Page 42 of Cryptic Dreams
“It’s ok. I’m ok.” I reach for the handle as Wraith’s eyes bore into my back, the look one I can physically feel, one full of concern, without me having to actually see it. “The sooner we go in, the sooner we can come back out.”
I climb out of the truck and hesitantly walk toward the porch, pieces of horrible memories running through my mind. My chest tightens with each step I take, fear making my blood pound in my ears and just when I start to get light headed, I feel the tiniest caress against my pinky finger, and suddenly I’m at ease.
I look down at my gloved hand and see Wraith’s long. slender finger just barely touching mine, the dark gold signet ring with tiny ruby glinting in the moonlight. I keep my eyes on that ring, don’t dare lift them from what must be his family crest in case it’ll break this calming spell he has me under. Wraith has barely looked at me, said absolutely no words to me since I ran into him in the hall, so I don’t completely understand why he’s doing this now but it doesn’t mean I’m not grateful for it.
Our bond, the one he will never embrace, is exactly why I crave his comfort, why I seek solace in his presence, and that bond is also why he can probably feel it. Wraith most likely feels my need for those things and the fact that he’s willingly providing them despite not wanting me says something about him. It says maybe I’m wrong about him, at least maybe about the fact that he isn’t impervious to other’s emotions and he’s not the cold, callus male I thought he is.
Evidence against that line of thinking is building to be quite honest, and I don’t know what the hell to do with it.
I know what I want to do with it.
I want to tell him I love him, that I need him and will do whatever it takes to be worthy of him. I want to beg for a chance to prove myself to Wraith then beg him to love me back. Then I want to tear off his clothes and climb him like a tree, inexperience be damned. I just want Wraith in the way we were created to be together, but that isn’t going to happen no matter how many sweet and kind things he does for me.
It’s what I’m used to after all, what I deserve. Always on the outside looking in, my hopes and desires always just out of reach. I can’t imagine that’ll change just because Wraith has softened to me a bit and I need to accept it. The sooner I do, the sooner I can get back to my very lonely existence.
“You ready?” Orion’s voice pulls my stare toward the front door and breaks the cosmic pull, interrupting the sweet moment Wraith and I briefly shared.
One I will hold onto for as long as I possibly can.
I nod as I wrap my arms around my waist and hug myself tightly. “Let’s go.”
My cousin and his mate enter first, the horrible smell of my life as a prisoner filling my senses and making me queasy. My brow furrows and my nose scrunches while the four of us squeeze through the boxes into the small space at the bottom of the stairs.
Stairs I’ve been knocked down.
Stairs I couldn’t run up fast enough.
I hug myself harder as anxiety creeps up my neck, the panic that Ian is just around the corner in his room, that he’ll come down the hall and start yelling at me for being gone, for bringing people into his house, so real I can taste it.
“Is there anything down here you need?” Orion looks at me, I can feel him looking at me, but I don’t see him.
No, I see nothing but Ian tearing down the hall screaming in that creole accent, whipping around the banister and taking the stairs two at a time in order to get to me quicker, to punish me for whatever wrongs I’ve committed in his eyes.
Disgusting, parasite!
“Z?”
Weak and spineless little blood sucker!
“Zephyr?”
Worthless, leech! You are a burden, an orphaned and unwanted thing incapable of being loved or wanted by anyone! I should kill you this time,cheri, put us both out of our misery!
The images disappear as quickly as they came when a big palm lands on the small of my back. It isn’t until Wraith touches me that I realize I was holding my breath, sucking in more and more air without actually breathing. It isn’t until his palm is flat against me that I realize my fingers were biting into my sides so hard I might have drawn blood if I’d have kept squeezing any longer.
Wraith appears to my left, his big body hunched and wedged between me and the boxes. “Perhaps we should head directly up to where her personal effects reside?” He isn’t speaking to me or looking at me but his hand is still on my back. “We can pack what we know she will need, then Zephyr can decide if there is anything else in this rundown shack she’d like to salvage.”
I flinch.
His words were quiet but I didn’t miss the tone he used. One so full of disgust and hate that I can’t help but take it personally. Which is crazy because I feel the same way about this house, about how empty and horrible it became once my parents died, but this is where I lived my entire life.
Once upon a time I played on this staircase and fantasized about being a princess in a tower waiting for my prince to rescue me. I sat in the living room with my father while he told me stories about living in Egypt and dreamt of going to his homeland that he still loved so much. I sat at the table in the kitchen with my mother while she cut up vegetables and prepared food for the humans that were kind enough to keep us safe, or while she shared what it was like to visit the royal court back before the war.
At one point I had my own bedroom on the second floor, one that was filled with books and toys, one that was every little girl's dream; and as I aged, it evolved into an artist's studio with my paintings proudly on display.
Not all of my memories of living here are bad, just the ones created sixty-five-years ago when my parents died, the ones over the last thirty years even worse.
My memories may be buried under mountains of shit that Ian had collected over time, and while I’m just as disgusted by it as anyone, it doesn’t mean I feel like I’m as tarnished and rundown as the house itself. Just undeserving of anything better because I let myself be here so much longer than I should have, but apparently Wraith sees us as one in the same.
