He cussed low again.
It wasn’t like hiding it from them would do him any good. Darius was out of time to do anything other than floor it to the library. Plus, he couldn’t just drop them off on the side of the road. Not only had he promised to watch out for the two, it just wasn’t good policy to ditch the sheriff’s son and one of their star deputy’s daughters on the side of the road.
Though, for a moment, Darius did entertain the idea.
He would have preferred not to have an audience for what he couldn’t believe he was entertaining.
“We’re going to the wedding,” he finally caved.
“Oh, so the bride just invited you,” Theo guessed.
Darius tilted his head a little, trying to figure out exactly how to say what he needed to—and exactly what it was that he himself intended to do.
Without wanting to, he recalled the distinct smell of blood. So strong he had to fight the urge to touch the scar on his back.
He wasn’t in that room anymore.
He wasn’t that kid anymore.
There was no blade, no blood and no terror gripping his chest so tight he could barely breathe.
There was no girl with her arms around him, bleeding too, but not at all scared.
Yet, even though he wasn’t thirteen anymore, there was the smell of blood filling his nose.
But, then, there was also bubble gum.
Faint but still a memory that had endured over the years.
The anger in Darius, the frustration and confusion, the feeling he couldn’t quite define, floated away.
He took a deep breath.
Then he let it out.
“We’re not going to watch the wedding,” he told his passengers. “We’re going to stop it.”
Chapter Four
If Eve were being honest with herself, she hadn’t spent much time in her youth imagining her future wedding, and the few bouts of fancy she had given herself as a kid had only ever gone one way.
Something small in the backyard, daisies and a sunflower or two around an arch her dad built, and some of those nice folding white chairs she had seen at Mrs. Dunphy’s garage sale pushed in between her old refrigerator and the electoral box in the wall, sitting pretty on the lawn. There wouldn’t be a lot of people there—of her own family, all she needed was her dad anyways—but there would be enough that they would have to buy a party platter from the home-cooking restaurant on Main for the reception.
Eve would wear some pretty white dress that poofed at the bottom and maybe put her hair up some nice-looking way. She’d paint her nails blue to match her groom’s tie.
The groom, of course, would be the boy next door.
A little nervous but smiling wide like he did when they were watching movies or sneaking out to the Becker Farm’s creek or passing notes between their windows.
Eve would walk down the aisle toward Darius without an ounce of hesitation because their wedding was inevitable. Shehad, after all, made it very clear that he was hers for life, and wasn’t that just another way to sayhusband and wife?
Now, though, reality showed Eve something quite different.
She wasn’t strolling down the grass aisle of her backyard, arm looped around her father’s, with sunflowers and daisies and a few guests in attendance. There was no poof to her tight designer dress. Her nails weren’t painted a fun blue, and the groom certainly wasn’t Darius Williams.
The Seven Roads Library had suffered a fire in the early nineties, and while it been repaired since, the main room no longer resembled its former glory. Instead of a large room filled with shelves and books and a librarian’s desk, there was an expansive space surrounded by exposed brick, laid out in refurbished hardwoods, and a partially domed ceiling of glass.
The sunlight poured through that ceiling and made a design in shadows against a wooden arch at the end of the room. One that hadnotbeen custom-made by her dad but instead bought with Keys money.
