Chapter 19 #2
Why does the idea of his fingers roaming over another woman’s skin burn my ribs like my sip of margarita?
I can’t possibly be falling for the human stranger with the glasses and protruding ears.
No. It’s because my life is in shambles, and he’s as far removed as a person can be.
“Electra, are you sure you’re okay?” He squeezes my thigh, and it feels…
“What a small world! Callie’s here.” Jeneva waves her over. Under her breath, she adds. “Is it me, or does she look a little pissed?”
“Electra Serran.” Calanthe bites out each letter of my name.
Oh, she isn’t a little pissed off. She’s full-on mad. “We’ve been searching all over the fucking continent for you! I even alerted airport police.”
“Continent? That feels slightly extreme. Where is it that you thought I was headed?” The evenness of my pitch adds another slash of red to her already flushed cheeks.
“Thanks for messaging me, Cillian.” She taps out a message on her phone, then stows it in the pocket of her sequined bomber. “Jeneva, Cillian, can you please go to the bar and stay there until I call you back? I’d get comfortable if I were you.”
It’s cute that she adds the word please when her eyes are lit up like the LED mushroom centerpiece.
Once they both walk away, Calanthe sinks into Jeneva’s chair and squeezes her eyes so tight it rucks the surrounding skin.
“Don’t disappear like that again. At least not without telling me where you’re going.
I can’t take that level of stress. Not since Tarian.
” She stops talking. Opens her eyes. Purses her lips.
“You know that abduction is my greatest fear.”
I turn my body to face hers and slide my forearms on the table. “Sorry I worried you, but how exactly was I supposed to run to you when you were part of the let’s-hide-things-from-Electra club, Callie?”
“I wasn’t hiding it. I was just—just—”
“Not revealing it?” I supply. “That is the very definition of hiding.”
“I’m sorry, Elle, but Tarian told me that you needed to hear it from your family first.”
“You are my family.”
Her eyes dampen, and she blinks. “I’m sorry.”
I take a chip and move it around the green dip. “Ines left me with my human mother. She knew I existed and just fucking turned her back on me. Did you know that?”
“No. I swear I didn’t.” Her eyebrows tilt low. “Are you sure?”
“Well, my parents didn’t deny it.”
“That is—” She grits her jaw, then slides it from side to side as though she had a kink in it. “That is—” Another jaw shift. “I’ll ask Tarian to remove her runes.”
Her words trickle warmth behind my ribs, smoothing all the jagged edges that have gored my heart since I fled my apartment. “Thank you for taking my side.”
She leans forward and seizes my hands. “Elle, I will always take your side. I can’t believe Ines would do such a thing.”
“Can’t you? You do recall she broke my neck once, right?”
Calanthe’s pupils are so small that her hazel irises resemble laurel wreaths. “So, now that I’m not going out of my mind with worry”—she gives my hands another squeeze, then leans back—“care to explain what the hell’s going on between you and Cillian? Are you into him now?”
I glance toward the bar to find him leaning against it with his arms crossed and his stare laser-focused on Calanthe and me.
“Honestly, I don’t know.” I heave out a sigh that is so deep it feels like the breath has been trapped inside my lungs since this morning. “He’s nice and…safe. And he seems to care about me, which I feel in short supply lately.”
“Is nice-and-safe enough?”
“Enough for now.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
“Okay, I’ll let you date him.”
I arch an eyebrow. “You’ll let me date him? What are you, the relationship police?”
“I am the guardian of your squishy heart, Electra Serran.”
“My heart is not squishy. Nothing about me is squishy.”
She chuckles. Actually chuckles. I shake my head, even though, deep, deep, very deep down, I feel so darn lucky.
“Also, why is Jen here?”
“Cillian was on a date with her.”
“What the actual fuck?” The speed at which she turns her head creates an actual gust of air. “I rescind my permission to date him.”
This time, I laugh. “Chill. It’s not really a date. He came out of obligation because she let him use the shop’s kitchen. By the way, she’s decided this décor is ideal for Bloom’s and is gearing up to pitch it to your mother. Might want to prepare Lisa.”
Her eyelids spasm. “You’re sure?”
“That she’s putting together a presentation? Eighty percent sure.”
“No. I meant that nothing is going on between the two?”
“You’re welcome to grill him, but yeah, I’m sure.”
“How sure?”
“I-asked-under-compulsion sure.”
Calanthe harrumphs. “I’m still going to grill him.”
“Be my guest.”
She leans back in her chair. “Are you drinking milk?”
“Yeah.”
“At a bar.”
“Yeah.”
“Weird.”
“I’m a weird bitch. Words for my next custom sweatshirt?”
Calanthe rolls her eyes, then waves over a server and asks for a Virgin Mary, while I ask for a beer, not in the mood to sample any more of their mixed drinks. “Before I call your date and Jen back over, tell me about your meeting with Gael.”
And so I do… I tell her all about it. And then she calls the others back. The evening turns out to be surprisingly nice and carefree, a welcome distraction from my loitering glumness.
Jeneva brings the noise and the fun. Calanthe is the safety net that allows me to lower my guard. And Cillian…he’s the quiet force that keeps me grounded with small touches that grow bolder when I don’t chase his hand off my body.
By the end of the night, his hand lies knuckles-down on my thigh, my fingers woven through his.
Calanthe notices because she brings it up once we’re alone, cruising back to her mother’s place.
“I don’t hate him,” I tell her.
She glances away from our Uber-black driver. “You could try a sentence that doesn’t cancel itself out.”
I roll my lips, considering telling her about the seed Malachi planted. But not now—not when there’s a chance Calanthe might agree with Malachi. I don’t feel like stirring up my enduring doubts. I want to let this worry-free evening carry me a little longer.
“I grilled him when you went to the bathroom,” she says.
“I suspected you might have.” I steeple my cheek on my fingers. “Can we discuss your findings tomorrow? I’ve hit my quota for revelations today.”
“Of course. But we should talk about them.”
Tarian phones her just as I’m about to bite and ask, Why? What did you learn? By the time they hang up, I’ve managed to beat back my curiosity. I really can’t take any more tonight.
Once tucked in her bed, I curl onto myself and try my hardest to find sleep, drifting off just as dawn creeps underneath the curtains and pinkens the hardwood floors.
When I open my eyes next, I’m no longer in Calanthe’s room; I’m in my yellow childhood bedroom, lying on a bloodstained mattress, my wrists and ankles bound to my metal twin bed.
A syringe as large as my forearm protrudes from my chest. I expect to find my biological mother standing over me, but it’s not the black-haired woman who gave birth to me. It’s Cillian.
Deep down, I know this is a nightmare. But when I startle awake, sweat mattes my hair, and my heart hurts as though Cillian had really just stabbed it with a giant needle.
My dreams aren’t magical like Calanthe’s, but are they premonitory?
The question tumbles through my mind until the latter shuts off again.
I dream of Cillian again, but this time, he’s lying next to me, holding me tight, and it feels so real that when I wake to the sound of clinking curtain rings, my skin isn’t clammy…it’s burning.