Guardian (5 page)

“Sorry!” she said as she stepped on my foot.  I gave a small guarded smiled.  She silently asked me to stop smiling and when it dropped off my face instantly she scolded me for it.  What’s a guy to do? 

”I’m okay.  Years of practice.  I’ll just never understand his obsession with me.  Why me?” she said more to herself than me. 

I picked up her things on the table, placed them neatly in her bag, and gestured for her to lead the way out the door.  The Rec workers followed behind us.  The ladies, who all watched the teenage drama episode on display for all, felt the need to give me their advice as they headed out the doors.

She walked her elegant rear end in a stomping fashion through the door and said to me, “Saved again, I know!” 

“Do you not want to be saved?” I asked her in honest curiosity.

She turned around not knowing she would run into me.

  “Sorry!  No!  Yes!  I mean—“

”Yes!” I cut her off stepping back quite enjoying her nervous responses of no real answer.

She frowned and dropped her shoulders in defeat, mad that she couldn’t hide her emotions.  I hoped like anything right then that one day she’d be able to read me like I could read her.  It was an intensely intimate feeling that I hated not being able to share with her.
 

The small chance I then took knowing that no others could see me now when I tipped her chin up to my face added a slow grin that she caused and spread across my own.  When her little gasp formed making her bite her bottom lip I nearly fell apart and lost all inhibitions.  I pushed everything my mind wanted to do at the moment to the girl I love and said instead, “Yes, you want to be saved?”

I tipped her head up and down slowly.  “No, you don’t? Which one?”  My hand braced there tipping her head side to side.  Her strawberry shampoo wafted across my face with the air around us.

Her control was hanging by a thread less than mine and that surprised me.  The desire welled up inside her stronger than any other emotion she displayed. 

She pinned it up though, rolled her eyes, shrugged her shoulders, and told me a lie. “Yes, I like that you save me from evil mean dude, Kin.  But no, I shouldn’t always need to be saved. I can take care of myself.” 

“Can you?” I drew my eyes in wanting to see only her face and nothing else.

Anger rose in her belly and straight to her mouth, “Yes!  Patronizing me doesn’t win me over either.  I could have handled him without you.”

She was such a lioness in a kitten’s fur.  I wanted to argue the point, but it wouldn’t solve it today so I shrugged my shoulders and told her, “You’re right.  You’re stronger than I give you credit.  I was just trying to protect you.  Am I…winning you over?”

She sighed inwardly. 

Oh, I mean what I say, kitten.
  I just can’t tell her yet.

She rolled her eyes to avoid the discomfort she was placed in.  The door beside us creaked.  My brave girl was screaming her version of unpleasantries in her brain at me.  It made me want to kiss those wordy lips right off.

We met the pouring rain outside the door.  It was Kinsler’s gift to me, but it never once hindered me.  He never saw it as giving me a chance to be with her.  And I would never tell him.  “Glad I brought my bike, but do you mind if I get a ride?”   She silently yelled that I should’ve done this earlier, but she didn’t know that I saved her from Kinsler even then. 

The rain was his doing.  A winter court other being who shouldn’t be able to, but he could.  Not one of my court ever figured it out, but one day I would.  Only a Firebearer should be able to do that.  And Grace was the only one of those.  Or so we thought.

“I’m cool with that,” she smiled all calm but it was backed with something I couldn’t always read about her.

The ride home was mostly silent.  The foggy weather was hard to drive in, but she ignored me when I offered to drive.  She turned on the air to dry up the windows I assumed though they didn’t appear fogged over.  The smell of the water in the air enhanced her scent from such a closed space.  Thinking she was too warm, I reached to roll my own window down.

“You’re hot?” I asked worried she might not feel well.

Her hands gripped the steering wheel like she was going to rip it off.  I heard her breathing stop.  She was holding her breath.  She read it as a statement...about her.  I couldn’t stop the smile that formed in the dark for her to not see at all.

“Uh, yeah.  You’re not?”  She admonished herself afterward secretly like she might have dissed me. “I mean… are you not…hot…that is...are you?” 

Her body was so flushed and she desperately needed the air from still holding her breath.  She wouldn’t even look my way and when I uncontrollably laughed aloud she tensed more. I let it go hoping she would ease back down.  I kept my cool, but she’d effectively sucked all the air out my lungs as well as the car itself.

After a while I reached for the radio dial to change it to another song and my mind went haywire when she thought I might be reaching for her hand.  Just wait my kitten.

When we were at her home, I told her I would change before coming over.   I wanted to walk since it’d stopped raining, or so I told her.  I
lived
at the other end of the street with my supposed mom who was never home and away on business trips, hence why I was always available to be at her house.  Little did Grace know that her mom planned every dinner to include me.    

She headed in the door, but looked back to where I was on the opposite side of the street. 

I stopped hearing her thoughts turn to me and where I was going.  I forced a turn away from a lurking Kinsler, who stood ten feet away from her yard, and looked straight at Grace.  Using magic on her proved useful, but made me feel awful.  Of course I know Grace well enough she stood there and watched me till she couldn’t see me anymore.  She dang peeked

again but I forced myself invisible to her and headed to take care of the louse. 

“You stay away from her.  She doesn’t need your mixed signals and damn crude language.”

Kinsler spit out, “You’re one to talk, Ian.  I hear your thoughts about her.  You want her so bad it hurts.  Right now you’d do anything to have her and the power she offers.  I know exactly what to say to her but you won’t let her alone for two seconds.  Do you go in the bathroom stall to watch her pretty ass too?”

“Shut the hell up!”

“Left me out of the party, boys.  Where’s the invite?” Pike came from behind me.  I tried to not look rattled, but I steamed on anyway. 

“Kinsler here thinks he can bully his way into doing something before the date,” I told Pike.

“Isn’t that what you’ve been doing for years?” Pike took Kinsler’s side. 

“Fine!  I’m done with both of you.  I’m not leaving her side, so don’t even think about what to do next.  When the night is here, she will make a choice and we go from there.”

“Not that we had the chance,” Pike spit on the ground. 

“Both of you can go now.  I’m not in the mood.”

Kin finally spoke again, not that it was worth a hill of beans to say.  “Ahh, but you are in the mood to rumble around with our girl up there who is probably naked at the moment and getting ready for only you to come in her house and join her for alone time with
friggin’
tree boy.”

“I’m done.  Go BS on someone else’s life.”

“Prophecy.  Someone else’s prophecy you mean.  Or wait, what if you’re invading on my entitlement.  What do we do about that then?”

I never answered Kinsler and Pike I ignored.  And I never changed my clothes.  Not being able to go far from Grace made that difficult and after the mindless discussion with two of my
best buds
, I needed to cool down first anyway.

Unfortunately, I let my mind recreate the day I almost lost her only making me bolt faster to see her.  I had to get this over with and get back to her.

The second I realized Grace’s mind was alerted to danger or fear I always knew.  That day changed me.  The one time I offer to help Caylie with something and leave her alone for maybe fifteen minutes, she was attacked.

Kinsler was on her like a shark to its movement sensor, but more annoying and not nearly as fulfilling.  He wanted her for sick, sadistic reasons, not merely survival. And certainly not any kind of affection. I understood his father and the ways of his winter court, but I was no sympathizer.  Not for him at least.

Bedding her would make one rule the other and they didn’t see fit to let me have it.  I didn’t want it, just her.

I remembered the crack in Kinsler’s jaw vividly the day I found Kinsler and Pike duking it out in front of her.  His jaw beat the side of the oak behind him and echoed for all the forest to hear.  My hand wrapped around his throat pinning him to the branch hanging low enough for me to brace his body against it. 
              “You will stay away from her,” I hissed just like that day four years ago.  That day would forever be edged in my memory.

              He seemed untouchable, yes.  He let his dead eyes gather mine into his sending whatever pain he could induce mentally.  The images he produced were not happy ones.  Nor were they real.  They were what
could
happen given Kinsler being about to worm his way into her heart.  Not gonna happen.

              “I can’t help but wonder myself.  Her taste.  Her skin.” Kinsler was just trying to set me off.

              “You.will.not.touch.her.”

              “For now.”

              I pushed off leaving him laughing like the villain he was.  He didn’t deserve her.  For that matter, neither did I.

She heard the knock and her mom yelled from the kitchen to get the door.  I heard her race down the stairs tumbling on one of the steps and missing another.  When she opened the door I half expected her clothes to be all mussed around her.

“Hey there!” she said flatly, too dry sounding.

“Something wrong?” I went with the obvious.  I was half teasing just to enjoy her blush, but I also wanted to know if she’d sensed or
saw
anything.  Her mind was locked up like it sometimes did when we saw each other.  I’d come to like the idea and assumed it was a girl thing/me thing.  Or hoped.

“No, why?”  She checked herself in the mirror by the door and bit her lip.  If she bit her bottom lip in front of me one more time I might just...

“No reason.” I looked at the stairs to cut my own line of thinking off, but laughed a small chuckle.  I wanted to touch my finger to that lip.  I knew it would be soft.

After a while of her staring at me and saying nothing, I heard the faint sound of a
“tick tock”
in the background.  I walked into the front door, but looked back at the car in the driveway to see Kinsler standing there tapping his wrist where a watch would be. 

“What?” she asked.  “Did you see something?”

She closed the door behind me, but looked back out the window. 

From the kitchen we heard, “Honey, are you two hanging out tonight?  I bought some of your favorite chips.” 

Mrs. Starmen rounded the corner from the kitchen aiming her food covered spatula at two of us, “Oh, well here he is.”  A clean spatula would have popped right across the back of Grace’s rear end right in front of me.  It always made her face turn a light shade of pink. 

“Go change your shirt, young lady!”

She scowled at her mom realizing the “Defy All” t-shirt was against her mom’s dress code and probably done on purpose.

  “I’ll be right back,” she told me. I watched her shake her cute little ass up the stairs. 

“Yes, mom!” she yelled from the stairs in ironic defiance.

“No attitude with me!” Ginera returned with the same sass ass voice her daughter had. “And don’t think I don’t know about the phone call.”

When she returned her hair was fixed different and she had extra lip gloss on her pouty lips.  I stopped in mid bite catching the difference in what she’d done to her hair.  When she sat down across from me trying to appear all sassy and coy, her smile reached my eyes and had a laugh all their own. Something besides the cookies was in the air.  I sniffed once to identify it.  Lavender perfume.  She’d put some on.  Hmm!

  “Would you like some cookies, you two?” Her mom’s voice shouted from the kitchen.  I was laughing and enjoying myself but for no reason than her face made me forget the potential end of ever seeing her smile again if she said no.  No to me.

“What are you laughing at?” she asked making her eyebrows arch.

“You!” I told her.  She was mortified by the way her mother made her change clothes.

“What did I do?” she scowled at me.  I wasn’t sure if she even knew how she licked her lips during certain moments like these or knew the way I watched her do it.  Lips and tongues shouldn’t be able to say so much.

“Your face tells it all, princess,” I called her for what she was...or will be I hoped.

“Don’t princess me, heckler!” she kicked me under the table.

Ow!

More cookies arrived.

Grace willed her mom to stop serving more.  When her mom grabbed the table, missed, and grabbed her own head I thought I would fall over in shock at the news flash.  Grace had some kind of power.  And she didn’t even know it was there yet.  Like the coach today at school. Oddly enough, Grace was putting two and two together in her head as I told the little tale in my own head but she couldn’t rationalize it.

I gently put my hand on her arm to comfort her.  She calmed instantly and from there she thought enough of it to suggest to herself that maybe we were both a witch and warlock. I laughed wickedly to myself.

When the cookies were pretty much gone, her mom yelled from the kitchen, “Are you two going to the Halloween party like you planned?  Just want to make sure you have a great Halloween.” 

“Ye—

I interrupted Grace before she could finish, pressing a finger to my lips in slow motion.   “Yes, Mrs. Starmen.  I’ll pick her and Caylie up at six o’clock.  We will use Grace’s car.   The party is at a house down from the old church.  Don’t worry about how late we are.  I’ll get her home safely.”

Her mom walked all the way back in the kitchen after looking around the corner to keep me from having to yell across the house. 

Grace fisted her hands begging silently for me to go outside.

I smiled the kind of smile that always ended in her closing her eyes for a second while I watched her fisted hands tightening more, “You needed saving, right?” 

Her genuine smile made me to know I’d said the right thing.  Her hair fell down against her shoulder blade.  I resisted the urge to run my hands through it, feel it but she saw me look.

We headed out to the old, deserted trampoline we’d adopted as our own hideaway a few years ago, shed our shoes, and got comfy for the night.  The smell of the earth near us made me long for home.  Her mind lingered on the plants, mine on the dirt.  She didn’t know why she was so in tune with what grows, but I did.  A summer court Fey always feels the earth’s needs.  The earth was patient, a pace that all Fey moved with.  Live long, love slow. 

Except with Grace.  I wanted to move straight to the living part with her.  Then, and only then, could we slow down to a snail’s pace.

When the stars were beginning to come out and the chips were long gone, I pulled out the green rose from Ginera’s rose bush I grabbed on the way out and gently slid in under her hair nestling it against her earlobe.   When my finger tapped the tip of her ear, she shivered.  It didn’t go unnoticed by either of us. The electricity in the air was more powerful than a rain storm after the winter season ended. 

“Any dreams last night?” I asked to break the air into slices we could both handle.  The thick fog that had mounted to almost intolerable as of late was growing with every touch.  I wouldn’t suffer so much if she were just a girl.  A man naturally wants a female.  It’s in our blood.  Can’t be helped.

But Grace is not just any girl.

She nodded to me.  “Same!  But didn’t you ask me that this morning?” 

“No, Princess Sleepyhead.  You slept in late, remember?”  I compulsively made my head avoid the annoying chatter of the idiots near us putting in their friggin’ two cents every time she spoke.  I was so tired of having an audience.  Even more so since I knew it wouldn’t be long for we might have
some
privacy. 

“Oh yeah!” she felt guilty.

“No new ending?”

She never told me the ending...
aloud
.  She slid over to lie on my arm I always extended out for her head in our ritual for laying there.  It was the only “touching” we allowed each other in the friend status we held.  I would even accept a fictitious made up story if it involved her near me. 

“Do you think it makes me special to have been born on Halloween?  Or that my initials spell a word, or the weird things that happen to me, or…is that what makes me really a freak?” She stared at the jasmine vines above our heads and behind us on the gazebo and everywhere in the yard. 

  I couldn’t believe my luck, as simple as the question may be.  The damn weeds were surely sprouting up around the trampoline as she said it though.  They always did when something evil was lurking. And that kind of question was sure to draw
his
attention.  Kinsler had a way of showing up when he was unwanted.  “Well, I do believe you were specially made to be born on that certain day.” 

She sat up in disbelief and turned herself sideways towards me going on about being the odd one she is in her eyes. 

“You don’t give yourself credit, Grace.  You have too much to offer.  You don’t realize your full potential in this world.  Maybe in another world,” I laughed to myself more than anything.    A world where touching her is my right.

I sat up and looked into her eyes thinking of all the things I wanted to say but couldn’t yet.  But I bumped her shoulder, laughed heartily, and obliged myself to lay back down in misery.  Misery was my life.  My whole life.  I hoped for a while now that Grace might be the one to change that.  She was the only light in it right now and that she could be taken away was like a knife churning in my belly.

We both laid there looking up in the sky.  Her mind dreamed of beautiful places and she pictured me in it even if she didn’t subconsciously know she was doing it.

“And you’re the queen, of course,” I finished the other-worldly statement hastily that I’d started before the silence took over.

“Of course!” she elbowed my ribs realizing a second later that I was finishing my own sentence and not answering her own thoughts.   

“And you’re the king, of course.  No…other king would do,” she continued the pattern.  I saw how she forced herself to look away. “We’ll rule the land forever,” she stole a swift glance at me.  This time I chained myself very still and she thought she’d done something wrong.  I just hadn’t heard her ever address me as king though she knew not what she was saying. 

“Of course!” I said unable to stop what I wanted to say so it was best to say nothing at all.  She just chalked it up as being blind to her feelings.  And at this time every Friday night, I would pretend to doze off to avoid the conversation and she would watch me.  I would stay that way until her thoughts drifted away into dreams. 

But this time I chose to say one last thing pertaining to how much I agree.  If she heard it, she never let on.

She nodded off and woke up once to see if I had.  She capered her hand closer to mine and was asleep quickly when I pretended to cover her hand and hold it moving it up her arm making her sigh deeply.  She would talk in her sleep soon and maybe I could hear her true feelings without her editing it out loud, but verbal nonetheless. 

Tonight, the only words she allowed me were, “Buzz off!”  That is the exact opposite of what I wanted to hear, but knew what she must be reliving in her head.  I’d spare her that nightmare.  Reaching into her mind, I stole the nightmare and replaced it with the picture already engrained in my head.  The two of us on the trampoline.  It was completely believable.

The air stirred behind us in the yard.

“Stay out of her dreams.  Unfair advantage.”

“Like you did,” I sneered at the darkness where Kinsler watched on like a stalking vulture.

I moved just enough to wake her from stirring around.
“We’d better go.  Weeds are bad this time of year!” I said rather loudly looking down at the grass through the mesh in the trampoline knowing she was too groggy to catch the meaning.  She held onto me as we walked around to the front of the house and into the front door.  I could wait for just a little while longer.  Only just!

She gave me a half hug snuggling against me in sweet torture and said good night.  I knew she watched me walk up the street through half lidded eyes. 

Living supposedly at end of the street, I didn’t need a car.  However, the house was just glamoured in for effect, not real at all.  I didn’t sleep except for the rare occasion when I allowed myself a few minutes here and there on her balcony.  I had a home.  It was waiting for me and my future bride to return.  The bride part was the only hang up. 

I typed HOME into the phone and settled on her balcony for the night making sure Danella closed the curtains tight before I opened the book I’d stolen from her pile in the car.  She insisted years ago that I text her so “someone” would know I was safe since my mom was supposedly missing in action most of the time. We kept it going for years now.  In my head I might have named it as saying something else in hopes for a future with her, but several possible futures could still turn out.  Depending all on
her
. 

When she began to dream, I myself calmed.  I’d slept many nights in the past watching and waiting, but no sleep would come for the next few days until I knew she was safe.