Break Away (Away, Book 1) (20 page)

A thought flashed across his green eyes and
his narrowed gaze vanished. “Lola must've been here cleaning and
forgot to close the door.” He walked to the paint-daubed table and
picked up the pointed carving tools. “But she should know better
than that. I don't like anyone to come in here,” he said while
placing the tools inside one of the drawers of a rolling storage
cart.

I took that as my cue to leave.

“Wait.” He threw out his arm and stopped me.
“I wasn't…you don't have to leave.”

I hesitated, watching his expectant eyes. I
knew what he was offering, and I wasn't sure I wanted to accept. I
wasn't ready for this part of his mind and soul that was almost as
baffling as it was alluring. I wasn't ready for the ramifications
that this could bring into our already difficult relationship,
because once a door was opened, there was no coming back. That open
space would always leave a hole.

Refusing to watch glimpses of an artist's
genius however, wasn't something I could do. Especially when the
artist himself, who appeared to treasure his work from the view of
others like a mollusk guarded a pearl in its shell, was asking me
to stay and appraise his sculptures. Even if the artist was Ian, I
appreciated the magnitude of his offer.

I nodded and looked at the heart sculpture.
“I love that piece,” I said to slice up the veil of awkwardness
that'd wrapped around us.

He looked at me and smirked, his smile edged
with something else I couldn't quite put my finger on. Then, his
eyes dropped and he shook his head, as if in amused surprise. “How
ironic,” I thought I heard him say. His words had been too mumbly
and low to put a safe bet. “It's one of my favorites, too,” he said
after a while.

I walked to the spellbinding sculpture. “I
love the rich purple color,” I said, studying its hue and texture.
“It doesn't even look like it's made of wood until you look up
close.”

“That's the wood's natural color.” He stepped
next to me. “It comes from the heartwood of a South American tree.
People call it Purpleheart, which if you think about it, is quite
fitting for the sculpture.”

A purple heart made with Purpleheart.
“Huh. I think you already have a title for this.”

“Nope,” he sighed. “This sculpture had a
title way before I started it.”

“Which is…”

“…only known to the artist.” He smiled.

I suppressed a roll of the eyes and decided
to let it go. He'd already shared with me enough of his stuff.
“So…how hard was this wood to work with?” I asked, moving around
the sculpture.

“Very,” he answered, his eyes following my
every movement. “Purpleheart is quite dense.”

I stopped across from him and locked gazes
with his emeralds. “You're really good, Ian,” I said as honestly as
I could, from artist to artist. “No wonder why Aremihc chose
you.”

The corner of his mouth lifted in a sweet
smile. “Thanks.” And then, an odd sparkle showed up in his eyes,
lighting the green in them to a piney warmth.

My stomach clenched. “What?” I asked,
uncomfortable.

“It's weird to see you standing here, that's
all.”

“Am I really the only one who's been here,
besides Lola and you?”

He cleared his throat and left for the long
table. “Yep. Though you kind of forced yourself into here.”

I followed him. “I already told you the—”

“I know. I know. The door was open.” He
lowered his gaze to what looked like a magazine in one corner of
the table and lifted it up for my view. “I, on the other hand, was
looking for this.”

I read the large capital letters on the
colorful cover. “Oris?” Of course he had a subscription to Oris
magazine, the Reader's Digest version for artists. With all the
money he had, he could afford himself a hefty monthly subscription
to the big artsy cash cow. Me? I favored independent magazines and
bloggers. They had more soul.

“Can I have a look?” I said, reaching out my
hand.

He shrugged and pushed the magazine into the
half-moon of my hand. “Go ahead.”

While he fumbled around in one of the storage
cart's drawers, where he seemed to keep all of his sculpting tools,
I flipped through the clean, rigid pages of Oris, which made me
feel as if I was looking at a class handout of an Economic MBA
program instead of an Arts one. How did anyone not see how cold and
boring to look at this magazine was? How self-important and—

My thought dissolved. The dark emotional
turmoil that'd been roaring inside of me before returned. I read
the article's title stretching under my nose with a thorn in my
chest.

WHY PEOPLE FALLING INTO COMA

MAY HAVE ITS ROOTS IN ART

By Comus

Shock and disbelief tumbled against each
other in my mind as the words seeped through my head, deep into my
brain. I could feel cold and hot colors stroking up and down my
cheeks and lips. My face must've been a blender of expressions the
whole time, something that was confirmed minutes later when Ian
asked, “Is there something wrong? You look like a black hole in
space just spitted you out.”

I folded the magazine in two and looked up at
him. “Read this,” I said, punching a finger to the page where the
article was and handed it to him.

He took it with a frown and started
reading.

I waited, turning over in my mind the
thoughts and ideas the article had seeded in me, examining them
like three dimensional objects in which each side held a different
hidden message. Could it be? Could those crazy, out of anyone's
mind words be true?

Later on, Ian shed light on the subject with
a snort. “You can't honestly believe what this man is saying. He's
nuts.”

“Is he?” I shrugged, opening my arms in
doubt, as if seeking an answer from the heavens. “How do we know
that?”

“Do you truly believe artists are behind this
because of, what, being so good at what they do?” He emphasized
with a shake of his head. “Our job has always been to transport
people to other places with our creations; be that a meadow filled
with sparkling butterflies or a waterfall with a hot chick in
Maui—it doesn't matter. What shapes and colors things around you is
your mind, not anyone else's. We artists are just the igniters of
that journey. The only thing we can be blamed for is inciting
emotions in people, not for dooming them into a weird coma.”

“That's exactly what this Comus guy is
saying, Ian. We are the creators of the vehicles allowing people to
escape their reality. People that burn with the need of leaving
this world if just for a moment.”

“You're not making any sense, Dafne. What
does it have to do with us?”

“Everything. If there are really bad people
out there trying to use this
need
to their profit, to gain
whatever they're seeking to get, then we are the perfect tools to
attain it.”

“And what are these bad people trying to get?
The Holy Grail? An army of walking comatose people to rule the
world? This is nonsense.” He turned around and snapped the article
on the table. “What would anyone get from making people fall into a
coma?”

“I don't know. That's what I’m going to find
out.” I fetched the magazine and stepped back from his reproving
look. “I'll ask Comus to explain what he meant with all this
nonsense
. He must've gotten this info from somewhere.”

“Dafne, everyone knows Comus lost his mind a
long time ago. The only reasons Oris agrees to publish his articles
are because readers love laughing at the poor man and because he's
friends with the founder. Nothing else.”

“He's the only person that has come up with a
different angle on what's happening. He's the only one that says
this isn't a virus.”

He paused and looked at me. “What do
you
believe?”

I took a deep breath and sighed. “I don't
know. I just…
know
this doesn't have to do with doctors or
virologists or the CDC. This is something more, and if someone else
believes this, too, then I don't care if he's a nutcase.”

He caught hold of my wrist before I made a
move to leave and lowered his eyes to mine. “Comodore Muslo has
schizophrenia,” he said, as if this explained everything.

I closed the distance between us and looked
at him with defiance. “So what if Comus is schizophrenic?”

“You can't put your faith in someone who
feeds on delusions and voices that aren't there.”

“In whom should I put my faith in, then?
Guardian angels?”

He dropped his emerald eyes to the fingers
wrapping my wrist and swallowed. “Me,” he whispered and stared into
my eyes. “Trust
me
.”

A black, corrosive feeling rose in my chest
with the memory of betrayal, leaving a sour tang in my mouth. I
still hadn't forgotten what he'd said to Buffy that night after
he'd proposed a truce between us. The echo of those derisive words
hadn't faded from my mind yet, no matter what his recent noble
persona had done in these two days. Treason was treason, pure and
dark. And if it involved playing with me, it was death, resolute
and rigid. I could never trust him again.

I looked at him. “I heard you that
night…downstairs with Buffy. You told her you could care less about
the stupid truce with me, that it was just pretense.”

He frowned, confused at the sudden words, and
then, as if realizing what track this conversation was staking, his
eyes widened. “You heard—”

“I trusted you. For the first time since I
met your insufferable ass, I decided to trust you. And you broke
it; you broke that thin ribbon of trust.”

His grip on my wrist loosened. “I
didn't—”

“Don't you ever ask me to trust you, because
doing it again is as possible as chipmunks taking over the
world.”

“Dafne—”

“You had your chance. Now if you'll excuse
me, I have to be somewhere else.”

The clasp of his hand tightened on me once
more. “Where do you think you're going?”

“None of your business.”

“It's my business when you're in my
house.”

“Let me fix that.” I jerked back my hand,
trying to free myself from his grasp, but he pulled me back,
smashing my body against him. I made myself ignore the warmth of
his skin, seeping through his thin white shirt.

“First, you had no business snooping into a
private conversation. Secondly, you won't leave this house unless
my
insufferable ass
”—he quoted me through slightly clenched
teeth—”is next to your insufferable one.”

My jaw dropped in astonished anger.
“
Excuse me?
” I enunciated very slowly. “Are you threatening
me?”

“No. I'm telling you that you won't leave
this house alone.”

“Which is still a threat!”

“It's not.”

“It is.”

“
Not
.”

“
Is
.”

And just like that, we were back again on the
hate boat.

With the tips of our noses being so close,
the need to seal that space and hit his forehead with mine felt
incredibly strong. I wanted to make insufferable, cocky Ian go
through pain. “Like you said, everything that happens in my house
is my business.” I told him with narrowed eyes. “That includes
stupid conversations you might have. And no, I'm not leaving this
house with you. I'm calling a cab.”

“You're
not
going alone to see that
crazy man.”

“Who said I'm going to see him?”

“It's written all over your face, Dafne. I
won't let you.” He released my wrist and ran a hand through his
tousled brown hair. “If I don't come with you, then—”

“Then what?”

“I'll tell your grandma what you're planning
on doing.”

“And what is that exactly?”

He took a deep breath and sighed loudly, as
if all the tension of the world had been in that lungful of air.
“You're planning on threatening a crazy man that wrote crap about
people falling into coma, blaming you for their situation.”

I stepped back, shocked. I was about to say
“you wouldn't dare,” but a second after that thought crossed my
mind, reality dawned on me. Yes he would, that and much more to get
what he wanted. “He didn't blame
me
.”

“He blamed artists, which you take
personally—and you want to beat the crap out of him,” he added on a
second thought, as if to strengthen his masterful idea.

I took another step back. “Gran would never
believe you. It's way too ridiculous.”

“You need an outlet to take out all that
frustration and fury burning inside of you. She'll believe me.”

“No way,” I said, doubt already lacing my
voice. I wasn't known to be a gentle person, and even if Gran knew
the real me, she could believe the somber circumstances wrapping
our lives in this moment might push me to do, well, reckless
things.

“Do you want to test it?” Ian offered,
producing an iPhone.

God, I hated handing a victory to him, but
this time he had me between the devil and the deep blue sea. “Okay.
You win. But know that after this, the little, microscopic speck of
respect I had for you is
forever
lost,” I said, putting
stress on the eternal time part. “You're worse than Hannibal
Lecter, and that's saying something.”

An ashen cloud fell over his eyes, dimming
the emerald color to the dry green of tea leaves. His shoulders
sagged, as if with disappointment and weariness, and he said, “If
being a cannibalistic serial killer from a horror movie stops you
from going alone to meet that cuckoo, then I don't care.” He said,
his last words ending in a soft mumble.

He seemed far from being indifferent to what
I'd said—it almost looked like he cared about what I thought of
him—but the mellow Dafne from yesterday and this morning was gone,
and the real Dafne who didn't give a hoot about Ian's state of
being—at least, that's what I told myself—was back. So in a very
Dafn-esque fashion I said, “If you're going to stick with me, the
least you can do is prove yourself useful.” I crossed my arms and
drummed my right hand fingers over my skin, as a bored queen
waiting to be entertained by her court's jesters. “Find Comodore's
address and program it into your iPhone's GPS. In the meantime,
I'll go to take a shower.” I turned around and started for the open
door.