Cade was already there, standing with his back to me and facing a woman. An incredibly beautiful woman. I felt my mouth go dry. She wasn’t as tall as me, but her presence oozed extreme confidence. Her hair was jet black and fell in perfect ringlets halfway down her back, and her skin was an almost unearthly pale. On most people it would be considered a flaw, but on her it only seemed to enhance her beauty. Her figure, well, I wasn’t exactly flat-chested, but she had the clear advantage over me. She had on a pair of designer jeans that clung to her figure and a shimmery top that accentuated all of her assets without being too revealing. In a nutshell, she looked like she had just stepped off of the pages of a fashion magazine.
I told myself not to overreact. Clearly she was Faelorehn, for she had that irresistible aura about her that also hung around Cade. I just hoped she was a cousin or a friend. At some point in time the roaring in my ears faded and I got over my numb shock. Breathing slowly through my nose, I inched forward, being careful to stay hidden behind the trees, and strained to hear what they were talking about. It was Cade’s voice I picked up first.
“You’re leaving. Right now.”
Cade grabbed the woman’s arm roughly and tried to move her towards the path leading to the dolmarehn. Anger, and maybe even a bit of fear, seemed to roll off of him in waves.
“I will not have you here when Meghan arrives.”
The beautiful woman only laughed; a cruel, confident laugh that made the hair on my arms rise.
“Oh? And why’s that Cade? Don’t want your little
Faelorah
to know about the most important woman in your life?”
Cade froze, pausing in his attempt to get the woman to leave. I tensed.
Oh Meghan, you have been so utterly stupid!
I gritted my teeth and willed the tears forming in my eyes to evaporate. But it was no use. I just hoped Cade and his,
girlfriend
(for who else could she be after a statement like that?), couldn’t hear my heart breaking.
It felt as if the earth were opening up beneath me, to swallow me and put an end to my misery. Of course, Cade and his companion didn’t notice. The woman sneered and yanked her arm free. Cade did nothing to stop her and through my blurred vision it looked almost as if he had been defeated. Like a dog cowering before its angry master.
“I will remind you, Cade dearest, that I am the one who gives orders and when they are not followed . . .”
I didn’t stay to hear the rest; I was too distraught. I had to get out of there before I started sobbing and drew attention to myself. I knew this had been a possibility from the get-go. I knew Cade might already be spoken for. But it still hurt; still dug at my heart.
I practically ran all the way back to my room, sobbing the entire way, my carefully applied makeup now streaming down my face. I threw open my sliding glass door, slammed it shut behind me and locked it. I didn’t even bother changing or washing my face before I fell onto the top of my bed to cry into one of my pillows.
Logan called down the stairs to say that dinner was ready, and fortunately I had enough energy to call back up that I wasn’t feeling very well and that I was going to bed early. No one came to investigate. Thank goodness. Rolling over on my back, I stared at the ceiling and let my misery flood over me. Eventually I fell asleep, but only because I was so exhausted. I didn’t even notice when Fergus returned to my back door to lie down and fall asleep.
Heart-broken
I was sick over what I had discovered, so sick that I stayed home the next day. I had acted like one of those stupid jealous girls you see on TV or in a movie, the ones who allow their lives to revolve around their perfect guy. I winced. At least I had left before I made a scene. What had happened to me? I had always been the sensible one. Why had I fallen so hard for Cade? The realization of that fact, the fact that I had finally admitted that what I suffered from was far worse than some crush, rocked me and turned me over like that time I tried kayaking at the beach. I sat up in bed, my mind nearly blank with shock, as one resounding thought reverberated around in my skull. I was in love with Cade MacRoich.
I grabbed a pillow and shoved my face into it, groaning. Oh, this was not good. He had a girlfriend, one who was way prettier than I was. Worse, a girlfriend he never mentioned to me.
Because you are so far from being a possible match for him, Meghan, that he didn’t even bother dishing out that information.
It didn’t matter that I was Faelorehn like him; that I had finally found someone who didn’t think I was some freak of nature. Hot tears burned my eyes and spilled out to stain my pillowcase.
Oh Meghan, don’t you see now? All that stuff he told you about being half Fomorian and half Tuatha De?
Either he had been lying about all that and had only been trying to get rid of me, or it was still true and he no longer wanted to have anything to do with me because of it. I had always wondered if my body could produce only a limited amount of tears. I was starting to fear I might be putting that theory to the test.
When my depression passed and my mind cleared, I took a deep breath and tried to shove the image of Cade from my thoughts. It was too early to contemplate all the possible meanings of what I’d witnessed yesterday. Best to distract myself with sleep.
The next morning I got up and got ready for school. I still felt terrible, but I needed to start functioning again. Tully noticed something was wrong right away but luckily I had the excuse of getting over my illness to explain away my groggy, gloomy mood. Sometimes she was too perceptive.
The day passed slowly and I hardly took note of my classes. Coach Tillmann even let me sit out during P.E., claiming I still looked rather sickly. His idea of curing the flu was to go into the weight room and do as many bench presses as humanly possible. The fact that he was extending his sympathy my way wasn’t a good sign. Time to ditch my drama queen act and get over it pronto. Only problem was, that was easier said than done.
I accepted a ride home from Robyn that afternoon and thanked my lucky stars she was in one of her self-centered moods. She spent the entire three minutes it took her to get to my driveway complaining about the streak of green in her hair.
“It’s teal, not lime. Honestly, how can the color description be that far off?”
I merely shrugged as I yanked my backpack from the backseat. I shut the passenger side door, more forcefully than I had meant, and the partially rolled-down window rattled in its frame.
“Uh,” Robyn said, eyeing me for what seemed like the first time that day. “You okay? You seem more depressed than sick.”
I gritted my teeth. “I’m fine. Just had a headache all day and my stomach hasn’t quite settled yet.”
Not exactly a lie.
“Well, you’d better get inside and within puking range of a toilet then, just in case. Hope you feel better tomorrow!”
Robyn threw her car into drive and practically peeled out down our quiet road. I sighed and glanced around our driveway. It was empty. If I was lucky, no one would be home yet.
I bypassed our front door and went straight to the backyard, unlocking my sliding glass door with the proper key and slipping inside, closing and locking it behind me. I dropped my backpack in a corner and belly flopped onto my bed. I wanted at least an hour of peace before my brothers and my parents got the chance to bother me.
I must have dozed off, because all of a sudden I was staring at my alarm clock and it was two hours later than it had been a few minutes ago. I dragged myself off of my bed, feeling grumpy and rumpled and wondering why I felt so forlorn. Then it came back to me: staying home the day before, walking around in a daze all day long at school, realizing I had fallen for the strange guy who claimed to be from the Otherworld . . . I groaned and scrubbed my face with my hands.
“Meg! Mom says dinner’s ready!” one of my brothers called from upstairs.
I sighed, did a quick check in my bathroom mirror, and plastered a smile on my face. The last thing I wanted was for my family to know I was pining after some guy. Giving myself one more power talk, I climbed the stairs to join them for dinner.
* * *
That entire week consisted of me gradually convincing myself that learning about Cade’s girlfriend was a good thing and that my broken heart would mend within the month. But as each day passed, I yearned to see him, or simply get a note from him. I wanted an explanation of who the woman was, even though I already knew. I wanted to hear it from Cade. And besides, I had taken off that day without ever letting him know I had been there in the clearing. Surely he was just as curious as I. Didn’t he want to know why I never showed up? I squashed that thought right away.
He doesn’t feel the same way about you Meghan. After that fight with his girlfriend, he probably forgot all about you.
“What’s been up with you lately? You’re not sick again, are you?” Tully asked around a mouthful of tuna salad sandwich.
“Huh?” I blurted, snapping out of my daze. I sighed, twirling my cold spaghetti salad with my fork. “Oh. Nothing. I’m fine.” I tried a smile, but it felt very foreign to me.
Robyn stared at me. “Nothing? Are you serious? You’ve been walking around as if you are living in a different dimension all week!”
I cringed. If she only knew how accurate she was . . .
“Just ready for summer, that’s all.”
“Most people who are ready for summer are antsy. Hyped up and talking about the beach and the lake,” Will commented as he polished off a soda.
“You’re acting as if . . .” Robyn trailed off and her eyes grew wide. “Meghan, you’re acting as if you’ve got it bad for some guy! Is it Clay again?”
The blush that flooded my face responded automatically and completely without my permission.
“Who’s Clay?” Thomas asked.
“Meghan? Is this why you’ve been acting so distant for the past month?” Tully asked gently.
I had totally forgotten about the fabricated Clay, but I wasn’t in the mood to talk about any guy, invented or real.
“No!” I said in response to my friends’ questions. I scooped up the remains of my lunch and headed towards the closest trash can. “There’s no one!”
After getting rid of my lunch, I merely walked away, leaving my four friends to gawk after me in shock. I didn’t want to talk to them about Cade. How would I explain everything to them without sounding like I’d finally gone off the deep end? I was so glad that I wouldn’t be seeing them for the rest of the day and that it was a Friday. I could use the weekend to recover my bearings and maybe come up with some excuse or story to tell them.
I had been avoiding the swamp all week, but today I decided it was best if I take the back way home and take my chances. If Tully and Robyn couldn’t find me in the parking lot after school, then they couldn’t force me to talk about Cade.
* * *
Walking through the swamp and the surrounding woods had been a bad idea. Hadn’t I been trying to forget about Cade? So why did I decide to take a nice little stroll through the place that reminded me of him the most? A wave of emotion swept over me: anger, mostly at myself for falling for someone so utterly unattainable, regret and fear that I might not ever see him again, and a bone-deep sorrow for the whole entire, stupid, messy situation.
As I plodded down the road, slipping a little on the gravel as the steep asphalt became a wide dirt path, my roiling emotions came to a breaking point and a sudden anger surfaced above them all. How dare Cade lead me on like that, treating me with more kindness and caring than any guy had ever done before him? Even Thomas and Will considered me to be just one of the guys, not that I’d ever consider dating either of them. Thomas for obvious reasons and Will just wasn’t my type. But Cade?
I wrapped my arms tightly around myself as the dirt path brought me to the outskirts of the swamp. I could see the small bridge of land that crossed its shallowest point just a few yards ahead. Cade
had
been interested in me, hadn’t he? My anger at him soon turned into anger at myself. Perhaps I had read too much into his actions and words. Perhaps things were done differently in the Otherworld.
“Hello Meghan.”
I screamed at the sound of the unfamiliar voice and only because my thoughts were so lost elsewhere. Turning with wide eyes, I found someone standing in the clearing that had become such a familiar meeting ground for me. As soon as I saw who it was, I gaped in shock. It was the beautiful Faelorehn woman, this time wearing a summer dress and heels. Really? Heels? In the swamp? I snorted. Why was that the thought that came to my mind? This was Cade’s girlfriend; shouldn’t I be more concerned with why she was here, talking to me?
The woman crossed her arms and smiled, her crimson lips and violet eyes making her white skin seem even paler. I shivered, despite the warm spring air. She simply gave me the heebie-jeebies.
After some time, she released a sigh and started examining the fingernails on her right hand.
“So . . .”
She let that word hang in the air for a while. “Cade has told me all about you.”