The Fallen Stars (A Star Child Novel) (10 page)

We drove a little farther before I answered his question. “Of course I knew I could trust you. That wasn’t the reason.”

“Then what was?” Gabe’s voice still had that hard edge to it. I tried to figure out how I could word my thoughts so I didn’t sound like an insane loser.

“I didn’t want you to think I was…crazy. I didn’t want you to think I wasn’t cool.” There, I’d said it. My geekiness was out there on display. No holding back now. “You don’t have any idea what it was like, okay? I was the only guy my age at college. It never mattered that I aced every class I ever attended, was ranked the best in each class. The only thing that mattered to other people was my age. No one would go out with me, no one would even talk to me. Half the time I was seconds away from getting beat up by somebody.”

“People liked you. I never saw you have any trouble,” Gabe said.

“You wouldn’t have, because they were all looking at you. Everyone loved you, Gabe. You were the best…you
are
the best friend I could ever have, man.”

Gabe responded, his voice barely audible, “Thanks.”

Grabbing my drink from the console, I took a swig and put it back down roughly into the cup holder, looking at him again. “When I stood beside you, no one noticed I was there. However, no one told me to leave, either. I
belonged
. That’s something that I never had before. No one ever gave me a hard time because you were my friend. College would have sucked for me without you.”

As it was, my time at Yale offered me an unprecedented amount of freedom without Stephen’s influence. He’d had a much easier time keeping tabs on me at boarding school. College freed me to do whatever I wanted. The things that I did, the experiences that I had wouldn’t have happened if Gabe hadn’t been my friend.

“Why would I think you’re crazy?” He smiled slightly and added, “I mean, you
are
, but—”

Delaying the inevitable, I leaned into the backseat and grabbed the package of Snickers candy bars from a bag on the floor next to my sleeping Cali. Opening the outer package, I took out a bar. “Want one?”

“Nah, I don’t eat that stuff anymore.”

“Since when?”

“Since I started watching what I eat, dude. Gimme a granola bar.”

“Granola? What are you, an old man now? You watching your fiber?” I asked, laughing.

Gabe snorted, but he seemed to be waiting for me to continue. Knowing Gabe as I did, I had no doubt that I would receive a full cross-examination if I didn’t spill the beans. Handing the bar to him, I sat back down in my seat. “Keep going,” Gabe said.

“Okay.” Tearing the wrapper, I looked down at my hands. “I met Cali when I was six. Anyway, I’d gone to my Gran’s in Ireland with Stephen and Roger. I had wandered off alone.”

Gabe made a small sound. He disliked my use of “Stephen” in reference to my father. Roger, my brother, he knew of but had never met. Roger could be best described as a loser and a younger version of Stephen. I often referred to him as The Turd. The presence of the word
the
in front of the word
turd
implied that Roger had reached a certain status as a turd—the highest level possible.

Opening my candy the rest of the way, I took a bite, my stomach rumbling greedily as the chocolate hit my taste buds.

“Dude, you’re like…addicted to that stuff.” Gabe glanced at me as I ate. When I just chewed without speaking, he asked, “Did your mother go with you? To Ireland, I mean?” Gabe bit into his granola bar.

“My mother…had already passed by then,” I said.

“Yeah.” Gabe’s voice shifted as understanding crept in. He knew all about my childhood, how my mother suddenly died and I was left with Stephen and Roger, both of whom verbally abused me. Gabe had always insisted that I should make more of an effort with Stephen—though I doubted he would have believed that if he’d known the latest.

Earlier that year, pre my fantastical journey through the world of Faerie, I inherited my Gran’s cottage in Ireland and a substantial amount of money. After graduation, I decided to move there and focus on my writing. My degree in literature had been the first stepping stone toward getting my work published. Once I got to Ireland, letters from my Gran provided clues as to where I could find information about my mother. A hole in the wall contained a stack of letters from my mom, Addison, as well as the truth about what really happened to her.

My mother hadn’t died in my youth as I’d been told, but a group of men had come and taken her away in the night while I slept. My father, tired of caring for her progressing cancer—which I’d known nothing about—had committed her to a mental hospital. Not because she was insane, but because of her illness and a short life expectancy. Apparently, that combination made my mother a messy inconvenience. As her beauty faded, so did his interest. She died in the institution in Northern Scotland, hidden by Stephen’s money and connections.

“After I met Cali, I asked my Gran about her. She told me that Cali was a legend, a Star Child. As much as I wanted Cali to be real, I figured it must have been a dream.”

“Why did it matter to you whether she was real or not?” Gabe seemed less angry now and more curious.

Because it meant everything to me not to be alone.
That had been after my mother died and before Gabe and Alistair. “She…she made me feel like everything would be okay. Like I had a friend.” Sharing this side of me with anyone, even Cali, went beyond my comfort zone. Emotions were a weakness, a vulnerability. Relationships were battlefields, with each side choosing their own strategies. If your opponents knew your weaknesses, then they could take you down, destroy you. It was better to keep your feelings close to the vest. Repress them.

At least that had been my approach until recently. When I decided to believe in Cali, something inside of me let go, decided to take a chance. Though it seemed risky, I didn’t want to lock away parts of myself anymore. Being alone had become exhausting.

My thumbs rubbed the fabric on the seat. Gabe glanced at me, his features softened from their rigid state of a few moments before. “I get that. You met when you were young. How did you find each other again later?”

Looking out the window made the conversation easier, for me at least. “I’m not sure we were ever apart. After we met, I dreamed about her every night, always the same dream, about our first meeting. Sometimes I believed she’d spoken to me when no one else was with me. She appeared to me every night for eleven years. Then after my Gran died, she just sort of…showed up.”

“You never told me about any of this.” Gabe repeated his earlier lament.

My thumbs scratched the fabric on the seat again. Gabe’s fingers drummed on the top of the automatic shifter. The car hit a bump in the road as we slowed for a construction zone. No one worked on the road, and abandoned signage sat positioned at various angles, ghosts along the highway. The car’s lights bounced off of the reflectors on the bright orange cones as we passed.

Another bump in the road jostled us. Glancing behind me, I checked to see if Cali still slept. Out cold. A ball of warmth seemed to fill my chest as I stared at her.

Gabe’s voice drew my attention again. “So these past few months…What happened then?”

“Lugh told you all about it.”

“Yeah, but I want the details from you, man,” Gabe said.

Where did I start? There was so much that had happened. There were so many things that I never wanted to talk about again.

Stretching my arms up, I linked my hands behind the seat headrest. “Cali actually showed up for real, not in my dreams, at Gran’s place when I got to Ireland. She told me about this prophecy and took me to this underground cavern under my Gran’s property. Paintings were all over the place that showed me fighting with her brother, becoming a god myself, then marrying her.”

Gabe didn’t say anything for a moment, and then he chuckled. “Dude. That must have been a lot to take in.”

Dizzy with relief that Gabe sounded like Gabe, I said, “You have no idea, man. Then, before I could really do anything about it, Lugh got kidnapped and Cali needed my help.”

“You could have walked away.” Even as Gabe made the suggestion, I appreciated that this was something that he himself never would have done. He epitomized loyalty. “Nah, you wouldn’t have done that,” Gabe went on, responding to his own comment before I could.

Clearing my throat, I unlinked my hands and glanced back at Cali, before looking out the window again. “She needed me. No one really knew why the prophecy was about me, but if there was a chance that I could help her…I
had
to help her. Plus…I’d already fallen in love with her by then.”

Saying that I’d
fallen in love with her
just didn’t cut it. She’d taken hold of my heart, taken over my life, and turned everything on its side.

Gabe nodded. “You do love her. I’ve always known that.”

Turning sideways in my seat, I watched his profile, my knee pushing into the console. “What do you mean, you’ve always known?”

Gabe smiled. “Well, you talk in your sleep. Every night I could hear you saying her name. Mostly I just heard ‘Calienta, don’t go’ or ‘Calienta, please don’t leave me’. I wanted to ask you about her, but I didn’t want to interfere. It was actually kind of weird.”

Wow. No one had ever mentioned me talking in my sleep.

“But you’ve never held back before. I’m surprised that you didn’t ask me,” I said.

Gabe inclined his head toward me, but kept his eyes on the road. “Kellen, you’ve had so many things happen to you, man. So many really awful things that I know you haven’t even told me anything about. You can tell when someone’s really been through it. You were damaged goods, man. My life has been happy, normal…like a Norman Rockwell painting.”

He couldn’t have surprised me more. I didn’t think he’d had any idea.

“Man, I figured there was a reason you weren’t telling me. I would have listened if you wanted to, you know, talk about it,” Gabe finished.

Gabe understood more than I’d given him credit for. I’d underestimated him. Shame weighed me down. “I’m sorry that I didn’t talk to you about any of this stuff,” I said.

“It’s over,” Gabe said. “Tell me next time something freaky happens, ‘kay, K?”

“Yeah, well, you might not have long to wait,” I said.

The interior of the car was silent for a moment. We’d become just a car full of friends on a journey. At least that’s what I pretended. Gabe’s next words dispelled my own illusion.

“So these guys that are coming after us…” Gabe began.

I smiled. I liked how Gabe included himself in the chase by using the word
us
. He could have walked away and they wouldn’t have touched him.

“They’re pretty messed up, huh? You must have really pissed them off, K.”

Among other things…
“They are. That’s why I think we should go wherever you want to hide us and then you should leave. Immediately.”

Gabe shook his head. “No, I’m sticking with you guys.”

Then something occurred to me. “Gabe, don’t you have to go somewhere? Are we keeping you from something? Like law school?” Self-reproach weighed me down. I should have asked this question before, not after we’d dragged him across the ocean and made him drive through the night. “I should have asked you sooner,” I said.

He smiled at me, a determined grin spread across his teddy-bear-like face. “This is where I need to be right now.”

To Gabe, things were that straightforward. Selfishly, I couldn’t help but feel relief that he planned to stay. Our situation seemed a little less dire with someone else involved.

More silence ensued as we continued to drive, heading further north. Despite the coat and comfortable jeans that I now wore, it was cold. Reaching over, I turned up the heat.

Gabe bit into his granola bar. After he’d downed it in three bites, he looked at me and then back to the road, a smile on his face. “So K, tell me all about this creepy Faerie place and killing that bad dude. Did you, like, get to use a sword and stuff?”

Smiling, I laughed out loud. “Oh yeah.”

Staring into the black, I wondered where the C.O.D. were and how much time we had. Only one thing brought me any degree of comfort: the old Gabe was back…at least for now.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CALI—
UNCONSCIOUS

I couldn’t believe how exhausted I felt. From the moment I got back in the car, I found such difficulty even keeping my eyes open. Though it was all for the best: Kellen and Gabriel clearly needed to have a discussion.

It had been such a challenge for Kellen to accept what I’d shared when I originally told him about the prophecy. How would Gabriel take it? Would he think differently of me when he knew everything? I couldn’t imagine Kellen leaving anything out.

“I love her…” Kellen’s voice drifted into my mind and I wanted to listen, to hear more. Yet I just couldn’t stay awake.

So, so tired.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

KELLEN—
HIDEAWAY

Gabe continued to drive as the hours passed. He wouldn’t accept my offer to take over, no matter how much I persisted. We just kept going, through Massachusetts, New Hampshire, then straight into Maine. I glanced back at a sleeping Cali for about the hundredth time. Her hair had fallen along the seat beside her, the strands ending in soft curls that bounced as the car moved over the pitted asphalt.

Though Gabe and I had kept diligent watch, we hadn’t seen anything strange. There had only been one other car behind us, and it had exited about a half hour earlier.

“They don’t really need cars,” I reminded Gabe. “They could be watching from a distance.”