Significance (37 page)

Caleb was reading me.

It’s ok. You don’t have to worry about it right now. We’ll figure it out later.

It’s not that I don’t want to. I do. I’m just worried about my dad. It would be so much easier and safer if I stay with you. And more fun.

I sent him a little smile but he was still hung up on the worry; the worry for me if I wasn’t with him and how this was going to work out. It was not only his desire to protect; it was ingrained in his veins.

I decided to distract him because his feelings of worry and upset and need to protect were choking me.

I pulled his face to mine with my arm around his neck. He sighed in relief against my lips at the contact and release of coiled emotions. His arms tightened and his gratefulness was all around me. He knew I was saving him with this kiss as I tried to forget the things that would have to be dealt with very soon...but not tonight.

We continued to sway with the slow music as we kissed slowly and sweetly. The song was something I wasn’t familiar with but it didn’t matter.

Someone bumped us, breaking our kiss.

“Oopsy. Shouldn’t you be heading home, preschool,” Ashley said as she swayed with a guy who was somehow even drunker than her. They both stumbled and grasped each other to keep from falling. She laughed. “Ahh! Did I interrupt something?”

Caleb quickly pulled us further away from them when someone else bumped against us. We both looked up to Beck and Ralph, writhing in rhythm to the music beside us on the sand, practically dry humping and I felt like I needed to avert my eyes but then I saw hers and realized she’d been drinking. They both had. I sighed at her stupidity at taking alcoholic drinks from a bunch of college kids she didn’t know.

“Hey, girl. Having fun?” she yelled over the music.

“Where have you been?” I asked feeling very motherly at the moment.

“Oh...somewhere,” she yelled and they both laughed maniacally, falling into each other, giggling and groping.

I rolled my eyes and wanted to go away. It’s not like we could talk anyway. There was entirely too many people around and so loud and Beck, although I was happy for her and Ralph, had been driving me crazy all night. We were growing apart, in different directions. I still wanted to be her friend but it felt like we were just in different places. Right now, I wanted to spend my time with Caleb more than anything else.

Say no more.

He took my hand and tugged me away from everyone to a little trail in the wooded area off the beach. The music died down as we kept going, hand in hand, and I leaned my head against his shoulder.

“What’s your biggest pet peeve?” I asked him finally after some minutes of comfortable silence.

“Hmmm.” He scratched his chin in that familiar way I was beginning to adore. “Probably lying, but since I’m forcing you do it because of our imprint I guess that’s pretty hypocritical, huh?”

“Caleb,” I protested but he kept going.

“But if you want an easier, less in depth answer, I’d say...a whiner. Someone who complains about everything get on my nerves. I know there’s nothing wrong with letting loose sometimes but there are some kids, especially since I got to college, who just whine and cry about every little thing. They are so spoiled, it kills me.” He looked over at me to see my smirk. “And you? What’s yours?”
“I’d have to say, in depth would be cheating on someone. I can’t stand it, hate it. That’s one reason I’m so mad at my mom. But the easier, less in depth answer, would be meanness. What about...what you like to do when you go home from school?”

“The same thing I like to do at school. Play music, write music, listen to music, attend concerts and friends’ gigs at clubs. I should really change my major, I think. I giggled and shook my head. “You? Favorite thing to do?”

“Um...read, I guess. I’m a nerd.”

“I like to read too, that doesn’t make you a nerd. Unless you’re calling me one.” He cocked a comical brow at me and I smiled then bit my lip, thinking.

“Favorite person?” I asked.

“You, that’s an easy one.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I laughed.

“I know, but we’re here.” He pulled back one last tree branch, like a curtain, it opened up to a postcard pretty picture in front of me. The moon was casting a mirror reflection on the water. The sand was white and clear. The waves were small and there was probably fifty yards of beach, right in between two rocks that seemed to be deserted and un-messed with. It was gorgeous.

“Wow.”

“Yeah. I found this place at another one of these parties. It gets to be a little much for me too, so I took a walk and here it was.”

“And did Ashley follow you here,” I joked and fluttered my eyelashes.

“She would have if she’d seen me.”

He took my hand again to pull me to the waters edge. He took off his jacket and laid it on the white dry sand. He laid his head down on the jacket and beckoned me down to him. I smiled as I snuggled up against him, using his arm and shoulder as a pillow.

You liked the stars last time...

I turned my face to look up and saw that it was possible to be even more beautiful than before. There were a million of them up there and, as cheesy at it sounds, it took my breath away.

We just lay for about twenty minutes, just like that, watching, listening, being together. It wasn’t hot or cold, it wasn’t loud or quiet, the sand wasn’t hard or soft. Everything was perfect and add his calming touch to that, his hand coasting up and down my arm, and it couldn’t have gotten better.

He started to think about things. What he was gonna do when I was in class without him. What if our schedules conflicted so much that we never got to see each other during the day at school, he’d never get any work done worrying about me.

You’re in my head, remember? You’ll always know if I need you. Everything should be fine.

I know you think that and I’d like to but what if the echoling never stops? What if Marcus never stops? I don’t know what I’d do.

Caleb.
I pulled his face close to mine with a hand on his cheek.
I like it that you worry about me and I’d never tell you to go against that but, why worry about something that hasn’t even come near to time yet? Who knows what’ll happen by then. This whole thing may be sorted out.

He chuckled and tucked my head under his chin.

You’re so cute when you’re all optimistic and take-charge.

Ha ha.

You’re right. No point in worrying about it yet. But eventually, all this will have to be discussed. Especially...the living arrangements once you start school.

Your parents are fine with my living with you? Because I know my dad would be livid.

No, they’re not ok with it, not really. I told you, they don’t really see another choice. It’s not like I can sneak into the campus dorms every morning to see you.

I know. I just don’t know what to do. Why does everything about this have to be so complicated?

Well, it’s usually not. Usually...we’re older when we imprint. No one else has ever had to worry about all this stuff before. We’re all knew and no one really knows what to make of it. See, before when they imprinted, they just got married and that was it.

I realized what he was saying. We were the first Ace couple to imprint and not get married.

How long did people wait to get married?
They didn’t wait. It was more like, how soon can they get married. My parents only waited three weeks.

I balked. My heart slammed. My head spun. What!! Three weeks!

Maggie. Breathe. It’s ok.

I’m sorry. I just... Three weeks? That just seems...

Crazy, I know but they’re meant for each other. It’s not like they were going to decide to date someone else, you know? They were it for each other, forever. Why not get married and get started on your life?

You’ve thought about this already, haven’t you?

Of course I have.
He leaned to hover over me on his elbows and looked seriously at me. “I’ve thought about it every since you first touched me and I knew you were mine.”

Why did you say to something like that, I didn’t know whether to run or cry in joy. I wanted to marry him, right this second, I knew he was it for me and there was no point in waiting but I was only seventeen. My dad wouldn’t forgive me nor understand and I’d have to tell everyone I met that I was a teenager and married. That shouldn’t matter, what other people thought, but for some reason, it kinda did a little.

I also wondered why we were chosen so young when everyone else imprinted in their early twenties. Appropriate marriage age. There had to be a reason. But right now, I was just scared.

We heard a ruckus behind us. We both looked up to see a couple drunk guys barreling through the brush at the edge of the woods in a clumsy and uncoordinated fight. Caleb groaned and got up. They were yelling loudly and taking swings at each other.

“Stay here for a second. Let me pull these idiots off each other.”

He left and I sat up to look at the water. I continued to think as I heard Caleb trying to settle them behind me. I felt the stick in my arm before it registered that something was wrong. I felt one second of panic before my heart slowed to a sleepy rhythm. The last thing I saw was the beautiful scene of where Caleb had taken me before my eyes closed and I fell back into the sand.

I woke up in the dark. I smelled Caleb all around me and moved my arms to feel that his jacket had been draped over my head. I pulled the jacket down to my shoulders and felt the chill hit my face. I was somewhere cold, musty and dark. I felt groggy and unhinged.

There was someone there, that’s why I’d woken up. They were laying my arms and legs out and strapping them down, my arms over my head. In my mind my heart spiked in panic but my body didn’t respond. My heart stayed at its slow lazy rhythm and I didn’t understand why. I didn’t even fight whoever it was.

I tried to focus my brain. Tried to tell myself to look around and see what was going on. Caleb. Where was Caleb? I popped my eyes open as wide as they’d go and looked up to see two faces over me. One I didn’t recognize but looked slightly familiar, a woman, and the other had my insides screaming.

Marcus.

I tried to move my hands and feet but they wouldn’t budge. My arm hurt. My eyes drifted to see wires and tape around my hand, an I.V. What were they doing to me?

I tried to speak.

“What-” My throat felt like sandpaper. “What are you doing?”

“Maggie, finally, It’s been hours,” Marcus said happily.

“Don’t talk to her, Marcus. This isn’t a game,” the person I could only guess was his uncle barked at him. “Get out of here.”

He smiled cruelly at me and left the room. I looked over to see a very heavy looking door slamming shut behind him as he left. The room I was in was small and metal, a box really.

“Now listen to me,” the man said and I jerked my face to look at him instead. “You have medicine in you to keep your heart rate low so Caleb won’t be able to follow you here. You might hear him, he might get through enough to talk to you a little bit but you’ll just be torturing yourself if you think that he will come and rescue you. He won’t. I’m sorry to have to do this to you but we can’t allow the Jacobson’s to have the power over us anymore. They’ve always had a hand over us and now this? I saw an opportunity and I took it.” He shook his head. “No more.”

He started to leave.

“Wait. How long am I going to be here?”

“Until Caleb stops looking for you and forgets about ascending.”

“That’ll never happen.”

He looked at me poignantly and smiled sadly.

“I know.”

The slamming door was like a nail in my coffin. I understood him exactly. They had no intentions of letting me go, ever, and they fully expected Caleb to spend the rest of his life looking for me in agony. Which from what I’d heard, when two imprinted Aces are not with each other, may not be long. I could already feel the ache in my back and legs for him which made me wonder how long I’d been here already. In just a couple days time we’d be in so much pain we could barely think from what I’d been told. And the medicine they were pumping me with apparently didn’t have pain medication in it because I could feel everything.

How had they pulled me away and Caleb not seen or heard them? What had happened to Caleb, had they hurt him? What happened to Beck at the party? My dad would be freaking if I hadn’t made it home by midnight. I couldn’t think anymore. My eyes started to drift closed and I could no longer command them to remain open.

I woke with a startled gasp as something warm and wet on my face. I looked up to see a girl, about my age, wiping my face and hands with a cloth. She dipped her rag and wrung it out moving to my neck and belly under my...wait a minute. Where was my tank top? I was naked under a sheet.

“What are you doing?” I creaked through the pain in my back.

My head pounded behind my eyes, blood rushing in my ears so loud I could barely hear myself speak, the withdrawals. I needed Caleb.

“Washing you,” she said with a ‘duh’ face. “You don’t want to stink, do you?”