Shattered Dreams: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (25 page)

His bottom lip was fuller than his top. Had I ever really noticed that before?

“Ready?” he asked.

I nodded, lifting my free hand to slide the hair from my face. It was all I could do not to do the same to Chase.

“I like when you do that.”

I tried to swallow. My throat was too tight. “Do what?”

“Move the hair from your eyes.”

I stilled.

“They’re pretty.”

No one had ever told me that before.

Just when I was sure my heart was going to slam out of my chest, he broke the moment, glancing from me to the big TV screen. “See those nooks in the rock?”

I did. I saw it all, all that he showed me, and all that he worked so hard to keep hidden.

“The weapons are there,” he said, and somewhere inside, I smiled. Weapons were hidden—but so were cracks. “All you gotta do is—”

“Chase?”

He glanced over, his arm still around me. “Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

He smiled, and from one heartbeat to the next everything exploded around us, the music blasted, and shots started flying. With his left hand he guided his player to the cliffs before I’d barely moved mine two steps.

“Watch out!” he called, but my player went down before I’d fired my first shot.

“Sniper got you,” he muttered, mowing down cyborgs left and right. “If you’d just followed my lead—”

I’m not sure why I shoved him. But I did. Reflex made him swing to look at me—and his player went down.

“Oops,” I said, and then the laughter took over.

Chase went still, watched me, and then like he’d promised, instinct took over.

All that tension and uncertainty, the dreaming and imagining and the crazy urge to run and hide … it all fell away, and Chase was leaning into me, and I wasn’t pulling back, wasn’t looking away, was instead reaching for him.

His hand found the side of my face, settling against my cheek with amazing tenderness. For the faintest of heartbeats our eyes met, held, and then his mouth lowered toward mine, and my mind went blank.

The kiss was soft, slow. Endless. My arms lifted, first to his shoulders, then to slide around his back—and pull him closer. With one arm to the sofa, he eased me backward, leaning over me so that the chain around his neck dangled, his jaw scraping mine as our mouths moved together. It was crazy. It was wonderful. It was everything I’d ever imagined and more, and all I could think was that I never wanted it to end.

And yeah, Chase Bonaventure was good at that, too.

And then he was gone, not really gone, but pulling back, his hand still cradling my face. I could see his eyes, the blue, blue glow, and it was all I could do to breathe.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that,” he whispered.

For so long I’d waited. And for so long I’d wanted.
“Chase,”
I whispered, lifting
my
hand to
his
face. This time I let my thumb skim along his bottom lip. “Quit talking.”

His smile was devastating. “Okay,” he said as his mouth came down to mine once again, not as gentle as before, but crushing almost. Demanding.

Our bodies slipped and slid, tangled. Sensations swirled, creating a wave of emotion I’d never imagined. I felt myself sink against the sofa, the heaviness of his body pressing against me. All the while my hands ran along all those hard lines of his body—as his roamed along mine. Everywhere he touched, I burned. And everywhere I burned, I wanted more.

Thought shut down, and feeling took over. The moment consumed.
Owned.
I felt him push closer, felt my body welcome. His hand skimmed down my side, fingers splaying around my rib cage toward my chest, where I suddenly realized how flimsy my bra was, because the sensation of his thumb and forefinger closing around me nearly sent me into meltdown.

There was a noise. It was low and mewling and I was pretty sure it came from somewhere deep within me.

“Chase.”
That was definitely from me. But I’m not sure if it was a word or a breath.

“So beautiful,” he muttered, and vaguely I was aware of the music still swelling, the strings and drums and the growing tempo as his mouth slid from mine and pressed little kisses along my jawbone, his whiskers scraping as he eased lower, along my neck, and I found myself arching, lifting into him, needing to give even as I wanted him to take.

And then I saw her. In the darkness of my mind, where all those protective barriers of thought and consciousness had totally fallen away, came the image, as stark as it was horrible, and everything else stopped. My hands and my mouth and my breath, even the rhythm of my body against his. It all stopped as I hung there mindlessly, lost between what was real—and what was not.

“Trinity?” Chase’s voice was soft and confused as I felt him ease back from my collarbone. But I couldn’t see him, couldn’t see beyond the blur of shadows. “What’s wrong?”

She lay on a dirty blanket spread across a concrete floor, as still as death. But her eyes were dark and open. Pleading.

“Jesus,” Chase whispered, and then he was gone and in the place of all that drugging heat came a blast of cold so sharp it knifed straight through me. “What the hell—”

No,
I told myself.
No, no, no.
“No.” And then I wanted to run again, to run as far as I could and to hide, but I knew it wouldn’t make a difference, because no matter where I went, it would never go away, not when the one thing I most wanted to get away from was as much a right of my birth as the color of my eyes and the curve of my mouth.

Birthright …

I made myself blink. I made myself pull back the focus. Made myself see.

And as soon as I did, I wished I hadn’t. Because the way Chase was looking at me, with his bangs falling into his face and his mouth moist and swollen from the way he’d been kissing me even as confusion glittered in his eyes, absolutely ripped my heart from my chest.

“Jesus,”
he whispered, and only when his hands fell away did I realize he’d still been holding my arms. “You see things, too.”

TWENTY-TWO

No. Just … no. I wanted to scream it as loud as I could. I wanted to make it all go away, to pretend my mother’s blood didn’t run through my body. To make Chase stop looking at me like I was one of the Covenant he was so good at slaughtering.

“Yes,” I said, because I knew,
I knew
nothing that I wanted mattered. And worse, that he already knew. He’d seen it all, from the house on Prytania to the courtyard in the Quarter to Fourcade’s. He’d heard everything the cop had said. And I’d let him. Like a love-struck fool, I’d let him. All because I’d wanted so badly to believe. “I see things, too.”

He absorbed the words like a physical blow.
“Jesus,”
he muttered and everything I was holding onto so tightly, all those bits and parts and fragments started to shift again. To slice. I jerked away from him, rolled toward my feet.

But he stopped me. His hands found my shoulders, and he just … stopped me. Not physically. I could have twisted away. But the way he looked at me, the sudden shift from shock to something warm and protective.

I couldn’t have moved if I’d tried.

“I wish you’d told me,” was all he said.

And I lost it. The bits and pieces broke free, and my eyes filled. I tried to stop it, I really did. I didn’t want to cry in front of him. But when a dam breaks, sandbags hardly do the trick, and there was no way I could blink it all away.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, glancing away, toward the carnage on the rocky field of
Halo.

Nothing prepared me for Chase to scoop me back against him. Nothing prepared me for the way he held me. Only minutes before it had been all hot and hungry, but this gentleness, this quiet, unexpected understanding, was so much more devastating.

“You saw her, didn’t you?” he asked all quiet and sad, as his hands moved against my tangled hair. “You saw Jessica.”

I nodded.

“And it wasn’t a dream.”

Again, I nodded.

He let out a rough breath. “She’s really…” His voice fell away, but the word hung there anyway.
Missing.

“Yes,” I whispered, and the horror of it all registered deep in his eyes, the safe buffer of illusion stripped away to reveal the cold, hard edges of reality.

“Just now,” he managed. “Did you see her again? Is that what … is that why you—”

“It was like she knew,” I said. “As if she could see us, like we were betraying her.”

He swore under his breath, far more crassly than I’d ever heard from him. “Are you saying … So are you like…”

I could see him struggle for the right words.

“… connected to her, like your mom was to the psycho who—”

He stopped himself from saying the words, but we both knew, because we’d both heard.

Killed them. The guy who’d killed my parents.

“I don’t know.” And I didn’t. “Has Jessica ever said anything about … seeing stuff?”

He shook his head, sending his bangs back against his eyes. “No.” Then he frowned. “But she’s got a Ouija board. She says she talks to her cousin who died of leukemia a few years ago.”

That was an interesting little bomb. Me and Jessica? Psychically connected?

It was hard to imagine.

“It’s possible,” I said. “I don’t know why it happens.” Only that since I’d arrived in New Orleans, the visions had been happening with increasing frequency. “When I walked into that room Saturday night, I thought—”

“Saturday night?”

I wanted to look away, knew that I couldn’t. “Yeah.”

“You saw something then?”

I nodded.

His breath was rough, choppy. “You knew—”

“No.” I stopped him before he could go too far down that path. “I was confused. I saw a girl on the mattress.” The memory chilled. “I thought it was me,” I said. “At first. I didn’t know what was happening.”

“Has it happened before? Have you always … seen things?”

Talking about it felt strange. “Sometimes,” I admitted. “Mostly when I was a little girl.” Back when I’d seen Sunshine dead two days before she’d died. “My grandmother warned me not to talk about it, that people wouldn’t understand.”

Against my waist, his hands stilled.

“It only happened a few times,” I said, “so I pretty much forgot all about it, until—” At the memory, I looked away, stared off into the darkness beyond the French doors.

“Until what?”

I didn’t want to go back. I didn’t want to remember. But I knew that I had to. “Until I saw my grandmother,” I whispered. “Dead.”

Chase swore under his breath.

“It was last summer,” I said. “I was up in the mountains, hiking. I’d made it through this rocky pass and was looking at these alpine flowers when I saw her. She was in the kitchen, at the sink washing sweet potatoes. The sun was coming in through the windows when she went all still. Her eyes…” God, I could still see her eyes, the way they’d gone all frozen and dark. “Then she just fell.”

“Trinity.”

There was something in his voice, so warm and amazing that I looked back toward him, and felt myself die a little more. He looked like he wanted to cry. Chase Bonaventure looked like he wanted to cry.

Because I’d seen my grandmother die.

“I ran,” I whispered. “All the way down the mountain. I ran so hard it hurt and then I got home and burst through the door into the kitchen and … there she was.”

He closed his eyes.

“Alive,” I said. “Sitting at the table working a puzzle.”

Slowly, his eyes opened.

“She smiled. She smiled and said my name, asked me to join her.”

“She was okay—”

“I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if I should tell her, because she’d told me to never talk about what I saw. But it felt wrong not saying anything. Not warning her.”

Chase’s hands reached for mine.

“So I tried,” I said. “I tried to tell her, but it was like she knew, because she wouldn’t let me. Every time I tried, she changed the subject or asked me to go do something for her. I remember that night, after she went to bed, I tore through the kitchen, looking for sweet potatoes.”

His smile was so tender it made my heart hurt. “Did you find any?”

“No. None. So the next day I didn’t think twice about running into town for her. She said she was going to her friend Marian’s for the afternoon, and that she had a craving for pizza for dinner. So I went. I took her Buick and drove to the store. I remember walking through the produce section and seeing the bin of sweet potatoes, frowning at them like it was their fault I’d seen what I’d seen.”

Against mine, Chase’s hands squeezed.

“I found her when I got home.” The memory still had the power to steal my breath.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, and I could tell that he was.

“In the kitchen,” I said. “On the floor in the sunshine … with a peeled sweet potato in her hand.”

When his eyes got all dark and intense, I realized how badly I wanted to dive back into his arms. I’d never had that before. My grandmother had been warm and kind, but not the huggy-feely type. She’d been more about bucking up and enduring than hugging and cuddling.

“Marian gave them to her,” I whispered. “Marian gave her the potatoes.” And there on Chase’s sofa, with his hands holding mine, the tears started again.

“Trinity.”

His voice was strong, solid, an anchor. Blinking, I made myself look at him through the watery veil. Let myself see.

Him, this moment … it was everything I’d ever wanted.

“It’s not your fault,” he said. “You couldn’t have stopped it.”

I swallowed against the thickness in my throat. My grandmother had told me the same thing after Sunshine died. “When I saw Jessica—”

He shook his head, sending the bangs back against his eyes. “You had no way of knowing.”

“I tried,” I said. “I tried to tell the police.”

Chase let out a rough breath, drawing back slightly, but still holding on. Tightly. “That’s why you keep pushing me away.”

The moment just kind of stopped. I looked at him in the dim lighting of his gorgeous family room, with our legs still tangled and our hands still joined. My body still burned.