Page 80 of Blood Moon
I nodded, pursed my lips, because I couldn’t force him to do anything. It wasn’t a power I yielded anyway. “I’m going to the Student Center if you want to walk me there,” I mumbled.
Julian moved with me, keeping his hands in his pockets and a healthy distance between us as if the scent of my blood affected him after all.
We paused once we got to the building.
“I’m leaving campus for the weekend,” he said, and it triggered a flight signal in me.
“Wait, why?” The five days he’d been away were already worrisome enough. He didn’t know the growing urge I had to go wherever he went. I didn’t want to be left behind. Couldn’t afford the thought of him being away. “But you’re going to miss homecoming,” I added, as a way to mask how I truly felt.
“That’s your world, not mine.”
“Why can’t you exist in it, too?”
He bit down, his silence echoing.
“But even if someone asked you, you wouldn’t go?”
For once, he smiled. He smiled, and it felt like I had him again, like everything would be okay. “Are you going to ask me?”
My heart dropped, and I sighed. “No. I … I’m going with someone else.”
Surprise hit him first, then he put the pieces together.“Oh.”He took a step away from me. “Good luck with that.” And I saw how much that hurt him. But we were friends.We were friends. We were friends.That was all.
Julian stepped away, into the shadows of the crooked afternoon. “See you around, Mirabella,” he uttered, and before my next breath, he was gone.
I was left with this gut-wrenching feeling that I was the reason for his absence, and there, on the sidewalk, beneath the scorching sunlight, I felt my soul rip and pour into the cement, hemorrhaging silently, perpetually, disturbingly into every crack.
CHAPTER39
If in battle, you fall before I do, I will remember that we still share the same sky.
Article IV, Lost Letters from Aadan the First
The following day, around six in the evening, Stevie zipped me into a dress. It was long and fitted with a trumpet. The underlayer, a light pink satin. Over it, a sheer intricate lace detail, complete with off-the-shoulder sleeves.
When I removed the pins from my hair, I gently separated the curls with a paddle brush and slipped on a nude heel. The sight of myself was overwhelming. The last time I’d been this dressed up was for senior prom, and even then, I looked and felt different. Not by much, but still, there was a hollowness in my cheeks and a tiredness beneath my eyes, signs of my youth dissipating. The resemblance to Rena stilted me.
A part of me wanted to continue to stare, if only to gleam at the fragments of my reflection that resembled my mother, but I refused to give in. It was time to go.
Classmates gathered in the lobby of Hester Hall, and me and my friends joined them, taking photos before half the posse was whisked away.
Then it was Em and I, side by side. We were the only ones with dates; the others had decided to go as a group. Chatter curved around us, and I stared into space in anticipation.
“Are you nervous?” Em leaned into me, her gold and pink flapper dress swaying. This close, I could see the glitter she’d sprayed on her body, in her hair. I smelled the sweet floral scent embedded in her skin.
“Yes,” I whispered, and she regarded me with a persistence I’d never seen before. It was compelling and crawling with a murkiness I couldn’t quite grasp.
“We can leave, ditch this whole thing,” she said. For a moment, I envisioned myself doing so—climbing into her Nissan, driving far into the starlit city, leaving it all behind—but in a blink, the sensation fled.
“No, it’s okay,” I assured, but she took my hand, silk glove squeezing my bare one.
“Are you sure?” she asked, reading my eyes like they’d reveal something. It made me think on the idea again, but it would require ditching Seven, and I wouldn’t do that to him.
“I’m sure,” I said, and when I did, Sev and Jak came waltzing through the double doors.
Em hurried to greet Jak, her hair bouncing as he kissed her cheek.
My heart thumped when Seven approached, and I felt a warmness everywhere. He kissed my hand, glancing up with a glimmer in his eyes. I had no right to stare at him the way I did. No right to measure every detail of his all-black suit—tailored and fitted so well. No right to be impressed by his fresh line and the way he smelled of midnight. No right to feel weak in the knees at the mere presence of his dimples and his proximity to me. But I did.
