The Year of the Great Seventh (35 page)

What were they doing? I couldn’t wait inside the room, doing nothing. Driven by the anxiety of not knowing what was happening outside and feeling my heart pounding through my chest, I pushed the door handle. The door creaked open.

I peeked through the crack. The corridor table from across my room was split into two pieces. The vase that had been on top was smashed into tiny pieces, and a silver candle holder lay in the middle of the corridor. I looked up the corridor to see Preston and Nate rolling on top of each other on the floor.

Preston was on his knees on top of Nate, punching him maniacally, and Nate grabbed Preston at his shoulders, trying to push him away.

I slid the door open a bit more and stepped into the corridor. I felt my hands shaking. Nate pushed Preston away from him after dodging one blow and managed to roll over on his back. Nate was now on his knees, punching Preston. Blood dripped from Nate’s lip while he hammered Preston’s face.

Preston was lying on his back, trying to get something out of his pocket while covering his face with his other arm. He reached and grabbed the silver candleholder, hitting Nate on the head with it.

“Ahhhh!!!” Nate yelled, covering his face with his hands and crawling into a ball on the floor.

Preston quickly got up and started kicking Nate with no mercy as he groaned on the floor.

“Nate!” I shouted, not knowing what to do.

Preston gazed at me through the corner of his eye, becoming aware that I’d been watching them all this time.

“Go back into the room!” Nate shouted amidst his agony.

Preston kicked Nate again with all his force. Nate rolled onto his side in pain.

I turned back into the room, as I saw Preston running toward me.

It was as if I were trapped in one of those dreams where you want to run away, but you can’t move from the spot. I saw Preston getting closer stride after stride as I moved in slow motion back into the room.

Simultaneously, Nate pushed himself up with both hands, sprinted onto his feet, and chased after Preston. As I turned into my hotel room, I saw Preston seemingly suspended in midair, getting closer to me with one hand outstretched to grab my hair from behind. As I got through the door, I felt Preston reaching my hair. I could feel his grasp closing on it.

Right before he was about to pull me to the floor, Nate jumped on him, and he seemed to be able to move faster than Preston. He shoved him against the emergency exit door, causing it to open. Then we heard Preston falling down the stairs.

“Go in the room,” Nate ordered, rushing after Preston.

Leaning on the door, I tried to compose myself. I couldn’t understand what happened. The corridor was the evidence that it hadn’t been my imagination. There were pieces of glass on the floor, and the side table was split in two. Drops of blood trailed along the white carpet.

“He’s gone.” Nate appeared through the emergency exit door. “Are you okay?” He rushed over to me.

Realizing I was in a state of shock, Nate grabbed my hand and led me into the room. I sat on the bed, unable to utter a word.

“Did he do anything to you? What did he say to you?” Nate paced up and down the room, bewildered.

I hesitated for a moment, unsure whether to tell him the truth or not.

“I think he knows why we’re here.”

“What do you mean?” Nate turned around at once.

“He wanted the bracelet.”

“Why would he?”

“I don’t know, but he obviously knows what’s going to happen if I take it off.”

Nate looked out the window anxiously. I knew he’d reached the same conclusion I had, but he seemed unwilling to accept it.

“This is a family thing, isn’t it? Preston knows about it because maybe it’s happening to him too…?”

Nate’s gaze was fixed on the black spot that occupied Central Park. The silence lapsed between us. He didn’t seem to want to weigh the possibility that Preston was in this, too.

“Are you okay?”

Nate’s lip was still bleeding. He stared out the window.

He wasn’t making an effort to cover the spreading gray mark anymore. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up and I could see how the stain covered both of his arms. I couldn’t play this game anymore. Nate must’ve known that someone was after us. It was too obvious.

“You believed someone else knew about what was happening to you, didn’t you? That’s why you told me to not open the door to anyone.”

Nate took a deep breath and spoke, looking out onto the street. “After I booked our flights, I got a call from the airline saying someone had called that morning requesting our flight details. I knew someone was tracking our moves, but I never suspected Preston.” Nate glanced at me over his shoulder. “I should’ve known. I broke my promise. I told you I’d always protect you.”

“You didn’t break any promise. You protected me,” I said quickly, before he decided all of this was his fault.

“We’re not safe here. He may come back.” Nate turned around, seemingly worried. “We’ll move to another hotel. Get your stuff.”

“Let me clean up the cut on your lip first. It’s still bleeding.” I went into the bathroom and soaked a cotton ball in water.

When I went back into the bedroom, Nate was drying the blood on his lip with his shirt. He was staring down the street vigilantly, as though he suspected Preston could be on his way back.

But unless Nate had bionic sight, it was impossible to tell people apart from this high up.

“Sit here.” I pointed at the sofa.

Nate sat, tilting his head and resting it on the back.

Bending over him, I tried to press the cotton ball on Nate’s lip, but as he was sitting and I was standing in front of him, I couldn’t really reach his lip comfortably.

“You can…,” Nate said, tapping on his thighs.

If I didn’t misunderstand, Nate was suggesting I sit on his lap facing him so I could reach his lip more easily. The maneuver was technically for first-aid purposes, but the thought of being so close together made my heart contract.

Nate kept his eyes closed as if trying to make the situation more comfortable. The street lights illuminated his face, making me aware that it was beautiful Nate right in front of me. In the dim light, the intense emotions that he brought out of me flashed through my mind at the speed of sound.

Carefully, I sat on his lap facing him and brushed the cotton ball on his lip with my shaking hand.

“It burns,” Nate complained with his eyes shut.

“You’re a tough guy. I’m sure you can bear it.” I joked.

Nate’s mouth lifted into a smile.

Why did he have to do this to me? Why did he captivate me so easily? All it took was one of his bad-boy smiles to make me lose any control over myself.

His legs felt strong and robust. His shirt was open, as the buttons had ripped off during the fight. His torso was covered by the stain and I could sense the strange heat that emanated from it. The defined muscles that interlocked over his stomach were still clearly visible under the gray stain.

I couldn’t get hold of myself. I had to bring back rational Sophie. The one who would never dare cross the line to the forbidden side, because as things stood, this bracelet may not protect us from our sins.

I wanted to think of grades and exams and behaving myself, but each time I stroked the cotton ball on his cut, I only became more aware that our lips were only inches apart.

As if Nate had been listening to every one of my thoughts, he opened his eyes, locking his gaze on mine. The city lights enhanced the perfect angles of his face, his deep, dark eyes, his full lips.

He had the exact same effect on me as that first day I saw him. His power, his confidence, his caring ways just took hold of me.

Nate leaned closer to me, and slowly, enjoying the ever diminishing distance between us, our lips met.

In the deep part of my subconscious someone was telling me to move away, but every part of my body wanted to keep going. The chemistry that we’d been repressing for so long propelled into the air at once. I knew there was no way back. I was under his spell.

Nate caught me unprepared when he began to move forward, inviting me to lie on the sofa. His lips traveled along my neck as I shifted to rest on my back.

Nate seemed to have succumbed to what his body had been yearning for so long. He was lost in the madness of his constant fight with desire and closer to defeat than he’d ever been.

Nate was now lying on top of me. He stroked my hair tenderly as if I was his most precious treasure. Each kiss was more passionate than the last.

Sirens echoed in the background, the snowflakes gravitated outside the huge glass windows, and the glittering skyline made it difficult to believe this was happening for real.

Nate looked deep into my eyes, as if he couldn’t believe it, either.

The intensity of feeling his body pressed against mine was indefinable. A bewitching peace trapped me and invited me to fall deeper into a spiral of non-return.

Nate started unbuttoning my blouse as his lips ran along my neck.

Driven by the urge of the moment, he kicked the lamp on the coffee table, catapulting it onto the floor—but he was so immersed in possessing every part of me that he hadn’t seemed to notice.

The power I had over Nate was even surprising to me. I couldn’t have imagined, not in a million years, that I could persuade Nate into crossing this line. Especially this one, where it could lead to a fatal end.

I knew this is what Nate feared all along. The Syenite stone protected me from who he was becoming, but taunting the devil from this proximity had no guarantee.

As he took off my blouse, I realized his eyes were slowly turning white, the veins on his face were swelling at an incredible speed, and his jaw was expanding.

But I didn’t care. I wanted him to make me his. It was too late. We’d already made the vital decision.

After each kiss, Nate pressed his body harder against mine, forgetting I was fragile, finite, and that the weight of his body alone could break me into irreparable pieces.

Nate was shivering and his eyes were lost in the infinite, making the crucial decision of taking me with him to his unspeakable world.

I knew he would have never allowed this, but now I realized that this evening, I was the one who’d caught him under my spell.

I didn’t know whether it was Nate or the other one possessing every part of me, but whoever it was had won my soul over a million times. That glorious sense lulled me into the numbness of infinity.

Nate leaned back, resting his weight on his knees, and without ceasing to kiss me, he proceeded to take off his shirt. Now, half his body was bare; he was only wearing his jeans.

I knew I could’ve tried to escape, but my soul had already decided to give in to the eternal energy that was filling each part of my body. This was probably the beginning and the end, all at once, decided with the toss of dice.

His hands were now on my neck as he kissed me again. He was beginning to press me a little too hard and I started to have trouble breathing, but I didn’t try to fight him off. Every piece of me was doomed to follow him wherever he took me.

Nate leaned back to unbutton his jeans with one hand while the other one was still on my neck. Suddenly, his gaze remained fixed on my neck and after blinking strangely, quickly, he yanked himself away from me.

Sprinting to his feet, he let the words come out in gasps. “I need to get out of here.”

Then he darted out of the room, smashing the door shut behind him.

No words spoken—no promises broken.

CHAPTER XIX

THE NEW HOTEL HADN’T exactly been an upgrade. We were now staying at a motel on the corner of East 119
^th
and First Avenue right in the middle of Spanish Harlem.

Nate thought it was unlikely that Preston would look for us here, and I totally agreed with him. No teenagers in their right mind would stay at a place like this.

Nate had left several threatening messages to Preston during the taxi ride to the hotel, telling him if he ever got close to me again, he was going to regret it. He also ordered Preston to tell him what he knew about the Syenite stone and why he wanted my bracelet.

The situation between Nate and me had become extremely awkward. We hadn’t spoken about it, and Nate was just acting as if nothing happened at all. He hadn’t said a word to me the entire trip, and every time I tried to bring up what happened between us, he just replied with one-word answers.

It wasn’t only his silence that was nerve-wracking. On top of that, Nate was acting cold toward me. Our hands accidentally brushed while we were getting out of the taxi and he’d quickly moved his hand away.

I’d always heard women were supposed to be more enigmatic than men, but Nate’s complexity was just overwhelming. I never knew how he felt or what was in his mind. It was really anyone’s guess.

After checking into two different rooms, Nate claimed he was tired and wanted to rest. Not wanting to confront him at this time of night, I accepted defeat and retreated to my room. I knew there was no time to waste. I could see what was happening to Nate.