Shattered (11 page)

I grinned, and with a stone face, he
sipped out of his water glass.

“
She
told you that?” he said. I nodded. “That’s ridiculous and even more ridiculous
that you believed her. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s with some guy right
now.” Sophia cleared her throat and tried to change the subject. He didn’t
stop. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s somewhere with Kamon. They’ve known
each other since they were kids. I’ve always thought they had a thing going on.
Maybe that’s why he’s upset over you. Maybe he’s mad he’s not your father.”

He laughed, and I just stared at him. In
what world would a comment like that ever be funny? Or appropriate to say to
your daughter? To give my mother the right to not sleep with people like Kamon,
her parents were dead and our lives were ruined. I completely understood why he
hated her, but some things should never be said.

“That’s the rudest thing I’ve ever heard,”
I said. He wiped the goofy smile off of his face and started eating again. “If
she wasn’t in love with you, and could’ve had a kid with anyone, even a hunter,
what does that make me?”

“That’s not what I meant,” he said.

“Then what
did
you mean?”

“I meant that … sooner or later,
sweetheart, you’re going to have to stop being starstruck and see her for who
she really is.” Sophia cleared her throat again. We both ignored her.

“No,” I said. “Sooner or later you’re
going to have to see that you’re never going to make me hate her! It doesn’t
matter what you say or what you think of her. She’s my mother, and I’m not
going to let you insult her!”

I guessed he didn’t have anything else to
say. We ate in tense silence until all of our plates were empty. The
conversation created a wide rift between Dad and me. I didn’t really know how
to fix it or if it would pass on its own. Maybe next time I wouldn’t take up
for Mom. I guessed we’d both crossed the line. I had more than one parent to
make happy.

Dad took his empty plate to the kitchen,
and Sophia leaned in close to my ear.

“Give him a break,” she said. “He’s still
hurting. Go make up with him. Life is too short to hold anything against him,
my love.”

She winked and motioned to the doorway.
It meant:
go now
. I found him in the
kitchen, with his face in his hands at the sink. I wrapped my arms around him,
and he lowered his hands. He was crying.

“I’m sorry for yelling at you,” I said.

“I’m sorry for giving you a reason to,”
he said. “I was joking about Kamon, but I won’t do that anymore. I promise.
It’s disrespectful. I shouldn’t joke about someone you’re afraid of.” I wanted
him to apologize for disrespecting Mom specifically, but with their history, I
guessed it was too much to ask.

“Zain,
he’s too young to play rough,”
the
older woman said. The white dog barked at her, and she laughed.
“Shift, son. Dinner is ready.”

The snowy world blew away, and I opened
my eyes in my dark bedroom. I didn’t even remember falling asleep, and my body
inexplicably felt like a truck had smashed into me. And I was still naked.

I forced myself out of bed and peeked out
of my door. I saw Christine dancing with her father in the kitchen. I guessed
I’d missed dinner.

My exhaustion had reached a whole new
level. I didn’t remember anything after Sophia had walked me to my room and
told me not to assert my opinion with Christine’s father, because fathers,
inherently, hated that.

After pulling on a pair of shorts, I
reheated three-day old leftovers that Chris wouldn’t dream of eating. I used to
be a picky eater, back when I had a mom who’d fix me anything I wanted, before
I stole from fast food joints and slept behind buildings. Three-day-old
leftovers were fine cuisine to me now.

The microwave dinged, and I took a fork
out of the sink that may or may not have been clean. I stabbed it into the
lasagna and opened my fridge to find something to drink.

“Nothing,” I said, and settled for faucet
water. I must’ve slept wrong. My legs ached too much to walk to the house where
we had plenty of drink options, and I really didn’t want to have another run-in
with her dad tonight.

I took my dinner to my closet and sat on
the floor, trying to keep my mind off of my problems, and oddly, for the first
time ever, off of the snowy world in my head. I’d never had to try to put it
out of my mind before. It had always been something I ignored. It felt very
wrong to acknowledge it. And sad. And scary. If Zain and the other people in my
dreams were real, that also meant the dead white dogs were real too, and that made
me feel alone on a level that I couldn’t even describe.

“My life is with Christine,” I said. She
was easy to think about.

Once, Paul told me that neat places were the
best places to hide things from his snooping grandmother. He used to keep his
alcohol stash in his closet behind perfectly folded clothes. In my closet, where
my shoes were neatly in order, was an old pair of sneakers that held my
secrets.

In one shoe, I kept a piece of paper I
stared at more than my own reflection these days. I’d printed a picture of
Christine’s future ring from Tiffany’s website, and I didn’t want anyone to see
it. My mom used to boast about how her ring was from there–the only place
to get an engagement ring in her book. She was more concerned with the piece of
jewelry than the man it had come from, but after doing some research of my own,
I’d found that she was actually right. Girls like Christine need bright blue
boxes.

I rubbed my finger across the picture of
the one-carat solitaire diamond. I’d given up on getting anything bigger. It
was going to take me a lifetime to save 11,000 dollars. It would take me three
lifetimes to get her a two-carat ring.

On the other side of the printout, I kept
tallies that marked the passing days since my meeting with Lydia. I’d hoped my
stress level would fall as the tallies grew, but it hadn’t happened yet, and I
really needed it to. I was spiraling deeper into losing myself. I felt it, and
unless I was going to stop on Nathan and stay me forever, I didn’t see this
ending well.

But what were my other options? Tell
someone and face a Statute Fourteen violation? Or run away from Christine’s
stressful life? That would never happen. If we were soul mates, I had to be cut
out for this part of her life as well. Not just the nice parts of being her
boyfriend. It would work out, it had to, because I was made to be with her.

Paul and Mr. Gavin started singing loud
enough for me to hear them. I stashed my secret box under the sweaters and
debated on going in there. I decided against it.

“Excuse me, rock gods,” Chris said, her voice
muffled by the distance and the closed doors and windows between us. Her
footsteps patted closer, the patio door creaked on its hinges, and I jumped in
bed like I’d been there all along.

“Baby?” she said. I sat up and opened my
arms. “You’re awake!”

“Yeah, I’m so sorry I fell asleep. What’s
going on in there?” She kicked her shoes off and stole a quick kiss.

“My dad and Paul are bonding.”

“Oh. Right. The dinner,” I said, trying
to act like I’d forgotten. She smiled, not buying my act at all.

“He’ll come around,” she said. “And
you’ll be best friends.”

“I don’t need a best friend. I have one.”
I tickled her. She squealed in my ear and blasted her scent into my nose. It
crippled me for a moment, catching my tired body off guard, and I buried my
face in her neck. I would’ve left it at that, I swear I would’ve left it at
that, but she kissed me. Each kiss with her was an unreal experience, like
realizing I’d won some obscene amount of money. I allowed myself to enjoy it
for a moment. I told myself to stop.

I should’ve told that to Christine.

Emma and Paul said goodbye to her father,
and Chris ran her hands up and down my bare chest.

Fingers snapped in the distance. Maybe
Sophia’s. And Chris rolled me over to my back.

I stopped hearing. Stopped thinking.
Stopped stopping. Months of pushing her away and being on duty around the clock
had weighed me down. I didn’t want the weight right now. I didn’t want to think
about the
right
thing, or the
stressful things, or all the little things my mind wrestled with all day. Right
now, life was about her scent and how she smelled when we kissed, like she
wanted more. Wanted me.

It was an electrifying feeling to know
that she wouldn’t stop my hands from gracing any part of her. Of all the places
to touch, in this moment, as I was two seconds from relieving her of her
clothes, I wanted her hands. I locked our fingers and moved them up slowly
until they were over her head. Good choice. Her scent spiked like that was the
perfect move.

There was just something about this girl
that made everything okay. She was like medicine. It felt like if I held her
long enough and kissed her hard enough, she might just solve everything, and I
would stop shifting unexpectedly.

For a minute, everything just slowed
down–our lips, our hearts, time. I just stared at her, and she smiled.
The moment seemed to come with its own music, like someone was humming a sweet
song you never wanted to end.

Then, I heard feet coming our way, and I
remembered she had a father now. I rolled away and out of the bed just in time.

“What are you doing in here, kid?” he
said.

“Nothing,” she said. “Just hanging out.”

I scurried to my drawer and pulled on a
shirt. Christine’s stomach was showing, but she didn’t seem to notice. I was
too afraid to call attention to it. “I see that you’re awake now, Nathan,” he
said.

“Yeah. Uh … yes, sir. I’m sorry I missed
dinner.”

He sighed and surprised the hell out of
me by sitting on my bed. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’m not going
anywhere tonight. We still have time to talk. Say goodnight, Christine.”

“Dad…”

“Just a man to man chat, honey,” he said.
“Nothing bad. Say goodnight.”

She looked at me with apologetic eyes. I
waved, and she blew me a kiss. I caught it, but when her dad looked at me, I
didn’t know what to do with the kiss in my hand.

She closed the door. The sound the breeze
made against the surface of the pool was the loudest thing I’d ever heard. His
heart was even. He wasn’t afraid like I was.

“Where are you from, Nathan?” he asked.

“Los Angeles. I think.”

“You think?” I nodded. “That’s weird.”

“My life is kind of weird, sir.”

He chuckled. “And why are you dating my
daughter?”

“Because I love her?” I didn’t intend for
that to sound like a question, but it did.

 
“Why?” My face soured at his random
question. “Because she’s pretty? Rich? Completely out of your league? She’s a
challenge, right? You can level with me, man. I’ve been there. Lived there.
Almost died there.”

I wasn’t falling for his male bonding
act. Neither one of us thought of the women in our hearts as challenges. He
still smelled like he’d jump in front of a bullet for Lydia any time someone
said her name. He was fogging my room with a very sad and lovesick scent. The
pain he always wore like an extra layer of skin made him smell like sweet wine
most of the time.

“I bet I know what you’re thinking,” he
said. I’d bet he didn’t. “She’s more interesting than the other girls you’ve
dated. She’s unique. The powers, the money, everything. It makes her seem … like
a goddess. And who wouldn’t want to be with a goddess?”

“No, that’s not it,” I said.

“Then why
do
you love my daughter?”

“I just do.”

He laughed and yanked the string on my
lamp. The sudden burst of light startled me. He opened the drawer of my
nightstand, and I leaned against the wall, submitting to his investigation. He
fished around in the drawer but didn’t find what he was looking for–protection.
I had a box, a gift from Paul I hadn’t needed yet, but it was safely tucked
away inside of a sneaker in my closet. Sophia also liked to riffle through
drawers.

“You just do?” he asked. “That’s a bad
answer. Love doesn’t just happen upon you. There’s a reason for it. If you
don’t know why you love her, I’m forced to think that it has something to do
with the fact that she is very beautiful and very rich and very naïve.”

For some reason, I had the urge to be more
honest with him than I had with anyone I’d ever met, outside of Devin.

“First of all,” I said. “…you can stop
looking. I’m not having sex with your daughter.” He narrowed his eyes and
smirked at me. “Second of all, I do love how she looks. I can’t lie about that.
She’s gorgeous, but I absolutely hate her money. I’d rather her be homeless and
poor like me. And third of all…” I rolled my eyes, hearing myself taking the
of all
thing too far. “She’s not really
naïve. She’s trusting, and I’ve given her reasons to trust me.” My voice
deepened as I found a little more confidence. “And as for why I love her, I
don’t really have a choice in that. It’s beyond me. I don’t think I could leave
her if I tried. I’m made for her. She’s made for me. That’s it.”

He rolled his eyes, exactly the opposite
of what I expected after a speech like that. “She’s made for you?” he asked.
“So I married the wrong girl when I was your age … all for you? You’re that
special? You’re telling me my daughter’s life is solely about Nathan Reece?”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” I said. Mr.
Gavin was awfully chatty without his stutter. I liked him better with it.

“I don’t care how you meant it. Just know
that I’m watching you. You strike me as dishonest, Nathan. That’s why I don’t
like you. For my daughter’s sake, I’d really like for you to prove me wrong.”

Theatrics were a disease in their family.
His ex-wife was famous for hers. And Christine, although perfect in my eyes,
could win an award for hers. Mr. Gavin was just like them. He reached his tattooed
arm to my lamp and slowly pulled the string. He rose from the bed in slow
motion and dismissed himself.

As if I needed something else to worry
about, now I had Christine’s dad breathing down my neck even more, waiting for
me to prove something I didn’t know how to prove. Just wonderful.

I crawled under the covers, and my body
seemed to become a part of the mattress. I felt like I hadn’t slept in days. Heavy
rain smacked against my roof and lulled me to sleep.

My dreams were flashes of snow, then my
mother, then snow, then my mother, red snow, then red toes.

My eyes flew open. Sweat was streaming
down my face and chest. I rolled over and nearly squashed Christine … who was
not supposed to be in my bed again. Instead of waking her to leave like I
should have, I grabbed her hand and listened to the rain. I refused to close my
eyes again. Bad things were happening behind my eyelids tonight.

Sometimes, I had moments when I wanted
Chris to know the parts of me I never talked about. But those moments were
always followed by the need for it to just be over. Like the night I took Chris
to meet my mother. I’d needed a social security card, but I didn’t expect her
to have one. I just wanted them to meet. But as Chris sat there breathing the
same air as them, my present too deep into my past, I saw how much they didn’t
mix and got out of there as soon as I could.

Take
care of yourself
.

Those were my last words to her. I didn’t
bother to look back as I said it. As a child, I wouldn’t have guessed those
words could’ve been our last or could’ve come out of my mouth at all.

The rain picked up outside, and I tried
and tried and tried to stop thinking about her. But rain made me think of
umbrellas, and umbrellas made me think of my mother playing with hers on the
city bus. I’d banished memories like these long ago, but I couldn’t stop it
tonight. I couldn’t shake out of it.