Kissing the top of her head, I pull away, and the smile fades from her face. “Why don’t you guys get some food and cleaned up and then we’ll get all caught up?”
She hesitates, but nods. “Sure, sounds like a plan.” I watch as she bites back a million questions, but I just... I just can’t. Not right now, when my head’s a mess.
“I’ll meet you at the house in a bit, okay?”
She agrees, worry clear on her face, and I hate myself for putting it there, for not acting more normal when I should be thrilled right now. But the longer I stand here, surrounded by dozens of people chattering, buzzing with excitement, the more overwhelming it all is.
With another kiss and a respectful nod at Dorian, I start walking back to the house. The minutes pass, and I pass more people on the street, emerging from their homes to go investigate all of the excitement. When the house finally comes to view I pause for a second, just staring. The stone, the luminescent ivy coating it; it’s beautiful. For the briefest moment, a flash of disdain rears its ugly head like a punch to the gut, and I can’t look at it anymore.
I keep walking, only pausing when I reach the edge of the town. On a whim, I change course, heading just past the buildings. There’s an expanse of land on this side of the town before the invisible barrier ends, a swath of nature pulled into their hidden dome so they don’t go nuts in hiding.
Hiking up the sharp incline, I only slow when sweat starts to build on my skin, the heat increasing. Weaving between trees, they thin out as soil gives way to stone, a small oasis. There are several hot springs, set up in tiers similar to the waterfall I jumped from a lifetime ago. There’s no one else here, and I waste no time shucking my clothes, easing into the steaming water.
Dipping my head below, I stay beneath the surface until my lungs scream for mercy, then push for a few seconds more. When fresh air blasts against my face and I suck down a gasping breath, the air seems cooler, lighter.
It isn’t as hard to breathe anymore.
The heat seeps into my sore muscles, only the sound of trickling water and the rustle of leaves shifting in the breeze to keep me company. I mocked Lucien for this, for fighting for peace and quiet in a world that thrived on chaos. I know I’m a hypocrite, an asshole. But I’m just so tired.
I feel her before I see her, a small tug on the back of my hand drawing me in her direction like she’s testing the connection to see if it’s still intact. She says nothing, scuffing slightly against the stone as she sits a good distance away.
Another breath, but it still isn’t as hard as it was in that crowd. Like a coward, I keep my eyes shut, avoiding the inevitable conversation. Once more, I slip beneath the water, and when I come up, braced to face her, she’s gone, as silently as she arrived.
Swiping water from my face, I glance around, but it’s just me; as alone as I wanted to be. There’s a small splash of water and I work my way to the edge of the spring, glancing down where the water runs from this pool to the one beneath. There, a good twenty feet below me, is Cambria.
I rest my chin on my folded arms on the stone ledge, kneeling and simply waiting. For what, I’m not sure. It’s entrancing though, the way the orange tints the water as she dips her head beneath the surface. It ripples out in rings before distorting with the slow current, a bright arrow following the path of the water like it’s trying to give us a sign.
Everything else is lit by that bluish glow; the water, the canopy of leaves, the tree trunks surrounding us. And directly overhead, the starry night, dotted so intensely that it may as well be a silver sky.
Minutes, hours; there’s no sense of the time that passes, but it ticks by in amicable silence. After she’s clean, she simply dons a similar pose as me, though she faces the forest to my left, giving me her profile instead of her back. The golden tips of her hair fan out on the water, bobbing with the gentle motion of the water, as hypnotic as the girl in front of me.
“Are you going to say anything?”
She rests her cheek on her arms, casually looking up at me. “Wasn’t sure what to apologize for, if we’re being honest, and thought I might make things worse. So was waiting to pick up on some sort of clue as to why you’re mad at me so I can fix it.”
I exhale a heavy breath. “I’m not mad at you.”
Patiently, she waits for me to elaborate, but the words stick in my throat and I choke. When it’s clear that I’m not about to say anything else, she gently asks, “Company or solutions?”
Blinking down at her, she shrugs a single shoulder. “When I’m upset, I don’t always have anything that needs fixed. I just want to be miserable for a while, bitch about it, and have someone to commiserate with so I’m not alone. So do you want to vent, or do you want someone to try to solve whatever problem is weighing on your mind?”
Gazing down at this girl, I feel like a real jackass. It’s easy to forget between her age and appearance, that the smiles and sarcasm are just a different form of glamour. All that projected self-confidence, scoffing at people so that they don’t realize their words affect her more than she lets on; a coping mechanism for someone convinced that she’s more broken than the rest of us.
“Both?”
She nods, gesturing with one hand for me to give her something,anythingto work with here. A place to start if nothing else, and yet every word that comes to mind feels wrong. They die on my tongue before I can voice them, struggling to voice things that don’t sound as pathetic as I feel.
She takes mercy on me and tries to give me a jump. “So you’re not mad at me. Is it something Ididthat upset you, but you’re trying not to hold it against me?” A shake of my head and she nods to herself. “You and Luce get into a lovers’ quarrel?”
My lip twitches. “It was hard, being apart from you guys. On both of us.”
Pushing away from the edge, she submerges herself up to her chin to warm up her shoulders. “And now that we’re back?”
Swallowing, I force the admission into existence. “It was hard being apart, but it’s harder being together, sometimes.”
I pretend that the flash of hurt that crosses her face is just a trick of the moonlight, there and gone in an instant. She licks her lips, treading water as she moves to the center of the pool. “Fair. If it was a rough adjustment for me after growing up with this sort of thing as normal, I can imagine it’s far more difficult on your end. Going from independent to living with three other people, never alone anymore. Three relationships to balance, triple the issues to handle.”
“Of figuring out where you fit into things when they’re constantly shifting as soon as you get comfortable.”
