Sacred (31 page)

With a gentle unknown woe

Will you think of me, and love me

As you did once, long ago?

The gloaming, that peculiar time just after the sun has set, before it is yet dark—neither day nor night, life nor death, waking nor sleeping.

Will had come to me in the gloaming. If there were faeries, this is when they would appear. If there was magic in the world, this is when it would happen.

“You came,” I had said to him.

“You called me,” he had answered.

I struggled to remember, to cast my line back into the storm.

Yes—I had called to him—
Will, Will, Will
, my need for him as steady as my heartbeat. But he could not possibly have heard me all the way from his house, even if I’d shouted his name—and I felt fairly certain that I hadn’t even spoken his name aloud, though my heart had pounded it fiercely.

And I remembered what he had told me—he was pulled, always, toward the scenes of violent crimes that have yet to be committed. No crime had occurred on the trail; Traveler was no criminal. It had been an accident—foolishness on my part, but an accident all the same.

Even more, he hadn’t gotten there in time to prevent my falling. He had arrived much later, after I’d lain for some time in the mud and the rain.

But I had called for him … and he had answered.

I sat huddled against the window of the helicopter. My father sat in front, next to the pilot. My mother, next to me, saw me shiver. “Are you cold, Scarlett?” Her face was creased with worry. “Maybe you should have stayed at the hospital one more day. The nurses were concerned about you getting sick, after spending all that time in the rain.”

“No, it’s not that,” I murmured. “I’m not sick. Tired, I guess.” I gave her a half smile.

She pulled her scarf off of her neck and wrapped it around mine. “Just for good measure,” she said.

The island grew larger and larger as we approached it. Will was down there, somewhere, on that little speck of green and brown. I felt him out there, and I knew without a doubt that he was thinking my name.

My arms longed to twine around his neck; my mouth yearned to tip up for his kiss.

Will
, I thought,
I’m coming
.

EIGHTEEN

M
y mother seemed determined to make up for lost time now that I was home. She wouldn’t let me get out of bed the first couple of days—“Doctor’s orders,” she said—but she had Dad move the TV and DVD player to my room from hers and kept me supplied with a stack of brainless comedies.

I guess she and Dad didn’t need the TV to keep them busy at night anymore; I heard them talking softly in the evenings, and I heard them crying together, but I also heard their laughter, and once a passion-filled moan that totally embarrassed me. I rushed to turn up the volume on the TV.

It wasn’t like everything was magically better thanks to my accident. Twice, when Mom set my tray on my lap at mealtime, I noticed her hands shaking badly—withdrawal from all the pills she’d been downing, I guessed. And though her face looked more animated and present, sometimes her gaze would drift out the window or toward the wall as she
sat with me in my bedroom, and I knew where her thoughts had gone.

Not everything was great about having Mom back on task either. She told all my friends that they couldn’t visit until Friday, and though I heard Lily arguing her case loudly over the phone, Mom wasn’t budging.

But on my second day home, three full days before Mom would officially lift the prohibition on visitors, I heard the doorbell ring downstairs. It was Will—I was certain of it.

I strained my ears to hear what my mother was saying, and after a while, I heard the door swing shut and footsteps climbing the stairs.

Two sets of steps—Mom said outside my door, “Just let me see if she’s awake before you go in.”

And Will—“Sure, Mrs. Wenderoth. Thanks.”

He was here! I straightened myself on the bed, pushing a pillow behind my back and trying to arrange my hair. Mom slipped into my room and smiled when she saw the state I was in.

“I guess you’re up,” she said. “There’s someone here who wants to see you. Refusing to let him in proved more difficult than putting off Lily.”

“Let him in!” I said in my best stage whisper. Then, “Wait! Can you get my brush for me first?”

Mom found my hairbrush on my bureau and sat beside me on the bed. She ran the bristles down the length of my hair, smoothing it with her hands as she went.

“You seem excited,” she said.

I rolled my eyes. “That’s an understatement.”

She finished brushing my hair and scooted around so she could see my face. Her fingers tucked my hair behind my ears. “He seems like a nice boy?” Her voice was searching, full of unasked questions.

I could tell she was being careful with me. She didn’t know how much to press me, how much it was fair to expect me to reveal. Before Ronny Died, I had told my mother everything—or nearly everything, anyway.

But I could tell from the cautious look in her eyes that she saw the changes in me. Could she see the dark places I had gone? Could she see that I was back now, but changed, forever changed?

She could. She had gone places too, alone in her room, places I couldn’t know. No man is an island, that’s the expression, but it’s not entirely true. Each of us
is
an island, though we can build bridges between us, if we want, if we know how.

“We’d better not keep the young man waiting,” she said at last, though it seemed that there were other things she would have liked to have said. And she stood, the place where she had sat on my bed indented from the weight of her.

She opened the bedroom door, and there was Will. I smiled at him, grinning stupidly, so overwhelmingly glad to see him there, in my bedroom.

“I’ll just be in the kitchen if you need me,” Mom said, and though she pulled the door behind her, she didn’t close it entirely.

“Scarlett,” said Will, and I saw now that he’d been holding himself together for my mother’s benefit. He strode
across my room in three steps and fell to his knees at the side of my bed. “Oh, Scarlett,” he said, and his fingers wound through mine, and his lips were hot against the backs of my hands, and then he was on the bed with me, pulling me against his chest.

His green eyes gazed into my face, looking at the white bandage at my temple. His face was haggard: bruiselike crescents darkened his face under his eyes, and his hair, always untidy, looked positively disheveled.

I traced the line of his jaw with my hand, and I couldn’t stop my fingers from brushing against the softness of his lips. My own lips parted, and my need for his touch was too great to disguise; he could read it in my eyes, on my face, and I saw it mirrored back at me in his expression.

His first kiss was so gentle, as if he was afraid I might break in his arms. His lips and breath, warm and feather-soft, were so tender that tears welled in my eyes. His hands, cupping my face, just barely touched my skin as his mouth reverently explored mine.

I wanted him to never stop kissing me. I wanted to taste more of him, feel more of him. The room spun around me, but it was his touch that was disorienting me, not my concussion. I clung to him, the soft curls at the nape of his neck brushing against my wrists, and my hands wanted only to grab him more tightly, my kiss wanted only to open to him more fully.

I heard my mother clanging pots in the kitchen, but as if from a great distance. Out in the yard, my father was running the lawnmower, but its growl seemed muted as well.
The sound of our breaths tangled together filled my head; the taste of his kiss intoxicated me.

But too soon Will shifted his weight away from me, and he unwound my arms from his neck, though he held my hands in his lap.

“Scarlett,” he said. Nothing more—just that, my name.

I hadn’t had nearly enough of him. My quickened pulse emboldened me, and I leaned across to kiss him again, not gently as he had kissed me, but full of my desire for him, and as he kissed me back, he abandoned his sense of propriety—at last. The weight of him pressed me down against my mattress, and my chest flattened underneath him, and I groaned as he kissed me again, this time with the intensity I yearned for so badly.

I was dressed for my bed rest in a tank top and yoga pants, and as I felt the press of Will atop me, the thin fabric of my clothes and his jeans and sweater still seemed a frustrating barrier between us.

One of Will’s hands found its way into the hair at the back of my neck and his other wandered down my bare arm, resting on my hip, squeezing me roughly before his thumb found the exposed half-inch gap of bare skin between the bottom of my tank and the top of my pants and traced a line there, brand-hot and not nearly enough.

He made a sound then too, a rough groan into my mouth as his kiss deepened. On fire now, I pulled at his sweater and found the broad, warm plane of his back. I pressed him even harder against me, wanting every inch of our bodies to touch.

“Your parents,” he murmured.

As if on cue, my mother loudly dropped a pan and called, “Oops!”

I couldn’t bring myself to care. I had Will again in my arms, and as far as I was concerned, my parents, my teachers, the entire junior class could line up to watch us kiss. I didn’t think I’d even notice.

But when my mother called from just down the hall, “You kids need anything? It’s awfully quiet in there,” Will pulled away.

Mom picked a fine time to rejoin the living
, I thought as I struggled to sit back up. “We’re fine, Mom,” I called, though my voice betrayed me.

Will had shifted from the bed to the rocking chair, though at least he’d scooted it close to me. I could still reach him, and our hands interlaced.

It took us a minute to calm our breathing and rearrange our faces into something resembling normalcy, but when my mother popped her head through the doorway minutes later, we looked tame enough—though I could tell from the glint in Will’s eyes that he was still as inflamed by our kisses as I was.

“You kids want a soda?”

“No thanks,” I said at the same moment that Will answered, “Yes, please.” We laughed awkwardly while my mom’s gaze traveled from Will to me and back again.

“Okay, I’ll bring you something.” She chose Will’s response, probably because it would give her another opportunity to check in on us. This time, when she went to the kitchen, she left the door open behind her.

“I think your mother suspects something,” Will said, full of mischief. “She doesn’t seem as trusting as your father.”

“Yeah, Mom remembers being a teenage girl, I guess. She must know what I’m thinking.”

“And what exactly
are
you thinking, Scarlett?”

I was thinking so many things—mostly about kissing Will again—but I knew my mother would return in moments, so I picked a safer topic of discussion. “I’m thinking how glad I am that you’re here,” I confessed.

Will’s face grew serious. “Me too,” he said.

“But why
are
you here?” I blurted out. “I mean, didn’t you break up with me?”

Will opened his mouth to respond, his face full of emotion, but then my mother came back in with a tray of sodas and chips.

“Here we go,” she sang, and she angled the tray conveniently between us.

“Thanks, Mrs. Wenderoth.”

I had to hand it to him—Will’s manners were impeccable.

And then we were alone again. Ignoring the snacks, Will turned to my question. “I didn’t want to break up with you, Scarlett. I just didn’t want to end up hurting you.”

The idiocy of this concept caused me to bark a harsh laugh. “So you hurt me to avoid hurting me?”

“Something like that. Let me explain. Scarlett, my trip back east over winter break … I learned some things.”

A shiver passed through me, like a cold draft. My eyes darted over to the window, but it was closed; the curtain panels hung still on either side of it.

“Tell me,” I said.

“On the flight back east, I was telling my father about us … about how I feel about you.”

He didn’t seem embarrassed that he’d confided in his father, though it did make me feel a little strange to imagine Will and Martin talking about me.

Will continued, “Scarlett, my dad knows lots of things. Things I’m still learning. And there are things from my past that he’s kept from me. He didn’t think it would do me any good to know them until I told him about the connection I feel when I’m with you, like electricity—”

“You feel it too?” I interrupted.

He nodded. “It’s as strong as the fishhook feeling, only in a good way. A way that distracts me from everything else. Since coming to the island, Scarlett, I’ve felt pulled closer and closer to you … like you’re the earth, and I’m the moon caught in your orbit. I can’t pull away. I don’t
want
to pull away.”