NOCTE (Nocte Trilogy #1) (17 page)

He raises an eyebrow.
 
“Do you want to see it?”

It.
 
The picture.
 
I forgot.
 

I nod, swallowing hard.

He hands me the picture and it’s
beautiful.
 

I look like a model, draped casually over
a settee. Dare made the curtains flutter in the wind behind me, and he created
an ocean view through the windows. The light shines in on me and I seem like an
ethereal creature, something otherworldly.
 

“It’s beautiful,” I breathe.
 

“You are,” he agrees.
 
He hands me my shirt and I
hesitate.
 

I don’t want to put it on.
 
I want
..
I
want… I want…
Dare.
 

But his expression is no-nonsense and
professional and he’s not touching me anymore.
 
 

Now isn’t the time.

I put my clothes on and hug the picture
to my chest.
 

“Can I keep it?”

“Of course.”

He turns to move the chaise back to where
it belongs and I pause.
 

“I was just thinking…” I begin.
 
“That I’d like to go to Warrenton Beach
today. Would you like to go, too?”

Dare narrows his eyes, but there’s
laughter in them.
 
“Is this you,
trying to get a bike ride in addition to a portrait?”

I narrow my own.
 
“Is this you, offering to give me one?”

Dare hesitates, and something in his eyes
is troubling, something unsure, but finally he shrugs.
  
“I don’t see why not.
 
It doesn’t look like rain.”

He heads toward his bedroom.
 

“I’ll grab a shirt.”

If
you must.

He calls out at me.
 

“If you look in that chest by the door,
you’ll find an extra helmet.”

I do as he says, and sure enough, there’s
one there.

“Why do you have an extra?” I ask,
pulling it out and closing the lid.

“Because you mentioned that you might
want a ride,” he answers, re-emerging from his room, a shirt in his hand.
 
“Safety first, and all that.”

He pulls the shirt over his head, and I’m
not sure what I’m more enthralled with.
 
His rippling abs, or the fact that he bought me a helmet.
 

Specifically for me.
 

It’s enough to make my stomach flip.
 

“Thanks,” I murmur.
 

He throws a look in my direction that can
only be classified as sizzling.
 
His
near-black eyes spark with heat, and it’s enough to set my nerve-endings on
fire.
 

I gulp.
 

“Are you ready right now?” Dare asks
me.
 
“You can leave your picture
here.”

I shrug, trying to be casual. “It’s as
good a time as any.”

He grins.
 
“That it is, Calla-Lily.”

VIGINTI
DUORUM

When
we’re standing in front of Dare’s bike, a shiny black Triumph, it looks
aggressive and intimidating, and I’m suddenly nervous.
 

Dare glances at me.
 
“Don’t have the balls?”

I toss my hair back and laugh.
 

“I think we just established that I don’t
have balls.
 
Right?”

I could swear he flushes as he shakes his
head.
 

“That’s true.
 
I just saw that for myself.”

And now I’m the one flushing as I see my
reflection in his dark eyes, as I remember how I’d just laid in front of him,
half naked.
 

Dare motions for me to climb on behind
him, which I do.
 

“Hold on tight, Calla-Lily.”

Don’t
worry.
 

Within moments, we’re gliding down the
mountain road and my arms are wrapped around Dare, and the nervousness fades
away.
 

Because I belong here with him.
 

I belong perched behind him with my chest
is pressed into his back. It sends sparks shooting through all of my nerve
endings.
 
His heat bleeds into me,
his strength, and I want to soak it all in.
 

I rest my cheek against his shoulders and
lazily watch the scenery blur past as we sail through town, and then over the
Youngs-Bay
bridge
.
 
The heavy bike vibrates between my legs,
and I can suddenly appreciate the appeal of the bike and the open road.
 
No wonder Dare has LIVE FREE tattooed on
his back.
 

There’s nothing more freeing than
this.
 
 

We hug the road with the wind in our
faces and too quickly, the ride is over.
 

Dare guides the bike into a parking spot
and we dismount.
 
It takes a second
to get my land-legs again, and Dare grins as he supports my elbow.
 
His touch is electric and I want
it.
 
And I can’t think because lying
half-naked in front of him has addled all of my thoughts.
 

“Well?”

It takes me a minute to realize that he’s
talking about the motorcycle ride.
 

“I loved it,” I announce.
 
“Let’s do it again.”

He winks at me. “Well, we’ll have to get
home somehow.
 
But first, let’s take
a look at this wreck, shall we?”

I grin and pull him toward the beach, to
where the remains of the old wreck rise out of the mist.
 
It’s weathered bones look at once
ghostly and impressive, skeletal and freaky.
 

Minute by minute, I’m brought out of the
charged sexual atmosphere from his cottage and into the brisk sea air of the
moment.
 

“The Iredale ran aground in 1906,” I
explain to him as we walk.
 
“No one
died, thank goodness.
 
They waited
for weeks for the weather to clear enough to tow her back out to sea, but she
got so entrenched in the sand, that they couldn’t.
 
She’s been in this spot ever since.”

We’re standing in front of her now, her
masts and ribs poking out from the sand and arching toward the sky.
 
Dare reaches out and runs a hand along
one of her ribs, the same hand that he slid along my naked hip, the same exact
movement, calm and reverent.
 

I swallow hard.

“It’s a rite of passage around here,” I
tell him.
 
“To skip school and come
out here with your friends.”

Except
I never had any friends, other than Finn.
 

“So you and Finn came here a lot?” Dare asks,
as though he read my mind, and his question isn’t condescending, he’s just
curious.
  

I nod.
 
“Yeah.
 
We like to stop and get coffee and come
sit.
 
It’s a good way to kill the
time.”

“So show me,” Dare says quietly, taking
my hand and pulling me inside the sparse shell.
 
We sit on the damp sand, and stare
through the corpse of the ship toward the ocean, where the waves rise and fall
and the sea gulls fly in loops.
 

“This must’ve been a good place to grow
up,” Dare muses as he takes in the horizon.
 

I nod. “Yeah.
 
I can’t complain. Fresh air, open water…
I guess it could only have been better if I didn’t live in a funeral home.”

I laugh at that, but Dare looks at me
sharply.
 

“Was it really hard?” he asks, half
concerned, half curious.
  

I pause.
 
Because was it?
 
Was it the fact that I lived in a
funeral home that made my life hard, or the fact that my brother was crazy and
so we were ostracized?

I shrug.
 
“I don’t know.
 
I think it was everything combined.”

Dare nods, accepting that, because
sometimes that’s how life is.
 
A
puzzle made up of a million pieces, and when one piece doesn’t exactly fit, it
throws the rest of them off.

Like right now, for instance.
 
I was lying naked in front him just a
while ago, and now here we are, acting like nothing happened.

“Have you ever thought of moving away?”
he asks after a few minutes.
 
“I
mean, especially now, I think maybe getting a break from…death might be
healthy.”

I swallow hard because obviously, over
the years, that’s been a recurring fantasy of mine.
 
To live somewhere
else, far from a funeral home.
 
But there’s Finn, and so of course I would never leave here before.
 
And now there’s college and my brother
wants to go alone.

“I’m going away to college in the
Fall
,” I remind him, not mentioning anything else.
 

“Ah, that’s right,” he says, leaning back
in the sand, his back pressed against a splintered rib.
  
“Do you feel up to it?
 
After everything, I mean.”

After
your mom died,
he
means.
 

“I have to be up to it,” I tell him.
 
“Life doesn’t stop because someone
dies.
 
That’s something that living
in a funeral home has taught me.” And having my mother die and the world kept
turning.
 

He nods again.
 
“Yeah, I guess that’s true.
 
But sometimes, we wish it could.
 
I mean, I know I did.
 
It didn’t seem fair that my mom was just
gone, and everyone kept acting like nothing had changed.
 
The stores kept their doors open and
selling trivial things, airplanes kept flying
, boats kept
sailing…
it was like I was the only one who cared that the world lost an
amazing person.”
 
His vulnerability
is showing, and it touches me deep down, in a place I didn’t know I had.
 

I turn to him, willing to share something,
too.
 
It’s only fair.
 
You
show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.
 

“I was mad at old people for a while,” I
admit sheepishly.
 
“I know it’s
stupid, but whenever I would see an elderly person out and about with their
walker and oxygen tank, I was furious that Death didn’t decide to take them
instead of my mom.”

Dare smiles, a grin that lights up the
beach.
 

“I see the reasoning behind that,” he
tells me. “It’s not stupid.
 
Your
mom was too young.
 
And they say
anger is one of the stages of grief.”

“But not anger at random old people,” I
point out with a barky laugh.
 

Dare laughs with
me and
it
feels really good, because he’s not laughing
at
me, he’s laughing
with
me, and there’s a difference.
 

“This feels good,” I admit finally,
playing with the sand in front of me.
 
Dare glances at me.
 

“I think you need to get off that
mountain more,” he decides.
 
“For
real.
 
Being secluded in a funeral
home?
 
That’s not healthy, Calla.”

I suddenly feel defensive.
 
“I’m not secluded,” I point out.
 
“I have Finn and my dad.
 
And now you’re there, too.”

Dare blinks.
 
“Yeah, I guess I am.”

“And we’re not in the funeral home right
now,” I also point out.
 
We take a
pause and gaze out at the vast, endless ocean because the huge grayness of it
is inspiring at the same time that it makes me feel small.
 

“You’re right,” Dare concedes.
 
“We’re not.”
 
He pulls his finger through the sand,
drawing a line, then intersecting it with another.
  
“We should do this more often.”

Those last words impale me and I
freeze.
 

Is
he saying what I think he’s saying?

“You want to come to the beach more
often?” I ask hesitantly. Dare smiles.

“No, I’m saying we should get out more
often. Together.”

That’s
what I thought he was saying.
 

My heart pounds and I nod.
 
“Sure.
 
That’d be fine.
 
Do you care if Finn comes sometimes,
too?”
 
Because I
feel too guilty to leave him behind all the time.
 

Dare nods.
 
“Of course not. I want to spend time
with you, however you want to give it to me.”

Dare grins at me, that freaking
Dare Me
grin, and I know I’m a
goner.
 
I’m falling for him, more
every day, and there’s nothing I can do about it. In fact, there’s nothing I
want
to do about it.
 
Because it’s amazing.

The Iredale is only a shell of a ship, so
the wind whips at us and Dare shoves his hair out of his face.
 
As he does, his ring shimmers with the
muted light of the sun.
 
A sudden
feeling of déjà vu overwhelms me, as though I’ve watched his ring glint in the
sun before, and we’ve been here in this ship, together.

We’ve
been here before in this exact place and time.
  

That’s all I can think as I stare at him,
as I watch his ring shimmering in the light, as I watch him shake his hair in
the wind.

Dare drops his hand and the feeling
fades, but yet the remains of it linger like the wispy fingers of a memory or a
dream.
 

I stare at him uncertainly, because the
feeling was so overpowering.
  

Dare draws back and stares at me.
 
“Are you ok?”

I nod, because
God, it’s just déjà vu, Calla.
 
It happens.
 

But it felt so real.
 
I shake my head, to shake the oddness
away.
 
I can’t
slip away from reality
,
I can’t be like Finn
.
 
God.
 

Dare’s hand covers my own, and we stare
out at the ocean for several minutes more.

His hand is warm and strong, and I relish
it.
 
I relish the way he rests it
against my back as we walk down the beach towards his bike.
 
And I relish the way I fold against him
as we ride back home.
 
I relish it
all because it’s amazing.
 
No matter
what else is going on,
this
is
amazing.
 

I feel like I’m floating as I slide off
the bike and stand in front of him.
 

We pause, like neither of us wants to
call an end to this day.
 

Finally, Dare smiles, a slow grin,
a
real grin that crinkles the corners of his dark
Dare Me
eyes.
 
He reaches up and tucks an errant strand
of hair behind my ear, and I swear to God I have to force myself to not lean
into that hand.
 

“Wait here,” he tells me and he
disappears into his cottage, coming right back out with his picture.
 
He presses it into my hand.