Stained (25 page)

He didn't reply, so she continued. "Killing this guy turns out to be harder than I thought, and along the way I find out that there are a whole bunch of people, just like me, getting killed. And the crap gets crazier. But no matter how bad it got, you were always there. We helped each other. I thought we were friends. I thought..."

Julia couldn't say what she thought, and Cayne didn't ask. "Things were as good as they could be. I mean, maybe you secretly disliked me, but you keep that secret pretty well. Then the other night you get your memory back, and suddenly it's like none of that ever happened. You act like you're a different person."

"I am a different person."

"A person who doesn't like to be with me."

"Julia, I don't like being around anyone."

"You don't like being around anyone!" She smacked her head. "Okay. Wow. And here I thought this whole you not talking to me thing was just
me
. But it's anyone. Doesn't matter who I was. I could be anyone."

"No," he said softly. "You could not be anyone."

"No, I guess not." She felt sick again. "You know what. Just go get Andre. Your friend. Whatever his name is. But don't give me anymore of this crap. If you don't want to stay with me, I'd rather you tell me the truth. And when you're done making me crazy, try working out your own stuff." Julia flipped onto her stomach and buried her face in the pillow, painfully aware of how dramatic she was acting, and equally painfully unable to stop herself.

The tears came like clockwork. As soon as her lips stopped forming words, the damn things started letting out sobs and whimpers and other annoying, sniveling sounds.

She pushed her mouth into the pillow and turned so her back was to Cayne. She heard the leather chair creak as he stood. She heard the door open and close.

Chapter 33

Julia's mini-breakdown was finished not ten minutes after it started. She felt like a drowned cat, and took another shower to clear her head. She was tying her All-Stars when Cayne walked in.

He cleared his throat. "I called Andre. He'll go with you from Chicago to Washington."

Julia felt like he had hit her in the stomach with a sledgehammer.
"What?"

"Andre--"

"Why are you leaving?"

Cayne spoke slowly, like he had just learned how. "I think it would be best."

Her mouth opened, but nothing came out.

"It isn't working," Cayne said carefully. "I tried, but I can't." He spread his arms, and let them drop to his jeans.

And the waterworks started. Julia was bawling again in less than one second flat, and Cayne was, of course, horrified.

"Please." He wiped his hands on his blue jeans, looking helpless. "You'll be better without me," he tried.

She shook her head, all decorum lost to pitiful, kindergarten sorrow.

"Staying with you--it's not the right thing. For either of us."

"It's going...fine...for me," she said, sobbing harder.

"It doesn't seem like it."

Julia almost slapped him, but instead she dropped onto the bottom bunk, crying messily into her hands. She cried and cried and cried and cried. She held on to the pillow and totally lost track of time and Cayne and everything but everything she had lost: her parents, the twins, her few school girlfriends she would never see again and the truck Harry drove and college plans.

She missed the French fries at school that made everyone feel sick but that Dirk and Dwight gorged on anyway. She missed getting milkshakes at Chick-Fil-A with Suzanne after test days and listening to her iPod, the new one she'd just gotten, not a week before the house burned down and they left her.

Now Cayne was leaving her, and she missed him, too.

At some point she felt the weight of his hand on her shoulder, but she batted him off. When she wiped her stinging, swollen eyes she found him standing solemnly by the window, looking for all the world like he was the victim. "I'm going to spend the day until Chicago in a room on another car," he said. He told Julia the number, but she didn't hear it.

And he didn't leave.

Cayne showered, he changed, and he planted himself in the leather chair like some kind of horrible garden gnome. He propped one foot on his knee and picked at his shoe, then glanced up, suddenly seeming almost shy. "I hope you know I, uh...I care about you."

It was the worst thing he could have said. Her whole body got hotter than a white dwarf and her heart did this ridiculous barrel roll and Julia knew--she really knew--that she was probably in love with him.

She snorted, loudly, a knee-jerk reaction that even jerked her tone--to something twisted. "As what? A friend?"

"No. As...as you."

Her shoulders started shaking, and then the rest of her. She put her wobbling hands under her thighs. "So?"

Cayne said nothing as he stood. He pushed his hands into his pockets and looked at his feet. Finally: "I uh... I liked getting to know you and all."

Julia bit her tongue. There were too many things she could have said, and she probably would have regretted all of them.

She prepared to turn her heart into stone. This was obviously how her life was supposed to go. No parents, bouncing from place to place. That's how it had always been.

She would cry, sure, but the tears would fade to restless dreams, and when the morning light broke through her compartment window, she would be ready.

He turned to go, and her hand shot out and she cried, "Cayne!"

He turned slowly, and she heard him say, "Yes?" The word was drawn-out, awkward, and she heard it from a far, high place--like she was watching the exchange from the top of a long and winding staircase.

She observed herself: angry. Taking a risk, she noted, but she still said, "Stop."

"This is--

"Screw your best. Screw whatever you were going to say."

"Julia."

She shook her head. She had to stall. "I...don't want to say bye like this. Can't you stay till Chicago? I don't want to switch trains without you."

She stared at him, her eyes imploring. At last he dropped his small bag and walked to the leather chair.

Slowly, surely, for there was nothing to lose now, Julia knelt in front of him and put her hands on his knees. He looked startled; she was steeled. "How about you tell me what's wrong." She smiled softly. "We're friends at least. And it bothers me, you being unhappy."

Cayne's warm hands enfolded hers, and he set them away, looking down at the floor, at the worn out grayish carpet. For the longest time, he didn't say anything, and she watched his shoulders rise and fall. Then his gaze jerked up. "I can't."

"You can." She put everything she could into those two words. He would have to talk, because she wasn't going to let things end like this. She was going to keep something.

Cayne closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. He seemed to deflate. "I wish I'd never gotten my memory back."

He spoke haltingly, as if each word were dragged from his lungs and up his throat, kicking and screaming. "I didn't know I was...like this."

"Like what?" she whispered.

He motioned to himself.

"What's wrong with you? I like you well enough."

"You don't know me."

"Cayne--"

"Don't tell me I'm being stupid," he barked. Julia refused to recoil, and his faced flushed with guilt. "I can't tell you." He looked pained.

Julia twisted the hem of her shirt into a knot. "It's okay if you don't tell me. I don't need to know."

"But you should. If I was at all..." He sighed. "I'm not good for you, Julia."

"I can decide what's good for me."

"You don't have all the facts."

"I don't need them!" She was fed up with the woe-is-me crap. She hadn't exactly been having the best of times lately, either. She softened her tone and said, "Cayne, I don't need to know about your past, because it's the past. The present is what matters. As far as I'm concerned, you didn't exist until you dropped into my warehouse."

"But that's--"

"The way I feel. Don't you dare tell me it's stupid."

He looked away. "I was going to say dangerous."

She shook her head. "I've survived this long with you.
Because
of you."

"That's not enough."

"For you to stay with me?"

"For it to be right."

Julia wished he would just come out with it--because the impression she had of "it" at the moment was something developing between them.

But he didn't say anything.

So slowly, and carefully, she closed the space between them. Her face was smooth, her motions infused with the certainty she felt. She slid her hands up his arms and caught his face between her palms. He didn't resist. She smiled, a wobbly, frightened little smile. "Silly demon-boy." Her voice shook. "I'll decide what's right for me."

And she took a big, deep breath and leaned in close to kiss him.

Chapter 34

Julia opened her eyes and thought she was still dreaming.

Cayne was holding her. Like, bonna fide arms around her, chest pressed to her back, chin pressed to her shoulder holding her. She had her hands over his hands, and his hands were locked around her waist--possessively. It was the closest she'd ever been to a guy. Maybe to any human. But he wasn't human was he? She grinned. It didn't matter.

Every inch of him that touched her burned. Every breath he exhaled tickled her hair. His heart drummed a rhythm that she felt in her bones.

Amazing.

Wanting to feel his skin, feeling daring--oh so daring--she reached back around him and eased her hand under his shirt. He let out a lazy breath and turned his head. Julia turned to kiss the sharp scar at his throat, then stroked his hair off his brow and re-arranged herself so she was facing him.

As she melded herself to the strong curves of his body, she felt what could only have been joy.

The white noise of the moving train, the occasional voice or soft steps in the hall, the high pitch of wind through a crack in the window--no longer notes on a cruel, lonely scale, but the soothing sounds of life, moving straight down a sure path, as she was. The tightness of the room was snug instead of stifling. Even the simple sensation of cloth on her skin was something sensual, to be savored.