I shoved my helmet on and Adrian pulled down the driveway, onto the main road, toward his house. Ten minutes later, we were there, the massive wrought-iron gates swinging open. He parked, and I tapped my phone again and sent a text off to Trish: can u cover me? im with adrian; rachel & joe think im with you. thx.
I could only hope that Rachel hadn’t already called Trish or her parents and asked how I was. Since I’d never called Trish earlier to tell her I would be coming over, she wouldn’t know that I hadn’t gone with them to Norah’s competition like I was supposed to. Oh hell, I hope the police hadn’t been called. I shoved my phone in my pocket, too tired to think through the possibilities, and followed Adrian inside. We went up to Adrian’s room and he found his cell phone where he’d left it. I sat on the floor, not wanting to get blood on any of the furniture. Some insane part of me found it amusing that the last time I’d been in this room, I’d been drunk and Adrian had been a pirate.
“Mariana?” he asked a moment later. “Come home now. He came back.” He listened for a moment, then glanced at me. “At the house, with me. I’ll fill you in when you get here.” He listened a moment longer, then hung up.
“Why didn’t they help?” I asked. “Why were you alone?”
He shook his head. “They were in D.C., following a lead about our father. It was a setup. He planned this whole damn thing.” He ran a shaky hand through his hair, then grimaced when he realized it was matted with blood. “I need, uh—you need food.” He helped me up and we stumbled downstairs and into the kitchen where he flipped on a few lights.
“Eat these,” he said, handing me a plate of chocolate chip cookies. “It’ll hit your system fast.”
I popped one into my mouth and chewed mechanically. I loved chocolate chip cookies, but I honestly couldn’t taste them now. He opened the fridge and reached into a drawer, pulling out a plastic IV bag. I watched, fascinated, as he ripped off the stopper and drained the blood in one long swallow. I was on my second cookie when he reached for another bag. I figured I should be nauseous, but I wasn’t. He wiped his lips, threw both bags in the trash, and reached back in the fridge, pulling out a covered Tupperware container. He popped the lid, slid something onto a plate, and stuck it in the microwave.
“What’s that?” I asked around my fourth cookie.
“Spaghetti; lots of carbs. Can you handle that?”
I nodded. “Do you have any milk?” I was eating chocolate chip cookies. I needed milk.
“Milk? Yeah…” He grabbed a gallon from the fridge, poured me a huge glass, and set it in front of me, hands shaking.
“Keep drinking,” I told him.
He saw me sitting there, munching on my fifth cookie, then went back to the fridge and pulled out his third bag and began sipping at it slowly. The microwave dinged. He held the IV in one hand and handed me the plate of spaghetti with the other, then set a knife and a fork in front of me.
He’d been dead an hour ago.
I twirled some pasta on my fork and ate it. Mariana’s cooking. Good.
“Why aren’t you in Virginia?” he asked finally, voice neutral. “You were supposed to be in Virginia.”
I blinked. “Our water heater broke. I had to wait for the repairman.”
Tommie. The repairman. Adrian’s father. So stupid.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. I couldn’t tell if he was angry.
So I shrugged. “We broke up. I didn’t want to call you.”
He bowed against the island we were both sitting at, his face in shadow. “We thought you would be gone all weekend,” he muttered. “We had someone in Virginia on standby to keep an eye on you. We let our guard down—Mariana and Dominic went off, Julian was in New York, and I stayed here with Lucian. I could feel you at your place, but I assumed it was residuals. I didn’t think.”
I swallowed my bite of spaghetti. “If you thought I was gone, how did you know what was happening?”
He looked up and I couldn’t read his face. “You—felt something—that you don’t normally feel. Well, you don’t … feel it all the time; only—it shouldn’t have been there, not if it was residual. You don’t feel like that when—when you’re away from me.”
My stomach clenched into a slimy ball of curdled cookies and spaghetti. I knew what he was talking about.
“Adrian,” I said, eyes watering, “I got all messed up.”
“We don’t have to talk about this now.” I couldn’t tell if he was offering me a way out or just didn’t want to hear about how I’d made out with his father.
I felt sick. Adrian had died because of me.
I let the fork clatter to my plate as I stumbled to the garbage can, barely getting the lid off before I violently threw up. There were hands on my back pulling my hair away and I just kept going until there was nothing left, and even then I couldn’t stop for a while. Adrian handed me a paper towel.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, and he helped me sit on the stool again because I was shaking too badly.