“Who’s she?” Marc asked her.
“Oh. She and her husband were good friends of my parents. I was staying with them before Paige came to get me.”
“You’re close to them?”
“Yeah. Karen was sort of a second mother to me.”
“And she didn’t blame you,” he said.
“No,” Lara whispered. “But she should have.”
“Why is that?” Marc asked her simply.
She lifted her head up slightly to look at his face. “I told you what happened. I threw a tantrum fit for a three year-old. I got in the car. I drove too fast to see the bend in the road in time. I slammed on the breaks. My parents crashed into me. You know what they call that? Vehicular Manslaughter.”
“They also call it an accident, Lara,” he said. “Did the police charge you with anything?”
It was a trick question. He knew that she hadn’t been charged. If she had, she would still be in Virginia. “I was given a fine for speeding,” she replied defensively.
“Then you couldn’t have been going more than, what? Ten or fifteen miles over the speed limit?”
“Sixteen.”
“People speed by that much every day.”
“Yeah, well, that doesn’t make them any less responsible when something bad happens.”
“Okay, fine,” Marc said unperturbed. “So you were speeding. But so were your parents. And they were probably following you too closely, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“And they weren’t wearing their seatbelts, which was their decision. Not yours.”
“They always wore their seatbelts. They didn’t do it this one time because they were too worried about me.”
Marc sighed. “I just…I don’t understand why you need to carry all of the blame for what happened.”
“There’s no one else left.”
“But you talk about it like you knew what was going to happen. Like you did it on purpose.”
Lara lay her head back down on his chest tiredly. “Maybe I did,” she whispered.
Part of her hoped that he hadn’t heard her, but she knew that he had. “What do you mean?”
She wasn’t sure if she was ready to have this conversation. It was a moment before she could answer him. “I was so mad at them,” she finally admitted, squeezing her eyes shut as if she could block out the world.
His fingers stopped moving through her hair. “Why?”
She took a deep breath, preparing herself to tell him what she had not told anyone else. “They told me that they were getting divorced.” Lara bit her lip. “God, how stupid is that? Most marriages these days end in divorce. Most of my friends’ parents were divorced. It’s not that big of a deal any more, people go through it all the time. But when they told me, I snapped. I screamed, I cried, and then I stormed out of the house and got in the car. The whole time I was driving, I was livid. I just hated them so much.”
Marc said nothing and Lara was grateful. She knew that whatever he said, it would be the wrong thing. Because there was nothing he or anyone else could say to make it right.
“Did you ever see The Shawshank Redemption?” he asked her after a few minutes.
“Uh, yeah,” she replied, tilting her head up to him in confusion. “A long time ago.”
“It’s probably my favorite movie. Towards the end, it has the best line in it. ‘Get busy living, or get busy dying.’”
“Hm. I always liked ‘You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake.’”
“That’s from Fight Club.”
“Um, I know.”
He laughed silently. “I wasn’t bringing up Shawshank randomly,” he told her. “I was actually going somewhere with it.”
“Oh,” she replied inanely. “Sorry. But you usually do that sudden topic switch for no reason.”
“True,” he conceded with another laugh. “But anyways, what I’m trying to say is that, for whatever reason, you survived the car crash. In the end, it doesn’t matter if it was fair or not. It doesn’t matter if you spend the rest of your existence torturing yourself over it. The universe doesn’t care either way. The only thing that matters to the universe is life and death. And you’re waffling somewhere in the middle. Pick one and stick with it.”
Lara disentangled herself from him and sat up. She hadn’t realized that he was such an existentialist. It actually suited him.
“I’m not…waffling,” she said indignantly. But she knew that he was right. She just didn’t know why she felt the need to argue with him. What was she trying to prove?
Marc sat up slowly, his patient gaze disconcerting her. He reached out to touch her face, and her breath caught in her throat.
"Do you want to live?" he asked her.
She couldn't answer. Impossibly, her eyes wrung out a few more tears that she refused to let fall. And for some reason, she thought of Kabran, of the past that she’d been reliving in her dreams.
It was all so clear now...
…she knew she had found her cure...
…she breathed even when the blade was inside her and her blood came rushing out. She imagined the pain rushed out with it...
"I...told you to let me die."
"Did you really want to die?"
"Yes."
"And do you still?"
"Lara," Marc pursued, "do you want to live?"
She looked down at the ground, trying to summon an answer, but the boy at her side continued, regardless. "Because life isn’t pain and guilt. And as lame as it sounds, you can’t live in the past. Whatever you may think—whatever that damn ghost might have told you—time only moves in one direction.”
Marc paused and shook his head. “I think…I think that you’re better than this,” he said softly. “Or you could be, if you tried.”
“How do you know?” she breathed, picking at the grass by her leg.
He lifted her chin and the tears in her eyes came dangerously close to spilling over. “Because I’ve seen it. I mean, this entire night… Look, you know how to be happy. You know how to have fun and let things go. I wish you could have seen yourself when we were jumping around on the Moon Bounce. Your hair was coming out of your braid and flying all over the place. Your eyes were bright, and you were laughing like a little kid.” He smiled softly, remembering. Then his expression grew somber. “You don’t have to feel guilty about that. You don’t need to kill everything that’s good in you just because your parents died in the crash and you didn’t.”
“You think that’s what I’m doing?”
Marc shrugged slightly. “From what I’ve seen, you’re working pretty damn hard at making sure that you can’t get past it, that you feel as awful as possible.”
“People always feel awful when someone they love dies,” she said weakly.
“Yeah. But I think your version of ‘awful’ is just a distraction from the real pain.”
Lara thought about that. He could be right. The hate, the guilt, the anger, the bruises…maybe she was using all of that to keep herself from actually feeling.
God, could that really be true? She’d convinced herself that she deserved all of the hell that she’d put herself through. It had felt like justice. But maybe it was weakness. Maybe she had hurt herself and had let Kabran hurt her, not because she deserved to suffer for what she had done, but because she was just too scared to face the grief and she would do whatever it took to avoid it. After all, when all of the anger and guilt was gone, what she was left with was the stabbing, gut-wrenching pain that she’d felt last night. She simply didn’t know how to deal with it.
But she’d survived the night, hadn’t she? She hadn’t slept, she hadn’t zoned out, and she hadn’t cut herself off. She’d simply felt the pain washing over her and had tried her best not to drown in it. It had been excruciating, but she’d still made it. And she’d done it by herself.
Part of her mind protested. It insisted that she couldn’t survive another night like that one. It demanded that she be punished because it was right, damn it.
For the first time, she was able to separate that part of her mind from the rest, and she realized that it was that part of her—that hissing voice—that Kabran nurtured. And maybe there hadn’t been anything more to her in the lifetime they’d had together, but…maybe there was more to her now.
At least Marc seemed to think so.
He was watching her, waiting for a response. There was a tentative hope in his expression, as if he thought that he’d finally gotten through to her, but was half-expecting her walls to crash down around her once more. In truth, she was expecting the same thing. She met his eyes and gave him a small smile, afraid to concede any more than that. Lara didn’t want to jinx this.
She reached blindly for his hand, not wanting to look away from him. “Thank you,” she whispered. Then she laughed awkwardly. “How did you get to be so wise?”
He snorted. “Trust me, I’m not,” he said. “Most of this stuff is just a variation of what my therapist or people from my anger management group once said to me.”
“Anger management?”
“Yeah,” he said, staring down at Lara’s hand on his, as if he was ashamed. “I told you, I got into a lot of fights after my dad left and my mom was…having hard time.”
She still had difficulty imaging that. Marc was always so calm, so unflappable. Random acts of violence seemed beyond his capability. That sort of thing was a part of her world, not his.
But then she remembered his smile—that warm, seemingly genuine smile that he’d given Tim on the porch despite the surreal, intense discussion that he’d been having with Lara only seconds beforehand. That same smile that he gave her mere minutes after he’d had a breakdown. His good humor and composure could be part of a great, theatrical trick that he was pulling on all of them.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” Marc replied, bringing his gaze back to her face.
He had loosened his grip on her hand and was caressing it sensuously. And, as it had the day before, his touch sent a ribbon of fire through her. She tried to ignore it. “What you said, about my feeling awful being a distraction…do you think being so nice and pleasant all the time is the way you distract yourself?”
When he didn’t say anything, Lara babbled on, needing to fill the silence. “I mean, not that being nice is a bad thing. It’s just that…well, like I said yesterday, I noticed that you lie really well. And you had a pretty bad meltdown when you told me about your father…But then it was like you were completely fine. Like it never happened. And after everything that I’ve put you through over the past few days, you never even raised your voice. And—”
He kissed her, cutting her off as his lips came down over hers. It startled her so much that she froze, unable to respond.
Marc pulled away a moment later and exhaled a trembling breath. “Sorry,” he said.
“It’s okay,” she whispered dazedly, wondering why he was apologizing. Did he think it had been a mistake? Or maybe he just thought that she hadn’t wanted it. After all, she had sat there like a damn statue instead of kissing him back.
“You’re right,” he confessed. It took Lara’s muddled brain too long to realize that he was picking up their conversation where they had left off. The corner of his mouth turned up. “For all of my talk, I still have trouble with real emotions. Especially anger. My doctor told me that I cut myself off from it by being nice and calm and innocuous. It’s like I have to be that way, you know? Like, if I ever let any anger out, I’d hurt someone. I guess I’m still sort of learning that it doesn’t have to be an all or nothing thing.”
“It must be scary, after seeing what your dad could do with anger.”
He swallowed and rapidly blinked his eyes a few times. “Yeah. And after all of the fights I started, it’s hard for me to believe that I can get mad without hurting anyone. The doctor kept saying that if I hadn’t kept it all in for, oh, my entire life, it wouldn’t have gotten so out of hand once I let it out. But I guess it’s hard to know that for sure since I’ve never tried.”
“Seems like it’ll take a leap of faith.”
“Probably. But I guess you have to take it on faith that you can make it through your parents’ deaths, so at least I won’t be leaping alone,” Marc replied.
His cell phone rang and he reached into the pocket of his jeans for it. “It’s my mom,” he said.
But instead of answering it, he looked at Lara with his eyebrows raised. He was asking her permission, she realized. “Go ahead. I don’t mind.”
“Thanks,” he said.
A few minutes later Marc hung up. “She wanted to know where we were. They’re all ready to leave.”
“Oh, okay,” she replied, her heart sinking. She never wanted this night with him to end. There were so many things about him that she needed to know.
He stood up and reached down to help her to her feet. But even when they started walking back towards the front gates of the fairgrounds, he didn’t let go of her hand.
Tim, Paige, and Lillian were waiting for them by the ticketing booth.
“There you are,” Paige said.
“Sorry,” Lara replied. “We lost track of time.” She hoped that her eyes weren’t still red and puffy from all of the crying she’d done.
“It’s okay,” Tim said, “but I think they’re about ready to kick us out of here.”
Their group walked out into the parking lot. When they reached the row that Lillian had parked her car in, Marc reluctantly let go of Lara’s hand. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay?” he said.
“Sure.” She smiled at him. “Tomorrow.”
Of course, the long hours of the night hovered between then and now, but Lara found that she was less afraid of it than she had been before.
The ghost had no silky reply. “Out having fun, angel?” he asked her in a clipped voice.
“Yes and no,” she replied as she dropped her purse on the floor. She’d been having a good time with Marc until she’d broken down on the bumper cars. And after that…well, she wouldn’t call it fun, but she wouldn’t have traded it for anything. “Where have you been?”
“With you. I’m always with you.”
Lara looked at him skeptically. “I didn’t see you.”
He disappeared.
Seconds later she felt something pulling at her hair. She whipped around, but he wasn’t there.
“Do you see me now?” He had moved behind her again.
The elastic at the end of her braid fell to the floor, and even though she knew it was useless, she turned back around.
Nothing.
In the next moment, her braid started to come undone and Lara forced herself to stay still. Once her hair was loose, she felt his icy hands sweep it forward over her shoulders, exposing the nape of her neck. Her pulse raced as his lips fell like cold rain on the tender skin. Chills shot down her spine.
“Do you understand?” he whispered in her ear. “You can still feel me. I’m still here, even if you don’t see me.”
His teeth scraped her neck. “Kabran,” she said in a weak whisper. “Don’t.”
He grabbed her shoulders, turning her around roughly, and then Lara could see him again. And though he had a bruising grip on her arms, the delicate features of his face were frozen in a mask of detached indifference. “Why not?" he asked with his lips so close to hers, his voice like velvet. "Because of him, right? The Adonis. You think he changes anything?"
"I don’t know,” she answered. She might have said yes if she hadn’t been looking into Kabran’s eyes. Despite what she felt for Marc, there was no denying the intensity of the connection between her and this ghost. Every time she saw him, he invaded her senses and clouded her mind.
"He doesn't matter, angel. Don't you see? I know you, Lara. I understand you. Do you honestly think this one night with him changes what we have? I know the darkness in you while he would choose to ignore it. I am the only—"
"But you can never have me," Lara snapped, trying to wrench herself away from him. It was so hard to think clearly when she was close to him. "And it doesn't even have anything to do with Marc. We can't be together with you existing in this...limbo! You may love me and understand me, and there may be a part of me that wants nothing—nothing—but you, but none of that mean a damn thing. I’m alive and you’re dead. We can’t ever be together. So tell me why I should let this thing between us grow any stronger.”
She knew that she should have seen it coming. She had stepped away from him, but had not put enough distance between them. In the corner of her eye, Lara saw Kabran lift his hand to hit her and she tried to brace herself for the blow.
But when he touched her, it was with a piercing gentleness that stole her breath, leaving her stunned. Her eyes fluttered shut as he ran his knuckles lightly from her forehead, down her left cheek, to her chin. Then he slowly repeated this gesture, again and again. When, inevitably, the shivers started to sweep over her, her head was already swimming. She was powerless against this, utterly at his mercy.
"Can you feel this, angel?" he asked her. "Can you feel me?"
"Yes," she could barely whisper.
"Look at me," he commanded.
Lara opened her eyes and found that the room seemed to be spinning. The only thing that was steady was Kabran's gaze.
"What we have is too strong for either of us to fight,” the ghost said. “I’m yours. You’re mine. My existence here is proof that nothing can separate us. Not even death. Don’t you see, angel? Death is meaningless—a slight hindrance that is so easily overcome.”
Kabran moved closer to her so that his cheek brushed against hers. He brought his lips to her ear. Lara was shaking so badly that she could barely support her own weight. She leaned against him and his arms came around her, sliding up her shirt to stroke the small of her back.
“I know that you are tired of being alone, Lara. I can feel the ache in you. You’re tired of struggling to breathe because it all hurts so badly. You are tired of your own heartbeat. You know that I am the only thing that can take it all away.” He pulled back and looked into her eyes. “Do you want to be with me?”
Lara felt as if his dark eyes were seeing through her to her very core. His words were a balm on her ravaged soul. The only thing that brought her peace.
Be with him, she thought. Fall into him...
“Do you want to be with me?” he asked her again.
"Yes," she murmured.
Kabran smiled then. In her peripheral vision, she saw something in his hands flash—moonlight reflecting off the silvery blade of a knife. "Then do it, Lara. So we can be together."
Yes, this was how it went. She knew exactly what to do. Very slowly she took the knife, finding it to be as cool as the ghost’s hands. She ran her thumb along the blade, slicing the skin open easily. Just as she’d done in her dreams, Lara closed her fist around the blood, clutching it like a talisman. Then she looked down to admire the blade and saw her own reflection, her own eyes staring back at her.
Everything crystallized.
“It will only hurt for a moment, angel,” Kabran purred. “And you know that it will be a pale shadow of the pain you already feel inside. And then there will only be me."
She wasn't afraid. Her gaze was steady and she thought that she felt strong now for the first time in ages. She had always thought that nothing could heal her, that she would never stop feeling like she'd been cruelly ravaged from the inside out. But now, staring into the reflection of her eyes on the cold, steel blade she held before her, she knew she had found her cure.
Lara lifted the knife, held it poised at her stomach. Bracing herself, she closed her eyes.
But just before she plunged the blade into her gut, a dull whisper wafted to the forefront of her mind.
Lara, do you want to live? I think…I think that you’re better than this. Or you could be, if you tried.
Marc...
Her eyes abruptly snapped open. The room had stopped spinning and everything was clear and Lara was aware of what she was about to do. It felt like she had just woken from a terribly vivid dream.
She looked up sharply at Kabran. "No," she whispered, shaking her head.
"What?" he demanded.
"I won't do this," she replied, holding the knife out to him. "I...I don't want to die, Kabran. Not even for you."
"I don't think you understand, Lara." His voice was devoid of the seductive softness that it had possessed. "You do want this, you always want this.”
Lara backed away from him, appalled and suddenly afraid. “Always?” she repeated.
The ghost gave her a nasty smile. “That’s right angel. You have come to me willingly in every life that I've found you and you will do it again.”
Every life? she thought wildly.
But then she remembered how she had once asked him how long he’d been watching her.His reply had been, Since the moment I found you again. When she’d asked him what that meant, he had changed the subject.
“Oh god,” Lara gasped, clapping her hand over her mouth. This wasn’t the first time that she’d been reborn. This wasn’t the first time that he had found her.
Kabran sneered. “You know all too well that I am your only god, angel. And you are bound to me by blood—your own blood that you've spilt to be with me time and time again. So don't tell me no, Lara, you have no idea what you'd be doing," he shouted at her. "Just come to me now before you regret it. And I will make you regret it!"
"No!" she screamed at him. "I won't do it!"
He advanced upon her before she could move or make a sound. He grabbed her hair, pulling her head back, and smacked her with the back of his hand. Then he held her face close to his so that she could see the maniacal look in his eyes. "So you don't want to die now, Lara, is that it?" he spat. "Well, you will. I told you, I can't exist without you and I won't. I will have you, angel. I promise you that."
Then he vanished. Without his arms holding her, she lost her balance and fell to the floor. Covering her face with shaking hands, Lara started to cry for the second time that night.
What had she just done?
Part 9
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