Chapter 228
I didn’t sleep well that night. Perhaps it was the fact that I’d taken a two hour nap during Office Space. Perhaps it was the fact that Elliott was downstairs, no longer the prisoner of an urn. Perhaps it was the fact that the guy I’d been falling for over the last three months had tried to kiss me, and I’d been dodgier than Jessie James.
The next morning, I decided it was time to have a conversation with someone about my concerns. I knew my choices were limited. Talking to my mother about how I was feeling about life in general, about Brandon, about being left behind would’ve been about the same as talking to a pleasantly painted wall. It might look nice, but I wasn’t going to get me anywhere. I could talk to Elliott about how I was feeling trapped in my own life, but I definitely couldn’t talk to him about his own kid. While Aaron was likely the best option for all of these topics, he was even more distant now than he had been when I’d first met him, thanks to Cadence’s charades. That really only left me with one option.
Cadence had gone to bed the night before at around the same time I was waking up from my siesta. As soon as the sun was coming up, I crept into her room, not wanting to startle her, and sat down on her bed. At first, I thought I’d just wait for her to wake up on her own, but being a sixteen-year-old girl, patience is not my middle name.
“Cadence, are you awake?” I asked in a harsh whisper for some reason, not exactly sure why I would keep my voice down while trying to wake up the only person in the house who was still sleeping. I poked her arm, and she swatted my hand away.
“I am now. God, what am I? A pin cushion?”
“Sorry,” I muttered as my sister rolled over, pushing her hair off of her face and yawning. “I’ve been trying to wake you up for, like, five minutes.” That wasn’t exactly true, but she’d have no way of knowing that. I guess I didn’t know my own strength. I didn’t think I’d poked her that hard.
Cadence stretched and pushed up to a sitting position. She yawned really loudly, and I tried to hone my waiting skills as she said, “Is everything okay?”
The sarcastic part of my brain wanted to point out that if it had been an emergency, we’d all be dead by now. But I held back. I shrugged. “Yeah, I just wanted to talk to you.”
Cadence smiled at me and fluffed a pillow, resituating herself, which seemed like a welcome mat to me to pour out my mental anguish all over her bright pink bedspread. “What’s up?”
My sister squinted a little bit, and I realized I hadn’t bothered to put my contact in. She looked away, but of course I had noticed her staring. It was a pain to not even be able to be in my own house without worrying about freaking people out with my garish facial deformity. I took a deep breath and tried to focus my attention on one issue at a time. “I guess, I don’t know. I was just thinking about how everything is so different now. You know?” Cadence nodded slowly that she was following. “It’s so hard to believe that Elliott is back and Grandma is gone. I was thinking about what Aaron said about the portal. Do you think… do you think something actually did come through? Something bad? And that’s what the Vampires were talking about when I heard them say ‘the time draws near’ and all that stuff?” I saw no point in mentioning the other variations I thought I may have heard the evening before since I may have dreamed that business about the time being now.
My sister ran a hand through her long, messy hair. She seemed to consider my questions thoughtfully, which was good. I half expected her to put me off. “I honestly don’t know. But I’m sure, if something did come through, whatever it is, we can defeat it.”
I nodded, wanting to believe that, too. My confidence wavered from time to time, not that I was willing to make any trades now, even if that was possible. “It will help now that Elliott is back.”
“Absolutely,” Cadence agreed.
I scooted closer to her, tucking one leg under the other. Carefully, I considered how to approach the next topic. I finally settled on, “Brandon and Elliott seem to be getting along really well.”
“That’s good.” My sister smiled at me.
“Yeah. At first, I was kind of afraid that Brandon might be kind of weird around him, you know? I mean, I’m not sure he’s forgiven Elliott for not being around—even though he realizes his dad didn’t even know he existed. I think he was kind of mad about that before.” Cadence didn’t really have a chance to see them together, as far as I know, since Brandon was with me until she went to bed the night before.
Cadence nodded. “That’s understandable.”
“Right. But they are a lot alike. I think it’ll be good for both of them. I just hope….” My eyes stuck to a spot on the carpet where my sister and her friends had spilled nail polish a few years ago. The words caught in my throat. They sounded so stupid now that I was about to admit them to someone else.
“Cass?” Cadence asked, putting her hand on my arm. “You just hope what?”
“I don’t know,” I shrugged. She was waiting expectantly for me to say something. “I guess I just hope that both of them still have time… for me.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I felt like an idiot. A selfish idiot.
I couldn’t tell if she was about to laugh at me or if she was just surprised. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” she assured me. “They both adore you.” Cadence patted my arm, and I looked up into her brown eyes. Her voice grew quieter. “Honestly, Cass, I don’t think Elliott was going to come through the portal until he realized I was worried about you. I didn’t tell him what happened until after we were back in Reno, but he said he could tell that something was off when he asked about you and I hesitated. He loves you. A lot.”
My eyebrows shot up. I remembered what Elliott had said the night before, about how happy he was where he’d been before. I hated to think I might have been the one to ruin all of that. “You don’t think he wanted to come back?”
“I wouldn’t say he didn’t want to; he just didn’t want to give all of that up. And he didn’t know about Brandon, either. So, I think he’s happy with his decision. It just must be hard to know he can never go back.”
I took a few deep breaths. “It would have to be a difficult decision.”
“For sure.” A silence hung between us as I considered whether or not to press on with my other topics of distress or to go ahead and bolt out the door now and forget we’d ever even had this conversation. Ever since the Eidolon Festival, I’d found it almost impossible to talk to my sister. I’d said to myself she just didn’t seem to have time for me, but now that she was actually making time, I thought maybe it was something else. Maybe she’d just changed… too much. “Why are you concerned about Brandon?” Cadence asked. I could tell she was trying to sound nonchalant.
I didn’t answer for a moment. I shifted my weight on the bed and realized I was chewing on the inside of my mouth, which I promptly stopped. For a second I was able to hold Cadence’s gaze, but then I dropped my eyes back to my own hands. I thought Cadence was going to say something else, so I finally just blurted it out. “He tried to kiss me.”
Cadence’s eyebrows arched, and I could tell she was holding back a smile. “Oh?” she asked, all innocent.
“Yeah. It was… awkward.” That was a nice way of putting it.
“It was?”
I let out a lamentable sigh. “I stopped him. I mean… I moved out of the way. I knew what he was doing, but I was… afraid. So I didn’t let him.”
“That’s understandable,” Cadence offered. I knew she was just trying to make me feel better. I assumed she understood then. About my teeth. Then she said something shocking. “If you’ve never kissed a boy before, it’s not surprising that you would be hesitant.”
I could hardly believe my ears. Who was she to determine that that was the problem—that I was scared of kissing Brandon. It really didn’t matter that she’d been right in her assessment that I’d actually never kissed a boy before. That wasn’t the point. And it certainly wasn’t her business. Before I realized what I was saying, I shot back, “I’ve kissed boys before, Cadence. Geez, I’m sixteen.”
“Sorry!” Cadence replied, trying not to be defensive. “You never told me about any of that.”
“I don’t have to tell you everything.” I had never told her about it before because it wasn’t true. Honestly, I’d never even wanted to kiss a boy before—except for Liam, and thank God that had never happened. Still, I was offended that Cadence assumed that was the problem.
