Sweet as Sin (41 page)

“So, can these rocks…can we save them?”

Andros sadly shook his head. “If you

were bigger, maybe. But the tainted blood needs to be filtered through the stone and through clean royal blood. You can’t

survive that.”

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“I don’t care.” Filled with the strength of every prince before him, Jondi stood firm.

“I can’t live without them, Andros. If it takes every drop of blood I have, do it.

Nordrake might get my death but he’ll never get my soul as long as they live. Do it.”

“I can’t knowingly take a life even to

save another. I—”

“I said do it! I can’t let them die. If you won’t do it, then teach me how!”

Measuring the conviction in his eyes,

Andros nodded. “All right, Jondi. I’ll teach you. And then I’ll bury you.”

She’d died and no one had told her. It was the only possible explanation for the throb in her skull.

But if she were dead, then she wouldn’t be feeling anything, right? Livvy rolled across the pillow, the simple motion making her hurt more. Bits of memories flooded back. Tow had made her some deliciously cool sweet drink and then everything got fuzzy.

The light stabbed her and she realized she was in John’s bed.
Wait, how did that happen?
A fleeting image of sitting on John’s lap, kissing, and his hands floating across her bare breasts shimmered through the haziness and she groaned.

Had she done something really stupid?

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Her hands held her head so it wouldn’t fall off her neck and she pulled herself from the bed, stumbling to the bathroom. The red tee shirt caught her eyes in the vanity mirror and she slumped. There was no way she’d have pulled this color from the drawer, not even when drunk. She smelled like John, the masculine scent wrapping around her with a twisted comfort. Something had definitely happened.

The cabinet latch echoed, gunshot-loud, and she winced before looking for the Tylenol. She got sidetracked at the two brown prescription bottles on the middle shelf. Livvy blinked and picked up the closest bottle.
Benzodiazepine. Dr.

Bernard Stolberg. Manhattan.
The date was last week and the bottle was mostly full. The second prescription had the same doctor’s name but listed the drug as Seroquel.

Livvy shoved the bottles back on the shelf and grabbed two painkillers. She greedily gulped two glasses of tap water. Her stomach quivered as the fluid hit. She’d been sick. She knew that. She remembered thinking her stomach was going to explode.

Wonderful, his last memory of me will be me
puking my guts up
.

She splashed handful after handful of cold water on her face, trying to clear the cotton from her mind. Vaguely she recalled yelling at John, 458

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crying, and something about a shower. Trying to focus hurt, so she stopped. What she needed to focus on was getting out of here before John found her awake. There was no way she could face him like this.

She came face to face with him the minute she opened the bathroom door, nearly colliding into him. His hands shot out to steady her as she fell backward. She shrugged his hands off, angled around him and went in search of her shorts.

“Head hurt?” His voice pumped up the throb and she grimaced.

“Yeah.” Her throat was raw, making her voice husky. She coughed and shards of pain stabbed into her brain. Her shorts lay in a ball beside the nightstand. The thought of bending over to grab them nauseated her, so she wasn’t sure she could actually manage the act. Instead, she sat slowly on the bed, careful not to bounce, and pulled the shirt hem as far down her thighs as possible.

Embarrassment heated her face but she had to know. “Did we…?”

“No.” His small smile was gentle and he shook his head. “You just slept. Alone.”

He didn’t look as if he’d slept at all. His hair was messed and tumbled, and the grooves at his mouth and eyes were deeper than normal.

Shadows grew under his eyes and tension knotted his shoulders.

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“I need to go home.”

“Stay. You’re hungover and hurting. Home

will be there in a few hours. Just rest.”

The idea appealed so much she nearly caved on the spot but being here, in his bed, with him in the room hurt too badly. It reminded her of what she’d lost. Pain gave her power and she leaped from the mattress.

And hit the floor. Carpet burned her knees as her head spun.

Okay, so maybe a little more rest before she left was required, just enough to make the room stop circling. John lifted her to the bed, laying her back and pulling the sheet over her hips. She let the blackness engulf her.

When Livvy opened her eyes the next time, pain didn’t explode, it merely thudded. The walls didn’t spin. They only rippled for a second. She just might survive, but only if she got away from John—she didn’t have the resolve to argue with him any longer. She pulled herself out of bed and padded to the bathroom.

John was waiting when she came out. He’d

changed into jeans and a bright sky-blue shirt that lightened his eyes but did nothing for the lines of fatigue around his mouth. Steam wafted from the daisy motif mug in his hand, the mug she

preferred her coffee in while at his house. He’d 460

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remembered. Livvy fought the wave of tenderness, forcing it away as he taught her, with cruelty.

“Hemlock? No thanks, you drink it.”

He held the mug out to her. “It’s green tea and chamomile. Gina left it here. I think it tastes like shit but it’s supposed to help an upset stomach.”

Livvy didn’t have an upset stomach until he’d said it. Then her insides lurched.
When did he
start being able to control my bodily functions?

Grudgingly she accepted the cup, careful not to touch his hands.

“Thanks. I’ll get out of your hair in a minute.”

She blew on the liquid and let the fragrant steam wake her senses. Easing back to the bed, she pulled the blanket over her bare legs, a move she saw he noticed. His gaze jerked from her legs to the wall behind her. Dead air hung for a minute.

Livvy couldn’t think of a single thing to say to break the mood that wouldn’t bring fresh tears until she looked over his shoulder at the long cherry dresser. The mirror frame hung empty.

“What happened to the mirror?”

John gritted his jaw before replying. “I

punched it out after you left…that night. I didn’t like the man I saw there.”

Livvy recalled the sound of shattering glass and nodded. What more could she really say? A few harsh comments threatened but they weren’t Inez Kelley

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worth the oxygen. They had hurt each other enough. It was time to let go. It was time to heal.

“Liv, now I need a favor.” Gravel rough, his voice was hesitant. “Will you read something for me?”

“What?”

“Book five. Just the skeleton, really. It’ll be three times the size when I’m finished but… It’s important.” His eyes on the wall behind her, he missed the frown she felt pulling at her lips.

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll steal it?”

He shoved one hand into his pocket. “I trust you.”

“Murphy, I have a headache big enough to stop a freight train and am looking at two of you right now. I really don’t want t—”

“If you love me, Livvy, read my manuscript.”

A heart can only break so many times before it goes cold. Narrowing her eyes, she glared at him.

“Low blow, Murphy. That’s blackmail.”

“When the stakes are this high, I’ll use what I have to.” At those words, words he’d used before to soften her anger, his eyes finally dropped to hers. “Please, Livvy.”

Why couldn’t she deny him? Why did he still have the power to turn her insides to jelly? “Fine.”

He picked up his laptop from the dresser and handed it to her. A flash drive stuck out from the 462

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side. “It’s the only file on there so you can’t miss it.”

“I got it.” She flipped the screen up and punched the power button. “Go away. I can’t read with you hovering.”

He turned to leave the room but stopped on the threshold. “I’ll tell you straight out, it’s raw. But the story’s real. To me, it’s very real.”

At her small nod, he disappeared from sight.

Livvy sagged back into the pillows. What the hell was she doing? He’d lied to her. He’d broken her heart. He was going to take her bakery. The computer finished the power-up cycle, and his web browser automatically opened. Her heart started pounding in echo to her head. She had the entire internet at her fingertips.

Without thinking about it too hard, she jumped out of bed and wobbled into the bathroom. She brought both prescription bottles back and carefully typed in the drug names. Anti-depressants. She scowled at the screen. Okay, so maybe John was depressed. She hadn’t exactly been spouting sunshine lately either. But something about the armchair diagnosis seemed off.

Nibbling her lip, she searched for Dr. Bernard Stolberg. Her stomach flopped. He was a

psychiatrist specializing in the treatment of military personnel returning from combat. John Inez Kelley

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wasn’t a soldier, but he had been in combat all his life.

The good doctor’s website was very helpful, the welcome page giving his positive spin on the treatment and therapies for… Livvy’s chest tightened and she hit the back button three times, fighting nausea that had nothing to do with her hangover. The medications in her hand were commonly prescribed to treat different aspects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Livvy ran a palm over her face. It made sense.

He’d lived through hell. No man could do that and not carry scars. She scanned WebMD and

mentally ticked off symptom after symptom. Did John have flashbacks? She knew about the

nightmares, the headaches, the mood swings, the aggression. Even the self-destructive behaviors like drinking, speeding and fighting played a role.

His anti-social tendencies melded right into the mix.

The list was endless, covering everything from sexual dysfunction—which he’d never suffered from with her—to problems sleeping—which he had with regularity. Her heart clenched at the suicide statistics shown. No, John would never…

He was a survivor, period. She clung to that thought.

One symptom stuttered her breath.

Hypervigilance was an exaggerated intensity of 464

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fears and emotions, and was often accompanied by increased anxiety and exhaustion.

Wasn’t that John to a T? Looking back, she could see the signs. Where any other man would have been upset or worried over a lapse in birth control, John shot into orbit. That forgotten condom had triggered something that rocked him to his core. Livvy couldn’t figure out how it related to Alan but she didn’t have to. John had obviously made the connection and it had thrown him into emotional overload.

Words swam on the screen and she wiped her eyes before closing the browser. But now he was getting some help. That was good. If she couldn’t be the one to take care of him, at least he was taking care of himself. No one else ever had.

Her gaze dropped to the flash drive. She

clicked the icon and waited while the file loaded.

Something in this story was important to him, important that he relay to her. What could he want her to see? She knew he wrote magic. She’d seen him pull a smile from a sad little girl with only a few strokes of imagination. Was there enough magic in this story to make a miracle and heal two broken hearts? Somehow, that seemed too tall an order for even the great J. B. Flannigan, Master of Monsters.

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John responded to sixty-five questions from a fan-based website and no sound from the bedroom.

He’d updated his professional blog with the upcoming release information and silence from the bedroom. He cleaned out his overflowing inbox and heard nothing from the bedroom. He’d called Christina and told her to accept the animation offer if she felt it was right. That call left his ear ringing from her excited laugh but he heard zilch from the bedroom. Antsy and tense, he sat, fingers drumming on his thigh, staring at the window. Somehow, he slipped into a doze, the long sleepless night catching up with him.

A door creaked and he shot upright in the chair.

Livvy, now wearing her cutoffs under the red tee shirt, hair pulled into a messy ponytail, bolted past the study.

“I’m just getting some toast.”

Translation: I’m not finished reading and don’t
want to talk to you.

A few minutes later, she walked by the open door, paper towel holding two slices of toast. She stopped but her head didn’t turn toward him. “I need the power cord, the battery’s dying.”

John dug the cord out of his desk drawer and handed it to her. He couldn’t help but notice she made sure their fingers didn’t touch. She took a step away then stopped. “Is Vory…am I Vory?”

“Yes.”

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The confirmation made her head shake. “Even as a pink monster, you hurt me. You really don’t do anything half-assed, do you?”

And then she was gone, the jab stinging like a bee.

Andros did more than teach Jondi. He

ground the blood stones, carried Vory from her bed, placed her next to Thorn and wrote the spell on thick vellum for Jondi to read.

Then he stood back and watched, eyes wet.

Eyes dry, Jondi laid his hand on the bat’s folded wing, silently saying goodbye to the strongest part of himself. His friend, his protector, his brother of choice, Thorn

deserved to live to fight another day. He would never have wanted to end up like this, mindless, pure rage, bent on self-destruction.

Jondi’s last gift to him would be peace.

Under that same hand, Vory shivered,

her fur petal-soft and hot. Shiny violet eyes opened, capturing his gaze for a long, quiet minute. She smiled and fell back to sleep.

Whispering goodbye, Jondi stroked her long lavender hair. She deserved happiness. His last gift to her was comfort.