The Fallen Stars (A Star Child Novel) (23 page)

I had no idea where I’d walked, but I found myself in a room constructed with windows on three sides. The view of the ocean outside seemed larger than life, like a postcard. There were about a million rooms in the house and I’d never been in this one before. The wall space that hadn’t been covered with windows held floor to ceiling shelves stacked high with colorful books. Under different circumstances, this would have been my favorite room in the house. Yet without Gabe to lighten the place, the home had a depressed quality to it, like a house out of some English novel where they wandered the moors. The American flag that hung within my vantage point from the nearest window quickly dispelled that image, as did the surf.

My heart hurt, ached, like someone had reached in and punched it. More like ripped it out. What could she have been thinking? I fought the angry tears that wanted to come. I was just so damn tired of not being able to trust anyone. Or rather, trusting the
wrong
people and finding out that they lied. I wiped at my eyes roughly with my sleeve, refusing to cry, scratching myself on the face with my watch as I did so.

Who would be next, Gabe and Alistair? This was why you kept things to yourself. If you didn’t trust people, then they couldn’t cut you. That’s what Cali had done. She’d cut me as effectively as if she’d taken a knife and plunged it into me. And what would I do now? Break up with her? I supposed that was what people did when they came to a point of contention that they couldn’t get past. The very thought of being apart from her, of leaving her behind, made me want to puke on the plush beige carpeting that blanketed the floor of the room.

A sigh abruptly alerted me to Cali’s presence beside me. I didn’t know that she’d come in, probably a testament to my own sadness and anger, emotions that competed for first place within me. Refusing to look at her, I stared down at the floor so that the tears that came anyway would fall at an angle to the ground instead of running down my face.

“Do you miss it? Ireland, I mean?” Cali asked.

I hadn’t said a word about it since our arrival, but I hadn’t known that I would miss home as much as I did. Despite being born in New York, Ireland had become my adopted country. It would always be home to me. To Cali, it was even more than that. Her love for her country had been as passionate as a romance.

Her emotions assaulted me then, as though she had chosen to project them to me. Sadness. Regret. Maybe she had. However, if I hadn’t known she’d come in before, I would’ve then. Her sorrow overpowered me. If my own feelings were a small river of emotion, then hers was an endless sea, as if no one hurt more than Cali did in that moment, no one lamented more than she.

But I couldn’t just forgive her. I’d always based my own beliefs on facts and I had none, other than she’d lied to me. Worse, this lie could cost us, could get us killed. I raised my shoulders a fraction as I sighed, debating about walking away from her. Yet despite my hurt, despite my pain, we stood at a crossroads, two would-be lovers with fractured hearts. Whatever decision I made at that point would impact us forever.

I answered her question about missing Ireland honestly. “Yeah. Pretty bad.” Turning, I looked at her, knowing the disappointment could be read plainly on my face. “I asked you about the second part of the prophecy before, remember? In Faerie? You told me that it had nothing to do with me. It sounds like it has
everything
to do with me, and maybe my father too. Why would you lie?” Every part of me screamed to be held by her, to touch a lock of her hair, to smell her sweet scent and feel the softness of her skin. I needed her, but I just couldn’t…
Please say something to make me believe in you again,
my mind begged
. Please.

She cried as she spoke, unabashed tears that I found myself fighting to keep from wiping away. “Because I didn’t want it to come true. The other part of the prophecy did. How could I risk losing you like that, to evil?”

Forcing my hands into my pockets and away from the dampness of her face took all of the restraint that I had. “But you lied, Cali. You kept it from me.” I balled my fists but just as quickly relaxed my hands, choosing instead to turn and place them on the back of a chair that had been positioned in front of the largest window. It had started to rain; the drops pelted the glass-walled room.

“I did,” she admitted simply. Again, the emotion of
regret
bridged the space between us.

“So what else haven’t you told me?” I knew that my words sounded harsh, but I wanted them to. I wanted her to know how I felt, to know—
Dammit!

She watched me as though looking at a stranger. Perhaps that’s what I’d become to her in that moment. Yet we were no longer on an uneven playing ground. We were both mortal now. That meant that all of my long ago mortal insecurities about not being good enough for a goddess had vanished. Ironically, she’d been the one to teach me that I deserved love, that I had worth.

“Kellen, you would know if there was something more on my mind,” she said, looking more beautiful than she had any right to.

“Maybe it was a good thing that we didn’t get married after all.” There, I’d said it. It had been hanging out there, the worst kind of elephant in the room, just waiting to be called upon. It sat between us, this giant obstacle of our own making.

She shook her head, pursing those lips that I wanted against mine more than anything that I could imagine. “I don’t think so, because I still want to marry you. The prophecy claimed that you would turn evil, would turn against me. Why would I want to talk about that, even mention it?”

“Cali! God! To
help
me! Don’t you want me to win? Don’t you want me to be able to walk away from this? Because now I’m unprepared. I don’t know enough about it to know how to fight against it happening. I don’t know anything about it. I just know it exists. I don’t even know what it says!”

“Neither do I!” she exclaimed, her chest heaving.

Doubt filtered into my mind, changing my face. “How can I believe you?”

“Because it’s the truth. I never wanted to know because the very idea terrified me. I don’t even know what it says exactly. What you’ve heard is all that I know.” Her voice held a pleading note.

“But even that much would have prepared me for something.” My voice sounded tired and so low in volume that I was surprised it even reached her ears.

It seemed as if she understood, her face a perfect portrayal of the remorse that she’d been communicating to me. By keeping this from me, she’d only endangered me more. Her head hung low; her cheeks burned as I registered her shame.

“You know me. Better than anyone. How do you think it makes me feel, knowing that you kept this from me?” The tears were back and I hated them, but a lifetime of repressing them made them hard to force back now. Now, when my world sat on the precipice between its beginning and end.

“Betrayed,” she said through her tears. “I never meant to betray you. Please…you have to believe me.” Cali raised both hands as if to touch me and then lowered them, seeming unsure. “I did it because I love you. I never thought…”

As I looked into her eyes, the emotion that came across to me more powerfully than all the others was love. Her intense love for me slammed into me, a tsunami that forced the rough waters of our argument to lift up into the air, to twist and turn and suck me in. In my world, people didn’t usually make choices on your behalf because they loved you; they made them because they wanted to manipulate you, to use you for their own sick purposes. But in Cali’s world…

In Cali’s world, people protected one another. They stood by one another. They stood by
me,
no matter what. What Cali had done was to make a mistake. How many times had I messed up as a kid, only to be alienated by my own father for weeks at a time? I wouldn’t do the same thing to Cali. “Let’s not fight,” I said.

She began to cry uncontrollably, all the while staring at the shoes on her feet like a child who’d lost her favorite toy. Cupping her face in my hands, I raised her eyes to meet mine. Relief overwhelmed me as I finally touched her. I’d come home. That’s how I felt every time I touched her.

“Don’t. Don’t cry, love.” My lips grazed her eyes, cheeks, and mouth and I lost my breath. I’d always thought of her as a puzzle piece, the final one that would complete me. That was what she’d always been.

Leaning into her, I deepened the kiss, letting my hands fist in her thick hair, as I’d wanted to earlier. The need to be as close to her as possible overpowered me, and the kiss became increasingly intense as we stood there.

“Cali,
my
Cali,” I whispered.

“Kellen…” She reached up and slid her hands into my hair, gripping it as I did hers. The heat from her body as it melded into mine pitched me forward from a place of quiet relief to a place from which I couldn’t return. I wanted her and I couldn’t control it any longer.

My mind told me that I should slow things down, but my body said something different. That it was done waiting. Again I pressed closer to her, wanting every part of her, all of her. The absence of Gabe’s cheeriness and Dillion’s authority made me feel all the more alone. We shared desperation in our need to be close to one another; it came through in Cali’s sighs, her touch. She wanted me too.

“Where’s Dillion?” I asked, as my lips pressed against her earlobe. I didn’t really care, apart from the fact that this time with Cali, I wanted us to be truly alone.

“Outside,” she said, her voice sounding breathless. She wrapped her hand around my wrist, cutting me with her engagement ring, which had shifted on her finger.

Moving to the divan seemed like a natural progression and we fell onto it easily, our mouths locked, bodies entwined, and my hands slid up the back of her shirt, splaying over her feverish skin. Never did I want this to end. Time had stopped, and nothing but the two of us existed.

The Children of Danu, the second part of the prophecy, Lugh, Dillion…they could all go to hell. Right then I needed to be as close to Cali as possible, to be connected to her, to be one with her. Reaching up, I started to unbutton the top button on her shirt.

Then she spoke, her voice a whisper. “Kellen, your ribs…?”

Though I hadn’t given it a thought before, I recognized now that I’d been healed. “Nah, I’m fine.” My mouth twisted with hers, my tongue dipping in between her lips, tasting the saltiness of her tears.

“But I don’t want to hurt you,” she said.

“Dillion fixed” was all I could answer. I wanted to taste every part of her, to be closer than we ever had, to wipe away everything that had happened. My mouth wandered to her neck, kissing her there, making me feel dizzy, heady. I unbuttoned another button on her blouse; my body became warm, too warm, as I tasted the skin that I saw there. Hands seeking, I slid my hands from her back to her stomach, my thumbs tracing smooth circles on her belly as I gripped her waist.

“Cali…” I stared at her, my breathing hard.

She looked up at me, breathless and beautiful. “Yes?”

“About what I said earlier.” Breathing was difficult and I had to force the words out between breaths. “I’ve always known I would marry you, from the first moment we met. What I said was…out of line.”

“I know. Me too,” she said, pushing me down against the cushions, unbuttoning the buttons on my shirt. Her fingers found my pendant where it lay against my chest. Slowly, she traced the outline of the symbols, her finger burning my skin where it touched. She surprised me then as she repeated the same action that I’d taken, kissing my neck.

She has to be mine
. I refused to die without ever having known what it was like to be with her. Cali would be mine, forever. My hand slid ever so slowly from her stomach up to her—

“Kellen!”

Turning, I could not comprehend what appeared in front of me. Then I caught up and my mind switched gears from passion to rage. William stood in the very room in which I’d been about to make love to Cali, a mixture of fear and anguish on his face.

“William! What the hell!” I could feel Cali tug at her shirt beneath me, trying to cover herself up from William’s searching eyes.

“It’s Gabe. He’s been in a car accident,” William said, his eyes shifting from Cali to mine. Gone were all traces of the mocking tone that William usually seemed to cling to like a security blanket. Now he only conveyed his concern.

“Gabe? How do you know?” Cali cried, pulling herself into an upright position.

“I had a vision. I saw his car go off the road,” William said. “You either come with me now or you’ll lose him.” It had started to rain and William stood there, dripping wet, on the carpet. Raindrops pounded on the glass all around us, making it hard to hear. The kind of rain that stung your skin if you ran in it.

As I looked into William’s eyes, despite all the lies that I knew he’d told us, the truth lay there for me to see.
They’d taken Gabe.
What part William had played in it remained to be seen.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

KELLEN—
SEARCH PARTY

Cali looked at me, a million questions evident on her face as she became paler by the moment. I didn’t know whether William spoke the truth. How could I, after the confusing experiences that we’d had with him so far? However, this was Gabe we were talking about.
My best friend.
Gabe would do anything for me. I would do anything for Gabe. We had no choice but to trust William, because not trusting him meant that Gabe could be in danger—exactly the sort of thing that we’d sent him away to avoid.

“Kellen. You need to come with me
now
.” William looked genuinely upset. His eyes flicked to Cali.

“Don’t look at her.” My voice held the same warning that it had when we’d stood on the path and William had forced the drink on me. However, for some reason he seemed to react differently tonight, for he said nothing and his eyes were immediately back on me. “You don’t deserve to look at her,” I said. “What are you doing in this house? I believe you were kicked out,” I reminded him. Cali stayed behind me, silent.