It's a Love Thing (19 page)

“
Hurt you? Are you kidding
me? Did you just threaten my mother’s job if I don’t agree to be
friends with you?”

Was this guy for real?

“
Mel, I would never
threaten you or anyone else. It was just an observation of a
potential future I would like to avoid.”

“
You son of a . .
.”

“
Mel, please, just come
hang out with us tomorrow night. We’re going to the movies again.
It’s on me.” He handed me a ticket stub. It was for some old film
and dated over a year ago. “Come on, just do this one thing. It’ll
be fun. I promise. You’re making a big deal out of nothing. You’ll
see.”

Not knowing what else to do I tucked
the ticket stub into the pocket of my jeans without giving him an
answer. He didn’t seem to need more of one. He grinned from ear to
ear and turned the car on again. Apparently our little chat was
over now. Techno music pounded in my head, drowning out even my own
thoughts until we pulled into my driveway. Jason dropped me off
without even bothering to put the car in park. As soon as I shut
the car door he was gone again . . . until tomorrow night
anyway.

*****

I trudged up the front steps and
rooted around in my bag for the house keys. Before I could even get
the door open, Lucas was on the porch behind me. How did he move so
fast?

“
Not now,” I growled at
him, stepping inside and trying to swing the door shut behind
me.

“
What were you doing with
him?” he demanded, pushing his way in behind me.

“
What do you care, afraid
you’re gonna lose some points?”

“
Mel, please. I get that
you’re angry but shouldn’t you be angry at him too? You don’t know
what’s really going on here.”

“
Oh, like that’s my
fault?”

“
No . . . it’s
mine.”

“
Yeah, it is . . . and I am
mad at him too,” I clarified.

“
Then what were you doing
with him?”

“
Talking.”

“
About?”

“
None of your damn
business.”

“
Mel, please.”

“
Why do you even
care?”

“
I just do,” he stated and
then proceeded to stand there and stare at me like he wasn’t going
to budge until he got an acceptable answer.

“
He wants to be friends,” I
relented.

“
And what did you
say?”

“
I told him I’d think about
it.”

“
And what are you
going
to say?”

“
I hadn’t decided yet, but
it’s not like I have much of a choice.”

“
Why? Why do you feel like
you don’t you have a choice?” he asked, angrily.

“
Because . . .”

I trailed off, feeling stupid for ever
opening my mouth in the first place. Being blackmailed into
friendship wasn’t something I was particularly proud of.

“
Because why, Mel?” he
asked, softening his tone.

The genuinely concerned look on his
face did it.

“
Because he says he knows
people on the board at the museum. The board that controls my mom’s
job. As long as I agree to hang out with him, just be friends, then
he swears her job there will be safe.”

“
Are you kidding
me?”

It didn’t seem like he was really
asking me so I didn’t bother to answer. Lucas paced the kitchen
like a caged tiger, muttering to himself and looking very much like
he wanted to pull his hair out. Clearly there was some inner
turmoil there and holey macaroni was it intense.

“
You can’t listen to him,
Mel.
Please,”
he
said, pausing in front of me.

The intense conflict was gone from his
face, replaced instead with stoic determination.

“
He can’t really affect
your mother’s job. He’s just trying to coerce you into choosing
him," Lucas declared. “You can’t believe a thing he says, he’s an
evil son of a . . .”

“
Evil? What, like the devil
on my shoulder?”

“
A lot like that,
actually.”

“
And what does that make
you? The angel?”

He half shrugged, with an
uncomfortable look on his face. Fudge monkeys!

“
You’re
serious!”

“
Sort of,” he said,
striding across the room as though the extra space would make this
conversation more comfortable.

“
How can you be ‘sort of’
serious? Are you honestly trying to tell me that you’re an . . .
angel?”

He took a deep breath and released it
slowly.

“
I am.”

“
Ohhh—kay.”

“
You think I’m
crazy.”

“
A little bit,” I saw no
reason to lie. “Aren’t angels supposed to wear like white dresses
and halos and stuff, not walk around sporting sexy cars and blue
jeans?”

Lucas looked at me quizzically for a
moment.

“
You think my car is
sexy?”

“
Sooo not the point,
Lucas.”

“
Right, sorry. Well, how
would you like it if I said women are
supposed
to wear dresses and take
care of the house and children, not run around all over town with
their friends in pants and sneakers?”

Okay, I get it; old fashioned
notions.

“
So what, did your wings go
out of style?”

Lucas quirked a little half grin that
made my stomach do funny things.

“
No, they’re still here,
you just can’t see them because they exist . . . sort of . . . on a
different plane, let’s say.”

“
Can I feel
them?”

“
Not as you are. Your soul
can feel and see them but not through the confines of your human
body.”

“
So, you could show me but
you’d have to kill me?”

The other half of his mouth tipped up
and there went my stomach again.

“
Yeah, something like
that.”

“
Then I’m just supposed to
take your word for it when you tell me something like
that?”

“
What if I could prove it?”
he offered.

“
I’d love to see you try,”
I told him, not completely sure it was the truth.

Best case scenario he was about to do
something entirely freaky. Worst case, the only remaining guy in my
life was about to prove to be a raging lunatic. Kind of a lose-lose
situation.

“
Well, my abilities on this
plane are pretty pathetic compared to those on the ethereal plane,
but . . . How about this?” he asked and I jumped a mile.

In the blink of an eye he had covered
the space between us. I hadn’t even seen him move. He was just
there; right in my face. I stifled a scream and leaned back,
indulging in a little personal space. Before I could process a
coherent thought he folded me in his arms and held me close. My
heart was thundering in my chest and it had little to do with his
impressive scare tactic. The heat radiating off of his body was
soothing and I leaned into him, pressing my face to his shoulder.
It felt as though the room was spinning. Like I was becoming
intoxicated just from his nearness.

“
Look,” he whispered so
close to my ear that his breath tickled my neck.

Reluctantly I withdrew my head from
his shoulder and glanced past him. This time my scream couldn’t be
stopped which was unfortunate since it was right in Lucas’ ear, but
who could blame me. There, over his left shoulder, close enough to
touch was an exposed beam of our twelve foot ceiling. Turns out it
wasn’t the room spinning, it was us . . . twelve feet in the air. I
immediately fisted his shirt in my hands and held on for dear
life.

Holy . . . yea, just holy. Oh man, oh
man, oh man. This could not be happening. This could not be real.
Maybe Lucas slipped me some of those drugs Jason had. That was the
only explanation. I looked around desperately for some kind of
wires attached to the roof. Maybe this was his idea of an elaborate
practical joke. Maybe I was being punked. Then I remembered it was
my house we were floating in. When could he have rigged something
this extravagant? Simple, he couldn’t. I looked anyway. There were
no wires. We were flying like freaking Superman and Lois Lane, only
Lucas wasn’t an alien, he was an angel. I looked up at Lucas with
eyes that I couldn’t keep from bugging out of my head and he shot
me an ‘are-you-satisfied-yet’ grin.

“
Okay,” I gasped. “I
believe you. I believe you. Put me down now.
Please
.”

“
Relax, I would never hurt
you,” he said softly as he lowered us back to solid ground. Part of
me wanted to kiss it when my shoes made contact, but I thought that
might be a bit extreme.

“
An angel,” I repeated,
like an idiotic parrot. “So what does that make Jason?”

He pinched his lips tight and raised
his eyebrows at me.

“
Like . . . the devil?” I
felt stupid just saying it out loud.

“
Not Lucifer himself, but
one of his, yeah.”

“
So let me get this
straight, Jason’s a . . . demon and you’re an . . . angel, and
you’re just telling me all of this
now
?”

“
I’m not supposed to be
telling you any of this at all,” he explained, growing deadly
serious. “There are rules to all of this.”

“
All of what? What
rules?”

“
The battle for
souls.”

“
That’s what you two have
been doing? Fighting over my
soul
?”

“
Yes. He’s trying to
corrupt you, so please listen to me when I tell you to stay away
from him.”

“
So then, what’s the deal
with Jenna and Kyle? Are they demons too?”

“
No, Jenna and Kyle are
human. Just a couple of my more
epic
failures. I tried to help them,
but they were more interested in all of Jason’s temptations than
anything I had to say,” he explained sadly.

Surprisingly, this actually made me
feel a little better. At least someone I had met since moving here
was a part of the human species.

“
What rules were you
talking about?”

“
There are certain rules
that both sides are supposed to abide by. They’re supposed to help
protect the human’s free will, but clearly Jason hasn’t been
playing by the rules when it comes to you, with spiking your drinks
at the club and trying to use your mom against you. That is
not
how this is supposed
to go.”

“
Why couldn’t you just tell
me all of this earlier?”

“
Because that takes away
your free will, too. If you chose to fall for his temptations I was
supposed to sit back and let it happen. Warning you about what he
is skews your opinions and therefore your choices.”

“
But then . . . if it’s
against the rules . . . why are you telling me?”

“
Because . . . I let myself
care too much about your soul,” he said, shaking his head slowly
like he couldn’t believe he was saying the words out loud. “I’m not
supposed to get attached. I’m supposed to protect what souls I can
and let the others go, and then just move on to the next, but I
couldn’t help it with you. You’re just so . . . I can’t stand the
thought of your soul in his clutches, Mel. I couldn’t sit back and
watch you end up like that.”

“
Lucas . . . I . .
.”

“
No, I shouldn’t feel this
way. I’m not
allowed
to feel this way.”

“
You’re not
allowed
to care about
other people?”

“
That’s just it; I’m not
a
person
,
Mel.”

“
That’s beside the
point.”

“
No, that is
precisely
the point,” he
argued.

“
Well, whatever it is . . .
it sounds very lonely.”

“
It is,” he lamented,
looking sadder than anyone I’d ever seen before. Years and years of
loneliness seemed to compound on him in that moment, making him
look young and vulnerable. “The thing is, it’s never really
bothered me . . . until now.”

“
Lucas,” I reached out to
touch his face but he stopped me.

“
You shouldn’t,” he said
quietly.

“
I don’t care,” I told him,
moving my hand to his cheek.

He leaned towards me.

“
I shouldn’t,” he
murmured.

“
I still don’t
care.”

My voice barely registered a whisper.
His lips were mere centimeters from mine and it had stolen my
breath away.

“
I’m sorry,” he sighed, and
before I could ask him what he was apologizing for his lips were on
mine.

Soft and sweet, and burning like fire
all at once, his lips clung to mine desperately. His large hand
cupped the back of my head, pulling me even closer, and my arms
wrapped around his neck holding him close. His kiss devoured me and
left me aching for more.