Ever After (22 page)

“After next week, I hope?” Thomas’s voice shook. He glanced around us and ushered me to a quiet corner.

“No. Tonight.”

Thomas’s eyes widened and his head lifted, making him look taller. “Well, I hope you’ve thought this through. There are things at stake here I don’t think you understand.”

Shelby and Kaitlyn wandered through the living room entrance. Shelby pointed to Thomas and me.

“I don’t think I can handle any more injuries.”

“Allie, so nice to see you up and”—Shelby paused and did an up and down inspection of me—“and looking absolutely gorgeous this morning.”

“Wow, you do look amazing,” Kaitlyn sighed and looked toward the kitchen, then back to me.

Thomas nodded. “We’ll talk later.”

“That’s fine.” I was glad for his discretion.

“Oh, no you are not.” Shelby crossed her arms and set her tongue against her cheek.

Kaitlyn’s face drained of color.

I walked ahead of them. There should have been laws set against mind-readers.

“Let’s take this conversation to the library. And don’t bother with your little piece of crap radio. It doesn’t seem to work,”
I thought to them.

Both girls were quiet as we made our way to privacy.

I shut and locked the library door.

They both turned on me.

“What’s going on?” they asked in sync.

“You can’t leave yet,” Kaitlyn blasted.

Hmm. They were frantic. Interesting.

“I don’t want the money.” I turned from them nonchalantly. “It’s not worth the trouble.”

One of them had gasped.

I turned back to gauge the look on their faces.

Kaitlyn’s jaw had to be out of socket, and Shelby drooped in defeat.

“What you’re really saying is you don’t want Cole anymore.” Shelby poked a hand in her curvy hip.

“I’m going to where my life isn’t threatened at almost every turn I take.” I leaned on the desk.

“We told you we already have everything under control. You’re the one holding the wildcard here. You keep doing everything we tell you not to,” Kaitlyn said.

“Obviously you haven’t spoken to Cole this morning. I’d say I have to worry more about being killed by him than some dumb ghost.” I shuddered at the memory.

“You know.” Dread covered Shelby’s face.

Kaitlyn’s eyes widened. She put her hand on her sister’s arm. “Stop running your mouth. If you used your brain for more than color coordinating your closet, then you’d know that Cole threatened to kill her last night. Not what you were thinking.”

Shelby clipped her lips between her teeth.

So there was more?

“I’m sure he didn’t mean it. It had to have happened in a moment of heightened emotion.” Kaitlyn wrung her hands. “There’s only one reason he’d threaten your life.”

“Yeah, there’s no way he’d kill you.” Shelby shook her head.

“He told me he’d put his fingers around my throat and choke the life out of me. In the real world, making death threats isn’t acceptable. I don’t know where you two are from, but saying that doesn’t sit well with me is a huge understatement.”

Silence. But not for long.

“What exactly was going on when this happened?” Shelby took a seat on one of the sofas as if she were conducting an interview, not being a concerned friend.

“Unbelievable. Okay, I’d just gotten back with Dalton and well…” I paused. It wasn’t my fault it happened. The guy wouldn’t leave me alone. “He kissed me. Like he’d never kissed me before. It was amazing.”

Shelby buried her face in her hands.

Kaitlyn rolled her eyes. “Here we go again.”

Wonderful chills covered my arms, but they took a dark, spiky turn as the memory advanced. “I asked him why he wouldn’t let me love him, and he went psycho on me.”

“Well, that explains it,” Shelby said with a smirk.

It explained nothing. Why couldn’t I tell him how I felt? Was he that scared of commitment?

“The idea of someone wasting emotion on him makes him crazy.” Kaitlyn gave her sister yet another famous disapproving glance, then shot her focus back to me. “Wait, like he’d never kissed you before? When before? Like now before? Or what do you mean?”

“Please tell me you don’t think his reactions are normal behaviors.” I ignored her questions. Answering would only get me in worse trouble. “Whose side are you on here?”

“Look, we can’t tell you what’s going on in his mind, but when he decides to tell you, you’ll forgive him. I promise. But if you leave now, you’ll never know,” Kaitlyn said.

“If you’re not going to tell her, then I will. If you leave this place now, Cole’s death—”

Kaitlyn slapped her hand over Shelby’s mouth. “There’s no need in giving her an unneeded guilt trip.”

Shelby slapped her sister’s hand away. “I can’t believe you’re going to let her go. It’ll kill him.”

“We don’t have a choice. Remember. It’s her decision,” Kaitlyn said.

“Wait, what? What do you mean, Cole’s death? What were you going to say?”

“He’ll die if you leave.” Shelby trembled, her expression dead serious.

Kaitlyn’s eyes bulged, and she swung around to her sister.

“Well, someone needs to tell her.” Shelby inspected her fingernails triumphantly.

“What are you talking about? He’ll die emotionally or what?” I had to sit down. The room swayed. I went to the other sofa and took a seat across from Shelby.

Shelby took her attention from her nails and focused on me. “The curse has been activated, so one of you has to die. If you leave, it’s Cole.”

“Besides the fact that I have no idea what you’re talking about, if I stay, wouldn’t that mean that I die? A ghost has tried her hardest to see that that is exactly what will happen.” I backed away from them.

They had to be nuts. They were talking about as crazy as Cole had been.

“No. We have a way to save you both and no one has to die, but you have to stay and help us. Cole can’t know. But you have to play along. You have to trust us and do as we say.” Kaitlyn joined her sister on the opposing sofa.

“What is this curse you keep talking about? She even said the same thing to me. That one of us has to die, and that I have to choose.”

“Please, Allie. Don’t listen to Grace and don’t let him die. Ignore anything she says to you. Come to us when she approaches you.”

I got up. “I’ll stay. But keep him away from me.”

Turning my back on their relieved faces, I left the library. I scaled the stairs. Behind its closed doors, the room was even bigger and lonelier than before. I spent the rest of the day reading to bury myself in someone else’s world and hopefully forget mine.

* * * *

After a sleepless night, I ate breakfast away from everyone else. Steam rose in swirls from my coffee cup, and no matter how tightly I gripped it, the heat from the cup couldn’t touch my heart.

I’d loved him. I’d admit it. It was the first time I’d ever felt that for someone.

He could have made things simple and let me down easy, but he had to be a creep. A psycho creep at that.

Having nothing better to do, I napped more.

In a room directly under mine, Shelby and Kaitlyn’s argument with Cole woke me. It was the parlor they’d kept Ava in. I listened from the banister, keeping my mind as empty as possible. I wouldn’t have to try hard, though, because the arguing had elevated to Cole pitching a fit.

Probably forgot his medication.

“So, now you know the whole story, and no matter what I do, I can’t get it right. If I’m in the room with her, besides attracting Grace, she’s in danger because no one ever knows what the hell will come out of my mouth or what the hell I might do to her. If I’m in the woods, well, you know what happens then. I’m losing it. I almost told her. I came this close. I can’t do this. I’ll be in the nut house before it’s all over.”

“Calm down, Cole. We have a plan in place. Trust us. You need to tell her the truth. Tell her what is going on. Tell her how you feel and who she really is to you.”

“You honestly think that amazing woman up there is going to ever look at me the same again after I threatened her life so viciously? She’d be a damned fool to consider me to shovel shit out of the stables much less anything else.”

“She loves you Cole. She’d never—”

“I said I don’t want to hear those words, you stupid—” Cole’s booming voice clipped.

Shelby stormed from the room and stomped toward the back doors of the house.

With my back at the wall farthest away from the banister, I hoped she wouldn’t look back and discover me.

“Cole, this isn’t you. I mean, I don’t know. Something’s not right. Have you eaten today?” Kaitlyn paused. “Cole, I asked you if you’ve eaten.”

“When have I had a chance? I spend all my waking hours watching over her. It takes all my energy to stay out of sight.”

“You can’t go without eating. You know how dangerous that is.”

He’d eaten breakfast this morning when we all had. Or at least I thought he had.

I’d taken mine in the dining room, but I’d seen him in the kitchen.

I don’t know why I bothered, but maybe I could help take some of the frustration off the girls if I talked to him.

Cole stumbled to the antique sofa facing the fireplace on the opposing wall. He gripped the wooden backing and held on.

Kaitlyn’s eyes widened when she saw me.

Cole leaned forward and crumpled to the floor, his chin catching the wood as he fell. Before I could get to him and help break his fall, he hit the carpet with a thud.

“Go to the kitchen. Get a jar of peanut butter, any thawed raw meat, and anything else you can think of that might be packed with protein.” Kaitlyn scurried to Cole’s side.

“Raw?”

“Just go,” she said.

I took a quick inventory of his face as I ran from the room.

His newly pale skin had turned to white putty. He was famished.

I slid into the kitchen and rifled through the fridge. I pulled raw hamburger from the back. Ugh.

Cole was out cold. How would he eat this?

With my arms loaded down, I ran back to the parlor. “This is all I could find.”

Kaitlyn had turned Cole on his side, his cheek on his arm.

His chestnut hair contrasted against the white carpet. His face matched it, save the blue under his eyes. His body shuddered and shook.

“I can’t lose him. Please, make him better.” I don’t know who I asked for the favor, but I trembled, hating the cold, helpless feeling in my chest.

“Out. Please.” Kaitlyn grabbed the first pack of hamburger meat and tore it open.

If Cole had a vitamin deficiency he’d neglected in order to take care of me, which had probably in turn caused his outbursts, then I had been horrible to him. I almost protested. Raw meat or not, I would help her feed it to him.

“You’re not going to want to see this.” With her bloody hand, she waved me out of the room.

“But—”

“He’d kill me if he knew you’d seen him like this. Just find Shelby. She’s upset, but when she finds out Cole’s sick, she’ll understand.” Kaitlyn opened more food. “Go, now.”

I listened on the other side of the door.

“Cole. Cole. Wake up. Cole. I know you aren’t going to like this, but you have to eat it in this form,” she said.

Yeah, who would like it in that form? It’d have to be fully cooked for me to touch it.

I shuddered and turned to find Shelby. She was probably about as pissed as I had been at Cole over the whole death threat thing.

This guy was losing it. At least he hadn’t threatened her life yet. Twice.

Shelby clutched the railing of the patio banister, nostrils flared, her knuckles bone white. She stared at something in the distance.

“He didn’t mean it.” My voice was solemn. I couldn’t believe I could stand up for him after the treatment I’d received the last few days.

“I’ve been called worse than what he was about to say. That’s not what I’m mad about.” Shelby’s voice quivered. “He’s not telling you the whole story. And I can’t either. I think we can earn your trust, but it’s almost impossible to get him to trust. We need you both on board, but we can’t get him to do what we know will make your lives what they are supposed to be. I have to go help feed his stubborn ass before he starves to death. We’ll talk later.”

“Okay.”

Shelby left me standing in the shaded veranda to stare at the rose maze beyond the large fountain sprays.

I couldn’t let them tend to Cole alone. It was my duty to be beside him. As owner of this house, if for no other reason. If his outbursts had been due to some sort of multi-faceted chemical imbalance, then—Oh, God. I was my mother. I had justified the very unjust treatment I’d received from a man I cared about. But I was sure Cole was nothing like my father. I just didn’t know how or why.

* * * *

Cole was no longer unconscious on the floor, but on the sofa with his forehead in his palms.

I rapped lightly on the door before opening it.

The girls sighed and shook their heads no at me.

“Are things better now?”

Cole visibly stiffened when I spoke but didn’t look up.

Kaitlyn nodded.

“Nothing some iron pills won’t cure.” Shelby gathered empty meat wrappers and peanut butter tubs.

Had the hamburger meat not been enough? There had to have been at least five pounds of it.

Neither of the girls met my gaze.

Looking even more gaunt and deathly, Cole shuddered, boring a hole in the carpet with a glare. “I haven’t been completely honest with you, nor can I now. But it would be stupid of you to fall in love with me. This illness will only get worse, and eventually, it will kill me. I have no plans of returning any of your affections. Like I said, forget me.”

“I’ll be in my room.” With the sensation of a ten-inch knife sticking out of my chest, I left them. I couldn’t process his words. I couldn’t hear anymore. I couldn’t care anymore.

He should have told me in the beginning and saved me from this pain.

* * * *

The next morning, the thought of breakfast made me sick. Everything made me sick, come to think of it. I was unusually weak.

I wanted nothing to do with any of the people at the house. I just wanted my duty done, my mother saved from a life of hard labor, and to never have to think about Cole again.