Crescendo

CHAPTER 10

AN HOUR LATER, I’D FIXED AND EATEN A LATE SNACK of cream cheese frosting spread on graham crackers, tidied up the kitchen, and watched a little TV. In a shadowy corner of my mind, I hadn’t managed to forget the text message warning me to stay home. It had been easier to brush off as a miscall or prank when I was safe and sound inside Vee’s car, but now that I was alone, I wasn’t feeling anywhere near as confident. I considered turning on some Chopin to break the silence, but I didn’t want to handicap my hearing. The last thing I needed was someone sneaking up behind me….

Pull it together! I ordered myself. Nobody’s sneaking up on you.

After a while, when nothing good was left on TV, I climbed upstairs to my bedroom. My room was, for all intents and purposes, clean, so I color-coded my closet, trying to keep myself busy so I wouldn’t be tempted to fall asleep. Nothing would make me as vulnerable as dozing off, and I wanted to delay it as long as possible. I dusted the top of the bureau, then alphabetized my hardcovers. I reassured myself that nothing bad was going to happen. Most likely, I’d wake tomorrow realizing how ridiculously paranoid I’d been.

Then again, maybe the text was from someone who wanted to slit my throat while I slept. On an eerie night like this, nothing was too far-fetched to believe.

Sometime later, I woke in the dark. The drapes on the far side of the room billowed as the electric fan oscillated toward them. The air temperature was overly warm, and my stretchy tank and boy briefs clung to my skin, but I was too caught up in envisioning worst-case scenarios to even think about cracking the window. Looking sideways, I blinked at the numbers on my clock. Just shy of three.

An angry pounding reverberated through the right side of my skull, and my eye was swollen shut. Turning on every light in the house, I padded barefoot to the freezer and assembled an ice pack out of ice cubes and a Ziploc bag. I braved a look in the bathroom mirror and groaned. A violent purple and red bruise flowered from my eyebrow down to my cheekbone.

“How could you have let this happen?” I asked my reflection. “How could you have let Marcie beat you up?”

I shook the last two Tylenol gelcaps out of the bottle in the mirrored cabinet, swallowed them, then curled into bed. The ice stung the skin around my eye and sent a shiver through me. While I waited for the Tylenol to kick in, I wrestled with the mental picture of Marcie climbing inside Patch’s Jeep. The image played, rewound, and replayed. I tossed and turned, and even folded my pillow over my head to smother the image, but it danced just out of reach, taunting me.

What must have been an hour later, my brain wore itself out thinking of all the inventive ways I’d like to kill both Marcie and Patch, and I slipped back into sleep.

I woke to the sound of a lock rolling over.

I opened my eyes, but found my vision muddled by the same poor-quality black and white as when I’d dreamed my way into England, hundreds of years ago. I tried to blink it away and bring my normal vision back, but my world stayed the color of smoke and ice.

Downstairs, the front door eased open with a low-pitched creak.

I wasn’t expecting my mom home until Saturday morning, which meant it was someone else. Someone who didn’t belong inside.

I stole a look around the room for something I could use as a weapon. A few small picture frames were arranged on the night-stand, along with a cheap drugstore lamp.

Footsteps trod softly over the hardwood floors of the foyer. Seconds later, they were on the stairs. The intruder didn’t pause, listening for signs that they’d been heard. They knew exactly where they were going. Rolling silently out of bed, I snatched my discarded tights off the floor. I tightened them between my hands and pressed my back to the wall just inside my bedroom door, a clammy sweat beading my skin. It was so quiet I could hear myself breathe.

He stepped through the doorway, and I roped a leg of the tights around his neck, tugging back with all my strength. There was a moment of struggle before my weight jerked forward and I found myself face-to-face with Patch.

He looked from the tights he’d confiscated to me. “Want to explain?”

“What are you doing here?” I demanded, my breathing elevated. I put two and two together. “Was that your text earlier? The one telling me to stay put tonight? Since when do you have an unlisted number?”

“I had to get a new line. Something more secure.”

I didn’t want to know. What kind of person needed all that secrecy? Who was Patch afraid would be eavesdropping on his calls? The archangels?

“Did it ever occur to you to knock?” I said, my pulse still hammering. “I thought you were someone else.”

“Expecting someone else?”

“As a matter of fact, yes!” A psychopath who sent anonymous text messages telling me to make myself accessible.

“It’s after three,” Patch said. “Whoever you’re waiting for can’t be that exciting—you fell asleep.” He smiled. “You’re still sleeping.” As he said it, he looked satisfied. Maybe even reassured, as if something he’d been puzzling over had finally worked itself out.

I blinked. Still sleeping? What was he talking about? Wait. Of course. That explained why all color was drained, and I was still seeing in black and white. Patch wasn’t really in my bedroom—he was in my dream.

But was I dreaming about him, or did he actually know he was here? Were we sharing the same dream?

“For your information, I fell asleep waiting for—Scott.” I had no idea why I’d said it, other than my mouth got in the way of my brain.

“Scott,” he repeated.

“Don’t start. I saw Marcie climb inside your Jeep.”

“She needed a ride.”

I adopted a hands-on-hips pose. “What kind of ride?”

“Not that kind of ride,” he said slowly.

“Oh, sure! What color was her thong?” It was a test, and I really hoped he failed.

He didn’t answer, but one look at his eyes told me he hadn’t failed.

I marched to the bed, grabbed a pillow, and hurled it at him. He sidestepped, and it flopped against the wall. “You lied to me,” I said. “You told me there was nothing going on between you and Marcie, but when two people have nothing between them, they don’t swap wardrobes, and they don’t get inside each other’s cars late at night dressed in what could pass as lingerie!” I was suddenly aware of my own clothes, or lack thereof. I stood feet away from Patch in nothing more than a spaghetti-strap tank and boy briefs. Well, there wasn’t a lot I could do about it now, was there?

“Swap wardrobes?”

“She was wearing your hat!”

“She was having a bad hair day.”

My jaw dropped. “Is that what she told you? And you fell for it?” “She’s not as bad as you’re making her out to be.”

He did not just say that.

I thrust a finger at my eye. “Not that bad? See this? She gave it to me! What are you doing here?” I demanded again, my rage boiling to an all-time high.

Patch leaned back against the bureau and folded his arms. “I came by to see how you’re doing.”

“Again, I have a black eye, thanks for asking,” I snapped.

“Need ice?”

“I need you to get out of my dream!” I ripped a second pillow off the bed and heaved it violently at him. This time he caught it.

“The Devil’s Handbag, black eye. Comes with the territory.” He shoved the pillow back at me, as if to punctuate his opinion.

“Are you defending Marcie?”

He shook his head. “I don’t need to. She handled herself. You, on the other hand …”

I pointed at the door. “Out.”

When he didn’t move, I marched within range and whipped the pillow against him. “I said get out of my dream, you lying, traitorous—”

He wrestled the pillow out of my grasp and walked me backward until I came up against the wall, his motorcycle boots flush against my toes. I was drawing breath to finish my sentence and call him the worst name I could think up, when Patch tugged on the waistband of my underpants and pulled me even closer. His eyes were liquid black, his breathing slow and deep. I stood that way, suspended between him and the wall, my pulse stepping up as I became more aware of his body and the masculine scent of leather and mint lingering on his skin. I felt my resistance start to ebb away.

Suddenly, and without heeding anything but my own desire, I curled my fingers into his shirt and pulled him the rest of the way against me. It felt so good to have him close again. I’d missed him so much, but I hadn’t realized just how much until this moment.

“Don’t make me regret this,” I said, breathless.

“You haven’t regretted me once.” He kissed me, and I answered so hungrily I thought my lips would bruise. I pushed my fingers up through his hair, clutching him closer. My mouth was all over his, chaotic and wild and starved. All the messy and complicated emotions I’d gone through since we broke up dropped away as I drowned myself in the crazed and compulsive need to be with him.

His hands were under my tank, expertly sliding to the small of my back to hold me against him. I was trapped between the wall and his body, fumbling at the buttons on his shirt, my knuckles brushing solid muscle beneath.

I rucked his shirt down off his shoulders, slamming the door on my brain, which warned that I was making a huge mistake. I didn’t want to hear myself out, afraid of what I’d find on the other side. I knew I was setting myself up for more pain, but I couldn’t resist him. All I could think was that if Patch really was in my dream, this whole night could be our secret. The archangels couldn’t see us. Here, all their rules went up in smoke. We could do whatever we wanted, and they would never find out. No one would.

Patch met me halfway, pulling his arms free from the sleeves and tossing the shirt aside. I slid my hands along perfectly sculpted muscle that sent a ripple of mania through me. I knew he couldn’t feel any of this physically, but I told myself love was driving him now. His love for me. I didn’t allow myself to think about his inability to feel my touch, or how much or little this encounter really meant to him. I simply wanted him. Now.

He lifted me up, and I wrapped my legs around his waist. I saw his gaze cut to the dresser, then the bed, and my heart flip-flopped with desire. Rational thought had abandoned me. All I knew was that I would do whatever it took to hang on to this unhinged high. Everything was happening way too fast, but the wild certainty of where we were headed was a balm to the cold, destructive anger I’d felt simmering under the surface the past week.

It was the last thought I registered before my fingertip brushed the place where his wings connected to his back.

Before I could stop it, I was sucked inside his memory in a snap.

The smell of leather, and the smooth, slippery feel of it against the underside of my thighs, told me I was in Patch’s Jeep even before my eyes had fully adapted to the darkness. I was in the backseat, with Patch behind the wheel and Marcie in the passenger seat. She was wearing the same slinky dress and tall boots I’d seen her in less than three hours ago.

Tonight, then. Patch’s memory had whisked me only a few hours back.

“She ruined my dress,” Marcie said, picking at the fabric clinging to her thighs. “Now I’m freezing. And I reek of cherry Coke.”

“You want my jacket?” Patch asked, eyes on the road.

“Where is it?”

“Backseat.”

Marcie unlocked her seat belt, got a knee up on the console, and grabbed Patch’s leather jacket off the seat beside me. When she was facing forward again, she tugged the dress up over her head and dropped it on the floor at her feet. Other than her underwear, she was completely naked.

I made a little choked sound in my throat.

She threaded her arms into Patch’s jacket and zipped it up. “Take the next left,” she instructed.

“I know the way to your house,” Patch said, steering the Jeep right.

“I don’t want to go home. In two blocks, turn left.”

But after two blocks, Patch continued straight.

“Well, you’re no fun,” Marcie said with a jaded pout. “Aren’t you just a little bit curious where I was going to take us?”

“It’s late.”

“Are you turning me down?” she asked coyly.

“I’m dropping you off, then I’m going back to my place.”

“Why can’t I come?”

“Maybe someday,” Patch said.

Oh, really? I wanted to snap at Patch.

That’s more than I ever got!

“That’s not very specific,” Marcie smirked, kicking her heels up on the dash, showing off inches of leg.

Patch said nothing.

“Tomorrow night, then,” Marcie said. She paused and continued in a velvety voice, “It’s not like you have somewhere else to be. I know Nora broke up with you.”

Patch’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.

“I heard she’s with Scott Parnell now. You know, the new guy. He’s cute, but she traded down.”

“I don’t really want to talk about Nora.”

“Good, because neither do I. I want to talk about us.”

“I thought you had a boyfriend.”

“The key word in that sentence is had.”

Patch took a short right, bouncing the Jeep into Marcie’s driveway. He didn’t cut the engine. “Good night, Marcie.”

She stayed in her seat a moment, then laughed. “You’re not going to walk me to the door?”

“You’re a strong, capable girl.”

“If my daddy’s watching, he won’t be happy,” she said, reaching over to straighten Patch’s collar, her hand lingering longer than was appropriate.

“He’s not watching.”

“How do you know?”

“Trust me.”

Marcie lowered her voice further, sultry and smooth. “You know, I really admire your willpower. You keep me guessing, and I like that. But let me make one thing perfectly clear. I’m not looking for a relationship. I don’t like messy, complicated things. I don’t want hurt feelings, confusing signals, or jealousy—I just want fun. I’m looking for a good time. Think about it.”

For the first time, Patch turned to face Marcie. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said at last.

From her profile, I saw Marcie smile. She leaned across the console and gave Patch a slow, hot kiss. He started to pull back, then stopped. At any moment, he could have broken the kiss off, but he didn’t.

“Tomorrow night,” Marcie murmured, pulling away at last. “Your place.”

“Your dress,” he told her, gesturing at the damp heap on the floor.

“Wash it and give it back to me tomorrow night.” She pushed her way out of the Jeep and ran up to her front door, where she slipped inside.

My arms went slack around Patch’s neck. I felt too slapped by what I’d seen to form a single word. It was as if he’d thrown a bucket of ice water on me. My lips were swollen from the roughness of his kiss, my heart just as inflamed.

Patch was in my dream. We were sharing it together. Somehow it was real. The whole idea was eerily surreal, bordering on impossible, but it had to be true. If he wasn’t here, if he hadn’t injected himself quietly and stealthily into my dream, I couldn’t have touched his scars and been catapulted into his memory.

But I had. The memory was living, valid, and all too real.

Patch could tell by my reaction that whatever I’d seen wasn’t good. His arms bracketed my shoulders, and he tipped his head back to stare at the ceiling. “What did you see?” he asked quietly.

The sound of my heart pounded between us.

“You kissed Marcie,” I said, biting my lip hard to stall the tears welling up.

He dragged his hands down his face, then squeezed the bridge of his nose.

“Tell me it’s a mind game. Tell me it’s a trick. Tell me she has some kind of power over you, that you don’t have any choice when it comes to being with her.”

“It’s complicated.”

“No,” I said with a fierce shake of my head. “Don’t tell me it’s complicated. Nothing is complicated anymore—not after everything we’ve been through. What do you even hope to get out of a relationship with her?”

His eyes flicked to mine. “Not love.”

A certain emptiness gnawed its way inside me. All the pieces came together, and I suddenly understood. Being with Marcie was about cheap satisfaction. Self-satisfaction. He really did see us as conquests. He was a player. Every girl was a new challenge, a short-term hookup to broaden his horizons. He found success in the art of seduction. He didn’t care about the middle or end of a story— only the beginning. And just like all the other girls, I’d made the huge mistake of falling in love with him. The moment I did, he ran. Well, he’d never have to worry about Marcie confessing her love. The only person she loved was herself.

“You make me sick,” I said, my voice trembling with accusation.

Patch crouched down, elbows on his knees, face buried in his hands. “I didn’t come here to hurt you.”

“Why did you come? To fool around behind the archangels’ backs? To hurt me more than you already have?” I didn’t wait for an answer. Reaching for my neck, I yanked at the silver chain he’d given me days ago. It snapped free at the back of my neck hard enough that I should have winced, but I was in too much pain to notice a little more. I should have made him take the chain back the day I called it quits between us, but I realized a little late that up until this moment, I hadn’t given up hope. I’d still believed in us. I’d clung to the belief that there was still a way to cut a deal with the stars that would bring Patch back to me. What an utter waste.

I flung the chain at him. “And I want my ring back.”

His dark eyes stayed settled on me a moment longer, then he bent and scooped up his shirt. “No.”

“What do you mean no? I want it back!”

“You gave it to me,” he said quietly, but not gently.

“Well, I changed my mind!” My face was flushed, my whole body hot with rage. He was keeping the ring because he knew how much it meant to me. He was keeping it, because despite his rise in stature to guardian angel, his soul was just as black as it had been the day I met him. And the biggest mistake I’d ever made was fooling myself into believing otherwise. “I gave it to you when I was stupid enough to think I loved you!” I thrust out my hand. “Give it back. Now.” I couldn’t stand the thought of losing my dad’s ring to Patch. He didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve to keep the one tangible reminder I had of real love.

Ignoring my request, Patch walked out.

I opened my eyes.

I clicked on the lamp, my vision returning to full color. I sat up, a hot flash of adrenaline warming my skin. Reaching for my neck, I felt for Patch’s silver chain, but it wasn’t there. I swept my hand across the wrinkled sheets, thinking it had fallen off while I slept.

But the chain was gone.

The dream was real.

Patch had discovered a way to visit me while I slept.