Page 16 of The Bleeding Woods

Grayson is a knight. Kind, caring, and quietly pessimistic because he thinks it makes him more alert.

I can work with that. I can play the girl ever in mourning, wrought with displaced guilt, tormented by an irrational sense of responsibility for events outside her control.

I flash a smile just wider than the previous, urging my eyes to burn until they are orbs of glassy deceit.

Like all servants of the crown, he’s wiser and more observant than he lets on.

One slip, and he’ll know my meandering was beyond grief.

He’s too close. He’s always too close.

His lips are also . . . too close. Plush, dusty-pink skin pillows curved into a perfect Cupid’s bow.

His eyes are so dreadfully blue. Arctic oceans, clear enough to count ice blocks in.

My cheeks gather reddening heat. My performance must be seamless, and this wasn’t in the script.

What I’m feeling right now, it wasn’t in the script.

“Well . . .” I pull away. I won’t burn in his sun or drown in his waters. For his sake, I can’t. “Thanks.”

He beams. Curse his sparkling rows of teeth, framed like a painting on the art museum of his face. “Come on, we better head back. It looks like there’s a storm on the way.”

I’m no meteorologist, but the sky looks closer to midnight than midday. The gathering clouds are one shade away from being as black as the Bootes Void. “We have to shower somehow,” I joke.

He laughs and, somewhere between the waves of sound, throws a hand out to hold mine.

We return to the car linked, footsteps in line but out of sync.

Our conversation curves to quips about camping and life before indoor plumbing was invented.

Again, I’m reminded of just how light Grayson makes me feel.

He’s deeper than he lets the world see. Yet no matter what swims in the sea caves of his ocular stroma, he always manages to smile.

No matter what shadows play in the spaces between his silences, he always manages to laugh.

He isn’t a white knight; he’s a golden knight.

His wispy locks and radiant skin are like armor.

Protective, but penetrable. Closed, but still open.

If I ever needed to tell someone about my situation, it would be him.

He wouldn’t understand, but he would most certainly try to.

The details impossible to comprehend . .

. he would address with empathy. A man left to raise a rambunctious teenage brother and manage an absent family’s covert, illustrious affairs must be made from quality ingredients.

Empathy is his most integral. It’s his lifeblood.

I wonder what it’s like to be good and know it. I wonder how I would feel if my recipe called for powdered sugar and maple syrup.

Back at the Hummer, Jade and Joey hide poker faces behind hands of cards. They are fully immersed in a game of rummy, sitting like trained yogis on the hood.

“Game over, you two,” says Grayson. “Unless you’re looking to go through a wash cycle, of course.

” He gestures to the crawling clouds. Trees on the horizon have begun to sway in glitchy, sporadic patterns.

They are being beaten by a deluge of rain.

The way they hinge creates the illusion of a beast on the ground rattling their roots out of place with each thunderous step, inching closer, closer, and closer still.

We pack into the trunk again. Grayson hands out individually packaged bags of miniature gingersnap cookies.

We feast over murmured conversation that ceases when the droplets arrive.

What begins as a mere shower becomes unrelenting curtains of water.

The car windows look like television screens overtaken by static, the world a blur behind malfunctioning pixels.

Day turns to night without notice. With the sun extinguished, we determine the time-shift on instinct and energy levels alone.

The relentless swath of thunderclouds refuses to clear, strong as a cold front but slow as a warm one.

Even as the group succumbs to sleep, I am kept awake.

No matter what I do, my body refuses to release its grip on consciousness.

How much more, Grayson Warner?

I glance to the left, where Grayson snoozes in the driver’s seat.

His legs are bent at awkward angles within the confined legroom, but his torso is relaxed, and his head seems stable as it dangles to the side.

Something like butterflies flits about in my stomach, and for a moment, he’s more to me too.

My arm extends without permission to brush the wisps from his forehead.

Now I get a clearer view of his peaceful expression.

I’m used to seeing him with stress lines trained into place, but right now, he looks remarkably unburdened.

My face tingles, moved by a smile and warmed by blush.

How much more?

The lightning strikes that descend from above begin to take on impossible colors.

Shades of crimson split the sky, each like bleeding scrapes on the horizon’s dark flesh.

Their booming sound decrescendos into mesmeric thrumming, ritualistic drums beaten in time with my heart.

I sway to the rhythm, pulled by an invisible chain through the door.

It opens and closes with an uncanny quietude that disappears without a trace into the downpour.

Once outside, the tempest’s tears drench my body.

My hair falls in slivers over my face, plastered to my burning cheeks.

Every limb on my body feels detachable. The confines of my human hardware have faded, leaving only a formless stream of dark starlight drawn to something betwixt the trees.

He is there.

Waiting beyond the curtains of rainfall, Jasper stands soaked to the skin.

He is naked from the waist up, the pale skin of his torso glistening.

Black veins are scrawled like juvenile drawings on his chest, shoulders, and arms, leading down to the pants hanging at his hips.

His raven hair is slicked to his forehead, and just below it, his eyes are deviant suns.

Red as carnelian. A million prisms on shattered glass.

Spirals of fractalized light reaching from the infinite depth of his being to the endless edges of my soul.

“Jasper . . .” I sigh his name. My breath takes the sound bite to him. He beckons me with a curl of his forefinger and a sliver of a smile.

Gravity pulls my galaxy to his. Most think of deep space as a silent place, but I know better now.

I know it is filled with his songs. In my head, he’s placed an orchestra, and every instrument is his voice.

Every chord is a command, a gentle caress that steers my vessel toward calm waters.

Ballet returns to me, and before I know it, I am dancing into his arms. The trees are curtains, the asphalt a stage, the crimson strikes our spotlights.

As I step into the wooded ocean, his smile widens into a toothy grin.

Like Grayson, his teeth are like pearls, but they are as serrated as a shark’s.

Everything about his human visage is sharp, and in this light, I could swear on the work of the lapidarist who carved it.

He takes my face into his ice-cold hands, drilling the brilliant hue of his gaze into my vision until the world is cherry-dipped.

“Stay,” he sings, and oh, how I want to. Right now, I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. I can’t remember if anywhere or anyone else exists.

His hands meander down my arms, fingertips just barely brushing my skin.

They move in paths paved by the water still pouring from above.

They dance, and in time, they leap to new locations.

They come to cup the curves of my hips, gently slipping beneath the saturated fabric.

He’s climbing my rib cage with touch, inching upward until I respond with a gasp.

His lips curl like parchment set alight at the edges.

Such a captivating smirk has taken residence on his face, a smirk that makes me want more of what caused it.

However, he only shakes his head and pulls away.

I can’t breathe. I’ve forgotten how to use the muscles in my diaphragm, and even if I were to remember, there would be no air to take in.

If it isn’t exhaled by him, it ceases to exist. I am molten, and I will melt into the ground without his hands holding me up.

I’d rather dissolve into obscurity than go another second as a ship on rough seas, navigating alone in the night.

Jasper is my North Star.

I need him. I need him. I need him.

The gentlest thunderclap rumbles the ground, an earthquake for which he is the epicenter. I follow the vibration, blind in the darkness but trusting in my true sight. He backtracks into the gloom until all I see is his red-shifting wavelengths.

“Stay with me, Clara Lovecroft,” he says.

Tendrils of vermilion guide the plant life.

Vines tango with smoke swirls, all of them coiling my arms and legs.

Jasper rushes forward like a gust of wind, his lips crashing into mine.

A supernova detonates in my chest. A lightning strike cleaves the sky in distant but perfect alignment with the rapidly closing space between us.