spend class tormenting myself?” he said. “I know it’s ridiculous. But you’re starting to scare me.”
I shut my eyes tightly, and for several seconds, there was nothing. Then there was Mason’s sharp breath, which somehow lacked air altogether.
“Kieran?”
An engine revved loudly on the road, and I jumped again. Paranoia was a cracking feeling, like fissures running down my skull. Maybe crazy ran in the family.
Mason’s voice grew sharp. “Will you at least look at me?”
Several seconds later, he got out of the car.
The door slammed behind him. I had no way of knowing how it felt to suffocate, but I thought I could guess right then.
I tore out of my seat belt and hurried after him.
Mason turned around looking relieved. Walking beside him, not too close, I went through the motions of getting my tardy slip in the front office.
He didn’t question the turns I took after that, following as I wordlessly led us to the abandoned teacher’s lounge.
If the silence between us got too bad, the clamor of band class in the background would keep me from losing it.
Once there, I sat on a tea-stained couch and shut the blinds behind me. The sky was lightening, but it was another dreary day. Though there was plenty of room, Mason sat right against my side. I wasn’t ready to hurt him.
His leg bounced, agitated. “Can you say something already?” he finally asked. His arms were crossed, guarding himself. “What did I do? Whatever it is, I’m already sorry, but tell me what it was so I can really mean it.”
“That’s not it.” I sounded breathless in my rush to say it. “You didn’t. You couldn’t. I need you to understand. This is . . . I don’t want any of this.”
“Like hell I’m going to understand when you’re not giving me anything to understand!”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’ll forgive you if we can just—talk through this.”
That was the thing—we couldn’t talk through it. Talking wouldn’t help.
I wasn’t ready. Mason’s hands were twitching in his lap, and I knew he wanted to reach for me but kept thinking better of it. I wasn’t fucking ready. I shoved my own hands between my knees so I wouldn’t reach out, either.
“This is excruciating, by the way,” Mason said. Unnecessarily. It was written all over his face. I would never, ever be ready for this.
“Cedric knows about us.”
I listened to the groan of the trombones next door.
“The Cedric who would love to see my entire kind six feet underground?”
“That’s the one.” I told him everything about that morning, watching and waiting for despair even though the sight would haunt me. None came. Instead, Mason propped his elbows on his knees and leaned his nose against his interlocked hands, letting out a long breath that rattled with fury.
Anger works, too, I thought. It might hurt less.
“I’ll make him wish he never put a hand on you.”
“That’s what you took from that?” I asked. Mason pried my hand out of my lap to examine my wrist, circling his thumb over the knobby bone. My voice went shrill with something like panic. “You’ll stay the hell away from him.”
He continued his ministrations, so focused on my wrist he didn’t seem to notice the long, low growl rumbling from his throat. “Give me one good reason.”
“He’s stronger than you.”
“Fuck that,” he spat. “I’m not scared of a little silver.”
“You should be.”
“I’m not.”
“Then be scared of him. You can’t know what he’s capable of. You’re too sane.”
“I won’t be sane when I fight him.” Mason promised.
“He isn’t worth it.”
“He isn’t worth shit. But you are, and it’s his fault you brought me here to dump me.”
There was a twisted comfort in knowing I wouldn’t have to say it.
“I’m not worth it, either.”
Mason rolled his eyes. “We’re not breaking up. I don’t need protecting.”
“Mason,” I said. “Please don’t make this harder. It’s already hard.”
“Do you still have feelings for me?”
“You know the answer to that. I’m doing this because I—”
“Because you’re scared. Don’t say it’s ’cause you’re worried about me—that really, really sucks, Kieran.
That feels like shit. You know I love you.
And I know you . . .” Mason seemed to bite his tongue.
I slouched back into the cushions, miserably glaring at the water-damaged ceiling.
I hadn’t even told him that I loved him.
I kept waiting for things to be right—not for one perfect moment but for a time when nothing loomed over our shoulders.
But there was always something. Another secret, another lie, and now this.
A time like that was never possible in the first place.
That had been the truth since we started this, but we’d stumbled along with blindfolds on anyway, as if what was ahead couldn’t hurt us if we couldn’t see it.
As if we could get away with this. But Daphne Kane had been right—it was naive not to think about the future.
Mason and I didn’t have a future. We were a two-headed calf: fumbling, miraculous, and doomed.
I hadn’t told Mason I loved him because I’d been waiting for peace that would never come, and now I wouldn’t get the chance.
Mason said, “What more do we need?”
“Both of us alive, for starters.”
“We’re here, aren’t we?” Mason put his arm around me. I sat stiffly, sure that if I relaxed at all I would sink right into him. “I’m alive, and you’re . . . well.”
He kissed my temple, then rested there, his nose against my hairline. Another silence, softer. I listened to the band, relying on the music to keep me rooted so I wouldn’t lose my resolve.
Standing abruptly, I stumbled around the coffee table for some necessary distance. “Can you take me seriously?”
Mason looked shocked that I’d left him again. He thought I was weak, just like Cedric did.
“He’ll kill you. Don’t tell me you can take care of yourself,” I snapped, and Mason shut his mouth. “You’re a good person. That makes you no match for him. Cedric is the kind of guy who’d smother you in your sleep. You can’t fight someone like that. I don’t want you to fight; I don’t—”
I don’t want anyone to get hurt.
“Okay! Okay, no fighting.” Mason stood but left me to my space. “We can still be together. He doesn’t have to know.”
“We already tried that. It didn’t work.” I raised my voice. In the background, the song seemed to burst, or it was just in my head.
“We’ll try harder!” Mason shouted. “Why are you so willing to give up on this?”
“Why are you acting like I want to break up with you?”
“Because if you really didn’t, you wouldn’t! Just admit that you never believed in us.”
The silence after this was the worst. The song ended, so his words sat in the air, growing stale. He turned his back.
“I thought I’d have more time,” Mason mumbled toward his hands. “To make you believe.”
The next part was inevitable, the part where I rounded the table and tucked my arms under his, hugging around his chest from behind. Try as I might, I couldn’t stop falling into him. He leaned back, hands slowly opening from their fists to rest over mine. His body was wired with tension.
“I hate this,” I said into his shoulder.
“Just give me a little more time,” he said. “If we can make it to college, he’ll be behind us. We’ll both get into Oregon for sure. Or we can go to Oregon State if you want, or Arkansas, for all I care. We just have to hold out that long.”
My heart squeezed. I hadn’t known it could do that. The University of Oregon was Mason’s dream football team, one of the best in the NCAA, and the coach was already in contact with him. Yet he said “I don’t care” like it meant nothing compared to this.
Mason had been thinking about the future.
“Cedric can’t touch us here,” he continued. “Even if he could go out during the day, if he tried too hard, he’d end up on the news—Peeping Tom Arrested for Attempting to Spy on Carrington High School Students—”
“Gross.”
“We can forget the shed. If our relationship doesn’t leave the school, he won’t know about it.”
“Our poor poppies . . .”
“I’ll take good care of them. I’ll even send you pictures,” he said, like he didn’t send multiple a day already.
“Mason.”
He bulldozed over me. “We’ll be cautious.” His words were unsteady. “Tell him we’re through. We won’t meet before first period, and we’ll go home as soon as the last bell rings.”
This hurt in a quieter way. “Is that really enough for you?”
“Would it be enough for you?”
Not even close. But if it meant I could have him at all—“It’ll have to be.”
“I’ll just bring your giant goose to my room and cuddle it when I miss you.”
“You are so strange.” I added, “And stubborn.”
Mason hummed, turning around, pushing my jacket off and letting it fall onto the coffee table so he could run his hands down my bare arms. When he reached my hands, he guided my fingertips into his front pockets.
“I can’t lose you,” was my last weak protest.
He said, “If you let me go now, I’m as good as lost.”
He meant gone from you, but I thought about Cedric’s bookshelves. How much did my brother know about mated pairs? More than I did, definitely. I wondered if he felt even better about himself, knowing he would get to hurt Mason in this way. The thought got on my last fucking nerve.
“If you let him kill you, I’m resurrecting you as a vampire,” I decided morbidly, as a threat, looking Mason square in the eye.
The smile Mason gave was small and fluttery. As it grew, his whole body seemed to unwind with it.
“That’s super impossible,” he said.
So are we. So were we. We had already done the impossible by making it this far. We could get the better of Cedric.