“So what kind do you think I have?” I asked, staring at her full faced, puffy, and tattooed with tears.
Her eyes searched around the room, looking for something. “Have you seen a girl around here? Her name’s Bryn Dawson and I thought I’d find her here.” She was having a tough time keeping a straight face.
“I think that girl’s gone—long gone.” I wiped at my face.
“Sometimes I think so,” Cora said, running her fingers through her sunflower hair. “Especially when you pull these kinds of stunts.” She looked at me pointedly, gesturing her hands around the room. “What if he came home and found you here?”
I waited for further clarification, but she was waiting for the same from me. Most of the time, I loved how Cora and I could talk vaguely and still understand each other exactly; now wasn’t one of those times.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be here, I just couldn’t really help it,” I offered, because—classic Bryn—I hadn’t stopped to think of the possible repercussions for showing up here unannounced. “Although I think she would be a hundred times more upset with me than you if she found me hanging out in his bedroom.”
Cora stared at me with eyes narrowed in confusion. “Am I supposed to know who you’re referring to?”
I almost rolled my eyes. “Please, Cora, Patrick’s bludgeoned me to death with this kind of stuff, I don’t think I could bear it from you too,” I said. “You know who I’m talking about, don’t put me on an endless carousel talking and thinking about her because Patrick’s made sure to remind me of her at every turn.”
To match her eyes, Cora’s face crinkled with confusion. “I think when you were out there roughing it in the world on your own, you got crazy hermit disease. Have you got any conspiracy theories to go over with me or did you only get as far as the crazy-talk stage?” Cora was the only person I’d known who could say something harsh, but look like she wanted to give you a hug right after.
“Okay, so we’re going to go there . . .” I took a deep breath, rolling my shoulders back to summon some courage. “The she I was referring to was William’s soon-to-be Betrothed. You know, that perfect female of an Immortal that has the Council’s stamp of approval plastered all over her. A.K.A. . . .”—I closed my eyes—“the woman he loves.”
There was silence. More silence. I opened my eyes to watch her face wring the wrinkles away. And then she laughed.
Cora’s cheap shots hurt worse than Patrick’s because I’d always considered her my friend, whereas Patrick I’d considered more as a fiend.
I was preparing to stand up, leave this house, and try to surgically remove the part of my brain that held on to long-term memories when her laughter cut off.
“Does this look like the room of a man who’s in love with someone else?” she asked, pointing at the room wallpapered with photos of a couple that exuded love in each cheesy smile and exaggerated pouted lip face. “The only person more dense than him is you.”
Instead of rushing for the door, I rushed to her. I grasped her shoulders, trembling with anticipation. “Like you said, I’ve been walking the crazy path for awhile, but did you just say—in so many words—that there isn’t someone else? No one that slid in my place to be Mrs. William Hayward?” I thought I’d heard the words right, but given what she’d said, it was more likely I’d crossed into a dream.
She gripped my shoulders back, although her tiny arms really had to stretch to cross the distance. “Listen to me. No. N.O.,” she mouthed, looking at me straight on. “No. One. Else. Besides, I don’t think there’s room on these walls for anyone else. Not to mention room in his heart.”
Warmth trickled into my veins, like I’d just been hooked up to an IV drip with a potent solution of euphoria. I threw my arms around her, squeezing her to me, managing to perform something of a happy dance with Cora swinging in my arms.
“Yeah, I missed you too,” she said, her voice tight. “But I’m still angry at you. Really angry.” She pushed back from me, looking at me as sternly as I’d seen her. “You broke his heart, Bryn. You absolutely, positively, crushed him,” she said, looking like she was the one choking back sobs now. “I mean, gosh darn it, you left him when he needed you most, for some other guy of all things. Never, in a hundred-thousand years, would I have guessed you were capable of such cruelty.”
I winced—replaying in my mind that night I’d left him more dead than alive—but now I’d been given a taste of hope, I wasn’t about to be detoured from it. “Cora, look at me. You know me nearly as well as he does.” I crashed down beside her on the bed—the bed he’d placed in the exact spot we’d designated last summer. “You know my feelings for him. Do you really think I would have left him for someone else—especially someone as infuriating, egotistical, and downright dimwitted as Paul Lowe?” I guess I still had a ways to go on working through my anger issues over Paul’s kiss.
“No, not really,” she said, twirling the hair curling behind her ear. “It didn’t make any sense, none of it did. But if you didn’t leave because of Paul, why did you leave?” Her face was exuding concern as she tucked her hand into mine.
“You know why,” I answered, offering nothing more.
“I suppose I do,”—she sighed, her head dropping—“I guess I always knew why, somewhere deep down that I kept repressed. Why are the bad things easier to believe than the good things?”
I laughed. “I’m not going to answer that. We don’t have enough time for me to give you my thoughts on that and you’re too sweet and innocent for me to corrupt with my gloomy ramblings of a wannabe philosopher.”
She rolled her eyes, giggling all the while. “I really have missed you. So you’re back?”
I smiled, nodding my head.
“For good?”
“That’s up to him,” I said.
She threw her arms around me again. “What took you so long, girl?”
“I think you know the answer to that one, too.” I pulled her away from me to emphasize my point.
“You feel in control of it?” she asked, her face serious.
“I think I’m as in control of it as I’ll ever be and I don’t have to worry that I’ll kill him if he touches me now.”
“You know that was a risk he was willing to take—”
“But I wasn’t,” I said firmly. “I’m still not, but I think we’ve proven that I pose a greater risk to him being away from him than I do with him.”
“So you left because you didn’t want to kill him. I get that,” she said, crossing her legs beneath her. “But why did you have to let him believe it was because you’d fallen for someone else?”
I tilted a brow at her, surprised I had to explain. She’d been witness to William’s unfailing devotion several lifetimes over. “I had to make it about someone else because I knew if he found out I’d left to protect him, he’d search the world looking for me . . . again. But I knew if I made leaving him for a selfish reason, he’d let me go.”
“That’s beautiful,” she said, patting my hand. “In a weird, sick way.”
I knew we could have wasted the night away catching up and devouring licorice ropes in between gallons of coffee, but there was something else that required my immediate attention. “Do you know where he is?”
“Not a clue,” she said, her sapphire eyes sparkling in the dark. “But I think I know someone, or someones, who would. If you thought those three brothers of his kept close tabs on him before,”—she shook her head—“well, now they’re watching him like he’s a woman four weeks past her due date. It’s like they’re just waiting for him to lose it.”
I was already across the room, heading into the hallway when she rushed past me, pulling me down the stairs and out the door. “Come on. Let’s go get your man back.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
FAMILY FEUD
The door was barely opened before my words spilled out. “Where is he?” I’d never been a particularly tactful conversationalist and now wasn’t the time to start.
“Hi, sunshine,” Patrick said, lowering the playing cards staggered in his hands. “Nice to see you, too.”
Cora came up behind me, winding an arm around my waist. The glare she had pointed at Patrick had Joseph fighting a smile. “Knock it off, Patrick,” she said, sounding no meaner than a mewing lamb, but I had to give her credit for trying. “You’ve done enough already. Where is he?”
“Someone’s returned exceptionally crabbier than when she left,” Patrick mouthed to the four members circling the table, eyes pointing at Cora before finding me. “You have a special way of bringing out those kinds of emotions in our family.” He smiled spitefully at me before turning his attention back at the cards he was hiding in his lap. “Thanks for retrieving her, Cora. I wasn’t in the mood, but sorry it made yours so sour.”
Cora marched forward with me in tow, braking once our legs rammed into the side of Joseph’s chair he’d purposefully scooted out. “I’m sour”—she said the world like she’d just bitten into a lemon—“because of you and the lies you’ve been telling.”
The outside of Patrick’s eyes crinkled, the most masterful wince he was capable of. “Something tells me I’m going to be in the dog house with the girls,” he looked to Joseph, petitioning for support. “Let me guess, you didn’t find her where she was supposed to be waiting?” he asked Cora.
Cora pounced her hands on her hips. “Like you really thought I would. You don’t have me believing for one second, Patrick Hayward, that you didn’t know where she’d wind up.”
“Well, I don’t think I’ll need twenty guesses to figure it out,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Given your expressions.”
Cora’s foot began tapping noiselessly. “I’ll give you one guess.”
He threw his hands in the air, his cards scattering behind him. “I knew I should’ve vaulted up that freaky shrine of a room before snoopy found it,” he said, accusing me with his eyes. “So, big deal. I lied about William being all hot and bothered for another woman. I was only doing it to piss her off and to keep him from coming across as a pathetic sucker still in love with her.”
He paused, looking around the room at six sets of eyes staring at him. “What? Why are you all looking at me like I’m the enemy? I’m not the one who played a game of hacky-sack with William’s heart.”
Cora lurched forward, stalled again by her husband, but Joseph couldn’t wrangle both of us.
“Where is he?” I demanded, swinging around Joseph’s chair, giving Patrick’s tilted one a shove with my foot. Unfortunately, he moved quicker than lightning, catching himself before he fell, but I’d achieved one thing—I had his attention and had wiped the smirk off his face.