FORBIDDEN (16 page)

She had a point. Now that she’d made the comment, I was curious. “Huh, I hadn’t thought about it. I guess I could see. Close your eyes.”

“No. I want to watch.”

“It’s not pretty.”

“It
wasn’t
pretty,” Hannah amended with a gentle smile. “Now it might not be the same. I want to watch.”

I sighed. There was no point in arguing with her. She’d win. Girls always won, even if the guy really was right. It was like some code or something. It was kind of annoying, actually. I shook my head in mock defeat. “Fine. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Eyes closed, I waited for the pain. Instead, a warm sensation ran down my spine, just like when Hannah begged for me not to die. Hannah gasped, and I opened my eyes.

“Did it hurt?” she whispered.

“No, not at all, actually.”

“Turn around.”

Cautiously I did a one-eighty so my back was facing her. Her hand traced the spots where my wings expanded. I felt her fingers gingerly run down the ugly scars that remained there as reminders.

“It’s beautiful,” she murmured.

“Now I know you’ve lost your mind. They’re ugly scars, Hannah. No reason to sugar-coat things.”

“Maybe they were before, but not now. Go look.”

I walked into her bathroom and craned my neck to see my back in the mirror. She was right. The ugly scars were gone. In their place, slightly golden lines shimmered like odd tattoos. They weren’t ugly by any means, just…different. I liked them. A lot. I flexed to see them ripple and completely disappear into the surrounding flesh.

It was as though I was almost human.

The surge of happiness that exploded through me was uncontainable. I probably wore the dumbest grin anyone could ever have. When I looked at Hannah, she seemed to be grinning pretty wide as well. She came and hugged me, then handed me my hoodie. “You okay now?”

“Yeah, I am.”

We smiled at one another for a moment, then she took my hand and pulled me toward her bed. “Will you stay with me tonight? I don’t want to be alone.”

“I can do that, but no funny business. I’m from another lifetime where there was chivalry and what not. If I hear your parents coming, I’m going MIA. Deal?”

She smiled. “Deal.”

She laid her head on her pillow, then sat back up. “One more thing?”

“Whatever you want. I’m your Guardian, remember?”

“Can I sleep in your wings tonight?”

The request made me smile. I set the hoodie on the rolling chair at her desk, then nodded. “I can do that.”

I unfurled my wings and she gasped appreciatively. “I can’t believe how much they’ve changed in less than a week. When I first saw them, they were black as coal. Now they’re silvery white,” She puckered her lips in concentration for a moment, then continued on. “This look suits you better, I think.”

“Don’t think too hard, don’t want to lose too many brain cells.”

She laughed. “I almost died. I think any brain cells I have left will make it through the long haul.”

We settled into her bed and I wrapped her in my arms, then covered us both in my wings. She sighed in contentment. At least, I think that’s what it was.

She pulled me out of my rabbit trail of thoughts. “I have a serious question for you.”

“Shoot.”

“Why did you end up having to be, you know, down there in the first place?”

I didn’t act like I didn’t know what she was talking about. It was obvious she was trying really hard to stay in a neutral tone, and I could understand the curiosity. We’d danced around the topic since she first laid eyes on me last week. If I wanted to be with her – however I could be with her – she’d have to know the truth eventually. “I don’t think you want to know that, Hannah.”

“Yeah, I do. Whatever you did, it’s in the past. You’re a Guardian now. Obviously someone thought you had earned the right to, you know, move up a notch or whatever.”

“It’ll change how you look at me.”

“No it won’t, I promise.”

She was impossible to deter when she made up her mind. Of course, I knew this long before I’d interacted with her, but it seemed even more impossible to deny her what she wanted now that I knew her. Girls. They were strange creatures. “Are you sure you really want to know? Knowledge is dangerous. Humans have proven this over and over again.”

“I’m sure. Please, I don’t want to have secrets with you. Don’t I have to trust you?”

I sighed. She had a point, but I knew she’d change her mind once I told her what happened in my past. I sucked in a long breath. It filled my lungs in a fulfilling way, which was something new to me. I took one more to settle the nerves I hadn’t felt in so long. Gosh, it was starting to seem like emotions might not always be great. My poker face sucked now that I had to control more than angry feelings.

Hannah rubbed her hand against my chest impatiently. “It couldn’t have been that bad if they allowed you a chance to become a Guardian.”

Her blind acceptance of my dark past frustrated me. “That’s where you’re wrong, Hannah. I don’t know why they even allowed me to be a Guard. They remind me of that all the time.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I killed
someone
, Hannah. I murdered
a person when I was alive
.”

SEVENTEEN

I had been counting on the instant recoil. Turns out I was completely off in the assumption. I had already begun to withdraw my wings before she grabbed my arms. “Where are you going?”

“I didn’t think you would want to be snuggling up to a murderer.”

She skittered to the other side of the bed in a tangled crab walk. If the situation hadn’t been so serious, I might have laughed. She looked at me seriously. “You killed them on purpose?”

“On purpose.”

By this point she was in the doorway of her bathroom, clutching onto either side of the doorframe for support. “What in the world would make you do such a thing? That’s horrible!”

There was no rational thought for why I did it, but
I slammed my fist against the nightstand beside the bed. “Don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think I’ve had to deal with the regret and pain of that for my entire existence? I see it every day, it plays out in my mind. But the worst part of it is this: I wouldn’t change it, I don’t think.”

Hannah gasped in shock. “You…you’re my Guardian now…and you don’t regret murdering
someone
? Isn’t that against the rules? What if you get mad and kill me?”

“Hannah, why would I do that? I have done nothing but break rules to keep you alive!”

“Yeah, and you broke rules to take a life! Is it really that different?”

We stood five feet apart, both of us scared to come any closer to the other. The fear was evident in her eyes, her smell, the way she was shaking. I wondered if she could tell how frustrated I was, or if my poker face was intact. Man, I hope I looked neutral. “Hannah, I can explain.”

Now that it was out there, her tone changed. It wasn’t hateful, it was just sad. She looked at me with eyes that seemed much older than sixteen. “Isn’t that like Guardian one-oh-one or something? Repenting of bad things you’ve done in the past? I don’t understand how you don’t regret killing someone. I want to understand, but I can’t.”

“Will you just let me finish?”

She sucked on her bottom lip, deliberating. After a moment she sighed. It looked like she was torn. I felt so bad to cause her this frustration. “I think you should go, Levi.”

“No, Hannah, you said you’d understand. If you’d just let me explain what exactly happened –”

She held up her hand and I stopped instinctively. How she held such sway over me, I had no clue. She shook her head. It seemed like she wanted me to stay, but felt bad for it. At least, that’s what my instinct was telling me. “Just leave, please. I know you’re my Guardian and all, and I’m thankful you are, but just… go. It’s not permanent; I just need tonight to wrap my head around it. Do you think that’s okay?”

“You can’t just push me away after everything that’s happened.”

“You saved me. I owe you my life. But Levi, I need to come to terms with this. You killed someone in cold blood, and don’t even feel bad for it. I promise I’m not going to ignore you or anything; you’re too good of a person for me to do that. I know you won’t hurt me or anyone else. I just need to digest this.”

The pain I felt now was nothing like I had ever felt. She was rejecting me. After everything that had happened, all of the emotions she had stirred up inside of me, she was telling me to leave. “Don’t you care about me?”

She stood silent for a moment, then walked the distance between us and wrapped her arms around me. I embraced her happily, thinking she had realized she cared. When she pulled away, tears fell down her cheeks. “I need to trust you, Levi. Why are you changed now? What makes you any different from the person you were when you took a life?”

“Easy. You.”

Her bottom lip was wedged between her teeth; she was biting back tears from the look of it. I reached out to touch her, and she stopped my hand. “I need to know the details, but I can’t do it tonight. You understand that, right? The past twenty-four hours have been a little bit more than what I’d expected them to be.”

I sighed in relief. So she didn’t hate me, she just needed to let things sink in. That seemed fair, even if I didn’t like it. “Sure. That makes sense. I’ll come over tomorrow before school and we can drive together. Ethan brought the car back and now we’re ‘borrowing’ it until the owner calls it in missing.”

She scowled at me. “You can’t do those kinds of things anymore, Levi. You’re on the good side.”

She was right. I was on the good side now, but it just didn’t feel like it could be true. Not yet, anyway. My wings were still a little grey. I could still toe the line until I was completely transitioned, right? After all, I was literally in a grey area myself. Not a member of either side, just stuck somewhere in the middle. She sighed and continued on through the silence. “Levi, I’ll let you know when I’m ready. I can get to school myself.”

“You don’t want me around,” I said dully.

“It’s not that.”

“Then what is it, Hannah? I’m not stupid. Don’t drag me along. Either I’m just your Guard, Guardian, whatever the heck I am, or you want me to be more.”

“You aren’t even alive. How can we be more? What is there for us? Please, tell me.”

I wouldn’t let her see how much she’d hurt me. There was no way she would ever know. I clenched my teeth together and stood straight, forcing the heat I felt in my eyes to go away. There would be no tears for this human. That was all she was, after all, a human. “Fine. I’ll be your Guardian, but only that. Just know I’ll take care of you.”

She nodded and swallowed hard. “Goodbye, Levi.”

“No, not goodbye,” I amended, sincerely hoping she would agree at some point. “Just I’ll see you later.”