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“Why?”
I could see a hint of heartache in his eyes, but I did my best to ignore it.
After a brief pause, I exhaled. “Because, Caius,” I started, and his facial expression softened at the sound of his name. The sight of him giving in to me, even only by a fraction, had me momentarily faltering. “It doesn’t make any sense. There’s no way this can be real.”
His eyes trailed down to my lips, watching me speak before moving back to my eyes. With a pinch of hesitancy, he turned his head to look down the path, away from both the entrance and my car. He waited a moment before turning back to me, a new confidence in his expression.
“Would you give me one final chance to prove to you that it’s real?” he asked, the sound of a plea buried under the layers of his voice.
Studying him, I tilted my head. As he waited for my answer, a handful of thoughts were speeding around my head, jumbling any reasoning that was trying to break through the noise.
“Why me?” I began. “Why are you trying so hard to convinceme?”
His face hardened at my question, and his body turned stiff as he kept his eyes on me. My umbrella hovered over both my head and the space between us, allowing us to keep our gazes locked without anything between us.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t intrigued.
I’dalsobe lying if I said I didn’t like the way he was restless for my approval.
But for what? Why did he want my validation? Why did he want me to see what he saw?
“Don’t deflect. Answer me, Celeste.” His hand moved under my chin, his warm fingers pushing to lift my gaze higher.
The simple gesture of his touch electrified me, lighting up something in me that could not be dimmed.
“Will you give me one last chance to prove to you that this is real?”
With his hand still under my chin and his thumb gently resting along the curve of my jaw, words refused to find their way out of me. My throat was constricted with a newly formed need, a craving for something in the unknown. I did my best to nod in response.
He dropped his hand back to his side, his skin taking the electric current with it. “Saturday. Be here at four. Drive up to the house.”
Without any explanation, he turned and walked off in the other direction. Raindrops streamed down the hood and shoulders of his jacket, dripping off of him in small splashes, and he continued on as if he was completely immune to the natural downpour. Before I could form a cohesive thought, before I could ask for more information, he was gone.
Celeste
“Hey, are you busy?” I asked, with the phone pressed to my ear and my hand on the steering wheel.
“No, why?”
“Because I’m in your driveway.”
Silence stilled on the other end of the line. Faintly, I could hear footsteps trot across the floor and rustling soon after. I looked up, and sure enough, Serena pulled open her front curtain to look at me from the window.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I want to show you something. Bring Nolan. We can drop him off at Mom’s on the way.”
I could sense Serena’s hesitation over the phone, and a deep sigh accompanied it.
“I promise we won’t be long.”
“Fine. Give me a minute.”
The call clicked off, and I dropped my phone in my lap.
Yesterday, after Caius invited me back on Saturday forwho-knows-what,I spent the entire night thinking about it. Imagining it. Molding the idea of it in my head like putty. When I showered, I tried to figure out what it was that he was inviting me to. What was he trying to show me? His directions were too specific for it to simply be just another conversation. Were other people going to be involved this time? Was the other guy goingto be there, the one who asked if I was staying for“the show”and indirectly started this whole thing?
Was there going to be another show?
