Cursed Hearts (A Crossroads Novel) (17 page)

“What the hell?” he breathed, catching the fierce look in her
eyes. Something inside of him liked that look – some
darker
part he wasn’t willing to acknowledge. Her body language
said that she could tell, and she wasn’t happy about it. Aria rose from the
chair, eyes flashing gold as she advanced on him menacingly. “Whoa,” Christian
exclaimed.

She watched him scramble back a few feet as fear and hunger
swirled around in his eyes. “Leave,” she said in a low voice. “Now.”

Christian couldn’t move.

“I’m sorry, okay?” he said unevenly. He watched her irises
bleed back to their lovely green, standing slowly and keeping his back against
one of the machines. Aria wrapped her arms around herself, circling back over
to the chair in silence. “…What
are
you?” he whispered.

“A fool,” she replied.

“You’re not a fool. I didn’t mean to take it that far.”

“You always meant to take it that far. Dallas was right about
you.”

“Dallas doesn’t know the first thing about me,” he said. “He
doesn’t know that I’ve kind of let you in, that I’ve taken you places I’ve
never taken anyone. And no one seems to realize that I’ve been trying to
protect you from that psycho. I don’t know what more you want from me.”

Aria kept her back to Christian as she wrapped a blanket
around her shoulders. She sat down slowly, staring out at the night sky.

“I want the same thing I’ve always wanted,” she said
distantly.

“And what’s that?”

“…Something real.”

Chapter 16

Life
tends to hand us more questions than answers. It throws us curve balls, steers
us in the wrong direction, and sometimes it even falls out from beneath our
feet completely. It doesn’t give us time to adjust, and it certainly
doesn’t care what we think we can handle. Christian
felt like he
was drowning in questions – questions that burned brighter
than all the stars in last night’s
sky. He
was thinking about going to find Aria when a plate of
waffles slapped
down onto the table in front of him, blueberries rolling wildly off into his
lap. It was the last thing he needed after a sleepless night.

“What
the hell is this?” he complained, looking up at his friend.

“I
snagged you a plate of awesome,” Adam said, setting his own towering pile of
waffles down with a loud clank. Christian’s stack paled in comparison to his
own, and he planned on going back for seconds.

“I’ve
told you before; I don’t eat junk like this.”

“What?
This isn’t junk. Look, fruit,” Adam said, holding up a sliced banana and waving
it carelessly towards him. It flew out of his fingers and landed on Christian’s
arm. Adam could see his face twitching.

He
looked calm as he peeled the sticky, syrup-covered slice of fruit off of his
skin and smashed it into Adam’s cheek.

“Dude,
you made me delectable,” he laughed. A group of girls walked by and he held his
arms out wide, calling out to them. “Any of you girls want a taste? I’m
officially delicious!”

Christian
was not in the mood for Adam and his energy. He’d left Ariahna alone on the
roof in the middle of the night, and had spent the rest of
his own evening staring at the ceiling of his dorm
room. It didn’t help that
bits and pieces of his memory were coming back
to him, either.

“So
did you pound that shit, or what?” Adam asked.

“Do
you always have to be so crude?”

“Uh,
duh,” he replied. “She left you with a stiff one, didn’t she?”

“Adam,
just… shut up.”

“I’ll
take that as a yes,” he laughed, taking a ginormous bite of his breakfast and
smiling as he chewed his food like a cow.

“I
can’t believe women actually sleep with you,” Christian said, draping an arm
over the back of his chair. “I mean, seriously, does it always have to be about
sex?”

Adam
turned a paranoid look to Christian, chewing a little slower. “What’s up with
you?” he asked. “You’re yammering on like some sentimental girl. The answer is
yes. It’s always about sex,
always
. The fact that you even have to ask
me that is cause for concern.”

Christian
sighed. “I don’t know why I hang out with you sometimes.”

“Pull
the tampon out of your twat and grow a pair,” Adam advised.

“You
first.” He watched what Adam called ‘eating’ in barely concealed disgust. The
mess in his mouth looked more like a
massacre
than anything edible. “I need to give her something real,” he mumbled.

“What?” Adam said around a mouthful of waffles.
Half-chewed food tumbled out of
his mouth and onto the syrupy disaster on his plate. He swallowed the rest of
it hastily. “Man, I don’t know what this girl has done to you, but you are
entering the danger zone. Abort mission, now.”

“I’m
not aborting anything. This girl is going to be the sweetest little fuck I’ve
ever had,” he said. “I just have to re-strategize.”

“
And
he’s back,” Adam grinned.

Christian
glared at him in annoyance. “I never left. I’m just perplexed trying to figure
her out. I’m not going to win her the usual way.”

Adam
frowned, mouthing the words, ‘
The usual way
’.

“What
other way is there?”

“If
I knew the answer to that question I wouldn’t be sitting here with you and your
god-awful mountain of sugar,” Christian muttered, leaning forward on his
elbows. He stared over the tops of his laced fingers, trying to solve the
problem he’d created.

“How
do I give her something real, without…?”

“Give
her a good time. That’s as real as it gets,” Adam laughed.

“Why hadn’t I thought of that?” he said, slapping
him upside the head. “If the
next thing out of your mouth is not something helpful, you’ll be leaving here
wearing your breakfast.”

Adam
promptly shut his mouth.

“Give
her what she values most,” he said after a quiet moment.

A
solution was forming in Christian’s mind and he slapped a palm against the
table as it came to him. “That’s it. If I want this one, I’m going to have to
venture into uncharted territory. Adam,” he said, looking at his friend dead
on, “I’m going on a real date.”

***

Gentle
fingers combed through Rome’s hair, rousing him from his sleep. He opened one
bleary eye at a time, blinking through the heavy weight of his eyelids and the
bright overhead lights.

“…Eliza?
What are you doing here?”

“Hello
blue eyes,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

Like
I have to pee
,
he thought. Rome moved to sit up and heard the clanking of dishes in his lap. Eliza
had brought him breakfast. Two perfectly cooked eggs sat sunny-side up on his
plate, adorned with several strips of bacon and links of sausage. A short stack
of buttery pancakes drew his attention away from the orange juice and towering bowl
of fruit. But what really made him uncomfortable was the red rose sitting
elegantly in a glass of water. “Are you sure you meant to bring this to me?” he
laughed.

“No,
I meant to bring it to the other boy who’s dying in a hospital bed,” she said, sitting
down on the mattress beside him.

“I’m
not dying,” Rome grinned.

“Really?
Because I heard you got struck by lightning.”

“If
that’s the case, I must be more confused than I thought.”

“You
should eat up,” she said, “so you can get your strength back. The sooner you
get better the sooner I can sweep you off your feet.”

Rome
wasn’t sure how to accept something like this
,
especially from
someone he barely knew. “I’m not really hungry,” he
lied. His stomach growled as if on cue and his lips curled up in a guilty
smile.

“Don’t
worry, it’s not poisoned,” she joked.

Rome
picked the fork up, hesitantly cutting off a bite of pancake. It had just passed
his lips when Eliza smiled.

“I
should just start laughing now to mess with you,” she said.

Rome
nearly choked.

“Now
I have to make you take a bite, just to make sure.”

Eliza looked down at the syrupy pancake dangling from the
end of the fork. Rome was
holding it out for her to take, and she smirked at him before slowly wrapping
her lips around the metal and sliding it onto her tongue. “Mm,” she moaned,
chewing delicately. “Tastes pretty good for poison.”

He
cleared his throat, looking down at the plate. He hadn’t intended for her to do
that. “Well, um… thanks,” he said.

“Sure.”

An
odd kind of silence blanketed the room. It was the kind Eliza only experienced when
she was around Rome. It was actually somewhat peaceful, she realized. “…You
might be the quietest date I’ve ever had.”

“What?”
Rome said, gulping down his half-chewed food.

“I
said you’re not very talkative,” Eliza smiled.

“You
know that’s not what I meant,” he said sheepishly.

“What,
you mean when I called you my date?” she asked. “Let’s look at this
objectively. You’re here, I’m here, there’s food and conversation.
Isn’t
that pretty much what a date boils
down to? So it’s in an unconventional setting. But hey, you can’t always
schedule your near-death experiences around your social life. I told you I was
going to take you out. This is just more like a home visit,” she shrugged.

Rome
stared back at Eliza, the girl who was probably the object of every guy’s
affection at Vardel. She’d brought him breakfast in bed, shamelessly flattered
him, and all but declared her interest in having him on her arm. And yet all he
could think about was a girl who wanted nothing to do with him. He exhaled,
loudly. “Eliza, I have to be honest with you. There’s someone I like, and
it’s—it’s not you.” Her face fell so fast he literally felt pain at the
dejected expression. “Okay, that came out wrong.”

“No,
it’s alright,” she said, smiling down at his eggs. “I think it came out right.”
Eliza was torn. She was supposed to be keeping Rome distracted for Christian,
but from the moment she’d met him it had become a purely selfish mission. She
genuinely liked him; and not because he was flashy, or cocky, or rich. He
wasn’t drooling all over her and falling at her feet. And there was something
appealing in that – sexy, even.

“So
you don’t like me at all?” she asked. “Not even a little bit?”

“I’m
not saying I don’t like you. You seem like a great person. I just
don’t think it’s fair to let you do things like
bring me breakfast when I’m
hung up on somebody else.”

“Oh,
well if that’s all you’re worried about, I’ll just eat it,” she said, laughing lightly.
Eliza could tell she was only making a bad situation worse. And the last thing
she wanted to do was come off as desperate. “Hey, it’s no big deal. Thanks for
letting me know so I didn’t waste all my good lines on you,” she said. She
stood, backing towards the door. “I suppose I’ll see you around. You know, class
and stuff.” She was stalling, and he probably knew it. “Okay. Um, I hope you
enjoy the eggs.”

Rome watched her leave and then tossed his head back
against the pillow, expelling all the air from his lungs. He knew he had to be
a complete idiot, turning down a girl like Eliza. With the way things had been
going, he was probably going to get hit by a car or blown up before he could
even talk to Aria.

It
felt like days had passed before the clock on the wall finally struck twelve. Rome
was staring down at a cup of jello. His lunch certainly paled in
comparison to the breakfast Eliza had brought him.
Beyond listening
in on the stagnant conversations going on in the
teachers’ lounge, he was bored out of his mind. He’d tried to tell Ruth that he
was fine. The burns were completely healed and the bruises on his abdomen
didn’t hurt that bad. He’d all but told her he’d had worse. It wasn’t just a
state of mental numbness driving him to leave, either. The longer he stayed in
these hospital clothes, with the nurse checking on him every few hours, the
more likely she was to see the scars all over his back. If she hadn’t seen them
already.

His
stomach twisted, and his eyes snapped up to the door. Rome was starting to
salivate. He was being overtaken by a sickening hunger. That hunger could only
mean one thing. “Kaleb?” he called. “I know you’re out there.”
Shit
, he heard
him mumble from the hall. The door creaked open a moment later and Kaleb
slipped inside. “What are you doing here? Come to finish the job?” he joked.

“No.
I just wanted to make sure you didn’t die before I could collect on that
favor.”

Rome hummed though
tfully
, sitting up and swinging his feet
over the
side of the bed. “Does that mean you came to collect?”

Kaleb
stepped between Rome’s legs, fingers curling around his waist as he tugged him towards
his hips. “I haven’t fully decided what I want yet.”

Rome
glared at him. “You know I’m not gay, right? So whatever you’re thinking, you
can forget it and back the fuck up.”

“Neither
am I,” Kaleb said. “…Maybe I shouldn’t have taken you for a man of your word,
though.”

“What
the heck is that supposed to mean?”

Kaleb’s hands smoothed over the tops of Rome’s thighs
,
bunching up
the thin fabric of his hospital pants. “You know what
it means.”

“When
I said anything, I meant anything but this,” he corrected, trying to shove him
away. He didn’t have the strength.