Velvet (6 page)

I turned to Trish. “How did he do that?”

She shrugged. “I have no idea! Isn’t it great?”

Was everyone crazy? People shouldn’t be able to
do
that. Why wasn’t anyone calling an ambulance? I mean he had to have some sort of compound fracture, cracked vertebrae, shin splints or
something
. Trish tugged me over to the last station, but I snagged a cup of punch on the way. She just laughed at me as I downed it. Happy freaking Halloween.

“Ladies, ladies, please come forward,” the pirate announced, mic in hand. “Since our gentlemen took the last round, we’d like to extend the honor of truth or dare to you. Please form a line!”

Trish pushed me gleefully forward. Since most of the other girls seemed to be as shy as I was, at least about performing in public, and because Trish was dead set on embarrassing me as much as possible, I somehow ended up being first. We were on the second story by the railing when the spotlight hit me.

“What’s your name?” the pirate-announcer asked with a game-host smile, shoving the mic in my face.

I blinked, trying to keep his face in focus. “Caitlin.”

Someone in the crowd yelled, “Go,
Caitlin
!” but I didn’t recognize the voice.

“And what are you tonight, Caitlin?”

I blinked at the announcer again. “What?”

He held the mic away from his mouth and whispered, “What’s your costume?”

“Oh. I’m a—” It sounded so stupid out loud. Let’s be honest, it sounded pretty stupid in my head, too. But the drinks were finally working their way through my inhibitions, so I smiled at him, trying to put some sass behind it. “I’m a vampire.”

I heard some of the guys cheer.

The announcer smiled encouragingly. “All right, Caitlin the Vampire: truth, or dare?”

I’d already decided. “Truth.”

I may have been drunk, but I wasn’t stupid. Dares always ended up being a thin excuse to do something vaguely or overtly scandalous with the even thinner defense of “but I
had
to.” In seventh grade, the class perv, Kyle Hanson, dared the class nerd, Sean Rubatino, to touch my boobs. It was a dare, and dares were sacred. I didn’t really have breasts to speak of anyway, so I let him do it, but we were both uncomfortable and I felt dirty about it for weeks.

“All right, all right,” the announcer said to quiet the chorus of
boo
s from the crowd of guys below. He pulled a crumpled piece of paper from a large glass jar. Unfolding it, he read, “When, where, and with whom was your first kiss?”

There was a chorus of
aww
s from the girls and catcalls from the guys. How had this happened? How had I picked truth and still managed to embarrass myself? It was suddenly very warm in the barn with the spotlight and the press of bodies and the bright flush of embarrassment. I found myself gripping the railing to stay upright.

It only occurred to me much later that I could have named anyone from my old school and no one here would have known who he was.

“I’ve never kissed anybody,” I admitted finally. Behind me, I heard Trish snort.

There was a moment of surprised murmurs before an unidentified pirate yelled, “Everyone kiss Caitlin!” Before I knew what was happening, another pirate pinned me to the railing and covered my general mouth area in a sticky, wet kiss. The awkward laughs around the room immediately transformed into gasps. Suddenly, the kisser was gone and I was being picked up, fireman style, and carried away from the railing and the spotlight and the humiliation. A door opened and slammed shut.

“
Out
,” Adrian demanded.

Couples muttered and cursed, but didn’t question him, scrambling to adjust clothing before hurrying out of the room. Adrian set me down on a couch carefully.

“Stay here,” he told me, and started for the door.

“Adrian!” I called out, grabbing on to his arm before he could walk away. “He was just joking,” I said, trying to smile. “It was a joke.”

“No, it wasn’t.” He tried to get up again, but I pulled him back.

“If you go out there, it’ll just make you look stupid, because everyone thought it was a joke, and you took it seriously, which makes it look—it makes it look like something it’s not.”

“I don’t care,” he stated flatly, and made to leave again.

“
I
care,” I said desperately. “Please, Adrian, just drop it.”

“Why are you trying to make this okay?” he asked, glaring at me. I didn’t understand why he was so angry.

I fluttered my hands around in an agitated gesture. “Because it’s not important. I just want to feel empty.”

His eyes narrowed in concern. “Empty?”

Oops. I hadn’t meant to say that last part out loud. “Full,” I corrected myself, nodding. “I meant full.”

I flung my arms wide to demonstrate
how
full, overshot, lost my balance, and stumbled backward. Luckily, Adrian caught my hands and pulled me forward before I could fall. I giggled, because the whole situation suddenly seemed really, really funny.

“Okay,” he said, patting my back awkwardly. “What did Trish talk you into?”

“Just one drink.” And then I snort-laughed because it wasn’t true. I’d had
three
drinks.

“I should get you home,” he murmured into my hair. But he didn’t make any move to leave.

“Hey,” I said, looking up. “Did you know there was going to be alcohol here?”

He met my gaze, an amused smile on his face. “I think that was implied.”

“Somehow I didn’t know,” I told him slowly, the words lagging behind my brain. “I thought ‘Hey, a Halloween party!’ I forgot about alcohol. And here we are.” I smiled up at him again, then leaned my cheek against his man chest.

Then the full implications of where we were hit me.

“Whoa.” I looked around the room with grave concern. “People do
stuff
back here. And you took me in here and kicked everyone out.” My eyes got big. “I bet people think we’re doing stuff.”

“We’ve been back here for a grand total of two minutes.”

“So?” I scoffed. “I hear it doesn’t take long for some people. Pigs,” I muttered with an disgusted shake of my head. I got dizzy and planted my nose on his clavicle. “That’s not love, that’s just sex.” And then the fact that I’d never, in fact, had sex, nor had I been in love, made me consider that it was possible I had no idea what I was talking about. “Maybe,” I amended. “Maybe they’re pigs. I dunno.” I looked up at him. “Do you think you can do it in two minutes?”

“Okay,” he said, flushing even in the faint light. “Time to go find Trish.”

“Adrian,” I said, suddenly desperate that he know the truth. “I didn’t decide to be a vampire. I just didn’t have a costume.” I tugged at the cloak until it slid to the floor, then looked down and kicked off my heels. “I think this makes me look stupid,” I mumbled, staring at my feet. “I think this makes me look really stupid.”

My eyes watered as I tried to burn a hole in the floor just by staring at it; one big enough for me to fall through and disappear and go home. I was miserable. I thought being drunk was supposed to make you happy, but it didn’t, it made you miserable, and sad. I hiccuped awkwardly and looked up at him. “It’s not a cloak, it’s my mom’s…” I trailed off, momentarily forgetting what I was talking about. I caught sight of it again in a puddle on the floor and bent to pick it up, latching on to Adrian’s pants to keep me upright. I stood and held it in front of me. “It’s my mom’s
quilt
. It’s not a cape.” I looked up at him, as though the coming information was still surprising. “She died. Eleven—” I interrupted myself with a hiccup. “Eleven days ago.”

And I didn’t feel like standing anymore, so I let my knees buckle, but Adrian caught me. After a moment, I put my arms around his neck and hugged him because I wanted to, because he was there, because he was warm, and for once the anger was gone and I was just wholly, completely sad.

“You’re a good guy,” I mumbled.

Before he could reply, the door burst open and a couple staggered in, completely oblivious to Adrian and me as they tottered over to a couch and did … stuff. Using one hand to prop me up, Adrian reached into his pirate pants and pulled out his phone, checking it.

“It’s one thirty. You want to go home?”

I looked up at him and frowned. “I don’t have a home. The ranch is not my home.” It was very important that he understand that.

He nodded. “Do you want to go back to your aunt and uncle’s?”

I flopped my face back on his chest. “I can’t. I told them I was spending the night at Trish’s. I can’t go back looking like this.”

Adrian smiled with the corner of his mouth, and it was adorable. “No,” he said. “I suppose you can’t.”

“Trish won’t want to go. She’s having a good time. I don’t want to make her leave because of me.”

“Do you want to stay?”

I looked back up at him, miserable and dizzy. “No.”

“Come on.” He handed me my shoes and led me out the door and back into the party. Despite my paranoia, nobody paid any attention to us since truth or dare was still going on and apparently some of the girls had agreed to interesting dares.

I stopped abruptly in the middle of the crowd. “What about Trish?” In my inebriated state, it sounded more like “Trissssssh.”

He glanced through the horde, but neither of us could spot her. “Text her that I’ll bring you over before her parents are awake.”

I thought about it a second. I didn’t want to stay. I couldn’t go to the ranch. I couldn’t go to Trish’s. “Where are we going?”

He smiled with the corner of his mouth again. “My home.”

Little warning bells dinged loudly in my head. Or maybe that was the headache. “Won’t your parents wonder about you bringing me home so late? Dressed like this?” I clutched my cloak around my shoulders and shivered like a crazy old cat lady.

“First of all, I live with my aunt and uncle,” he explained. “Second, we don’t even have to see them; there’s a balcony connected to my room and we can get in through there. But they wouldn’t mind either way.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Caitlin,” he said, crouching down to make eye contact. “I won’t take you anywhere you don’t want to go.”

I searched his face. He wasn’t lying. At least he didn’t seem like he was lying. I honestly don’t think there was a way I would have known at that point, but his face looked like one of those sincere, non-lying faces.

I nodded. “Okay.”

We slipped out the barn doors. I grabbed his arm so I didn’t fall into the man-size potholes littering the dirt-and-gravel parking lot. He didn’t seem to mind. Once we got to his bike, it occurred to both of us that I was wearing a dress.

“Hmm,” I said, contemplating the logistics. “This will work. Just don’t be staring at my business.”

Holding on to him, I hiked my dress up and swung my leg over, the fabric bunched up to my thighs, the leather of the seat freezing against my skin. Adrian grabbed his coat from one of the saddlebags and put it over my shoulders.

“Won’t you be cold?” I asked, already shivering.

“I’ll be fine. I’m just worried about you. I forgot to factor in the whole”—he looked at my legs—“dress issue.”

“I’m fine if you’re fine.”

He stared at my legs again. “I’m fine.”

I shivered, waiting for him to get on the bike.

He cleared his throat. “Right.”

I shoved my helmet on (did he always carry around a spare helmet?) and slid my arms around his waist.

It felt a lot different when he wasn’t wearing a jacket.

Adrian had very nice abs.

I poked them just to make sure they were real, and he turned around to look at me strangely. I decided to stop poking him.

The headlight cut through the night as the Harley revved away from the barn, the beat of the music fading quickly behind us. We picked up speed until I was sure we were breaking the limit by a good twenty or thirty miles, or maybe it just felt like that because my eyes couldn’t focus on anything.

God, it was cold.

My arms were fine because of the cloak and Adrian’s jacket, and my face was fine because it was completely covered by the helmet, but my legs felt like they were being whipped with lashes made of ice. Overhead, the moon shone brightly through a few clouds and cast the road ahead into odd shadows, making the whole strange night even more bizarre. The woods on either side of the road were like zippers pulling closed behind us. If we didn’t go fast enough we’d get eaten up in their teeth, crushed in cold leaves made of metal.

Sometime later, the silence hit me, and I realized we’d stopped. Adrian pulled his gloves off and put his hands over mine, presumably to warm them up. We sat like that for a while until I could move my fingers, then Adrian stood, removing his helmet. Still numb, I shoved my helmet off, too, and let it drop to the ground.

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

He didn’t say anything, just lifted me off the bike like I was a child. He carried me up some stairs, through a door, and into a warm, dark room where he set me down. I immediately curled into a ball and shivered while he closed the balcony door, then rustled through some drawers.

“Caitlin,” he murmured a moment later, placing a hand on my arm. “When you can move, put these on.” He tucked something next to my hands and then said, “I’m going to go downstairs to make some hot chocolate. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

His hand left my arm, and a moment later I heard the door close.

I sat up. With the moonlight coming through the French doors, my eyes finally adjusted and I found a pair of drawstring sweatpants, some thick wool socks, and one of his deliciously soft sweaters. I buried my face in them and breathed deeply. They smelled like Adrian. It was a very good smell. I wobbled to the door and felt around for a lock, then switched it. I reached for the zipper on my dress, then paused, a thought finding its way to the surface of my sluggish brain:

I would be mostly naked, however briefly, in Adrian de la Mara’s room.

I would be without clothing. In Adrian’s room.

Naked.

I think I snorted.

Searching for any sort of sounds from the house and finding none, I shimmied out of the dress and threw it on the bed, tried three times to unhook my bra (because let’s face it, sleeping in a bra is pretty much the worst thing in the world), succeeded, threw it somewhere across the room with far more velocity than I’d intended, then reached for the sweater and pulled it over my head. I finally got around to the pants and fell trying to get them on. Then I had to sit still for a minute because my head was spinning. I was just pulling the socks on when there was a quiet knock. I made sure the tie on the sweatpants was tight so they wouldn’t fall off and then opened the door. He looked to make sure I was dressed, then slipped inside, carrying two mugs.