Cold Kiss Part 9

"You can't put it off, Wren." He steps closer again, and I back up. I can't think when he's so near, so warm.

"Well, first I have to pa.s.s my chemistry test and get through Friday night," I mutter.

"What's Friday night?"

I huff out a laugh that's mostly a sigh, and shake my head. "A sleepover. A stupid girly sleepover at my house, because my friends are ready to walk out of my life forever, and I can't bear it if that happens, so I have to sit through some horror movie and eat popcorn and watch Jess paint her nails, okay?"

He doesn't look convinced, but I'm not interested in making him understand. Not right now.

"Wren, let me help, okay? I could do some research. I don't want you to go through this alone. And I really don't want you to get hurt."

He's serious, and everything about the defined angles of his body is softer now. But I can't help blurting out, "G.o.d, why do you care?"

He flinches as if I slapped him. "Isn't it obvious? I noticed you before I picked up on your power, Wren."

That shouldn't feel as good as it does, a bright hot pulse in my chest. It doesn't matter if Gabriel likes me, and it really doesn't matter if I like Gabriel. There's Danny to think about. Always Danny.

I don't know what to say, so I stand there blinking instead, and finally Gabriel gives up and takes a step toward me again. I don't back up this time, even though I do have to tilt my head to look him in the eye. Why are the only boys who like me always so tall?

"I saw you, Wren," Gabriel says, and his voice is so soft, a feather drifting on the air, that I close my eyes to listen. "I saw this girl with these dark eyes and this crazy hair and this f.u.c.k you look on her face, and I wanted to talk to you."

I laugh and open my eyes. "Wow. Smooth."

He smirks, his mouth twisting to one side, and shrugs a little. "It's true. You don't look like everybody else, and that's a good thing."

"At least the outside and the inside match," I say, and let myself move just a little closer. I can't help it-my life has become a series of b.a.l.l.s I'm trying to keep in the air, and I can't hold on to any of them long enough.

I want to hold on to Gabriel.

My hands find his forearms, and I tangle my fingers in the worn cotton of his sleeves. Another kick of energy washes through me, warm and bright, and the air shimmers around us. I want so much, so much I can't have, so much I'm not supposed to even think about.

But I stretch up anyway, trembling, hearing the echo of Gabriel's voice: I saw you. I saw you.

I never thought I wanted to be seen like that, so completely. I didn't think it was possible, after keeping so many secrets for so long. It's amazing how good it feels.

When I press my mouth to Gabriel's, I can feel the shimmer, taste it, sweet, mellow gold where our lips touch, a slow-blooming heat that twines around us like vines. And it's so bittersweet, so much like that long-ago first kiss with Danny, I break away with a jerk.

"I have to go," I manage to get out, and then I'm scrambling, pushing away from Gabriel's outstretched hands and the sound of his voice to grab my stuff and run.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

DANNY WAS A SECRET FOR A LITTLE WHILE. Before he died, I mean. He didn't have to be-it's not like my mom was opposed to me having a boyfriend, even though I had to sit through the big s.e.x talk after we got serious, which was epically awkward. I never thought I would hear my mom say "condom" so many times, although watching her unwrap one did make us both giggle, since she'd somehow managed to buy fluorescent ones.

I stopped her before she made me put it on a banana, though.

I wasn't really worried about Jess and Darcia, either. We'd talked about boys since sixth grade, after all, starting with Bailey Sutter, who got tall before any of the other boys, and used to b.u.mp into Jess at every opportunity, which was as close to a declaration of love as you got at twelve.

Danny wasn't the first boy I'd crushed on, but he was the first boy I couldn't stop thinking about, the first one who made me itchy and nervous waiting for the phone to ring, the first one I wanted to climb all over, climb inside, take apart so I could see and touch every part of him.

I didn't want to share him. It was a little bit like drawing a picture-I didn't want anyone to see it until I was finally happy with it. And being with him those first few weeks was just as magical as learning what I could do had been, touching a flower and watching the color deepen, swooping the music on my iPod higher with a gesture. I was giddy with the way I could look at him across the cafeteria, find him smiling at me, and know that he was mine, that this huge thing that had happened to me was still just mine. No one could question it or taint it or ruin it-I could hold it, perfect and whole, as long as I wanted.

It didn't last, of course. After a while, it got too hard not to let him take my hand in the hallway, or snug up behind me at my locker, his chin balanced on the top of my head as his hands snaked around my waist. After a while I wanted to share it, to show it off, to let the world see why I was smiling like a complete idiot half the time.

It's not like that with Gabriel.

My phone buzzes that night, after I've run the last few windy blocks home, the taste of him still on my lips and my cheeks hot with shame and guilt. I know I should probably ignore it, but I don't. I curl up under the covers instead, staring out the window as the bare branches of the tree outside sc.r.a.pe at the sky, and answer it.

It's another secret, another lie, and the worst part is that I'm lying to myself this time. Telling myself that I'm only talking to Gabriel because there's no one else, and because he might be able to help me figure out what to do about Danny. Ignoring the rushing shiver when I remember kissing him, pretending that I don't wish we were in the same room so I could do it again.

"I'm falling asleep," I whisper into the phone after an hour of talking about things that don't matter, music and pizza and Mr. Rokozny's horrible suits and the costumes we wore on Halloween as kids.

"And my phone is dying," he says. I can hear his smile.

"Okay. Well..." I don't know what to say then, and I don't really want to say good-bye. The sound of his voice is an anchor, bobbing sure and steady across the crackling connection, and I want to hold on to it for as long as I can.

"It's okay, Wren. I'll see you tomorrow." I can hear him breathing, the distant rustle of fabric that means he must be in bed, too. "It's really okay."

I want it to be. I want a lot of things that I'm not going to get, though, so I tell him, "It's really not," and click off the phone before I start to cry.

I'm pulled in every direction the next two days, stretched so tight I'm sure I'll snap and tear. On Wednesday Madame Hobart looks like someone just drowned every kitten in the world, and apparently decides torture by the past imperfect tense is the answer to her mood. We get hit with a compare-and-contrast essay on The Stranger in World Lit, and I fail the chem lab so spectacularly I'm amazed nothing gets blown up.

It doesn't help that Jess is there at lunch, tossing stray vegetables from her salad onto my tray and pulling nail polishes out of her bag to hold up for my inspection. Dar's got a playlist ready for Friday night and a plan to make double fudge brownies, and meanwhile Gabriel is watching me in the hall and in cla.s.s, eyes shifting to his notebook whenever I catch him or when Jess and Dar are around.

Mom needs me at the salon after school on Wednesday, too, because two of the girls are out sick, and she steers me between the phones and the broom and the wet mess of used towels waiting for the washer. By the time we're in the car on the way home I have three texts from Dar, two from Jess, and six from Gabriel, and Mom raises an eyebrow as I thumb through them.

"Missing some big party this afternoon?" she says as she pulls into the driveway. The car's engine dies with a grunt and a wheeze, and she tilts her head to one side, waiting as I flip my phone shut.

"Oh yeah. Rock stars, limos, crazy drugs. The usual Wednesday afternoon scene." I'm aiming for sarcastic but I land on tired instead, and she reaches out to stroke my cheek.

"You okay, babe?"

I swallow as I look up at her. Her face is so familiar, the slender nose, the delicate mouth, all that thick hair the color of healthy bark, even the smell of her, clean cotton and magnolia over the faint tang of hair dye. For a second I want to admit that I'm not, that I need her to fix everything and let me sleep for about a month, and before I can stop it I'm seeing her through the sting of tears.

"Hey." She leans closer, runs her thumb over my cheekbone and my jaw, a whispering touch. "What's going on?"

I shake my head and pull away. I can't give in. I don't want to know what would happen if she found out about Danny. It's too enormous to even imagine, like the whole earth going up in a ball of flame. "I'm just tired," I say, and stuff my phone in my bag as I reach for the door handle. "I didn't sleep well last night."

She doesn't believe me-I can see it in her eyes-but it's actually not far from the truth. I dreamed all night, of the tree where Becker's car crashed, wrapping its spindly limbs around me until I couldn't breathe, of Danny wandering into Bliss, his skin gray and torn, his eyes as dead as the stones that fell out of his pockets, and the whole cafe full, my mother and Jess and Gabriel and Trevor, all waiting for me to see him, turning me around to watch as he wept blood onto the counter.

My subconscious isn't very subtle, I guess.

Thursday's not a lot better, especially since I was up until two again, trying to convince Danny I had to go home. I'm so tired I feel brittle, and I snap at Alicia Ferris in the hall after history when she takes a picture of me picking up notebooks and my iPod and crushed packs of gum from my dropped backpack.

"Seriously?" I hiss, blinking away the flash and feeling that dangerous knife edge of anger cutting through my control. I'm crouched awkwardly with a partially unwrapped tampon in one hand and a forgotten, desiccated apple in the other.

"It's for the yearbook," she says, smirking, and holds up the camera to take another.

That's it-I haven't even thought about what I'd like to do when the power rolls up out of me in a tingling wave, and the sprinkler above Alicia's head bursts to life. I scuttle backward, out of the line of fire, as she shrieks and drops the camera.

People up and down the hall are shouting and laughing, and within seconds Andy Petrov is in his socks, sliding along the wet floor, shaking his head like a puppy. Alicia is still stunned and soaked through, ignoring the smashed camera to peel her wet clothes away from her body. Mascara drips down her cheeks like black tears.

By the time Princ.i.p.al Gorder turns the corner, the sprinkler is spitting to a stop and I'm halfway down the hall to lunch. I'm not tired anymore, but I feel scooped out, empty, and beneath the satisfaction-I've hated Alicia since fourth grade, at least-the guilt is already rolling inside like a sour stomach.

Jess is waiting, as usual now, and I only manage a quick glance at Gabriel before I sit down at the table she's chosen. He gives me a small smile before holding up his phone, and the brief flare of relief in my chest somehow feels worse on top of the guilt. There will be a text from him, then, and I hate how much I want to see it, how much I want school to be over so I can talk to him, instead of plotting tomorrow night's fun with Jess.

By the time I meet Gabriel behind the public library a half hour after school is over, I'm back to exhausted. I can't even think about the essay I have to write, or the new trig problems, even though I know my grades are slipping. College seems like a distant impossibility today, and one that matters a lot less than the next twenty-four hours.

"Hey." Gabriel is slouched against the faded red brick, and he stands up when I round the corner of the building. I never got closer than five feet away from him yesterday, and I don't even bother to argue with myself as I walk straight into his arms. We connect with a vague oomph. I don't think he was expecting that, but I don't care.

Judging by the way his arms go around me, sliding under my backpack, he doesn't either.

"Bad day?" His words are m.u.f.fled by my hair.

"Bad night," I tell him, and pull away far enough to look up at him.

His voice sharpens. "What happened?"

"Don't be a big d.a.m.n hero, okay?" I poke his chest with one finger. "Just be my friend."

"You didn't answer the question."

I sigh. "I know."

I don't want to, which is the first problem. Not because I'm afraid Gabriel will go all tough guy, but because it hurts to admit that Danny is getting harder and harder for me to control.

Last night when I finally snuck out there, he was down in the garage, prowling around near the door to the yard. Thin and pale in the sliver of light through the window, he looked like something from another world when he turned around and saw me standing there, my mouth hanging open and my heart pumping pure terror.

He didn't even smile the way he used to. When I think about it, he hasn't in days. Instead, he focuses those flat dark eyes on me, as if now he can see into me, too, and he wants something there that he can grab onto and twist, viciously.

I wriggle out of Gabriel's hold and kick aside some damp leaves to sit down with my back to the cool brick. Gabriel joins me, his knee brushing mine.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not really." I shrug, and he winds his arm around my shoulders. The weight of it is a comfort, and I let my head rest against it. "I had to make up a spell last night just so I could leave. It was terrifying-I was trying to remember what I'd read in some of the books and figure out what to say, and all I could think was that I didn't want to make things worse."

"What do you mean, so you could leave?"

I stare at my lap, where my battered backpack is covered with Danny's doodles, faded Sharpie initials and faces. "He doesn't like being alone anymore. So when I need to leave, he gets ... upset."

It's an understatement for the stubborn way Danny held on to me last night, wrapped around me from behind, his chin digging into my shoulder, his voice low and cold in my ear.

"Wren." Gabriel stiffens beside me, and I reach up to grab his hand, twining my fingers with his.

"I'm going to figure it out, I promise. And he's not going to hurt me, Gabriel. He wouldn't."

I wish I was actually sure of that. I wish I had any idea what "figuring it out" meant. Just the thought of doing something to hurt him is enough to make me ill. I'm not strong enough to strangle him or smother him, and he isn't actually breathing anyway, so what good would that do?

The fact that I'm sitting here in the chilly leaves imagining ways to get rid of the boy I loved so much I brought him back from the dead is so ridiculous, so horrifying, it's almost funny. In an unbelievable, black humor way that's not really funny at all.

"I wish I believed that," Gabriel says, and rests his head against mine, kissing my hair gently.

I can't tell him that Danny was down in the garage last night, way too close to venturing outside. I can't tell him that with Danny's arms around me last night, it had been hard to breathe, harder still to concentrate on winging a makeshift spell with my ribs crushed under Danny's forearms.

"I just have to get through tomorrow night," I say instead. "This weekend, I'm going to ... well, I don't know what, but I'll figure something out. And then..."

I don't know where that sentence should end. Then what? We can stop hiding? We can date? I can pretend that I didn't make the most horrible mistake you can make in the name of love and get on with kissing the cute new guy?

I don't deserve a happy ending. I don't even deserve a semi-happy ending, because Danny isn't going to get one. He might have-he might have been in heaven, for all I know, lounging around in his favorite T-shirt with his guitar making the kind of noises he couldn't quite get it to make while he was alive and pinning his drawings to the clouds. I took that away from him. So I could have him back, so I wouldn't be alone.

And now, somehow, I'm going to be the one to end his life, again. Kiss of death, that's me.

"Hey," Gabriel says, and nuzzles the top of my head. "And then, okay? Just concentrate on there being a then."

"I know." I twist around so I can look up at him, the bricks sc.r.a.ping against my back, and find him right there, waiting. There aren't any more words, not right now, so I kiss him again.

He tastes sweet, and the soft give of his mouth feels like coming home. I lick the curve of his bottom lip before I pull away, and he shudders out a breath and tightens his arm around me before resting his forehead on mine.

Then feels impossibly far away.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

"HEY, ARE YOU LISTENING?"

I drag my gaze away from the window in the butler's pantry, where I'm holed up with my phone. The yard is dark in the shadow of the trees, and I can barely make out the outline of Mrs. Petrelli's garage.

"I'm here, sorry. Just trying to figure out this last trig problem." It's a lie, of course, but Jess will buy it. I'm worse at trig than she is.

"Wren, it's almost midnight. Do it tomorrow. Or skip it and beg mercy from Ms. Nardini. She'll let you off if you just gush about her knockoff Louboutins."

"Oh yeah, because I really look like the type to be craving Louboutins of my very own," I say, rolling my eyes. The windowsill is digging into my forearm as I press my nose to the gla.s.s and squint into the thick blackness outside. There's barely a moon tonight.

Mom didn't go up to bed until almost eleven, and I heard the low hum of her TV for a half hour after that. I had just crept down the stairs to the kitchen when Jess called. I'd forgotten my phone was in the pocket of my hoodie, and it sounded so shrill in the silence, I'd flipped it open without thinking.

And wound up here, huddled in the butler's pantry, which Mom uses as storage for pretty much anything she doesn't want to haul up from the bas.e.m.e.nt or find cluttered in the hall-Christmas lights, Robin's sports stuff, the box from the new toaster, lightbulbs. At least there's a window.

"All I know is, no homework talk tomorrow night," Jess says sternly. "Even from Dar. I know she's freaking about her lit project, but I am not discussing dead nineteenth-century white men on a Friday night."