Shattered Dreams: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (9 page)

I closed my eyes. Held on. Wished this was all some nightmare and that I could wake up. All except the Chase part. That part I wanted to last. But the rest … I wanted Jessica to magically reappear and for everyone else to forget all the stupid rumors.

The bell rang. It was time for English lit. But neither of us made any effort to move. Chase kept standing there, quiet and strong, holding me.

And I, hardly recognizing myself anymore, let him.

*   *   *

We walked in silence. He’d been waiting when I walked into the courtyard after last period. He’d reached for my backpack, and I’d given it to him. Just like that, I’d handed it to him as if I’d done so a thousand times before.

Then he took my hand. That was another first.

I made no move to pull away.

I didn’t ask him where we were going, either. It didn’t matter, as long as it was away. Quietly I walked with him to the seriously old Camaro he and his dad had found abandoned in a junkyard after Katrina. They’d restored it themselves.

Chase opened the door, and I climbed inside. Then he slid behind the steering wheel and we took off.

I knew people watched, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to get as far away from Amber and Enduring Grace as I could.

And I wanted Chase to take me.

Eventually the press of once-beautiful old buildings gave way to trees, big, old trees that made the oaks at Enduring Grace seem young by comparison. We parked along a narrow street, climbing from the car to walk along a cracked sidewalk. He led. I let him. And for the first time I realized his limp was almost gone. Along with my fading bruises, there was virtually no reminder of Saturday night.

Except for the lingering residue of deception.

The sign said City Park, but the name sounded bland compared to the beauty around us. The park sprawled in all directions, all winding paths and fountains and statues. And birds. They were everywhere, herons and crows and even a few seagulls, swooping around us and perched in the moss-infested branches, some down on the ground.

I’d never seen—or heard—so many in one place.

“This way,” Chase said, veering from a swarm of toddlers and babies and mothers. “I want to show you something.”

I turned to follow, but stilled when I saw the bridge. Nestled among thick vegetation, it was old and stone and arched, linking one side of a lagoon to another.

“This place is so pretty.” I’m not sure why I whispered, but using my full voice didn’t seem right.

“You should have seen it before the storm.”

At the edge of the greenish water, two huge herons stood amazingly still, as if they, too, listened.

“These trees have been here forever,” he said, his voice even more quiet than mine. “Before my grandparents—their grandparents. Before any of us.”

I glanced at Chase, could tell that for a moment, he’d gone somewhere else.

“They’ve always been here,” he murmured, “but the storm almost took them.”

Like it had taken so much else. And yet, despite the rain and battering wind, standing in saltwater for weeks on end, the old oaks had found a way to survive. They’d endured.

There was something to be said about that.

“Were you here?” I asked. “When the storm hit?”

He looked down toward a series of knobby roots jutting up from a blanket of leaves. “We got out in time.”

“Thank God,” I whispered, but the way his head jerked up told me I’d said something very wrong. “I mean—”

“No, don’t.” We stood in shade, but his eyes glinted. “People always say that, talking about God’s grace and prayers answered, but it’s hard to think about God and Katrina having much to do with each other.”

Whoa. Heavy stuff—so not a path I’d meant to stumble down. I mean, what was I supposed to say to that? “I’m sorry.”

The words rang totally insufficient.

“Don’t be. We made it. The city is coming back. A house is just a house.”

I swallowed. A house is just a house? The cryptic comment sent a new question jumping through me. Had Chase’s family lost their house?

I had no idea, which, in turn, made me realize how little about Chase Bonaventure I knew. His mom was a lawyer, his dad a doctor. He had a younger brother and two dogs. And his smile was absolutely killer. That was about it.

“Did you guys lose much?”

Around him, shadows deepened. “Nothing that can’t be replaced,” he said, and then he was walking again, moving deeper into the seclusion of the trees.

I tried to take it all in, the stillness of the fading afternoon, the contrast of greens and browns—and the very real fact that Chase, the guy who by all appearances had everything, seemed as weary as the trees.

We walked quietly, and though the sun had burned off most of the cloud cover, the thick tree canopies made it seem more like dusk.

And then I saw the clearing.

There amid the play of shadows and light, trees gave way to columns. They rose up from a tangle of vegetation like forgotten guardians, standing in a perfect circle around a beautiful fountain. It was like walking into a nature preserve in New Orleans, and emerging in Ancient Greece.

Except for the tall iron fence surrounding the clearing. And the
DO NOT ENTER
sign. Those served as stark reminders of where we really were.

My breath caught anyway. “Wow,” I whispered, pausing a few feet from the locked gate. “That’s so cool.”

“I thought you’d like it.” Chase closed in on the fence, taking the iron in his hands and swinging a foot up to the crossbar.

“What are you doing?” The second the question left my mouth, I wanted it back. It was pretty obvious what he was doing.

“No one cares,” he said, climbing over and glancing back at me. Those long bangs fell carelessly against his eyes. “Come on.”

Maybe he didn’t care, but I’d never been one to take warnings lightly. I glanced around, saw nothing but trees—

Shadows slipped. I swung back toward a cluster of three oaks, narrowed my eyes. I would have sworn something had moved.

“Trinity?”

My heart raced ridiculously—there was nothing there, just the play of leaves and the sway of Spanish moss.

Swallowing, I turned back to Chase. The fence stood between us, tall. Strong. Eyes on mine, he extended his hand—

And I could see him all over again, as he’d been Saturday night when he’d run from the house, shouting my name. I’d been so blinded by shock, I’d seen only what I’d let myself see: a joke. That everyone had been in on.

“Trinity?”

But now I jerked the moment back into focus, the haunting fountain and the shroud of weathered columns, and the tall slats of wrought iron standing between me and Chase, and saw what I’d not let myself see before, the quiet fire in his eyes. The … honesty.

“Are you okay—”

“You really didn’t know, did you?”

He stilled. “Didn’t know what?”

“About the game,” I whispered. “What Jessica and Amber were going to do.”

Behind him, the fountain danced. Above him, the sun shone brightly. But the shadows falling around him made the blue of his eyes look black. “No.”

Inside me, something shifted.

“That’s why I was there,” he added, his voice noticeably rough against the wind. “To make sure you didn’t get hurt.”

Once, a long time ago when I was a little girl, my grandmother took me to Boulder, where we visited all sorts of shops and galleries. In one, an old man who looked a lot like a skinny Santa Claus was making glass figurines. It seemed like hours that I stood watching him with his torch, working the molten glass. I’m sure it wasn’t really that long, but I’d been fascinated by the way he used a torch to make something so beautiful.

In the end, I’d fallen in love with a green dragonfly. I could still remember how gently I’d handled it, so scared that I would break it.

Odd that I would think of that while standing with Chase, but in that moment that’s how I felt, like that fragile dragonfly of blown glass.

Not allowing myself to think or analyze, I stepped toward the iron rail and reached, held on while I lifted my leg and climbed for the top. There I jumped—and Chase caught me.

His eyes met mine, and my heart kicked hard. Slowly, he lowered my feet to the ground.

“She’s jealous,” he murmured. “You know that, don’t you?”

Somehow I swallowed. “That’s crazy.” Jessica Morgenthal had everything. “She’s one of the most popular girls in school.”

“But she’s also smart, and she has eyes,” Chase said. “She can see.”

The breeze blew hair into my face, but I made no effort to push it back, didn’t trust myself to move. “See what?”

“You,” he said. “How gorgeous you are. How different.”

It was my turn to go very, very still.

“You scare her,” he said. “You’re everything she isn’t—warm, sincere.” As if in slow motion, he lifted a hand to slide the hair from my face. At the edge of my cheek, his fingers lingered. “Honest.”

“I thought you two—”

“Not for a long time,” he answered before I could finish. “But sometimes it’s hard to let go—that’s what the whole truth-or-dare thing was about.”

“Letting go?”

“Payback,” he said, stepping closer and bringing his thighs against my hips. “She knew it was over.”

His eyes were warm, penetrating. And his hand was still touching me, those strong fingers that could crush a football stroking like a feather along my cheekbone.

And I was totally lost. Throat tight, I wanted to step even closer, to lift a hand and touch his face, put my fingers against the shadow of stubble beginning to show along his jaw.

And his mouth, that full lower lip …

“I never meant for you to get hurt,” he said, and my heart sang a little more.

“It was no big deal,” I found myself saying, and then because I couldn’t breathe, I broke away from him, stepping to my right toward the lonely columns. Corinthian, I thought. Maybe Ionic. I didn’t know.

It didn’t matter.

“Why did you bring me here?” I turned, made myself confront the question that had been nudging me since we’d slipped into the Camaro. There’d been a sense of purpose to him from the moment he’d led me from the courtyard, and I, not wanting to think too much, had gone along for the ride.

But as we stood there with the shadows, I had to wonder why. I’d never been one to live in the moment, without trying to see through to the other side. Why, then, had I gotten into the car? Why, after the nightmare of the past several days, had I let him take me here?

“You really don’t know?”

His voice was so quiet I had to concentrate on the words. “I wouldn’t have asked, if I did.”

The blue of his eyes shifted to something much darker—and much less discernable. “I brought you here to get you away from the poison at Enduring Grace.” Slowly, dreamlike, he took a step toward me. “To get you alone.”

I watched him close in on me, told myself to step back, turn away.

“I brought you here because if you try to walk away, there’s nowhere to go.”

At that moment I could no more have moved than I could have breathed.

“Because we need to talk. Two detectives came to see me last night,” he added, and finally, finally I had something I could grab onto.

“LaSalle and Jackson?”

Chase picked a twig up from the ground between us. “They knew about Saturday night,” he said. “And Monday.”

I watched him roll the stick in his hands, wondering how he could be so rough and gentle at the same time. “Monday?”

He glanced up, held my eyes with his own. “You don’t know?”

I shook my head.

He frowned. “Jess and I had it out. She followed me behind the gym, tried to tell me she didn’t mean any harm Saturday night.”

Not harm, not by her standards anyway. By her standards she sought only victory.

“I told her to save her breath,” Chase said, and again something warm and elusive swelled through me. “That I knew the game she was playing and it wasn’t going to work. That if she did anything else to you, she’d regret it.”

My breath caught. I could feel it there in my throat, knotted up with doubt and longing, so strong I had to look away, toward the huge sprays shooting up from the fountain. The water rained back down around us, sliding like tears along the carved dedication:
FOR THE PEOPLE OF NEW ORLEANS.

“She laughed,” Chase said, but I didn’t let myself look at him. “Told me I hadn’t seen anything yet.”

I stepped closer to the spray, felt the sting against my face. “That’s what you think this is all about?”

He stood behind me, but the fall of his shadow told me that he moved. “Last summer,” he said as his voice grew closer. “A few days before the Fourth of July, I told her things weren’t working anymore. That we should take a break…”

His shadow merged with mine, stilled.

“She took off. For four days there was nothing—no texts, no calls. Not even to her parents.”

Once, not that long ago, his quiet words would have surprised me. My world had been small in Colorado. My grandmother had been my center. Never would I have considered putting her through that kind of hell.

But after two months in New Orleans, I knew that one person’s hell was another person’s triumph.

“What about Amber?” I asked, turning without thinking.

He stood closer than I realized, so close I had to glance up to see his face.

“She said she had no idea.”

And I could tell that he did not believe her. “Did you call the police?”

“Her parents did,” he said, still rolling that stick in his hands.

I wasn’t sure he even realized it was there.

“But they weren’t too worried. It was obvious she left on her own.”

Exactly like this time. She’d told her parents good night, gone to her room. In the morning, they’d found her room empty. Her bed was unmade, her purse and car were gone. Those were the facts.

But all I had to do was close my eyes, and the dark silent movie of my mind would play all over again …

“She turned up a few days later,” he said. “With a cousin in Pensacola.”

I looked back toward the fountain, watching the glint of the setting sun play with the droplets of water. The facts lined up. The pattern was clear. Whatever I’d seen—