Phantoms of Fall (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 2) (37 page)

“How did you figure it out? I wanted to tell you, but I
thought telling you would change things—or worse yet, put
you in danger.” I stroked the cast on his arm. It made me sad
to know that it was my fault that he got hurt.

“I knew it a split second before I fell. Those weren’t
ordinary hands shoving against my back.
There was just
pressure and
then an icy
sensation cut through me.
I
remembered how Rachel described the
attack during
the
séance and I knew I was experiencing the same thing.”

I hid my face in my hands as I started to cry. “I’m so
sorry I left you there at the bottom of the steps when you
needed me the most! It’s just…she did it to get
my
attention! I
thought maybe if I put some distance between us, she would
leave you alone.” All of the pain came flooding out of me. “It
hurt so much to know that you got hurt because of me!”

Zach pulled my hands away from my face and leaned
down so we were eye to eye. “And you got hurt because of
me—I reached levels of guilt that I didn’t even know were
possible. I know what I did that day was wrong and I’m in an
anger management group now to deal with my issues. I want
to work to put this all behind us, Ruby. I want to wake up
every morning knowing that you’re still mine.”

“But as long as we’re together, you’re in danger! I’m
nothing but poison, Zach!”

 

“If you’re poison, I’ll gladly drink it. Pour me a big
glass right now!” he said with Shakespearean flair.

 

“This isn’t a joke, Zach! You got lucky this time but
what about the next time? You could die!”

 

He held both of my hands in his and looked into my
eyes. “I would take a bullet for you, Ruby.”

“Don’t say that!” I ripped my hands from his grasp
and
turned my back on him.
The thought of him
dying
because of me was unbearable.

He walked around to meet me and took my face in his
hands.
He lifted my chin and placed his forehead against
mine.

“I would take a bullet for you,” he
said slowly,
enunciating each syllable clearly. “Living without you isn’t
really living anymore.”

Then he kissed me. He moved slowly at first, his lips
trembling as much as mine. His kisses were familiar to me
but there was something different about this one.
This one
felt eternal, unbreakable.

The kiss took me to a deeper level of emotion than I
had ever been to before.
I wanted to fall into him until we
were one being, one heart beating forever. I wanted him to
lay me down in the leaves and take my virginity right there.
But unlike those other nights, I didn’t want it because of
raging hormones or just to prove a point to Misty. I wanted it
because I wanted him to touch my soul, to know every part of
me the way I wanted to know every last piece of him.

But reaching dizzying heights
also meant crashing
back down to earth.
He was dating someone else now. Yeah,
Chloe was cold and calculating when she befriended me just
to get her claws into my man but I was kissing someone else’s
boyfriend just the same.
And that made me
no better
than…Misty.

“Stop!” I said pushing him away, “We shouldn’t be
here together like this! You have a new girlfriend now!” My
own words seared into me with such heat that they should
have sealed my wounds shut. But they didn’t. They just cut
deeper into territory I was afraid to explore. The thought of
him touching, kissing someone else—I couldn’t think about it
without wanting to die. The fabric of my cape swirled around
me as I spun on my heel and started to run.

“No, Ruby, you don’t understand! Chloe and I are just
friends! Let me explain!” Zach called out to me.

It sure didn’t look like they were just friends. I was
almost back to the safety of Rosewood where I could hide my
sorrow in peace when Chloe came strolling out the front door.
I sank down onto the cold stone edge of the fountain and I lost
it. I mean,
really
lost it. There she was—the Other Woman—
the lying, backstabbing Other Woman. Things were about to
get ugly. What would she do? Yell at me?
Start a fight? Run
away crying? She did none of the above. Instead, Chloe did
the unthinkable. She sat down next to me and put her arm
around me.

The audacity!
The sheer nerve!
comfort
your ex-friend
after stealing
her

To sit there and
boyfriend!
If
I
wasn’t crying so hard that my vision was blurred, I would
have popped her one right in the mouth.

Zach sat down on my other side and put his arm
around my waist. I wanted to fall into him and let him take
the pain away. But how could I when his girlfriend was sitting
right there?
If there were ever a time when I wished for a
trap door to magically appear at my feet, it was now.

“Can I tell her, Chloe?” Zach asked as he slid closer to
me.

 

“Yes, but first I want her to promise to keep my secret
for me.”

 

More secrets? I had enough secrets of my own thank
you—why would I want hers, too?

 

“Do you promise, Ruby?” He leaned in close as he said
it and gave me a light kiss on the cheek.

 

Did I want to? No. Did I have to? It sure felt like it. I
nodded my head but said nothing.

 

“Okay,” Chloe said with a sigh, “Zach and I were just
pretending to date.”

Pretending?
Why would any girl want to “just
pretend” with someone as smoking hot as Zach? Did she
really think I was going to buy that excuse?
Sure, maybe
he
pretended to like her to make me jealous or something, but
her
? Did I really look stupid enough to buy her story?

“Why?” I looked her straight in the eyes—I had to see
her face when she gave her answer.

“Because I’m into girls—not guys. My mom is superreligious and when she found out that I kissed Chelsea, this
college girl I met over the summer—well, she flipped out. She
said she would ship me off to live with my dad in Maine if I
didn’t “repent for my sins”. But I love Chelsea and we did way
more than just kiss—I didn’t want to take the chance of my
mom finding that out. So I asked Zach to help me. He’s been
my pretend boyfriend since school started. He would pick me
up, drop me off at Chelsea’s dorm room, and then drive me
home a few hours later. My mom started to get suspicious,
though, and I knew she would eventually ask my aunt to keep
an eye on us. There wasn’t anything else we could do—Zach
and I had to take the plan one step further.”

What? That couldn’t possibly be a lie—could it?
It
would definitely explain the weird way Chloe reacted when I
asked her if she was still a virgin that day in the fitting room.
But…
what
? I couldn’t even form a full sentence in my head let
alone speak out loud.

“I didn’t want to do it, Ruby, but after you and I broke
up, I needed Chloe to help me with my math homework.
I
didn’t want you to think what you ended up thinking in the
end anyway, but Chloe’s aunt works in the school cafeteria so
we had to keep up the charade even during the day. Then we
ended up on that stupid Homecoming ballot—Misty’s idea of
a joke, I imagine. We didn’t even go to the game. I tried to
send you a mental signal—you know, to let you know the
truth. I guess it didn’t work.”

Mental signal. What—did he think I was psychic now,
too?
The absurdity of that comment was only compounded
by the fact that one look at his face proved that he honestly
thought it could have worked. I wanted to be mad at him. I
wanted to tell him he was a complete moron. But how could
I?
I was madly in love with him—complete moron moments
and all.

“I almost told you about Chelsea that day at The
Village, but I was afraid you of how you would react. Zach
was the only one I felt I could trust to help me. He and I have
never been anything more than just friends and I’ve never
even remotely wanted it to be more. After things started to
get out of control, I tried to explain the situation to you. But
you were so mad at me that you wouldn’t even give me a
chance to and I begged Zach not to say anything to you,
either,” Chloe said as she stood up. “You can still hate me if
you want, just please don’t tell anyone my secret, okay?”

I considered holding
grudges
to be one of my
specialties—once, when I was eight, I didn’t talk to Lee for an
entire week because he ripped the head off of my favorite
Barbie doll. I was tempted to run straight up to the ballroom,
rip the mike out of Crimson’s hand and tell the entire senior
class that Chloe was a lesbian. Sure, it would be childish but
why should I care? Why? Because it wasn’t the right thing to
do.

Loving Zach changed me.
He made me want to be a
good person. So I stood up, too, and gave her a hug.

“I won’t tell—I swear! And I’m sorry for all of the
horrible things I thought about you when I thought you stole
Zach from me!”

“Thank you. I’d like to go back to being friends with
you but I can understand if you don’t want to because of who I
am….”

Not be friends with her because she liked girls?
I
admit it was kind of weird now that I knew, but I figured that
the weirdness would go away with time. “We could go
shopping Friday after school.…”

Chloe gave me a big smile. “Friday it is! But right
now, you two need to be alone.” She walked back into
Rosewood leaving me alone with Zach once again.

What a day. I snuck into the school then broke wildly
out of it. My favorite teacher turned out not to be a killer after
all. The party I was dreading delivered me the best dance of
my life. The girl I thought stole my boyfriend ended up being
more attracted to me than to him. Zach knew all along that
Garnet pushed him down the stairs. Nothing turned out to be
what it seemed and the night was still far from over.

“So Ruby, there’s more I want to talk to you about—do
you want to go back to the oak grove for privacy?

Now that the emotional dust had settled, the crispness
of the fall air felt more like a biting winter chill. I shivered
even under my furry cape. “Let’s go back inside.”

I led him up the stairs and at the top he automatically
turned toward the ballroom.

 

“No,” I said tugging at his arm, “let’s go to my room.”

Zach’s face became an instant palette of emotions.
Maybe there was some validity to the whole mental signal
theory after all because he sure seemed to know what I was
thinking when I invited him to the attic. I snuck up the stairs
quietly with his hand in mine thoroughly convinced that no
one saw us.

Once we were in the attic, I locked the door behind us.
Then I double checked it and triple checked it.
I certainly
didn’t need anyone walking in on us—one school scandal was
all I could handle, thank you very much.
Once my OCD was
satisfied that we were safely alone, I put my arms around him.

“We’re alone now….” Was that too big of a hint? Not
big enough?

 

The sexiest smile I’d ever seen spread across his face.
“We
are
alone.”

The door to my bedroom stood wide open, inviting us
in. “So…do you want to sit down?” I pointed to my bed even
though the futon was only a few feet from us.

“Yeah, that sounds good.” It was like that smile was
permanently etched onto his face.
I could get used to that
smile.

I ushered Coco out of the bedroom and locked that
door, too. I loved that cat almost as much as I loved Zach, but
this was definitely something I did not want her to be around
for.
Quickly, I kicked off my shoes—my feet were simply
killing
me—and sat down on the edge of the bed. When Zach
did the same, I knew we were both thinking the same thing—
for once.

“Can I ask you something, well, personal?” he said as
he took my hand.

“Sure.” I feigned confidence but I was dying inside.
He wasn’t going to ask me if I had my period was he? I would
simply die if the word “tampon” was uttered in the next sixty
seconds.

“So, I’ve noticed that you’ve lost some weight.” He
fidgeted nervously on the bed beside me. “You aren’t sick, are
you?”

“No, it’s a bad side effect of my current haunting. I’ve
been to the doctor and they say nothing’s wrong. I think
Garnet was sick and I’m feeling what she felt—that’s how
phantoms work according to Rita.” Was it weird that talking
about phantoms was no big deal to me but tampons were
taboo? Yes, yes it
was
weird. Weird was kinda my specialty.

“So you’re not,” he paused, “starving yourself on
purpose or anything?"

“No—definitely not! I’ll be so happy when this
haunting is over—my first order of business will be hitting a
buffet!”

“Whew, I feel so much better now—I was worried
about you.
Well, I still
am
but at least I know why it’s
happening. I’ll do anything I can to help you with this ghost
so we can get you back to normal.”

Add one more thing to the list of reasons why Zach
was perfect. He actually wanted me to gain the weight
back
. I
always heard that boys didn’t care half as much about that
kind of stuff as we thought they did, but I didn’t believe it until
now.

“I’ll tell you all about the haunting tomorrow.” I took a
deep breath and just said what was on my mind. “Talking
about Garnet isn’t what I had in mind for tonight.”

“Me neither, but there are three things I have to do
first—starting with this.” He pulled the blond wig off of my
head and tossed it into the corner. “That’s better. I want this
moment to be with you, not with the Viking princess.”