Veiled (Ada Palomino 1)

“Then why is he staying away from me?” I asked.

“Because he needs to for the time being, to go back to the way he was, to forget you in . . . that kind of way. You don’t need him right now anyway, you’ve got the rest of your life to attend to. You can’t just sit around and wait for demons to pop on through, you have to go on with your future, day by day.”

To forget you in that kind of way.

His words slammed into me like a sledgehammer.

And today, on the bus ride home, it’s all I can think about.

Jacob had said I couldn’t sit around and wait for demons to pop up.

But I was waiting for Jay.

Waiting for him to come back to me.

Waiting for him to act like I’m nothing more to him than some pupil he has to watch over and train. A glorified babysitter.

I’m both dying to see him again, to be near him, and absolutely terrified that I won’t survive it. That it will hurt too much to mean nothing at all.

I get home to an empty house—my dad’s gone to visit his brother on the coast for the weekend—and sneak a bit of his wine before heading up to my room.

I step inside.

Nearly drop the glass.

Jay is standing in the corner, idly flipping through some of the books on my shelf.

The very sight of him knocks the breath from my lungs, like I’ve been winded by a blow.

He raises his head to look at me. His eyes reach mine, burning with a familiarity I thought I’d never see again. I’m immediately engulfed in his gaze, fevered with heat, my heart lurching heavily against my rib cage, as if trying to go straight to him, where it belongs.

Every part of me aches, not just with a hunger of the body, but a yearning of the soul. I feel pulled toward him, compelled, and it takes all my strength to stay planted where I am. If he has to stay strong, then I have to too. The last thing I want to be is some lovesick, sex-starved psychopath throwing myself at him, no matter how right it feels.

“Hey,” he says, voice so low and gravely that I feel it inside me. He nods at the wine. “Am I interrupting something?”

“Only my happy hour,” I manage to say, amazed how calm my voice is.

He smiles sourly. “Sorry to make it unhappy then. I didn’t mean to just show up…”

“No,” I quickly say, crossing an arm across my chest, not daring to come closer, not trusting myself. “It’s okay. I’m . . . I’m really glad to see you.”

He nods impassively. I can’t tell if I’m having an impact on him or not. If this is hard on him at all, he’s not showing it. He’s back to looking stern and borderline surly, like a sculpture of marble or ice, his jawbones and brow chiseled, his eyes cold and empty.

But they aren’t, are they? The more I stare at him, the more he starts to fidget, his composure slowly unraveling until he has to look away.

He clears his throat, running is fingers along the tops of my hardcovers. “I heard you talked to Jacob. He told you why I’ve been away.”

“He did. Can’t say I was happy about it.”

He licks his lips, tapping his fingers against one book. It has his rapt attention. “I failed you when I shouldn’t have. The one place I should have never brought you to to begin with. I let what I felt for you, what I shared with you, complicate everything. And that’s on me. If something had happened to you, I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself.”

“You would have gotten your memory erased, I’m sure.”

“No. I would have lived with it, as punishment.”

The gravity to his voice tells me he’s not kidding around. I sigh. “Look, stop beating yourself up over it. You saved us in the end. Without you, I’d be dead and damned, as would my mother.”

I’m not sure if he’s taking it in or not. His eyes are still focused on the book, blazing with contempt for himself.

“Jay,” I say softly and, against my better judgement, I place the wine down on the desk, taking a step toward him. The closer I get the more his posture stiffens.

I stop where I am. It takes all of my strength. I know I should just let things be as they are, as the way they need to be.

But that’s the problem.

Because the way things need to be involve the two of us together in ways I can’t even begin to explain. It’s not even that I gave Jay my heart—I’m not sure if I did—but I gave him every inch of my body and soul. He’s the only one who truly understands me and even though there is so much more to discover about him, so much more for him to discover about himself, we’re fused together for better or for worse.