Chapter thirteen
Can’t deal
As soon as our lips met, fire erupted through my veins. It burned my throat as it spilled out of him and into me. My legs gave way, but my arms were tight around his neck. I gasped breaking the kiss, while Adrian held me tighter against him, groaning, needing. I then broke the kiss with a cry as he held me firm but gentle.
I was taking deep rapid breaths. Partly due to the intensity, partly due to the wild reaction of my heart.
“Anything?” I managed to ask.
Adrian moved a strand of my hair from my face. He gazed down at me tenderly. “Maybe it’s not the best time to ask me that.” He smiled, and I smiled back.
Sweet and willing and just for him.
I’ve known Stella Dubois since she made me a cup of coffee a few years ago to try to find out who bit me. She has tried to make sense of all this for me since it happened, at least now, I have an explanation. Does it ease anything? Hell no, it doesn’t. I still can’t control how I feel around Jade.
Thanks to Madam Stella, I now know how Jade feels as well, and her rejection is bitter.
But…she did kiss me. Even if it was just to take back the love I’ve been exposed to.
She tasted exactly how I imagined, and I fear that I have become even more addicted.
Adrian
***
Dozens of cars lined the street near Bellview Park.
My heart was in my throat as I parked and watched Seth’s family and friends console one another.
“You promised me forever…” I whispered and leaned my head on the steering wheel.
Someone tapped on my window and startled me.
Shit.
I looked up into Stephan’s face.
There was something different about that beautiful face today.
It wasn’t smiling. I pressed my hand against the window, and Stephan mimicked my movement on the other side.
“I can’t do this,” I whispered. I knew Stephan could hear me or read my lips.
His muscular jaw flexed and then his face relaxed. The tension in his eyes dimmed. He was pulling himself together for me.
Stephan opened the door and reached for me. I almost fell into his arms but he pulled me in against his side.
“I’ve got you, Duchess,” he said against my hair. “It’s all right to fall apart sometimes.” He kissed my temple and then he made a face and wrinkled his nose.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing.” Stephan forced a smile that didn’t reach his suddenly searching eyes. He scanned the area like he was looking for something…someone.
I didn’t ask again. I just leaned against his side and let him lead me up the stairs to the pavilion where Seth’s mom, Karen Prescott, was greeting friends and family who were offering their condolences.
“Breathe, Duchess,” Stephan whispered against my hair. “Just breathe.”
I did. Slowly…in and…out. “We need to talk,” I said.
“Later.” He commented.
Set on an easel next to Seth’s mom was an enlarged a picture of him. It was taken at homecoming. He was wearing my soft blue shirt, which brought out his hazel eyes. He was smiling that wide, perfect smile that made him look innocent and seductive at the same time.
My chest tightened.
Fall apart?
Yes, I may do just that.
If Stephan had not been holding me, I might have fallen. It was too hot. I felt clammy.
Karen was a woman of small stature, with thick blonde hair, hazel-green eyes, and a delicate face, smooth and flawless without a stitch of makeup on. You could see grace and confidence on her face.
But today, Karen looked drained, exhausted in every way that a human body could be exhausted. Her eyes were almost sunken, there were dark circles around them. Her mouth was in a tight line on that delicate face, and her eyebrows were mashed together like nothing would ever undo them.
Still, when she caught sight of me, there was a spark in those hazel-green eyes. Like life was still there somewhere inside her and just needed a breath to resume. Karen walked toward me, but I almost ran to her.
She wrapped her arms around me and clung to me. Karen smelled of expensive perfume and lotion. That smell was so very familiar, and her skin was so closely pressed to mine that memories immediately slammed into me like a truck. I saw myself in a hospital bed, bruised, bloody, and clinging to life. I felt Karen’s panic and grief like the universe had stopped spinning and no one could hear her scream her anguish. I watched through her eyes as Seth took his first steps, said his first words…said goodbye.
She crumbled.
Tears breeched that iron dam and came rolling down her face like rapid, devastating waves. She cried until her lungs hurt and until her heart sank so deep into her stomach that its beats were lost in the emptiness there.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Prescott,” I managed to say.
She squeezed me tight as I rubbed my hands along her back in rotating circles.
“I’m so sorry.” I repeated.
Karen took my face in her hands and wiped away the tears with her thumbs. “I know. Bring him back to me, Jade.” She wept. “I want him back.” She let out one more struggled cry. I pulled her back into an embrace and cried with her. Hurt with her.
“I do too,” I whispered in her hair.
The vigil lasted an hour.
Various people, including Stephan, had stepped up and shared their memories of Seth. Good memories, bad memories. Any memory. People laughed and people cried. But I had shut down.
I was standing between Karen and Stephan. Both of my hands held theirs, but I couldn’t feel their hands. I was too focused on that picture of Seth that smiled at me. I remembered that night at homecoming.
I wanted to scream until my voice would give way and I could never speak again. Yet I held on and kept myself together as best I could. Pushing all that pain and despair and emptiness into the deepest pits of my soul.
I would be strong.
I had to be.
The air was thick and growing thicker. I ignored the pressure in my chest, the fire that started rising again as if I opened my mouth and flames would shoot out. I held my breath but felt his touch. Felt his hand touch my face along the jawline and then trace my lips. I felt him there, felt his pain, his guilt, his need to truly touch me. His anguish was like knives carving into my heart and I bit down on my tongue as not to scream.
I saw the hair on Karen’s arm stand up.
I knew he had touched her too and was probably holding his hand over both of ours.
Not too far from the park was the cemetery where my father was buried ten years ago. There is nothing in the grave because we never found him, but everyone thought we needed closure after a year, so we held a funeral for him.
Ashes to ashes…those words made my heart crumble into a pile of gray ash and fall into a bottomless pit.
Dust to dust…my soul diminished to nothing but rubble.
The vacant expression on my mother’s face that day still haunts me. Every time I visit her, those same dull eyes peer up at me without recognition, and it kills me.
Somehow after Seth’s vigil, I had wandered over to my dad’s grave.
It was snowing. Soft gentle flakes fell on my shoulders.
Even though I was wearing a coat, the cold inside of me and the frigid wind pushing against everything that was once warm, now froze my bones, and I trembled with an ache that could never be cured. A wrong that will never again be righted.
The fact that my father wasn’t actually in this grave and the fact that I couldn’t locate Seth’s body didn’t lessen the pain which rode me into darkness and threatened to forever hold me there without mercy.
No, the pain was not eased. It glazed my every vein and poisoned my bloodstream like a terminal disease.
I promised to search even hell itself if I had to in order to find Seth’s body. I will find him and bring him home.
My stomach felt like it had grown a hand, and that hand reached through me, shattering ribs and tearing muscles as it moved and reached into my heart.
It squeezed it – squeezed it until the last drops of blood trickled like running water and the sound made me instantly dizzy.
My breaths were trapped by that ghostly fist that ravaged through me, stole my peace, and sentenced me to a lifetime of anguish and restlessness.
I fell to my knees.
Stephan was at my side.
“I’ve got you, Duchess.” He kissed my head and held me tight. “I’ve got you.”
“I hurt so bad.” I cried.
“I know you do.”
“How do I make it stop?” I trembled.
“I don’t know. I hurt with you. I cry with you, and I would take your pain if I could.” He caught my tears with the pad of his thumb.
“They both left me. Everyone left me. My father, my mother, and now Seth. I can’t…I can’t deal with this.”
“You are not alone, Jade.” Stephan rocked me back and forth in his arms. “I am with you, and I am not going anywhere. You hear me?”
I nodded.
He took my face in his hands and kissed my tears. “I’m not going anywhere.” He kissed my forehead.
I knew he was there. I knew he was sincere, but in that moment, I hurt so much that nothing would ease the ache inside of me.
With heavy breaths, I allowed myself to cry and fall apart because – after today – I would not do it again.
I would not crumble.
I would not break.
I couldn’t.
I let myself fall deeper into a pit of agony. I fell forward and dug my hands into the frozen earth. My fingers scraped it up until bits of it pushed so deeply under my nails that blood began to stain the snow around me.
I reshaped the earth with my hands, turning it over and over again until my fingers became numb from the frozen ground, and my fingernails split and cracked, exposing my flesh.
Tears poured down my cheeks and onto the earth that held so many lost loved ones.
“Stephan.” I cried.
“Yes.”
“Do something. Please.” I wept. “Do something, I can’t take it.”
He grabbed my hands and stopped me from scraping, and then he wrapped me up in his arms and took me to his car.
As he carried me, I felt the pain inside begin to subside. Like I had taken a sedative. Something touched the deepest inches of my soul and lifted the heaviness on my chest and the ache in my stomach.
I stopped trembling.
I didn’t know what it was, but I was glad to feel the release.