Velvet (28 page)

He laughed, which I wasn’t expecting. “Honestly? The library. Books. Harry Potter. I couldn’t be friends with real people, couldn’t interact with my classmates beyond academic necessity, but as long as I told Mariana that the books were for school, I could read as much as I wanted. I consumed fiction like it was food. At home, I had no real concept of compassion or brotherhood or loyalty or bravery—I learned about all of that from books.”

He smiled suddenly. “You know Mrs. Goode, the office lady at school? She used to be the town librarian. She was probably the closest thing I had to a friend. She’d always pick out new series that she thought I’d like, and call the house to tell me that my ‘research materials’ were available. I felt like a spy.” He grinned and shrugged happily. “Once I realized that I could choose to be different, that I could
love
people, even if they didn’t know it, I promised myself I would find a way to live a different life. I would be nothing like Julian or Mariana or Dominic. I wouldn’t grow bored with the world. And once Lucian came to live with us, I promised myself that I would do my best to make sure that he knew he was loved. He exhausts me, and he’s kind of insane, but he’s my brother.” He paused, a hard look stealing over his face. “I’ve accepted what I am, but I will not accept that my existence is meaningless or that I can’t be inherently good despite my lineage.” He glanced over at me. “That’s why you’re…”

He trailed off and swallowed hard. “That’s why you’re unique,” he finished after a moment. Adrian stared at a stain on the old plaid couch, tracing it with his finger. “I am so sorry that all this has happened to you, with my dad,” he said finally. “It’s awful. It’s terrible, and it’s unfair. But I can’t help but be happy, in a way.” He looked up at me slowly, eyes dark, rimmed with firelight. “You are my excuse to be the person I’ve always wanted to be,” he murmured almost to himself, searching my face as if he’d never seen it before. “Every moment I spend with you is stolen time, and I don’t care. I will never have someone like you again. I will protect you with my life, I will keep you safe from my father—but what truly terrifies me is the thought that, when this is all over, you won’t remember me at all.”

I stared at him, dumbstruck.

There were so many words, so many feelings and impulses building up inside me that I could hardly breathe. Before my stuttering brain could come up with anything even resembling an elegant reply, he blinked, as if coming out of a daze, and stood up.

“Are you hungry?” he asked abruptly, heading toward the kitchen.

I wasn’t, particularly, since I’d eaten breakfast less than an hour ago, but he returned from the kitchen with Lucian under one arm and the cooler under the other and set his brother on a chair and the cooler on the table. I shuffled over with my blanket and sat down, and we ate silently. It was Mariana’s cooking, so it was delicious, but I didn’t really notice because I was distracted by everything Adrian had said. Lucian finished eating in record time, and produced a deck of cards out of thin air.

“Can we play?” he begged Adrian.

A tiny wave of what could have either been irritation or tiredness passed over his face before he smiled and said, “Sure.”

“I’ll clear the dishes.” I picked up everyone’s plates and carried them into the kitchen to wash them by hand in the glacier-cold tap water. A few minutes later, I had the dishes laid out on the drying rack and crept to the door to listen, peeking through the sliver where the door didn’t quite meet the jamb. They were sitting on the rug in front of the fire.

“Go!” Lucian said excitedly.

Adrian picked up a card from a pile between them.

“Do you have any Jacks?” Lucian asked, holding his cards awkwardly close to his chest so he wouldn’t reveal them to Adrian.

“Go fish.”

Lucian’s face fell and he picked up a card from the pile, but as soon as he saw it, he grinned and laid down four matching cards.

“I win!”

There was still a huge pile of cards sitting on the floor between them, but Adrian folded his up and said, “You sure did.”

I decided to walk in then and join them on the rug.

“Would you like to play?” Lucian asked me as Adrian began shuffling the deck again.

“Sure,” I said, pretending innocence. “What are we playing?”

“Go,” he announced.

“It’s Lucian’s version of Go Fish,” Adrian explained and dealt out cards to us. We played a few rounds where whoever got the first set of four ‘won’ the game. It was amazing to see how Lucian’s normally blank face would light up when he thought he played well or got a good hand. After Lucian won his fourth game, Adrian gathered up the cards. “Do you think that’s enough for one day?”

Lucian said, “Okay,” but looked pretty bummed.

“Why don’t we open presents now?” I suggested.

Adrian looked at me. “You brought presents?”

I shrugged as I stood up and went to my messenger bag. “Nothing much.” I sat back down and handed the first package to Lucian. His eyes got wide behind his aviator goggles. “Open it.”

He reverently untaped the paper and slid it off. When he saw what was inside, his mouth formed a round O of surprise.

“What’d you get there, Lucian?” Adrian asked.

“
The Adventures of Frankie the Boy
,” he replied in an awed voice.

Adrian looked at me and I shrugged shyly. “I got the idea from when you said he liked stories. So I made him that.”

I wasn’t exactly an illustrator, but I drew fashion designs all the time—it hadn’t been a huge stretch to try and capture Lucian’s quirky mannerisms in some simple sketches. As far as the dialog was concerned, I’d mostly taken that from actual conversations we’d had.

“Adrian, look!” Lucian demanded, crawling onto Adrian’s lap and turning the hand-cut pages slowly. “That’s me! I’m in the library hanging upside down like I’m not supposed to, and there I am jumping out of your truck, and that’s me on your shoulders, and there’s me and the lady, and there’s me
dreaming
!”

Adrian looked attentively down over Lucian’s shoulder at the colored pages, making appropriate “mm-hmm” sounds when necessary. I thought maybe he didn’t like it until I realized his eyes were a bit shinier than usual. Not vampire glowing, but kind of glassy. As Lucian babbled on, Adrian leaned his forehead against his little brother’s hair. I looked down at the carpet, not wanting to intrude.

A moment later, I heard Adrian say, “Tell Caitlin thank you for the book.”

I felt a small pair of arms latch around my neck at the same time I heard Lucian exclaim, “
Thank you!
”

I hugged him back, tightly. “You’re very welcome. I’m glad you like it.”

I peeked over Lucian’s shoulder at Adrian. He mouthed the words
thank you
. I shook my head in an it-was-nothing sort of way and smiled.

“Do you want to see what I got your brother, Lucian?”

He instantly let go of me and sat on the floor to look at Adrian. I picked up the other package and handed it over.

“Merry Christmas,” I said, feeling suddenly shy. “This is from me and my family.”

He took the package and opened it just as meticulously as Lucian had, then frowned curiously when he saw the box inside.

“I know it says Folgers, but it’s not that,” I assured him.

He smiled at me, opened the box, and pulled out a pair of lamb’s wool slippers.

“My uncle makes them every year for everybody, and since you’re kind of family now, he wanted to make you a pair, too.” I shoved a second package at him before he could say anything. “This is from me.”

He took the second, smaller package and unwrapped it. Then he stared.

“
Interview with a Vampire
?” he asked, and I couldn’t tell if he was amused or disgusted.

“It seemed funny at the time,” I said, feeling completely and utterly lame. It had been half off on Amazon, so I’d bought it. I heard an odd noise, and looked up to see that Adrian was laughing so hard he had to lean against the couch for support.

“Are you okay?” Lucian asked, concerned.

“Yeah, I’m all right; Caitlin’s just a very odd girl.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and let the laughter trickle off into chuckles.

Before I could respond, Lucian hopped up and said, “Caitlin, will you read to me?”

“Lucian, I don’t think—” Adrian began, but I cut him off.

“No, it’s okay. I’d love to read to you; come up here on the couch.”

He scrambled immediately onto the sofa and crawled onto my lap, holding his prize book in his hand.

“‘
The Adventures of Frankie the Boy
,’” I began reading. “‘By Caitlin Holte. Once upon a time, there was a boy named Frankie, who loved to do strange things…’”

He made me read it three times, and by the middle of the third reading, he’d completely zonked out, and I wasn’t far behind. The repetition of the story, the warmth of the fire, Lucian, and the blanket, and my constant exhaustion combined to throw both of us into a mid-afternoon nap. Lucian was hanging limp in my arms.

“You want me to take him?” Adrian asked quietly from his place on the floor.

I yawned. “No, I don’t want to wake him up. He can stay with me; I don’t mind.” I propped the two throw pillows against the arm of the couch and slowly tilted so that we were both lying down, facing the fire. He stirred and snuggled closer to me. In minutes, I was deeply asleep, and for once, I didn’t dream.

*   *   *

“Shh, we don’t want to wake her up.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’s very tired. We should let her sleep.”

“Oh. Okay.”

*   *   *

I slowly opened my eyes to see Adrian leaning back on his elbows and Lucian kneeling on the rug in front of the fire, concentrating very hard on making an elaborate, multideck card castle. I watched them for a few minutes as I slowly began to wake up. Unfortunately, I couldn’t keep a small yawn from escaping, and Lucian whipped his head to look at me.

“She’s awake,” he said in a stage whisper to Adrian, who smiled and nodded.

“What time is it?” I asked sleepily.

“Just after five,” Adrian replied.

I stretched and yawned again on the couch. “When do we have to go back?”

One corner of his mouth tilted up in a sad smile. “Soon.”

I looked at Adrian. He looked back.

“Is it dinner?” Lucian asked, unable to mask his excitement.

“There’s a Snickers bar for you in the cooler,” Adrian said, not taking his eyes off me. Lucian darted into the kitchen in search of his treasure. I blinked out of necessity, but kept my gaze level. The sound of Lucian searching for the Snickers bar escalated, but I almost didn’t hear him because nothing was so important in the world as this moment, here, with Adrian. Just then, Lucian ran back in, prize in hand. I blinked and sat up, folding the blanket to give my hands something to do.

“Caitlin,” I heard Adrian call my name. I looked up. “I left your present in the other room. Lucian, we’ll be back in a few minutes, okay?”

“Okay,” he said, happily chewing on the candy bar.

I stood up slowly and followed Adrian through the bedroom door, which he closed behind us. A single lamp shone from the nightstand. My heart was beating too fast, and I couldn’t seem to breathe right.

“Caitlin,” he murmured, and backed me up against the door. I stood perfectly still, half afraid I was asleep. He closed his eyes, leaned his forehead against the door and his cheek against mine and whispered my name again, like it was sacred.

I slid my arms around his waist and murmured, “Merry Christmas.”

He breathed quietly against my neck. Slowly, as if afraid I would disintegrate in his arms, he gathered me into a hug that lifted me off my toes.

“Merry Christmas,” he whispered. Slowly, he let me down again, and finally let me go. He shook his head and cleared his throat. “I suppose you want your present?”

I cleared my throat, too, feeling weird and emotional. “I didn’t expect you to get me anything,” I told him as he went to the other side of the bed and picked up two large boxes.

“I know. But I wanted to.” He set them on the bed, and they made a huge indent. “Open them.”

Cautiously, I went over to the first box and unwrapped it. Inside was the sewing machine my mom had bought me, the one with the broken pedal cord.

I looked at him. “You fixed it?”

He shrugged, blushing. “I thought you might want to use it again.”

I felt tears racing to my eyes and I turned, blinking rapidly to bat them away. “Is this other box for me, too?”

He nodded.

I scowl-smiled at him as I ripped off the paper. Underneath was the packaging for a brand-new Brother serger.

“Adrian—is this what’s actually in there?”

“Yes.”

I tried to breathe again. “I can’t accept this. This is very expensive.”

“If you don’t accept it, I’ll just drop it off at your front door with a note to your aunt saying it’s an anonymous Christmas present for you.”

“Adrian,” I breathed, “I can’t—”

“Yes, you can. Please.”

He almost looked anxious. I rubbed my hands over my face. “No one’s ever gotten me anything this nice before.”

“Then it was about time,” he said with a small smile. I looked at him again. He seemed determined.

“Thank you,” I said finally. “They’re perfect. I don’t know where I’m going to put them, but they’re beautiful and perfect.”

He blushed a little. “That’s already taken care of.”

“What do you mean?”

“I converted one of the offices into a studio for you. You can come over and use it anytime you want.”

“Adrian,” I began to protest again, but he cut me off.

“It’s already stocked with some of the fabrics you’ll need to start making your designs.”

I stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Remember when I borrowed those sketches of yours after Thanksgiving?” I nodded warily. “I sent copies of them to a contact in New York. He agreed to supply you with fabric and materials. He also said that if your work is as good as your sketches, there’s an internship waiting for you when you graduate—assuming you don’t mind moving to the city, of course.”