Shattered (18 page)

Don’t call me that. And we are not an us,
he said.
I don’t care about you. This is about her.

He was obviously lying. His
voice cracked and betrayed him.

Lydia straightened in her
chair, like strength was slowly returning to her body. “If it’s about her, then
we need to do what’s best for Nathan. She loves him.”

He sighed and said,
You promised to at least detain him.

“He doesn’t need to be
detained,” she said. “He needs help.”

His voice was ice cold when
he responded.
If you bring him back to
this house, he’ll have to deal with me and my gun. You choose.

Then there was silence. Mr.
Gavin had hung up on her. Lydia made another call as I stood there, my tail
wagging fast. It rang once before a frantic voice cut in.

Don’t give me bad news
, Sophia said.

“I won’t,” Lydia said. “He’s
fine. He just shifted. Get his things for me, will you?”

Can I take them to my house?
she asked, in a painfully tearful voice.
Can I take him?

“I have somewhere better. You
were right about Nathan’s problem being much bigger than her wrist,” she said.
“I’m sorry I didn’t listen.”

Did hell just freeze over?
Sophia asked.

They shared a quick and nearly
humorless chuckle, and Sophia hung up.

 
“You’re a real mess,” Lydia said. She
kneeled next to me and petted my head. I could’ve said the same thing about
her. She smelled like she wanted to crawl in bed and scribble her ex-husband’s
name in a journal or something. “I’ve given you too much to deal with. If I had
known you weren’t handling it well, I would’ve stepped in and helped. Honestly,
I wouldn’t have let you near my daughter until you were better.”

I whined, trying to tell her
I understood.

“You can’t go back to that
house with her,” she said.

I nodded.

“Give her father some time-”
I whined and shook my head. “What? You don’t want time?” I shook my head again.
“You don’t want to be with her anymore?” I lay down then, unsure of how to
answer. There was no animal way to say …
I
want to, but I can’t
. She sighed, apparently sensing my answer. “Are you
sure?”

I nodded. I was more than
sure. Chris and I weren’t as perfect as I thought we were. We weren’t good at
all. I couldn’t really say how long this would’ve gone on if her mother hadn’t
gotten involved. Her wrist could’ve easily been her ribs or her beautiful face.
How far would she have let me go without asking for help or at least telling
me? How bad was too bad for her? My mother didn’t have a limit with John. Years
and years of him putting her down wasn’t enough for her to leave.

Then I thought about the
drums I’d heard and how that entire thing was Kamon’s first big move–the
thing I’d waited on all month. He didn’t get her, or me, or whatever he wanted,
so there would be another attempt, and Christine wouldn’t have me around to
protect her. Or hurt her.

Now, it wouldn’t matter if I
stayed Sparky forever. I didn’t have anyone to protect, I didn’t have her, and
I would never have her again.

The last twenty-four hours felt like a
lifetime. I was almost lured to Kamon, my insane mother had read my mind, and
my boyfriend was now gone. Even after all of that, the only thing on my mind as
I lay in bed was that there was obviously more than one way to sedate a hunter.
I hadn’t taken the potion, but I was about as powerful as a toenail.

And today, when all I wanted to do was
run away and find Nate, I needed to be more powerful than a toenail.

Sophia gave me a torn out piece of
notebook paper with six words scribbled on it.

 
I’m sorry. I love you. Goodbye.

“It’s from Nathan,” she said.

Problem was–besides the fact that
Nathan would never say goodbye to me like that–it wasn’t his handwriting.
It looked like hers but skinnier and smaller. Like she was trying to write like
a boy. Nathan didn’t write like a boy. His handwriting was more circular than
straight, and he always wrote in cursive. He had perfect penmanship.

“I’m not stupid,” I said. “This isn’t
from him.”

“Ah, ha,” she said. “So you
can
talk?”

“Is that why you gave me this? So I’d
talk to you?” She took that as an invitation to join me in bed. I hadn’t spoken
a word all day. Mostly because my father thought the moment I woke up without
Nathan in my life was the perfect opportunity to inform me that I wasn’t
allowed to date him or talk about him or think about him ever again. So since
we weren’t talking about Nate, I didn’t want to talk about anything.

Dad was calling it abuse. He’d said, to
quote him, I was in a dangerous and abusive relationship. He didn’t understand
that Nathan was stressed and what that meant for shifters. He didn’t understand
anything but my broken wrist.

“You’re right,” she said. “He didn’t
write it, but it is something he would say right now. He wouldn’t want you to
be isolating yourself like this. Or making us
sedate
you. We, including Nathan, want you to get up and start healing from this, take
the potion on your own again, and get back to normal.”

Normal? That was a hilarious word now.
Until Nathan came back, nothing would be normal, or even mimic normal, ever
again.

“Where is he?” I asked, since I was
apparently talking to Sophia now.

“He’s fine. Your mother calmed down. Like
I said before, he’ll need to be detained. That’s all I can tell-”

Dad walked through the door and Sophia
clammed up. I, on the other hand, was tired of being silent.

 
“I want to know what detained means to
her,” I said.

“And
I
want you to go to bed,” Dad said. “You haven’t slept in almost twenty-four
hours, kid.”

“Is he in jail? Is he alone? Is he hurt?”
I asked.

“Christine,” Dad said. “No more
questions. You two are broken up. You don’t need to know where he is. I’ve had
enough. You’ve spent the entire day staring at the wall, missing your
abus
-”

“Don’t!” I screamed. “Don’t call him
that.”

“I will call him whatever I want,” he
said. “I’m not going to sit back and let things happen to you anymore. I’m your
dad. I don’t care if we just met. I don’t care if you’re thinking I don’t have
the right to do this. I do! And I’m not going to back off until you’re safe
from everything and everyone who can hurt you.”

He had tears in his eyes. I couldn’t let
that soften me.

“I didn’t say you didn’t have the right,
Dad. I’m saying that you’re wrong about Nate, and if I could just please talk
to him, we can clear this up for you.”

“He doesn’t want to talk to you, love,”
Sophia said.

I knew that couldn’t be true, so I
ignored her.

“Maybe we could all sit down and discuss
this,” I said. “We can have another meeting. I can be mature about this. I just
really want to–need to–talk to him.”

“I’m not meeting with him,” Dad said. “You’re
not either. You will have to talk to him over my dead body.”

And there it was again–the
heartbreaking reality of my life. My parents and my happiness didn’t mix. They
repelled like oil and water, making it impossible for me to have it all. There
would always be a choice. There would always be a void. But I couldn’t let that
void be Nathan.

I had to find him, and whatever would
happen with my parents because of that would just have to happen. I loved them,
I really did, but I’d already risked my relationship and felt what it was like
to lose Nate, and that couldn’t be my life. It wouldn’t be my life.

Luckily, I had the power, buried deep
inside of me, to do something about it.

Before now, every time I’d thought about
using my powers, I’d felt like I was suffocating, drowning, or falling through
the portal. The thought of what I did would eclipse everything else, but that
was how big Nathan Reece was to me. He was bigger than portals and millions of
people dying at my hands. He was big enough to make me see that my powers weren’t
the enemy. They were the solution, and there was only one person I knew who
would understand.

“I’m going to bed,” I said, just to get
Sophia to leave and get my father off of my back. She kissed my cheek and apologized
softly in my ear. She disappeared as my head hit the pillow and left me alone
with my overprotective father.

“Honey,” he said. “I know I’m not your
favorite person right now, but you know I love you.” I didn’t respond. I didn’t
want to fight with him, but I couldn’t pretend everything was okay. Like he’d
said, I knew he loved me, but currently that was the problem. I needed him to
love me a little less and step away and see this situation for what it really
was. An accident. A horrible, unfortunate, heartbreaking accident. “I’ll be
right here in this chair all night. If you need me or want to talk or …”

He gave up on his statement and plopped
down in the chair he’d set up next to my bed. He lived in that chair now.

So
now we wait
, I said to
myself.

I fought with my eyelids to be the last
one standing for the night. After a few minutes, he reclined the chair and put
headphones over his ears. He hummed along to whatever song he was listening to.
Evil man. I needed him to fall asleep, not lure me there.

He yawned and turned over to his side,
balancing his phone on the arm of the chair.

That’s
it. Go to sleep.

I watched his eyes close as mine closed
too. My head was pounding. The second thing I needed most in life was sleep,
but the first was Nathan.

When his arm fell over the side of the
chair and just dangled there, I knew I had him. I crept out of bed and tiptoed
to him. I’d seen him with my phone, answering calls from Em and Paul, and
guarding it like it was my passport to Nathan. I hoped it would be. Gently, I
patted his pockets, but didn’t feel it in there.

As quietly as I could, I searched every
drawer and countertop in my room. Then I searched his jacket that was hanging
on the back of the chair.

“What did he do with it?” I whispered.

I rolled my eyes. If I hadn’t insisted on
being powerless, I would’ve been able to answer that question and locate the
phone and possibly Nathan with very little effort.

Just before I crawled in bed and gave up,
I saw my laptop on the table next to Dad. Perfect. I didn’t need a phone. The
person I needed to speak to had emailed me every day for the past two months.

I quietly kneeled next to the table and
opened the laptop. The small movement rattled the ice in his glass. I paused,
my breath trapped in my chest, and waited for him to wake up. He didn’t, so I
proceeded to open my last email from Gregory. My heart pounded harder as I
clicked REPLY.

I
think I’m ready to talk about power now. Please email me back. Or come over.
Please, Gregory. -Christine

I waited for a reply and watched my
father sleep. After a few terrible minutes, with my head growing heavier with
each passing second, I deleted the evidence of my email and got in bed.

I dreamed I was in a pool with Nathan. He
kept pushing my head under. I knew it was playful, so I laughed, but my family
and friends stood around the ledge of the pool with their arms crossed over their
chests, judging him and calling him something he wasn’t. An abusive boyfriend.

I grabbed his hand, and we swam to the
bottom of the pool to get away from them. We knew we couldn’t stay under there
forever, but we held our breaths as long as we could.

“She doesn’t have to move,” Mom said. Her
voice echoed down to where we were. Bubbles blasted out of both of our noses
and floated to the surface. “Why are you fighting everything I say?”

Just as we ran out of air, I woke up. My
parents were standing in the doorway, half in the hall, half in my room. I
wished I were in the pool in real life with Nate. Even suffocating was better
than being stuck here without my boyfriend and listening to them fight.

“I don’t know, Lydia, why
am
I fighting everything you say?” Dad
said. “Could it be that you stole my kid? You know … that little thing you
did.”

She raked her fingers through her hair
and held her hands there like she was going to pull a few chunks out. “I told
you that I’m sorry, but what am I supposed to do when my apology isn’t good
enough?”

“You aren’t supposed to be in situations
like this to begin with. I can’t believe you want me to feel sorry for you!”

“I don’t! I swear I don’t. I want to come
and see my kid without having to clash with you. I don’t know how to deal with
this. We never used to fight, so I have no clue how to do this with you.”

“We never used to fight because I never
disagreed with you. I let you do whatever you wanted, and look where that got
me.”

“Alive! Why can’t you see that? You’re so
focused on being mad at me that you don’t even see what I did. And guess what,
Gavin, I would do it again! Right now! Over and over. I’m sorry that hurts
you.”

“I’m not hurt because you can’t hurt me!”
He stepped closer to her with his jaw and fists clenched. I was two seconds
from getting up and telling him that Nathan would never look at me like that. I
guessed we could call Dad abusive now, since we were throwing the term around
so loosely. “Like I said. She’s moving, and you don’t have a say in this.”

“She’s safe here,” Mom said. “She can’t
move in with you. They know where your house is. Magic will only protect you
two so much.”

“Then I’ll take her to my other home,” he
said. It was quiet for so long, I’d thought they’d given up on the conversation
altogether. Then he said, “In Puerto Rico.”

“You … still, you … still, um … have that
place?” Mom struggled.

“I really hate how you ask questions
about things you already know the answer to!” Dad said. “Like I don’t know
you’re psychic. It annoys the hell out of me. So since you’re playing dumb,
yes, I still have that place. And I’m moving her there whether you like it or
not.”

Since they were arguing about me moving
somewhere else, apparently to Puerto Rico, I assumed Trenton was over. Just two
days too late.

“It’s not about what I like,” she said.
“It’s about what makes her safe.”

Dad mumbled at first, then repeated
himself louder. “Just say you don’t trust me with her.”

I was about to sit up and break up the
fight until I remembered it wasn’t my job anymore. I’d let being their referee
and their personal cheerleader distract me from Nate hurting himself, and now
he was gone. They could fight all they wanted to now.

“I can’t do this with you,” she said. “I
just want to lay with her. I have twenty minutes before my next meeting, and
all I-”

“Just say you don’t trust me with her,”
he repeated. “Say it to my face. Say you think I’m weak. Say you think, and
that you’ve
always
thought, she isn’t
safe with me. You’d rather send her to live with strangers than me. You
would’ve probably left her with your old pal Julian before leaving her with me,
right?”

Ouch. He’d hit way below the belt with that
one.

“Wow,” she said. Her voice was low and
sad. It almost made me want to hug her. “Is that really what you think?”

Dad groaned and walked away, then right
back to her. “You’re doing it again. You know what I’m thinking. Stop
pretending.”

“I’m not listening to your thoughts, Gavin.
Christopher. Whatever. I have no idea what’s going on in your head. I don’t
watch you. I don’t read you. I don’t use my powers with you at all, for all of
these years. It kills me to even think about you. But … you don’t care, right?
Because I’m the bad guy and everything is my fault. So I’m not allowed to have
feelings. I’m not allowed to wonder how the hell you could stay away from me.
I’m not allowed to say I still love you, and I’m crushed that you spent years-”

Dad kissed her. Really kissed her. It was
this abrupt, forceful thing that I couldn’t look away from. Two planes crashing
at the same time. I blinked a few times to make sure I was awake. I was.