No Time to Cry (Nine While Nine Legacy Book 1) (37 page)

 I wanted
him to hold me, comfort me. Why was he being so cold? This was not my fault.
Why was he so far from me and sounding so full of hatred? I wanted to slug him,
slap his face. I pressed both of my hands against my chest trying to calm my
rapidly-trying-to-rip-from-my-body heart. Gideon. I just wanted Gideon. He was
standing so far from me. Not making any move to explain anything. He was just
letting this pain rip through me. He’d just been kissing me, now he just stood
there, not answering the questions.

“Does Liam
know…that I wasn’t supposed to die?” He didn’t need to answer, I could see it
on his face, Liam knew. “How long has he known?” Cold resignation took over me
.
Detach, detach, detach…

“Since the other
night at the club. I told him then. Though we suspected that first night in
Long Beach.” He finally answered.

I simply nodded.
“And the others, do they know?”

He shook his
head. “No, but they’ve all been wondering.”

“What? Wondering
what?”

“What you are.
How it got cocked up.”

“Cocked up? Is
that what you call it? I was not supposed to die. None of this was supposed to
happen? Oh my gods! That’s why he kept calling me Lissa, kept saying that name.
It should have been her not me.” I slumped to the rug in front of the fire, my
legs no longer of any use, the air gone from my lungs.

“How? How can
something like this happen?” I cried out. “And you knew. You’ve known for
weeks. And…after everything we just…after everything you just told me you still
didn’t tell me
that
part.”

“I told you
nothing of it because I didn’t know enough until moments ago from Deimari. She
had a great deal to fill me in on.”

“You already
knew that I wasn’t meant to die. I need more answers…”

“I don’t have
any.”

“What am I?”

I don’t know
what you are!” He bellowed.

Plans were
already forming in my mind. Escape route. Alternate choices.
Screw this.
Screw them all. Go. Just run.
I wasn’t supposed to be dead. I was not
Ál
faer
.
I was not
Rúnaigh
. Then what was I, to be able to
do the things I could. What would become of me? If the Comhairle could end me
for not doing a cull…would they end me because I wasn’t even supposed to be
here? How could I cull if I was not
Ál
faer
?
Go away. Get away
. “So, that’s
it? That’s why you’re being this way? Because twenty minutes ago you could
barely pull yourself from me.”

He was still
pacing, rage a thunderous cloud around him.

“You were just fine
with me when the problem was merely that I wasn’t supposed to be dead, but
throw in the new fact that I’m not
Ál
faer
and can’t be
Bháis
…and that makes me untouchable?”
It wasn’t adding up. There was something he was still keeping from me.

If whoever was
out there had not shown up…

“It’s her isn’t
it?” I breathed out, shocked. “Your dear little Roghnú is out there, isn’t she?
This is about her isn’t it? Because you were already unsure as to what I am,
you didn’t know if I was Sióg or human and that didn’t keep you from me. This
isn’t about that at all is it? It’s her…Liam said—”

“What!?” he
yelled. “What did Liam say!?”

“He told me
about her, about your feelings for her, or that he suspected…that for years…” I
was shaking my head in disbelief; I couldn’t even make my mouth form the words.

The thought of
him with her, the way we had just been. The kisses, the touches. My heart was
in shreds. “So, is that it? Oh my gods. It’s totally ninth grade all over
again. She’s the one you’ve wanted all this time, and now suddenly she’s here
and you’re shoving me away.”

 “Give me
my clothes,” I demanded. I glared at him. How could things have changed so
quickly? So fucking quickly. Liam had tried to warn me. I wanted out of here.
Away from his anger, his judgment. Everything was happening too quickly.
Everything in my head was moving too quickly and I was having the hardest time
grasping onto any of it. I needed desperately to break down and cry and I was
not going to do that here with him…or with that thing just in the other room.

Oh, how it hurt.
I wanted him, wanted it to be an hour ago. Trying to breathe was getting worse,
more difficult. My heart. My heart felt like there was nothing left where it
had been minutes ago, nothing left but pulp. I just looked at him. I gave him a
pleading look, begging him to come to me, not to let this, her, tear us apart.

He moved to his
closet, removed my things from within. I moved to him, but when he reached out
his arms to hand them to me, instead of taking them, I rushed into his arms,
crushing myself into him, laid my head against his shoulder, my hands on his
chest, before sliding my arms around his middle. Unwanted tears fell and wet
his shirt, ignoring my will.

For just a
moment he laid his head against mine and for just that moment I thought it
would all be okay, with this nightmare past. But then he backed away from me,
pushed me away. His rigidity quickly descending and replacing that flash of
tenderness. Obliterating it.

This really couldn’t
be happening. I felt ill. His eyes fell closed, not his eyelids, but that
carefully constructed barrier dropped over them. His face turned resigned. It
just made no sense. His actions didn’t fit the circumstances. His emotions
didn’t fit the situation.

“Gideon?” So,
this was it.

“We still need
to talk.”

He was ice.

“Gideon.” I
touched his face, looked in his eyes, gave it everything I had in me, tried
waking that place in me to reach out to him with that radiant power.

But he was
winter.

 “Don’t do
this. It doesn’t have to be like this.” I was shaking my head, imploring him
with my eyes. I stroked his cheeks with both of my hands, trying to get him to
meet my eyes. “I don’t know what exactly she said to change us, but please,
think back to just a while ago. How you held me, kissed me, touched me.”

He wouldn’t meet
my gaze.

“She hates me
Gideon. I saw her in Tiarnas, remember? Saw her with you. She hates me. She
wants you. She knows you love me.” There I’d said it. He did love me. His heart
beat for me. Me. Not her. I saw something flicker in his eyes, a flicker of
that look he’d had when we were kissing.

“She told you I
wasn’t supposed to die; she told you I wasn’t
Ál
faer
,
didn’t she?”

“She wasn’t the
one. It was a member of
Na Ceann Comhairle that told me about the mistake.
Deimari brought me the other news.” His tone was edging toward vicious.

“Well, someone is wrong, or lying to
you. Maybe I should not have died…I don’t care anymore Gideon.” I pulled his
face to me, met his eyes. “Are you listening to me? I don’t care if I’m not
Isabelle, as long as I can have you.”

“You can’t.” He moved away from me, out
of reach. His voice was pure arctic frost.

“Because I’m not
Ál
faer
.”

He looked away in response.

“Someone lied or is misinformed. I am
Sióg.” Uldwynah was real, he’d confirmed that. I was tattooed with a symbol
from the High Court; I could sprout fricking wings from pure energy. I was able
to dream walk and I could get to Tiarnas when I slept. We’d met in the woods,
we’d met at the pool, and we’d met on horses. My brain prickled again... “If
I’m not…how can I do all the things that I have?”

“We still need to talk, when I get
back,” He repeated.

“And you’re leaving with her?”

What had that
thing
in the other
room convinced him of? Why had he believed this lie so easily? How could he
turn from me so easily? I shook my head as I grabbed my clothes from his hand.
I strode to the door, without looking at him. I was shredded. I wiggled into my
jeans, zipped them, pulled his shirt off my body and threw it at him. It landed
at his feet. I refused to meet his eyes. I pulled my sweater around me. My
boots could wait until I was clear of his home, clear of him. I’d call a cab
when I was around the block. It was cold out, but nothing could cause more damage,
make me feel colder than I already did inside, clear to my core. And nothing
would be sufficient to warm me.

“Iliana.” No Draghail. No Milseachd. No
cute endearment now. He spoke with no emotion; no longing, no sympathy, no tenderness.
And yet it still could stop my heart, make my step falter. “I’ll be back soon.
I’ve been called away, again. Be here when I return. There will be things to
finalize.”

“Like what? Ending me?” I shook my head.
“You’re going with her. She came here for you!”

“She came here to warn me about you!” He
bellowed wrathfully. “Would you like to tell me about Collum!?” He roared.

I stumbled back, fell against the door.
My head felt like it had exploded inside…I remembered a dozen things all at
once. Bagpipes and fiddles, a blazing bonfire, many goblets of elderberry wine,
a faun, a satyr with a girl from the party, the lights, Eyvindur…no it wasn’t
Eyvindur I had found. It was Gideon on his horse. No it wasn’t Gideon. It had
been Collum. They all swirled around like a kaleidoscope, making me feel
sicker.

“Collum?” I held my head, turned to him.

“Don’t try denying it. Deimari was there
in the clearing, she saw you in the grass with him. She saw you kissing him,
touching him, your legs wrapped around him. And you stand here and tell me you
love me!?” His temper rose, his voice turned to thunder in my ears.

He picked me up by my shoulders and
pushed me against the wall, moved his face in cruelly close to mine. “Did you
like it? Were his kisses as good as mine? Did they make you as hot? Did you
fuck him in that meadow?” He growled so deep in his throat I wondered for just
a second if he was part animal. “Tell me he forced himself on you.” His voice
held the very slightest edge of beseechment.

His eyes were
darkly fierce, full of pain and hate.

Tears were
streaming down my face. Collum. I’d forgotten about Collum. How had I forgotten
that?

This was what it
was all really about.

 “I don’t
know. I honestly don’t remember…didn’t remember anything of him until you said
his name. It was such a strange night Gideon. I wasn’t prepared for all of
that, for the things I saw, for everything I felt. The air, the energy, it was
all overwhelming. I should have been better warned. It was all so different and
strange. I didn’t even remember anything beyond the bonfire until you said
something”

“Answer the
questions!” He seethed into my hair, his rage quiet and lethal. His voice was
brutal and his body was vibrating with fury.

“No.” I stroked
his face tenderly. “No. Gideon. You. I just want you.
You
awoke my
mhésen, Gideon. It was you. Not Collum. You. Please don’t do this. Make her
leave. She’s lying about all of it. I didn’t sleep with him. I didn’t. Let’s
just go back to the couch. Go back to where we were before she got here.
Please.” I begged him. I implored him. It couldn’t go this way.

“Lies and
omissions.” He pulled me from against the wall, pushed me towards the door.
“Go. Leave. And you’d better still be around when I return. Do not make me have
to look for you” He warned, his tone was death.

I touched the
pendant that was resting on my chest. He’d just put it there. It lay over my
heart, what was left of my pulverized heart.

He saw me touch
it and scowled. “Uldwynah could not have been more wrong.”

“That’s exactly
what I was thinking. Screw you Gideon.” I choked out through restrained sobs.
“Maybe if there hadn’t been all the games of cat and mouse, maybe if you’d
shown me anything, any little bit of what you did here tonight, before I went
to that party, that…whatever, that I couldn’t even  remember would not
have happened. I wouldn’t have been in those woods.” I pointed to his bed,
without looking, I couldn’t look at it. “I would have been there with you instead.”
Those last words barely made it out, the catch in my throat and heart nearly
obliterating them.