Shelter (6 page)

Why was he pushing me away? Had I done something wrong? I just couldn’t understand it. But I knew I couldn’t leave him.

I awoke with a start. Kai was standing over me. Apparently, I had fallen asleep outside the shed. The ground was cold and damp underneath me, and I was shivering. Kai looked at me like I was a maniac or something.

I stared up at him weakly, pulling myself to a sitting position. He must have thought I was some kind of stalker or something – lying there on the ground in the dark. After a moment, he sat down on the ground beside me. He sighed long and hard, and he hung his head.

“I’m sorry, Alice,” he said sincerely.

“No,” I said. “I’m sorry. You asked to be left alone, but I just couldn’t go. I should have respected your wishes.”

He looked startled.

“Why did you stay?” he asked gently.

“I… I don’t know,” I stammered. “I was worried about you, and I just couldn’t leave until I knew you were okay.”

“Why?” he wanted to know.

“Why what?” I inquired.

“Why were you worried about me?” he asked.

“What kind of a question is that?” I demanded.

“You just met me a few hours ago,” he explained. “Why would you care enough about some worthless idiot you just met to sleep on the cold, hard ground like this?”

I wondered just how long I’d been asleep, but it wasn’t yet daybreak, so it couldn’t have been more than three or four hours.

“Worthless idiot?” I gasped. “What makes you say a thing like that?”

“It’s the truth,” he stated, fiddling with a blade of grass.

“No!” I gushed. “No! It’s not the truth!”

“How do you know?” he asked, still starting intently at his blade of grass.

“Kai, look at me,” I urged. He shook his head, his gaze still transfixed on the grass. “Please,” I pleaded with him.

Slowly, he turned his head to look at me. I caught his beautiful blue eyes and I looked deep within them. I reached over with my right hand and placed it on his arm.

“Kai, you are so incredible, I can’t even describe it,” I blurted out. I didn’t know if I should be gushing like some silly schoolgirl to a guy I’d only just met, but I couldn’t stop myself. “When I’m with you, I feel whole – alive,” I told him. “I know we just met, but you’ve made me feel things I never thought I could. You’ve shown me things I would never have seen without you – glorious things. The sea in the moonlight, the joy of playing the piano for someone besides myself, what it’s like to be kissed...”

I stopped and turned my eyes downward. Perhaps I’d said too much. I really didn’t know if I should be telling him he was my first kiss. Honestly, that was embarrassing.

“
I
was your first kiss?” he asked very quietly – almost in a whisper.

I nodded, looking down at the ground. My hand still lingered on his arm, and suddenly he took it and placed it over his heart, then rested his hand over mine. I could feel it pounding deep inside his chest. My own heart was pounding just as hard and just as fast. I felt like it was going to leap from my chest.

“You were mine, too,” he confessed.

“Really?” I asked.

I found it difficult to believe that such an incredibly beautiful human would never have been kissed, especially at nineteen, but then again, Kai didn’t seem like an ordinary human. Not in any way.

He nodded.

I was overwhelmed. I put my arms around his neck and held him close. I noticed him burying his head in my hair and breathing in deeply as he squeeze me tightly within his strong arms.

“I’m sorry I told you to go away,” he told me. “I didn’t mean it.”

He had begun to cry. I took his face in my hands and pulled his gaze up to meet mine. I looked deep into his eyes – those piercing blue eyes that were now hazy behind a veil of tears – and I spoke.

“I understand,” I told him honestly.

After what I’d witnessed, I realized why he was such a loner. He felt worthless and unlovable. He didn’t want to get hurt, and he was afraid to get too close to me. The kiss had scared him – either because he was afraid I would leave him, or perhaps because he felt unworthy of being loved.

“Oh, Kai,” I whispered. I wiped his tears away with my thumbs, still cradling his face in my hands.

He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me toward him. He hesitated, his lips so close to mine I could feel his ragged breath on my face. It seemed as if he thought me too delicate to touch. Feeling his warm breath against my face, I desperately wanted to kiss him again. Sensing his hesitation, I twisted my fingers into his hair and pushed his head toward mine. Our lips met in an electrifying kiss that sent shockwaves of pleasure through my body. My lips parted, and he pressed his tongue into my mouth. I moaned gently, and he began to kiss me more fervently.

His lips moved away from mine, and I soon felt them against the skin of my neck. He pushed my hair back and pressed his lips against me. The sensation of his hot breath on my skin sent chills up my spine, and I wanted to feel his skin against mine. I tore at his shirt like a wild animal, desperate to rip it from his body so I could feel him.

I pulled his shirt over his head, and we both froze. We had been caught up in the heat of the moment, and I guess he had forgotten what it was like underneath his shirt. I was aghast at what I saw. Scars covered his torso on every side. Some were long like slash marks, and others were small and round. There must have been dozens of them.

I reached out to touch one gently, and he jerked away. He yanked his shirt away from me and held it in front of him – shielding his body from my eyes as much as he could. He started to back away from me, and then he stood up and quickly disappeared inside the shed.

What had I done, now? It seemed like I couldn’t stop making these stupid mistakes and chasing him away. The last thing I wanted to do was cause him more pain. I stood up and tapped gently against the door. I was met with silence.

“Kai, please,” I begged. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

He was still completely silent. It was unbearable.

“Kai, let me in,” I pleaded with him, pounding my fist on the door. “
Please
,
please
let me in.”

He still didn’t make a sound. I turned the doorknob slowly, cautiously, and the door opened. I pulled it gently, and I peeked very carefully into the shed.

“Kai?” I called quietly.

I heard a faint whimper, and I turned toward it. Kai sat huddled in the back corner of the shed, curled into ball with his arms around his knees. He was rocking and crying, and I could tell he was shaking. He hadn’t put his shirt back on, but he had it pulled over him in the front.

My heart was breaking. Seeing him like this was the most painful thing I’d ever imagined. I walked over to him and knelt in front of him, but I hesitated before I touched him. I didn’t want to touch him if he wanted to be left alone, but I couldn’t stand seeing him like that.

I placed my hand very gently on his arm. He jumped, but he did not try to push me away. I placed both of my hands on his arms just above the elbow, and I felt him relax ever so slightly. I very slowly moved my hands up his biceps toward his shoulders, and then back behind his neck. He bent forward to rest his head on my shoulder as I put my arms around him. I noticed a long scar on his shoulder, and I kissed it gingerly. He did not push me away. I placed my cheek against the scar and wished with all my heart I could take it away.

“I’m sorry,” he whimpered.

“Please don’t apologize,” I begged him. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I never should have gotten you involved in any of this,” he told me. “You don’t deserve this.”

“Don’t deserve what?” I gasped.

“This!” he hissed. “All of this! I’m a mess. I’m worthless and pathetic, and you’re better off without me around. You’ll just leave me like everyone else does. Besides, you deserve better.”

“No!” I said flatly. “You are
not
worthless, and I am
not
going anywhere!”

“Everyone does,” he said. “My mother, my father, my grandparents. Everyone leaves me.”

“Did your mother do this to you?” I asked gravely.

His jaw clenched, but he said nothing. It was all the answer I needed.

One thing I knew for certain was that I had no intention of leaving him. If you’d told me a month before that I would be falling in love with a human I’d just met who was an emotional wreck, I’d have called you crazy. I always imagined myself being with someone who was strong and protective. Now, I couldn’t see myself anywhere else. Besides, how could I leave him after seeing what his own mother had done to him?

“I will not leave you,” I said firmly. “I promise.”

“Swear it,” he said, looking into my eyes with complete seriousness.

“I swear it with everything I am,” I vowed.

He swept me into his arms and we held each other close. I laid my head against his strong shoulder, and I could feel the deep scar against my cheek. Again, I wished I could take away all of his pain.

Looking back, I can see how unusual it was – that I felt myself falling in love with someone so quickly. I never even thought I’d fall in love at all, much less with a human. But the emotion was intense. It was so intense it was indescribable.

Our tender moment was interrupted by Kai’s phone. His ringtone was “Moonlight Sonata.” I hadn’t heard it before, and it was startling.

“That’s weird,” he said. “Who would be calling me at this hour?”

He answered the phone, and then he looked at me. He pushed the phone toward me, looking a little befuddled. I took the phone and answered.

“Hello?” I asked.

“Alice, it’s Will,” said my brother. “It’s almost five in the morning. and you have school tomorrow. Should I come pick you up so you can get ready?”

“Oh, shit,” I said. “I completely forgot about school. How’d you get this number?”

“Caller ID,” Will replied. “You called me from this number.”

“I’ll take you home,” offered Kai.

“You don’t mind?” I asked.

“Not at all,” he assured me.

“Okay, thanks,” I said. “Will, my friend is going to bring me home.”

“Oh, okay,” Will agreed.

“See you soon,” I told my brother. “Bye.”

I handed Kai his phone, and my heart sank. I didn’t want to leave him this way. I had no idea when his mother would be coming home or what would happen when she did. I was worried. I’d almost forgotten about his hand, and I took it in mine and looked at it.

It was red, and the injury was obvious, but it didn’t look nearly as bad as it had a few hours earlier. It looked like it had happened weeks ago. I looked up at him.

“Your hand,” I said. “It looks a lot better.”

Kai quickly became self-conscious and pulled his hand away.

“It wasn’t that bad in the first place.”

“Yes, it was,” I said. “It looked horrible last night.”

“It was dark,” he explained. “Maybe it just looked worse than it was.”

That was a plausible explanation. Or, it would have been if I didn’t have such excellent night vision. I didn’t buy it. I’d seen how truly horrible it looked, and it was terrifying. It still looked bad, but I thought humans took a lot longer to heal than vampires.

“I’d better get you home,” he said quickly.

I was sitting in homeroom a few hours later when a new guy walked in. He had dark, brooding eyes, and dark, chin length, feathered hair that framed his chiseled face. His bulk rippled under his tight t-shirt. He was stunning. Too stunning for a random high school in Savannah, Georgia. He belonged on the cover of a magazine. My jaw went slack.

For one fleeting moment, it seemed as though the world had slowed down. Maybe it did. Time almost stopped. In slow motion, just like in a movie, he strode across the classroom. His walk was jaunty and masculine.

He placed a stack of books on an empty desk near the front of the room and shrugged off his backpack, hanging it over the back of his desk. For one magical moment, his dark eyes turned my way, and the corner of his mouth turned up in faint lopsided grin. I turned my eyes down toward my hands. He was too beautiful to look at. He wasn’t real.

“Wow,” I heard Amanda whisper to another girl. “Who is
that
?”

“He’s new,” the other girl said. “I heard he and his family just moved here from California or something. He just enrolled this morning.”

“He’s hot!” Amanda said, and the two giggled.

When roll was called, I heard his name – Maksim Augustine. I thought that was an unusual name.

After homeroom, I was walking down the hallway and Amanda and Ashley were standing by the lockers whispering and giggling. They both eyed me as I walked by, and I felt distinctly uncomfortable.

“Slut,” I thought I heard one of them say, but I kept walking.