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Ryan and Carter had left a little while ago. Ryan still worried Lacey wasn’t happy with him. I didn’t understand his problem, she said she understood and let it go, it was time Ryan did the same.
Carter had a dance audition. I thought that was insensitive of him. She lay there with a seriously bruised leg and was damn lucky she hadn’t broken it. And all he could think about was his bruised ego and he knew she might not dance in the same way again. Not that as time went on, she was going to have that opportunity, but that wasn’t a conversation we had authority to speak to her about.
And I wouldn’t be the one to give it if we were.
The guys annoyed Carter because he never got what he wanted and after Lacey’s accident we finally sat down and agreed we had to work together. Even if for now this was as her knights and nothing remotely romantic.
I ran my finger over the bruise on her face, her eyelashes fluttered, she stirred.
There was a gentle tap on the door. Seb peeked inside the room and whispered, “I’m going to get a takeaway, do you want something?”
I whispered back to him, “take my card and get something from the Chinese restaurant in town, get Lacey a special curry with rice, I know she likes that and me a special chow mein.”
Seb smiled and nodded his head. That surprised me because Seb was desperate to spend more time with Lacey, but he appreciated at least one of us was with her at all times. “Don’t leave her.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. I wasn’t. The moment I understood my feelings… his feelings. Everything came flooding back to me. And I hadn’t believed what I was thinking at first, but now I did. The connection I felt for Lacey was deeper than I ever imagined.
The love Seb had for her was too… I was going to keep this new knowledge to myself. The knowledge that, the fight Lacey and I had when we were younger wasn’t the first time we’d met. Only the first time in this life.
I smiled as I thought of that and I wondered if Seb had realised because I remembered him too. Unfortunately, I remembered Blake and I was glad he wasn’t in this knight group.
“I’ll be less than an hour,” Seb said before he smoothly closed the door. I didn’t want him to know she was waking up. I wanted a moment with just me and her and nobody else. I glanced down, feeling her fingertips as they stroked over my hand.
She smiled and looked at me. “Why did you get this one?” she asked, and I realised she had waited until Seb left before she spoke.
“I only had an arm sleeve but added the angel to remember my mum.” At least that was what I thought at the time, now I knew I had hidden memories of Lacey and it was her on my tattoo.
“Your mum, she died?” She raised her eyes to me, her gaze flitted around my face. “Sorry. I didn’t know. What happened to her?”
“I don’t talk about it,” I said much too quick, but I wanted to talk toherabout it. I’m not sure why I said it like that.
“That’s fine, I understand. It’s hard when it’s raw.” Her finger stroked around the edge of the angel tattoo. Her touch was soothing. “When I first saw this, it seemed to move every time I looked at it. I used to stare at it in class. It’s mesmerising.”
“She died in an accident,” I said.
“Her magic couldn’t save her?” Lacey asked, her eyes glistened.
I sighed and shook my head. “She was an elemental... her magic couldn’t stop the accident or save her.”
Lacey gently nodded her head before she looked up at me with tears in her eyes, giving me a gentle smile. “I’m so sorry. She must have been young. You must have been young.”
“I was fifteen,” I said. "And she’d just turned forty. You were young too.”
She smiled at me. “I know...” She swallowed. “And this is how you remember her. Does it help?”
“Sometimes it does, other times I realise nothing helps.”
“I know,” she whispered. She wrapped her arm around my chest and hugged me tight. I kissed her head, and I really wanted it to be night time so we could sleep and cuddle together the entire night. Just like we had. I never realised until that day how much I wanted it, but I wanted it with her. And now we were getting closer again, too.
“Will you take me to get a tattoo?” she said after a moment of silence.
“No, you don’t need one to remember people. Your memories keep them alive, not ink.”
“But you’ve got them. I was thinking of three small butterflies, maybe on my collarbone.”
I grimaced. “Do you know how painful that will be?”
“But I’ll see it every time I look in the mirror,” she said and laughed. “I’ll magic the pain away.”
