Speak (Witches & Warlocks Book 1) (8 page)

So, then why do I feel like I’m being a major creep? Why do I feel about as small as a mouse and as ugly as a rat? A wet rat that’s been hanging out in sewers and garbage dumps? I offer Noah a weak smile and he turns away and the tiger thumps her tail and snarls in frustration.

“What’s up, Zoe?” asks Luke. “You ok? That guy been a problem for you?”

The weird, oozing, purple fog rolling towards my heart feeling is back and the tiger is pacing and panting and my pulse is skyrocketing. Noah glances my way and his blue upon blue eyes just like mine ignite a golden explosion of pressure in my chest and it’s like all the comfort and safety I’d felt for the first half of the night had been borrowed because I’m suddenly locked behind the obstacle in my throat and in my heart and in my head. I can’t speak and if I tried everything I said would be wrong and maybe I’m just overthinking everything.

Luke unwinds his arm from my shoulders, like a boa constrictor retreating back into the trees. “Zoe?”

“Did you lose her?” Becca kind of stumbles into me, tripping over her high heels. “You’ve gotta come back, babe. ‘Member? We can’t hear all the things you think you’re saying out loud.” She’s slurring like crazy. I’m not all that steady on my feet either and I seriously regret all the drinks I’ve let myself have.

“Sorry,” I say and I mean it. Sorry for that awful look on Noah’s face. Sorry for making Luke think I’m anything close to normal. Sorry for letting Becca down, “Let’s play some pool.” I think I managed to hide the tsunami of an upset stomach that’s churning away inside me.

Becca lurches towards the pool table and then abruptly changes her direction. “Know what? I gotta pee.” Wow. That’s blunt for her. Maybe drunk Becca totally works with Carter. I watch her stumble off to the bathroom before I turn back to find the guys setting up the table. Noah is nowhere to be seen and I’m just as happy not to see that look on his face again as I am disappointed not to actually see his face again. Luke and Carter are kind of muttering to each other, deep in some kind of conversation I don’t think I’m meant to see.

Ugh. Whatever. I need a time out. This is over the top way too much for me.

“I’m going to head to the bathroom as well.”

Luke hits me with his super sexy beast man smile and I sigh a little despite myself. “Hurry back.”

I don’t know if Luke saying that was corny or awesome and I’m way too confused to even begin to decide how I feel about that statement. Flannigan’s has never been so busy and I think I say excuse me at least a hundred times and reroute around people who won’t budge. It’s like I’ve gone invisible again and after an evening’s worth of being seen, it feels horrible. After what feels like a year of shuffling around people, I make it to the hallway that leads to the bathroom. I stop before I turn the corner because I’m pretty sure I hear Becca.

“I thought I told you to stay away from her.” That’s definitely Becca and she’s sounding definitely not drunk.

“So, what are you, her keeper?” And that’s Noah. I press myself tight against the wall. What in the world is this?

“Actually, I am.” Becca sounds haughty and pompous and not at all like her sparkly little self. “I’ve been her guardian her whole life — appointed by people way more powerful than you.”

“You and I both know she doesn’t deserve what’s happening to her.”

“You have no idea what she is.” It would have been nice to hear something other than venom in Becca’s voice.

“The real tragedy is that
she
has no idea what she is.”

What the hell? I shuffle a little closer and I swear I hear them both gasp and turn towards me.

“She’s here,” they whisper in unison. How did they know? What’s happening? If only I could think even kind of clearly right now. Becca’s heels come clicking towards me, the rhythm off beat and syncopated as if she’s staggering. There’s no way I want her to find me eavesdropping, not after that, although maybe she already knows I heard. This whole thing is hard enough to figure out without the too many drinks floating around in my system, making my thoughts all murky. And now I’m feeling draggy, tired, worn thin to the bone. I push off the wall and round the corner toward the bathroom and run straight into Becca.

“You
so
do not want to go down there,” she says, her words slurring again.

I don’t know what to say so I say the first thing that comes to my mind. “I don’t feel so good.” It’s the truth. The conversation I just overheard is mixing with the alcohol and that’s all jumbling up with this sudden exhaustion and my stomach is lurching under the onslaught of adrenaline.

The tiger nudges me down the hallway towards Noah but I definitely don’t want to run into him. I have no idea what I’d say. My indecision paralyzes me until Becca grabs my arm and tugs me towards her. “Babe.” She hisses the word into my face, a heavy whisper dipped in beer breath. “Noah’s down there. You don’t want to go down there now.”

She pulls me back towards the pool table and I let her. If I ever had any fight in me whatsoever, it’s gone. Caput. I’m Zoe, Becca’s doormat, ready to bend to her every will. No, that’s not fair. Becca looks out for me. Or at least I thought she looked out for me. I thought she was my seeing-eye dog, but maybe she’s more like my guard dog.

“Oh, no!” Luke even manages to make concern sound sexy. “What’s wrong?” He tucks me into his arm and some of the exhaustion melts away, like he leeches it from my body with his.

“I just saved her from a near tragic run-in at the bathrooms. The last guy Zoe hung out with is a bit of an ass.”

No, he’s not. Apparently Becca’s the ass. Apparently I am something that I’m not allowed to know about and she’s been appointed my keeper by someone who’s very powerful. I don’t even … I can’t …

I want to go home.

My senses have decided that now is the time for me to have to deal with even more information and I’m seeing and hearing and feeling everything. Strange look between Carter and Becca, Luke’s heart beating in his chest, the rough skin on his hand tickling my shoulder, people laughing, plates clinking, TV’s yammering, pool balls colliding, drinks slamming into tables, waitresses in their tight little uniforms swarming the joint like ants …

“I need to get out of here.” I say it as I think it and I mean it with everything that I am. I can’t handle all this. There’s too much to process and I’d stretched myself to my very limit this evening
before
I happened to overhear the weirdest conversation between my so-called best friend and the guy I really thought I wanted to know better.

Becca looks mortified and Carter just scowls. “I’ve had way too much to drink to drive.” She says it like an accusation.

“That’s fine.” I’m nudging my way towards the door, pulling out from under Luke’s arm. When I say it’s fine, I really mean it’s fine because let me tell you, I don’t think I want any alone time with Becca right now. I don’t know what I’d say or how I’d say it or… well, let’s be real. I know what I’ll say. Nothing.

‘Cause I’m Zoe Tate and I can’t speak.

Becca’s protesting and Carter’s scowling and Luke looks uncomfortable. “Really. You, know me. I like to walk anyway. I had a great time, I think it all just got to me.” I’m babbling excuses, tossing anything at Becca that’ll make sense because the last thing I need is for her to know that I heard what she said to Noah.

“Well at least let me walk you home.” Of course Luke wants to walk me home. It’s just that kind of day. Or night. Or whatever. The kind of day where you get all dressed up and pretend to be something that you’re not only to find out that you actually
are
something you’re not. I don’t have it in me to fight, so I just nod my acquiescence and we head outside. He’s gonna have to deal with me being quiet though, because the noise in my head is too loud to talk over.

Which he actually does. He even manages to respect my space, no clingy arm wrapping around me, no trying to hold my hand so I have to wonder about that strange purple creeping fog feeling, he just walks beside me, studies the people we pass, and smiles at me when he catches my eye. This whole night is weird. I take that back, things have been weird since Noah stopped at our table all those weeks ago. Becca’s insistence that he’s no good despite my evening with him that proved that he is in fact, very good. Becca claiming to know anyone that looks like Carter well enough to want to go out on a double date. Becca claiming to be my guardian, Noah acting like that means something wrong, and apparently I
am
something. And it’s a tragedy that I don’t know.

I sigh and Luke looks my way. “You gonna be ok?”

I nod and smile and for some reason, I feel like I’m the one who needs to make him feel better. As far as he knows, he was out on a date with some chick who just had a nervous breakdown or something. When I’m feeling uncertain, contact makes me feel better, so I reach out and thread my fingers through his.

“You’re really sweet, you know,” he says, leaning down and speaking softly.

I think what he means is weird. I’m really weird. But it’s cool of him not to be so blunt about it. The quiet of the evening is really nice after the super loud energy of Flannigan’s and I’m so not ready to break it. I lean my head into his shoulder and we walk the rest of the way to my apartment door like that. I haven’t said one word and Luke hasn’t pressed me. He’s let me be silent. No more questions, no more forcing me out of my shell. It’s just us, hand in hand under the night sky, the summer breeze dancing like silk scarves around my bare arms.

I probably should have told him he’s really sweet, too. ‘Cause he actually is. Outside of the bombshell of a conversation I’d overheard, it’d been a really good night. A groundbreaking night actually, and all because of Luke’s strangely comforting presence and his insistence that I join in the conversation and participate instead of observe.

I’m so out of my depth. Let’s forget for a second that Noah seems to think he knows more about me than I know about myself. And let’s forget that he seems to know more about Becca than I do and that I think she doesn’t want me around him because of it. Let’s get rid of all of that because that adds a layer of complexity that I can’t process just yet.

Let’s just realize that a week ago, I was walking up to my front door with Noah, totally infatuated, hoping beyond hope that he’d kiss me. And now, just a week later, I’m walking up to my front door with Luke. Two weeks. Two guys. I don’t know how to be this person. I might as well have been dropped into someone else’s story because this sure as hell isn’t mine.

I lead Luke up to my front door and don’t have it in me to kiss him. My insides are all knotted up and I think one more bit of emotion will be enough to make me explode. There’s not a single thing I could say that doesn’t sound stupid or overused or just plain old wrong.

I just settle for the truth. “Thank you for letting me stay quiet.” And now he’ll try to kiss me and I’ll have to kiss him back and any other night I think I’d like that very much. Just not now. Not while I’m already so confused.

Luke takes my face in his hands, gently cups my cheeks and jawline. The look in his eyes is beautiful and I let myself get lost for just a second. With Noah, I felt like he saw me, heard me, but the look in Luke’s eyes says he understands me. My lips part. Instead of lifting my face to his, Luke lowers my face and presses a kiss to my forehead. There’s no golden ping of anything. No purple creeping energy fog. Just Luke, bending protectively over me and the gentle touch of his lips.

“You’re stronger than you know, Zoe,” he says before giving my hand one last squeeze and leaving me to stare after him as he walks down the sidewalk away from my apartment.

Chapter 10

The apartment is dark and I leave it that way. I don’t need any more information, any more stimulation than I’ve already had. I’ve got enough to work through, enough to try to understand without taking in all the things I’d see with my senses on overdrive the way they are. I don’t even know what to think about this right now. I’ve had too much to drink and the only thing I want to do is sleep. I’ll try to figure this out in the morning.

Maybe, while my conscious mind is asleep, my unconscious mind can start uncovering a plan, kind of put the pieces of what I overheard together with the things I know, or at least think I know, about Becca. Maybe I’ll wake up in the morning and I’ll understand things like Becca as my guardian and tragedies regarding what I am. Maybe the conversation I overheard will have a meaning other than I lost my mind and started having auditory hallucinations in the middle of a double date.

I yawn and tuck myself into bed, pulling the covers up tight to my chin even though I’m a little hot already. Maybe the tiger understands everything that happened tonight. Maybe I’ll figure out a way to communicate with that part of me, that tiny flame of strength and confidence that no other introvert has ever understood. Hell, that part of me that even I don’t understand. I have no idea what the tiger is.

Something in the cadence of that last thought matched the cadence of Noah’s words:

The tragedy is that she doesn’t know what she is
.

I sit upright in my bed and throw the covers off, swing my feet off the edge and rest them on the floor. Something’s clicking along inside me, thoughts and images from the last few days lining themselves up all nice and orderly and I can almost make sense of them. The tiger is on fire, flaming with anticipation and if I could just … think. The answer is right there. I can feel it. On the tip of my tongue or caught in my throat. Or my heart. Or my head.

There’s the golden pings of contact with Noah and his eyes the same blue upon blue shade of mine. There’s the creeping, rolling, purple fog of electricity that rolls up my arm from Luke. A rush of energy that started in my heart after my shower and left me stunned and sitting on my bed long enough for my hair to dry. There’s Luke telling me that I’m safe and it’s ok to relax and those words stretching out long and important in my head until I believed them.