Thirty-one
Hours passed before my dad and Dr. Marino came up the stairs again. The sun might have been rising, but I couldn’t tell in the windowless room.
“Mason is going to be just fine,” my dad announced. “He’s awake, if you want—”
I missed the rest, already halfway down the stairs.
Mason’s eyes snapped open when I entered the infirmary. His chest was wrapped in bandages, his lower half covered by the white sheets. He smiled, and I sort of whimpered. Afraid of hurting him, I battled the longing to fall over him, bringing a hand to his sweaty face instead.
Mason had no such fear. He sat up and hugged me forcefully. I nearly toppled onto the bed.
“You’re okay,” he said, breathing in deeply even though I must have smelled like blood and death.
“Me?” I said. “You—you’re . . . What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t,” he confessed. “I felt crazy, I don’t know.
I just, I needed to fix things. It wasn’t a thought so much as an instinct, but I only made everything worse.
Was that all . . . It was all real? Even .
. .” Mason sounded hopeful, like he wished he really had been seeing things.
Watching my face, he curled in on himself, snatching his hands from me.
“It’s my fault. I’m so sorry. My head just went empty. ”
His voice shrank as he added, “Emptier than usual. You’re right, you’ve been right since the day you met me. I’m so stupid.”
I shook my head frantically, pulling back to hold his face and really look at him. His bruises had already faded. A strip of skin around his neck was still pale.
“I don’t believe that. I never could, not even at the beginning, when I wanted to. I really wanted to, but you’re . . .”
I trailed off when Mason shut his eyes. He started to speak, but he paused, then opened his eyes again to meet mine head on. His lashes were wet. Always so determined. He whispered, “Do you hate me?”
“I’m just glad you’re here,” I said, meaning both here, alive, and here, right now, with me. I had missed him so badly that holding him again made me woozy, like standing up too fast.
“Are you done trying to die for me?” I asked.
“Depends,” he said. Mason licked his chapped lips. He looked nervous, like he was waiting for the other pin to drop. “Are you done running from me?”
I smiled sadly. I owed him a thousand apologies. So many things could have been better if I hadn’t forced him to be brave enough for both of us.
But I started with, “Thank you.”
“I really don’t think I’ve earned that.”
Maybe not. Maybe he shouldn’t have forced me to be careful for the both of us.
Still, I had to thank him. “For choosing me,” I said. “Again.”
I still didn’t understand why he did, over and over. But I was starting to believe I was worth it, even if I couldn’t imagine how. I didn’t want to blame him for loving me anymore. My mom wouldn’t have blamed me for loving him.
I think she would have adored him, actually.
Mason exhaled shakily.
“Done running,” I said. There was a new scar on his palm and fingers, still raw and fleshy.
“If you think I’m ever letting you out of my sight again, you really are stupid.
And you’re a lot of things, Kane, but that isn’t one of them, so you have to already know: I’m going to stick to you like a leech.
Or a sloth. Or one of those climbing vines that grow on trees to get sunlight—”
Mason interrupted me with a raspy laugh, not quite smiling. “Is that a threat? You’d better follow through.”
It sounded a lot like Don’t make promises you can’t keep. He still looked unsure. So I gave him an oath:
“I love you.”
Mason got the dumbest, sweetest look on his face. He keeled forward and kissed me like he had been waiting his whole life, because he had. We had.
The kiss was overflowing. It was too much longing, anger, need, love, fear. Mason had fought for me endlessly, and I had finally fought for him in return. Now that it was over, I held his hair too tightly, and he squeezed around me until I really did half fall onto the bed.
We groaned at the same time, not in a sexy way. Mason put a hand over the bandages. I touched a deep ache in my jaw that had been simmering all night, muted beneath the fog of Mason, Mason, Mason.
“Fuck,” I breathed. “I think I broke my face.”
Mason looked alarmed. “Like, just now? We weren’t going at it that hard.”
“I hate that I love you. Earlier, asshole. I think the adrenaline covered it.”
“That’s like, five hours’ worth of adrenaline,” said Mason. “Can you say that first part again?”
“I hate you.”
“I’m injured. Be nice to me.”
I pulled myself fully onto the bed and dragged him into me again, muttering I love you whenever there was enough air, ignoring the pain. It would heal. It would all heal.
Soon, I forced myself away, heading upstairs to find a change of clothes for him.
The entrance hall was busy again. There were only a handful of bodies, but looking closer, there were rats, crows, and bats lurking, eavesdropping.
My father looked grave, hunched with one hand on the stairwell, holding up his weight. I knew Dante had told him everything.
Casper was oblivious to it all, dozing on a sofa beneath the shadow of the staircase the way a cat curled up in a patch of sun.
The high of seeing Mason alive crashed down fast enough to leave me teetering. I stumbled toward my dad, feeling hopeless. When he raised his head, his eyes were rimmed red.
“Dad,” I choked out. It felt so hollow, so useless, when I stammered out, “It was an accident, I swear. I’m—”
My voice failed when he reached out, hooking one hand around the back of my neck.
“Listen to me,” he said. I hadn’t heard his words scrape like this since Mom died. He so rarely let himself be weak. “Listen, Kieran. I am so sorry for everything I’ve done to make you think you had to go through this alone.”
He drew me into a hug that made me tiny. It made me a child. It reminded me, for the first time in so long, that I still was one for the most part.
“I know you did your best,” he said. It shattered me.
Dad straightened, steadying himself in front of my eyes. “Tell Mason to call his parents.”
“I’ll take him home,” I said. I tried to sound sturdy like him, but I wasn’t like him, born to lead.
“You absolutely will not,” he said. “They’ll have every right to be furious. It’s too dangerous. They can come get him.”
“Hold on,” someone said behind us. I remembered that we had company as animals rapidly shape-shifted into humans, revealing themselves to protest. “We accepted that the boy get treatment here—”
“But to invite more of them into our home—”
“Don’t any of us get a say in this?”
My dad sighed. He looked exhausted as he thought over his response.
Annalisa beat him to it.
“This is the problem with you people,” she exclaimed.
“You’re taking your prejudices out on someone who needs you, out of what—fear?
So many of you are parents, but you don’t want one mother and father to come and see their injured son out of fear?
There are thirty of us! You would have let that son, a kid, bleed out right in this very room, out of fear?
He was attacked and nearly killed because of that same fear!
Have some shame. I’m embarrassed for you. ”
Her words seemed to echo.
“The whole vampires versus werewolves thing, what’s even the point?
We became enemies a billion years ago because we used to fight over prey.
But we don’t hunt humans anymore, and neither do they.
I know some of you are old as fuck, so maybe you lived that, but it’s ancient history.
Kieran and Mason, they’re making new history, bringing us together, and you’d rather stay stuck in your ways.
They’re braver than all of you combined.
They’re building a bridge across an antiquated, useless chasm.
Cut it out with the us and them and think, for one second, about how much stronger we would be together. ”
She ended with a huff. My dad studied her, impressed.
“Any more objections?” he said.
***
Daphne Kane entered like a hurricane. I thought I had seen her angry at the state championship, but I’d been dead wrong.
She tore into everyone who had the misfortune of entering her line of sight, demanding to know how they’d allowed this to happen. Everyone except for me.
When Mason strolled up from the basement, casual as hell, she stopped mid-sentence.
She forgot instantly about my dad, who was trying to squeeze out an apology between her words, to embrace her son so tightly he probably would have popped a stitch if he were human.
After my dad and Dr. Marino’s treatment, he was healing rapidly.
Mason’s mom and dad hugged him together.
I hoped that everyone who had vanished at their arrival, shape-shifting to watch from the shadows, was seeing how similar we really were.
I felt a tug on my pants leg. The commotion had woken Casper.
“That’s the boy from your drawings,” he whispered, loudly.
Mason grinned at him. “And you must be the receptionist-in-training.”
Casper made a face. “No. I’m an artist now.”
“Oh. Dope.”
“All right, it’s bedtime for you,” said Mr. DeLuca, scooping the boy into his arms to take him downstairs.
Daphne rounded on my dad once more.
“How do you plan to atone for what has happened?”
“Mom!” said Mason.
My dad responded calmly. “My son is dead,” he said. “Haven’t we paid enough?”
This seemed to sap her fire, a storm fizzling out. Maybe she was seeing it too. That we weren’t so different.
Roger Kane put a hand on her shoulder. “Mason acted on his own.” Giving her a significant look, he added, “Any of us would have done the same for our mate.”
“Thanks again for saving me, Mr. Callisto,” Mason said pointedly.
Shocking everyone, Daphne lowered her head. “You have my deepest gratitude. For that part,” she said. “And you.”
I recoiled a little when she faced me.
“Thank you for protecting my son.”
Mason wiggled away from his parents to hug me, kissing my cheek. Totally mortifying, but I was too goopy in my head to protest, and too dazed from Daphne’s gratitude.
“Will you come over soon?” he asked. “Like, in an hour?”
“I’ll, um . . .” I checked on my dad over my shoulder. He had taken everything in stride, as well as he could, but I worried he was holding back. All I saw on his face as he watched Mason, though, was recognition.
“You should be with your family,” I said. “I can meet you at the shed tomorrow.”
“No,” said Mason. “Come over for dinner. Or . . . to watch us eat dinner.”
I hesitated. Daphne said, “I think that’s a great idea.”
“You can see my room and everything.”
“With the door open,” Daphne stipulated.
My dad broke in. “In a while, once things have settled down, we should meet once more. Not as coexisting enemies, but as . . .”
“In-laws?” Annalisa suggested.
“Whoa,” I said. “Slow down.”
“No, no, I like that,” said Mason.
Eyeing each other warily, the alpha and the chief shook hands. Without any rituals this time.
***
That night, I slept in my dad’s bed. It seemed bigger than ever. Once upon a time, we’d all fit in it together: him, Cedric, my mom, and me.
My body was healed by morning, yet I hurt all over, muscles stretching with a phantom ache.
I was mandated bed rest, and I took it gladly, relieved to hide away from the doting, the questions, the pity, the grief that seemed to follow me around the house.
Worst was the distrust, the wary bewildered strangeness with which some of the clan regarded me now. As always, Mason was my escape.
It was late that evening, after dinner, that I knocked on the Gibsons’ door.
Diane answered. Her eyes flicked over the bouquet clutched in my hand like a lifeline, and she disinterestedly called to Cella. I heard running and a thud. Cella replaced Diane in the doorway in seconds, tired-looking and rubbing a suspicious red spot on her forehead.
I started rambling immediately.
“I wanted to tell you I thought you were amazing. At the play. I didn’t get to congratulate you then, so—” I thrust the bright orange bouquet at her.
“They’re California poppies. It seems appropriate since you’re going to school there.
Uh. Annalisa feeds me info from Lara sometimes.
Now that I’m saying that out loud, I realize how creepy it sounds.
Er, what I mean is, thank you. For helping me that night, and last night, even though you owe me less than nothing after the way I’ve been.
You were amazing then too. You’re just amazing.
I’m sorry for involving you, and for everything else. That’s it.”
I didn’t want to leave, but I was prepared to, one foot inching behind the other.
Cella stepped onto the porch and squeezed me with strength that shouldn’t have been possible for someone her size. The door shut loudly behind her. I stood frozen.
“Is Mason . . . How is he?” she asked into my chest.
“Yeah,” I mumbled, dazed. I had texted her once, yesterday, but I reiterated it now: “Yeah, he’s okay.”
“And you? Okay?”
I had made it out in one piece. I had Mason. The secret had come out, and the world had continued to spin.
I shook my head. No more lies, not even the small kind.
“I should have been there,” she said. And no, no, that wasn’t right; I couldn’t handle her apologizing.
Cella pulled back before I could figure out what to do with my hands, and I was inspected for injuries for what felt like the hundredth time in twenty-four hours.
“I hate this. Not knowing what’s happening. I’m going to worry either way.”
“You were there,” I said. “Every time it counted. You had no reason to be, after what we did, but you were.”
To that, all she said was, “I miss you.”