Eternal Hope (The Hope Series) (5 page)

             
“Please,” Grayson pleaded, “just give him a chance to explain. Things like this are usually not as bad as they first seem.”

A loud crash echoed somewhere out in the hallway but Farley ignored it. She was too busy staring at Grayson, wondering if the glasses were a disguise and he was actually really stupid. How could he possibly think this wasn’t as bad as it first seemed? If anything, it had been better the first few moments she was processing the news. Now, all the implications and consequences of what she’d been told were really sinking in, and everything seemed to be getting infinitely worse by the second.

“Farley-” Another loud slamming noise interrupted Grayson and he frowned, pulling a little at his collar. “Does Oliver need some help?”

“No,” Tess said, slightly offended. “He knows his way around a kitchen. It’s probably that red-haired Barbie doll that was strutting around here before.”

Tess had obviously met Anna.

Grayson shook his head. “She went into town a half an hour ago. I think I’ll just…” But before he could finish his sentence, the clatter of breaking china reached them, swiftly followed by an odd scrabbling noise that sounded like a raccoon trying to fight its way out of a closet.

Oliver appeared in the doorway before they had made it halfway across the room. The front of his white t-shirt was stained with coffee and something that looked suspiciously like butter. His slate-grey eyes were wide and round and his hands were crimson, like he’d dipped them in red paint.

“Uh… Grayson?” he said calmly. “There’s someone at the door.”

“Kayden!”

The sound of his name was familiar enough, although the voice took longer to place. For some reason he kept seeing dental floss and packing tape. It took a long time for him to realize that it was Grayson, whose oral hygiene obsession was only equaled by his penchant for obsessively tidying other people’s belongings away into boxes, when he should be minding his own damn business.

“Asshole!” he hissed through his teeth. They felt broken, but his tongue was too swollen to run across them and check. In all honesty, it was a surprise that he even had a tongue. There was a vague, foggy memory in the back of his mind of it being cut off at some other point in time.

Kayden heard a sharp intake of breath from somewhere above him and sensed there were other people close by now, too. Something smelled like coffee and toast.

“Is that… is that
Kayden
?” someone asked. With that voice came a bri
ght light and angry silver eyes
- words from another lifetime:
You have to help him. You have to help me.
Farley. Of course it was Farley.

He felt warm hands on his bare back, sticking to his skin; they travelled down until they reached a burning area at the base of his spine that felt impossibly hot. A loud scream ripped through the air, rising higher and higher as someone climbed through the layers of some distant agony. Was it… no, it couldn’t be him.

“What the hell happened?” Grayson muttered, talking to himself. Surely there was no way he could have expected him to answer?

“Ahhh… why is there a naked, half-dead guy on the doorstep?” A different voice. Young. Female. “He looks like he might be dying. I think… oh crap, I think I can see his spine.”

There was the sound of someone running on wooden floorboards and a door slamming in another room. “Grayson, put me out,” Kayden moaned. He was beginning to feel things he hadn’t been able to feel a moment ago, and it really wasn’t good. “Put me out, you bastard.”

Hands were on him again, this time reaching under his arms. The pain was too big to comprehend; it made itself known in white hot flashes that paralyzed him one second and made his body spasm the next
. He felt carpet underneath him
- no, a rug, with a spiky, brittle weft that prickled at the ruined skin across his chest and stomach, making it sting. A second later he felt a sharp jab at his thigh, and then everything began to grow soft and muted. The pain lost its sharp edge, but it still tugged insistently on his insides, making his mind spin.

Another jabbing sensation.

The pain disintegrated, scattering into tiny particles. They seemed to blow around the inside of his head like sun-drunk flies, batting against a windowpane, more of an annoyance than anything. He raised his hand to try and wave them away but the action unbalanced him. The world pitched backwards and he was falling, tumbling down a deep, dark hole.

“Hey! Can you stop chewing my phone? If you’re not gonna use it, then give it back.” Cassie held her hand out impatiently. Daniel gave up thoughtfully gnawing on the corner of her flip-phone and gave her a warning look.

“Y’know what, Cass? You are seriously lucky I’m talking to you right now. If teeth marks on my phone were the only punishment I received for potentially ruining my friend’s life, then I’d consider myself lucky and move on.”

Cassie let out an exaggerated sigh and let her hand drop. “Look. If you’re going to call her, then great. But just get on with it, would you? You’ve barely said a word for the past five hours. I can practically hear you arguing with yourself in your head. Should I call her? Shouldn’t I call her? Is she still mad at me? Should I have worn a blue shirt today instead of a red one? My name’s Daniel, and I can’t make up my mind about anything.
Ever
.”

That last comment seemed a little pointed. Daniel focused on the road, trying desperately not to say something he’d regret. Clearly
something
needed saying, though. But what? What wasn’t going to offend her? Cass had rocket fuel for blood, which made her liable to go off at the drop of a hat.

“Cass, I… I didn’t realize any of this was
about
making up my mind. As far as I understood, what you’d asked me was an ‘
if’
kind of thing.
If
I was single.
If
you were single.
At no time did I think that meant you wanted for us to be together.”

The public radio station that had been wittering on for hours suddenly turned to static, losing reception once and for all. He flipped the volume dial to zero so silence flooded the car. When he turned to look at her, Cassie was digging her nails into the back of her hand, staring blankly out of the passenger window.

“Cass
-”

“Don’t worry about it, Daniel. I’m not surprised. Why would you even consider that? It’s not like I’ve been following you around like a lost puppy for the past seventy-five years or anything.”

“You were hardly following me around. There were always seven or eight of us. We went everywhere together. It was never just you and me.”

“Well, maybe I wanted it to be. Is that so wrong?” she snapped, turning on him.

Daniel glared ahead at the road, knife-edge straight in front of him, not wanting to look at her. Not when she looked like she was going to cry. She had always been like a little sister to him. She’d been younger than him mentally and physically when he’d met her, even though she’d had the years on him. He’d never shaken the idea that she was just a little kid.

“I’m sorry, Cass. I guess it’s not wrong for you to feel that way. It’s just not
right
for me.”

“Oh, great…” she groaned, still staring at him. “You think
I’m
not right for you. Am I not… am I not attractive enough?”

Daniel’s breath caught in his throat. This was uncharted territory with her, and he wasn’t particularly good at complimenting girls. Or talking to them in general. That’s why things were usually so easy with Cassie- because when he thought about her, he never thought of her as a girl first. He thought of her as family.

“Don’t be like this. Please. You know you’re really pretty. You-”

“Really pretty?” She slumped back against her chair like she’d been deflated. “And what about Farley? Does she get told she’s beautiful?”

“That doesn’t matter. Farley’s important to me, but we would still be having this conversation if she weren’t around.”

“Do you love her?”

Daniel wrung the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.

“Well, do you?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Don’t give me that crap. You either love her or you don’t. If you can’t answer me, then you should be asking yourself why.”

The tires made a screeching noise when he pulled off the side of the road, kicking up a plume of dust that consumed the car, cocooning them in marbled red smoke.

“I said it’s none of your damn business, now just leave it alone! You’re making this harder than it needs to be. I’m with Farley. End of story.”

He was seconds away from grabbing hold of her shoulders and shaking her. Being angry with Cassie felt wrong, but she’d never been so difficult to deal with before. She stared at her knees, picking at her fingernails. Her eyeliner had smudged a little in the stuffy heat of the car.

“Okay, I get the picture. I guess it’s good finally knowing where we stand.”

“Where we’ve
always
stood,” he said, resting his forehead against the steering wheel with a dull thud.

“Can you just tell me one thing?”

“
Cassie.”

“Please. Just one thing, then I’ll let it drop, I swear. Can you tell me who you imagine me with down the line? Who do you see me with in fifty years or so? Can you tell me it’s not you?”

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to tell you. I’ve been trying to be nice about it but you’re making it remarkably difficult.”

“Then who?” she whispered, her voice cracking.

Daniel turned his head so that his cheekbone propped him against the wheel, finding Cassie’s eyes brimming with tears. They tremored precariously, on the very brink of falling.

“The same person I always imagined you with. Kayden.”

She let out a silent laugh and shook her head. “Why Kayden?”

“Because he loved you. He always did.”

Her face twisted into an incredulous expression. She didn’t say anything, though. They sat there studying each other in the silence for a long while. Cassie’s phone, resting in his lap, broke the quiet, blaring out an old-fashioned ring as the tone.

Cassie didn’t look up to answering; Daniel picked up just as her tears finally stopped making threats and streaked silently down her cheeks. She brushed them away angrily with the backs of her hands and went back to staring out of the window.

“Yes?” he said, hoping to God it wasn’t Farley. He needed time for that conversation. More importantly, he needed to be alone.

“Oooh, Daniel answering Cassie’s phone. There are so many reasons why this would make interesting gossip back in Chez Gun Creek right now,” a female voice replied. “I might make a hand-out.”

“Anna, have you ever thought about dropping the bitch act and maybe trying to be a nice person every once in a while? There’s a danger you might make some friends.”

“Oh, I have friends, Danny boy,” she sniped back. “Just clearly not as many as you. Maybe you ought to start leaving notes for yourself so you remember where you’re leaving all these heartbroken girls. Things will get seriously complicated if you run into any more while you’re out on the road.”

Daniel closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Fighting the urge to toss the phone out of the window was almost impossible. “What do you want, Anna?”

“I wanted to ask Cassie to pass on a message to you, but now that I have you live and direct I guess she doesn’t need to. Kayden’s here. Grayson thinks he’s dying. Just thought you might like to know.”

Daniel’s grip on the phone tightened. The plastic protested loudly next to his ear. “How bad is it?”

There was a long pause.

“Bad.”

“Okay, we’re on our way.”

The only thing that had made that bloody mess recognizable as Kayden was the bright silvery hair, and even most of that had been red. His arms and legs were sliced open in a rick-rack of bloody welts, a spider web of shallow cuts, each bleeding into the next. His back was flayed raw. His face was a swollen mess, eyes so puffed up he couldn’t open them. He’d been ruined. Tess had run off and vomited when she’d seen him. She hadn’t come back to help move his body.