Darker Days

Wow. Way to be stealthy. I seriously needed to work on that. “Why?”

He didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice came barely above a whisper. “I’m not sure. I suppose I was worried. About you.”

A few more minutes passed. All I could hear was the soft sound of Lukas’ heart beating in my ear. With the window open, the cool night breeze blew through the room, chilling the air. His arms, wrapped tight around me, were almost electrifying in contrast. I snuggled closer and breathed in deep. He still smelled like the forest—which should have bothered me after what happened—but there was something else. Something comforting. Something all Lukas.

“Tell me something.” I felt comfortable—safe—and somehow that felt wrong. Too intimate. It went well beyond liking his voice and taking comfort in his presence, and that scared me. “About you. Tell me something no one else knew. A secret.”

“Painting,” he answered almost instantly.

I shifted around so I could see him. With his head tilted down, his bangs had fallen across his eyes so that the only part of his face I could see was from the nose down. He was smiling. Not a passing grin or a two-second smirk, but a genuine smile.

It was amazing. It lit up the dark and made the butterflies in my stomach dance in crazy circles.

“Painting?”

“It’s all I ever wanted to do. Paint.”

“That’s a secret?”

He nodded, smile fading. “It was. I never told anyone.”

“Why would you keep that a secret?”

“Where I’m from, a man is expected to follow his father—not pursue unrealistic dreams.”

“What did you paint?”

“Anything. People were my passion, though.”

“Why people?”

“Because there’s so much to see. When you paint someone, you have to look at them. Really look at them. You can see it all—everything they keep hidden. It’s all in the eyes. Truly a window to the soul.” He sighed. “It was my peace. My calm. It kept me grounded when all else was in upheaval.”

“It sounds nice.”

“Your turn. Tell me something about you.”

“There’s nothing secret about me.” I gave him a small smile and swiped a hand across my damp eyes, suddenly embarrassed. “I’m an open book.”

“Surely there’s something. Do you like helping your mother at the agency? Don’t you ever get scared?”

Not until today. “I was raised around this stuff. It’s second nature to me. I guess my big confession is that normal people scare me.”

“Normal people? Why would normal people scare you?”

“Things aren’t the same as your time. Read the paper—watch the news. Demons and all the other nasty things that go bump in the shadows—they have an excuse most of the time. It’s their nature. People, though? They’re horrible because they choose to be. Humans are more dangerous than any Otherworlder I’ve ever come in contact with.”

“Working with your mother, you must see human atrocities.”

“I guess—they just never happen to me. It doesn’t seem real. It’s a pretty messed up world where a girl can take down a high ranking demon but—”

“What happened with your friend wasn’t—”

“I know…” It was the truth. Garrett would never have done anything to hurt me if he’d been thinking straight. He just wasn’t that kind of guy. But even knowing that, I wasn’t sure I could ever look at him—or people in general—the same way again.

Lukas was right. I’d seen plenty in the years I’d been helping Mom. But it was different. Detached. People were bad—but I was never the target of that bad. I’d never been made to feel like a victim. It scared me because, really, Garrett was my lifeline to normal. Not Garrett specifically, but school. I meant it when I told Mom I had no interest in living a normal life, but I did like to visit on occasion. But now, every time I closed my eyes, I saw him hovering above me. I felt the weight of his body pinning me down. Pressing the air from my lungs…

“I believe the effects on Garrett were heightened because he has feelings for you.”

An insane giggle slipped past my lips despite my best efforts to keep it in. “That’s hysterical! Garrett doesn’t have a thing for me.”

Lukas shook his head. “That is one thing about women I see has not changed. You are all so oblivious…”

“Quite the comedian when ya wanna be, eh?”

He chuckled, then took a deep breath. Face serious, he said, “I have a confession as well.”

For some reason my heart sped up. His arms still around me, we were face to face—inches apart. “Oh?”

“The day I asked for your help, that first day in the office—it wasn’t about securing my freedom from the box. It was about revenge.”

“Against the witch?”

“Yes.”

“But Meredith Wells is long dead.”

“It was Meredith’s bloodline that kept me there—trapped. The Wells bloodline. When the box was opened, all I could think about was destroying her descendants.”

“But if you destroyed the descendants, you’d never be free.”

“It didn’t matter. I was consumed by anger and hate. I’d been betrayed by the same line three times.”

“It’s understandable that you’d want revenge.”

He nodded. “Jessie, that’s only half my confession.”

“There’s more?”

“There is. As I said, it was about revenge in the beginning. I didn’t care about what happened after I destroyed Meredith’s line.”

“And now?”

He tilted his head to the right. The curtain of hair parted and the moonlight glittered off the light in his liquid brown eyes. “I don’t want to go back. I’m willing to let my revenge go—as long as I can stay.”

“Well, this is an awesome time to live—”

He reached out and cupped the side of my face. “You.” He leaned closer—our lips were almost touching now, but he didn’t push forward. “I want to stay because of you. I’ve never come across someone like you. Your strength and determination is astounding. It’s odd because you’re so incredibly infuriating—”

“Kids our age don’t say things like incredibly infuriating—just so you know.”

“Shh.” He placed his index finger across my lips. “My entire life, all I wanted was to find something different. Special. I never would have guessed I’d have to sleep for so long to find it.”

He paused, face so close to mine. A lot of girls would have pulled away. Maybe I should have, considering what had almost happened earlier, but being there with Lukas, in his arms, made me feel safer than I had in a long time. His nearness wasn’t uncomfortable like it had been with Garrett. In fact, it was just the opposite. It made me feel ten feet tall and nearly bullet proof. If this was anything like the feeling Mom got around Dad, then I understood everything.

And then he kissed me. At first, I didn’t know what to do. His lips moved over mine, soft, warm, and tasting faintly of the ketchup he’d slathered his french fries in at dinner. Arms tightening around my waist, he urged me closer, teasing my lips apart with his tongue.

I mimicked his movements, terrified I was doing it wrong. But he didn’t complain. Instead, a small noise of contentment sounded low in his throat. The sound tickled my stomach and sent a chill racing up my spine. Seconds later, that single chill exploded into fireworks. Grand finale on the Fourth of July fireworks.

Falling. It was like falling. Wind in your hair, freefalling into perfection plus. In that moment, I