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“What do you regard as safe?”
Nothing. I gritted my teeth and shrugged. “I don’t know. My apartment, I guess.” He’d have to drop me off there eventually, anyway. Frost took the next right, heading towards my neighborhood. “So, tell me,” he said.
I let my eyes fall shut and took a deep breath. He was going to think I was insane. If everything else I had put him through in the past few days hadn’t confirmed it, this would. “Where were you today?”
“Arresting a drug trafficker. Not my usual line of work, but homicide and substance abuse often go hand in hand. Hence the paperwork. My partner and I closed the case today.”
“Who’s your partner?”
“His name’s Justin Abercomb. My age, but new to the department. He spent some time in the marines, which comes in handy.”
I nodded, not sure what else to say. There were only so many ways to dodge around a conversation and I did not have much experience in conversing to begin with. “I lost my Starbucks job.”
“I figured you might.”
I raised an eyebrow, caught off guard. “How did you figure I might?”
Frost smiled wryly. “Relax, I’ve given up on stalking you. I used to work at that location in high school. The manager is kind of…well, you know.”
“Not understanding.”
Something dark slid into his eyes and the smile remained, but what little of it that was genuine vanished. “Yes. Exactly,” he answered numbly, his voice dead. Frost pulled up outside my apartment building and slowly parked the car and cut the engine. After he removed the key, we sat in silence for a moment, he staring forward down the street into space and me staring at him. After a while, in a quiet, numb voice, I asked him, “Did you actually try or just think about it?”
“What do you mean?”
I pushed up the sleeve of my sweatshirt several inches and turned over my arm. He looked down and his eyes went immediately to the white slashes scarred across my wrist. “Is that the only time?” he asked. I shook my head and pulled up my other sleeve, lining up my forearms side by side. I had given up on my bandages and splints the day prior and all my scars were exposed. Where one arm bore solely horizontal slashes, the other portrayed the same scars overlaid by younger vertical ones. “The first time I didn’t know how and the second I was caught,” I said. “I needed my family.”
Frost met my gaze and stared at me for a long moment, his eyes wet and pained, the irises molten ice, as though his core was frozen. Finally, hands shaking, he unzipped his leather jacket and unbuttoned the top four buttons of his shirt, pushing it open slightly. In the center of his chest, he bore a single round scar, the unmistakable mark of a bullet. “I didn’t have time. My father kept my aim away from my head, so I did the most damage I could. It wasn’t enough.”
I gritted my teeth, my eyes stinging with unshed tears. Shaking, I extended my right hand slowly, gently laying my palm over the scar, my fingers splayed across the warm, bare skin of his chest. Frost shivered and laid a hand over mine, then stroked my left wrist with the other. I heard once more Dr. Grey’s words in my head.It’s the reflection of your own feelings in him.I let my eyelids fall shut, allowing the warmth of his touch to seep into my veins as the tears fell silently, smoothly over my cheeks. I felt the brush of Frost’s breath on my lips as he whispered, mere inches from me, “What are you afraid of?”
“Everything and nothing,” I answered, my voice soft, breathy even. “I’m afraid to be close to you and I’m afraid to lose you. I don’t know if I’m capable of healing. And being together will only hurt us both. I wish I could tell you differently, but I can’t.”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
“Not yet. But you will be.” I opened my eyes slowly and drew my hands away from his. He didn’t move, though, other than to open those eyes of molten ice, scarcely two inches from my own. Reluctantly, I lowered my eyes and sat back away from him, breaking free of the spell. “We should go inside,” I intoned, trying to keep the disappointment from my voice. After a brief moment of regretful silence, Frost nodded his agreement and we slipped out of the sedan, into the icy November wind.
The journey from the street to my apartment was far too short for comfort. In the interval, I tried to formulate just what I was going to say to him, but by the time we reached my door, I had scarcely managed to sort out exactly which issue was at hand. There were so many different issues to sort out. The Poe curse topped the list of course, but it would be one of the most difficult to articulate. Below that lay discussion of why each of us had attempted suicide. How my stomach muscles had really been torn up. What all the medications were for. The fact that we both clearly wanted something romantic out of this relationship, but I was terrified of the prospect. Where to begin?
I unlocked the door and let him in, following him and bolting it behind me. I shuddered and rubbed my arms as a chill rose up my spine. “Jeez, I think it’s colder in here than outside,” I muttered quietly, crossing the tiny living area to the decrepit, old radiator. The controls claimed that the apartment was set to 85 degrees Fahrenheit, but I’d long since given up on any hope of it regaining accuracy and kept turning it up. “I need to talk to my landlord. This is ridiculous.”
When I had turned back away from the radiator, Frost had draped his leather jacket over one of my two rickety dining chairs and was facing away briefly. In that spare moment, I caught myself studying the contours of his shoulders and back, vaguely hinted at by his button-down shirt. I could still feel heat in my palm from the feel of his bare skin pressed to my hand, the raw emotion searing through my veins not only at that warmth, but also with the eerie feeling of his scar pressed against my palm, the intensity of his gaze locked with mine.I care about you. “Frost, there’s something I need to tell you. You probably won’t believe me, but I have to try.”
He turned slowly and, his expression blank and waiting, stepped towards me across the room. I took a shaky breath and began, knowing that in about ten minutes, he would be driving me right back to Dr. Grey’s. “In the hospital, I had a dream. In it, I spoke to Edgar Allan Poe.” Frost’s eyebrows lowered slightly in puzzlement. “He told me…that I was his descendant and…warned me that my family, leading back to him, was cursed and that I was in danger.” Frost nodded and leaned casually against the back of the couch near me, just more than arm’s length away. “That night, in the nightmare you tried to help me with, which I still haven’t been able to fully thank you for, by the way, there were several parts. Segments of the nightmare, I suppose. In one, I was in a graveyard, laying roses on…dozens of graves.” I met his gaze levelly. “One of them was yours.”
Frost’s jaw tightened, but he remained quiet and pensive, listening. I swallowed hard, the anxiety drowning me. “I didn’t put much stock in it, of course. I have ridiculous, horrible dreams all the time. But when I spoke to Edgar Allan Poe, he told me to ask my foster-mother about my lineage. This morning, I visited her and I asked.”
“What did she tell you?”
I winced, hoping to God he would not think I was insane. “She told me that my father had had the same dreams. Visits from Edgar Allan Poe. That the curse was real and that it had been the cause of my family’s death. She said that it will try to destroy me in any way it can, directly or indirectly. That it will try to kill those closest to me. You were the first person I thought of and I was afraid to tell you because I knew you’d think I was insane, but I had to warn you.” I was rambling, panicking. His expression remained unchanged, though, and I couldn’t tell if he believed me or not. “That’s why I was so panicked when I called you and you didn’t answer. I thought…you could already be dead, or worse.”
Frost lowered his head and brought his hands to his temples, rubbing circles into them as if he was developing a headache. Tears came to my eyes and I bit my lip so hard that I tasted coppery blood on my tongue. “I don’t expect you to believe me. I’m still not sure I believe it. But I couldn’t let you get hurt. I had to say something.” He still hadn’t reacted. He didn’t believe me. I grimaced in an attempt to hold back tears. “I…I care about you too.” Frost looked up suddenly and I tried to compose yourself, but I knew there would be no mistaking the fog gliding across my eyes, nor the heat in my cheeks. His expression seemed to shatter into sadness and concern. Before he could say anything, I looked away. “I don’t know why. I’ve told you that I don’t trust anyone. But I trust you.” My voice had fallen nearly inaudible and cracked like broken glass. “I care about you and it scares me. It scares me, Frost. Because if this is real, then your life is at stake and I can’t be responsible for your death. I can’t lose you like that. And even if it’s not, I don’t know how to care about people. I don’t know how to be cared about. And because of who I am, I will never be worth the time and trouble and pain you would have to endure to continue caring about me.”
After a long moment, Frost’s footsteps approached me and he touched my cheek with his soft, warm hand. I lifted my eyes to meet his hesitantly and when I did, he whispered, “That’s not true. You will always be worthwhile, Poe. And I believe you.”
It took me a moment before I could respond, the confusion had so overpowered me. “Why in God’s name would you believe me?”
His thumb gently brushed tears away across my cheekbone. His face was still passive, but I could see that it was a mask, a vain attempt to distract from the pain in his eyes. “Because I know that you are not insane and I know that you are not lying to me. How can I not believe you? ‘When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’”
