The Guardian (Callista Ryan Series) (35 page)

             
“But why?” she whispered, sitting up and hugging her knees. “Why would you try to cut them off?”

             
He snorted, livid. “Why would I try to do away with the things that made me a freak? You try living in a time when witches and monsters and beasts were all very real to people, and then you tell me why I wouldn’t try to get rid of them.”

             
“But you’re not a beast,” she said, realizing for the first time that this was true. In the back of her mind, she heard the echoes of what she’d said the first night she was here:
What if I just want to get the hell away from you freaks?
The memory broke her heart as she looked back on it now, as she realized just how wrong she had been. Moving closer to him, she said, “You’re one of the most generous people I’ve met. You care about people. I have never seen anyone less beastly than you.”

             
“And yet the second you first laid eyes on me, you were petrified,” he said bitterly. Turning to her, his eyes burning with unspoken sadness, he continued, “Imagine having them growing out of your back, slicing through your flesh, and
knowing
that you are suffering such indescribable pain only so that you might be rejected by everyone you care about?” He shook his head, and hung his head again. “It was a nightmare,” he admitted hollowly.

             
Sitting beside him, feeling the waves of heartache roll off of him, she reached out. This time, she knew he could feel her hand as she lay in on his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I had no idea.”

             
He paused, catching his breath, and then replied, “When I realized you weren’t going to grow your wings, I was glad. I thought, now she can finally know what it’s like to be normal. But then you started having the nightmares….”

             
Her head snapped up. “Nightmares?” she asked. “You mean about the accident?”

             
He nodded. “I tried not to think about it,” he said, sounding tortured. “I couldn’t just leave you, though, and every time you fell asleep you got into my head—“

             
“Alex, what are you talking about?” she asked, sensing that he was apologizing for some crime she didn’t know he’d committed.

             
He looked at her again, and he seemed to be drowning in something. He took a breath to speak, but no words came out.

             
“Tell me,” she said, her caution overshadowed by her need to lessen his burden. Whatever it was he’d done, she couldn’t stand to see him look like that, like he couldn’t forgive himself.

             
With a shaky sigh, he began, “After the accident, when I saw you asleep, I was always reminded of that day. The way you looked when you were unconscious in my arms. I couldn’t help but flash back to that memory. But I swear to God, Callie, I had no idea that you were seeing what I saw. And then, when you went to that psychiatrist and you told her about the dreams, I realized…what you could do. I knew that you were Perceiving. I was shocked, and I couldn’t believe that I had been making you relive that each night. I tried to leave, to let you have some peace. But I couldn’t….I couldn’t leave you alone. Every time I left, I just imagined the things that could have happened to you. I thought about all the things that could go wrong in my absence. And so I had to come back.”

             
“I don’t understand,” Callie said. “I had those nightmares every night. How is it that they could have all been because of you, if you only checked in every six months?”

             
He didn’t answer; he just looked at her, guilt scratched across his face. She began to process the new information, a thought slowly taking shape in her mind.

             
“That day, the one you were just dreaming about, when I was walking home from school…that was the same year as the accident. But it was Autumn, only a few months after it happened. How where you there?”

             
“I began checking in more often after the accident,” he admitted.

             
Suspiciously, she asked, “How much more often?”

             
He stared at her for a long moment, his liquid brown eyes drawing her into their depths. She felt like she would suffocate, she was having such trouble breathing. The way he looked at her, like she was something precious and fragile and familiar, and yet like she had the power to undo him, made the air a little too thin.

             
“I never left,” he murmured.

             
She drew a quick breath, letting the information sit there. So she had been right. He had been the one in the shadows all these years, the one watching her. Although she’d been mistaken, too, for he hadn’t been simply watching her. He’d been watching
over
her. Protecting her. She had been scared of him without really knowing him for so many nights.

             
She turned to him again and saw the pain written on his features. Without thinking about it, she reached out and drew his head to her chest, cradling it against her shoulder. She felt the scratch of his golden hair against her skin, the heat of his face warming her where his face met her body. She combed her fingers through his hair, breathing deeply of his scent, as they sat there for a long while.

             
Eventually, she felt his shaking begin to fade, and his heartbeat return to its regular rhythm.

             
“Callie, I’m so sorry,” he whispered into her throat. “I’ve hurt you so often in the last four years, and now I’ve gotten you mixed up in all of this.”

             
“Shh,” she said. “Alex, you saved my life.”

             
“But you should have been able to
live
it,” he said.

             
She smiled into his hair. “You want to hear something crazy?” she asked. “I think I might have always known about you. That you were there, I mean. I always felt someone…standing there. The doctor told me that it was a figment of my imagination. Stress. And even though I was scared of it, I kind of knew that it wouldn’t hurt me. That kind of made me feel safer, knowing someone was there. Even if I didn’t know why.”

             
He shook his head and lifted his face, looking down at her. “Why are you so accepting of all this? I watched for years as you refused to accept anyone into your life, blocking entrance to those who wanted to be a part of it. And yet now, in a place full of people who have witnessed the most heinous acts, who have committed mass destruction, you seem to feel at home. You are allowing people to know you once again.”

             
She caught her breath at his accuracy. She remembered all those months of sitting in the backs of classrooms, walking straight home after school, spending Saturday nights reading or watching movies. He was right; it was incredible that she couldn’t feel like she fit into her own world, but she could so easily become a part of this one.

             
“Maybe it’s because I relate to your people,” she said finally, feeling the truth in her words. She remembered how happy Serena had been in her memories, and how angry she was now. She sensed the bitterness in Alex.  “We share the same sadness, I think. After I lost my parents, I never trusted anyone to stick around again. But here…I don’t know. There is magic in this forest, I think. There is something healing here.”

             
There was a crack in Alex’s distraught expression, and a tiny smile broke forth. “After Adeline, I felt the same way,” he said. “I couldn’t count on others. That’s why I never….Well, that’s why I changed.”

             
Callie grinned wryly. She knew what he had been about to say. He had stopped focusing so much on other women. From what she could tell, he had stopped spending each night in a new woman’s bed.

             
“I was angry all the time,” he continued. “Not so much because she was no longer in my life, but because I felt as though fate had slighted me. I began to fail in my missions, allowing my resentment to interfere. One year, I was on assignment in Rwanda. The tribes had been engaged in what was essentially a slaughter. By the time I left, a cease-fire had been implemented. I thought that my job was done. I returned to the forest, unconcerned with the fact that nothing had really been done to stop the humans from killing one another. And that was why, when the president was killed a year later, I wasn’t around. I should have been. I should have followed up on the mission, made sure that everything was running according to plan. I
knew
that the humans were still in danger. I simply couldn’t bring myself to care.”

             
He paused, as though he’d said too much, and looked at Callie worriedly. She swallowed, but nodded in encouragement. As much as she hated to hear this, she knew it was something he needed to say.

             
“That had been the latest in a string of such incidents. After that, Emeric took me off of those cases. He decided to assign me to be protector of a new potential. I think he assumed that it was a job at which I couldn’t possibly fail.”

             
Callie felt a kick in her pulse. Suddenly, with inexplicable certainty, she knew. That was the year she had been born.

             
“I thought it was beneath me, of course. I was under the impression that I was too great a protector to be someone’s babysitter. But a mission was a mission, and so I went to your town and located you. For the first thirteen years of your life, I would spend as little time in America as possible. I would check on you twice a year, and then assure myself that my duty was done, and return home. But then the accident happened….” He trailed off, and shook his head. “After that…I can’t explain what happened to me. I was suddenly terrified to leave you. But it was more than that. I was fascinated by you. I had never considered the human psyche on such a small scale; a single person had never before interested me. Watching you mourn your parents, and struggle to take care of your sister—I could not leave you. Something about your bravery, and your sadness, and the depth with which you loved your parents struck me in a way that allowed me to feel compassion for the first time in centuries.”

             
He stopped for a moment, and gazed at her with wonder and tenderness in his eyes. “I don’t think it is the canopy which has healed you, Callie. I think you have the power to heal yourself, and those around you, without even realizing it.”

             
Callie swallowed, tears pricking the pits of her cheeks. She touched his jaw, and, without second thought, closed her eyes and leaned towards him, inhaling the salty, sunny smell of him, and brushed her lips lightly against his.

             
At first, he was still. But then he began to gently respond, his mouth curving more comfortably against hers. She sensed her inexperience, but wasn’t uncomfortable. She knew that this was exactly where she was supposed to be, and as he wrapped her possessively in his arms, she forgot that she had never done this before. She forgot about the world outside of this small cottage. All that she could make sense of was the pulse in the vein at his jaw, the heat of his bare chest as it pressed against her skin, the muscles which protruded from his upper arms as he cocooned her further into himself.

             
She felt as though she were being absorbed by him. Sunlight enveloped them, sinking into their skin with a peaceful glow, as he kissed her tenderly, his body cloaking her with warmth and love.

             
Callie could have stayed like that forever. There ceased to be pain in that place. There was no angst, or fear, or suffering. She wanted to dissolve into the moment.

             
She might have, too. If, at that second, someone behind her hadn’t cleared his throat.

Chapter Nineteen

Training

             
Callie gasped, jerkin
g
away from Alex and turning to look in the direction of the sound. Zeke stood in the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest, an impish grin upon his face.

             
“Well, hello there,” he said wryly.

             
Callie felt herself flush, and tried to push away from Alex, to put an appropriate amount of distance between them. But Alex kept one arm around her waist, preventing her from moving even an inch.

             
“Zeke,” he said cordially, as Callie’s nerves tripped over each other. “What brings you here?”