He reaches out now and grasps my hand, enveloping mine with his larger one. He is warm and strong and I ache to melt into his body. I know, from the way he is staring at me with such stormy, dark eyes that he wishes nothing but the same.
“Please, Luca,” I whisper.
I don’t know exactly what I’m begging for.
Everything, I guess. Everything and nothing.
Luca stares at me for a moment longer, then gets to his feet, still holding my hand. He leads me through the crowds of people, ignoring the curious stares. He winds up the back staircases of the church, and through a hallway to a room upstairs. It’s a side room and I can tell that it isn’t used very often. I look at Luca questioningly. How did he even know it was here? He senses my question.
“I was an altar boy,” he says as he closes the door. “I know this church like the back of my hand.”
He turns to me and lifts me up, his mouth closing in on mine. It’s hot and needy and electric.
“I can’t stay away from you,” he growls into my neck. “Even though I know I should.”
“I know,” I whisper. My hands are in his hair, driving his head into my chest, into my neck. I want him everywhere, I want his taste, his touch, his tongue. I just want him. All around us, there is a lingering, overwhelming sense of sadness. We know that this will be the last time and it makes us ache.
He lifts me against the wall, pushing into me. There is no foreplay, because we don’t need it. We only need each other.
When I whimper, he gently covers my mouth with his hand and stares into my eyes. He rocks with me until I feel him explode. He quivers against me and then stills, still clutching me to his chest.
After a moment, he slides me to the ground.
“I love you.” His words are soft and quiet in this reverent place.
For the first time, I acknowledge that we just had sex in a church. I should feel guilty, but I don’t. I doubt that God cares.
“I love you, too,” I answer, grasping his hand as if I can make him stay with me. But I can’t. Finality is in the air between us. We are over and we both know it. All that is left is the goodbye. The very worst part.
Luca fastens his pants and adjusts his suit jacket.
“Please be happy,” he says and his voice is choked. He bends and brushes a soft kiss on my forehead. I fight back tears as I nod, unable to speak and he wrenches his gaze from mine. He leaves and doesn’t look back.
Chapter Thirty-Four
I don’t remember walking through the church or the bus ride home. Everything is a blur as my emotions numb my body and my heart. I feel like I’m in shock and I probably am.
I get off the bus down the road from my house and walk the rest of the way, one foot in front of the other. When I get to the house, I find that I don’t want to go in.
But I also don’t want to go to Marianne’s. I don’t really want company. Instead, I walk along the beach for a while, my shoes in my hand. I sit on the sand and stare at the water, burying my toes in the white beach, trying to ignore the pain in my heart.
No one dies from heartbreak, I remind myself. I should know. I lived through it years ago.
I honestly don’t know how long I sit like this, zoned out and staring at the water. But eventually, after an hour or two, I grow cold. I walk back to my cottage and make my way up the path to my door. As I do, I see something propped against it.
An envelope.
Curiously, I pick it up and take it inside so I can see it in the light.
It’s from the lab where I sent Luca’s blood-work.
I rip it open and pull it out, my hands shaking in anticipation. And then I almost drop the paper.
The chemical components of his blood are all normal. But that’s not the interesting part.
On a whim, I had decided to have his blood tested for drugs. And it is positive for several things. Enough things, actually, that the lab manager compiled a letter to accompany the results, explaining what the poisonous components likely are.
There are very slight trace amounts of a poison with the chemical makeup of Nightshade, a naturally growing and very fatal plant. There is heavy evidence of recent use of Rohypnol, more commonly known as the Date Rape drug. Components of Angel’s Trumpet are there too, a strong hallucinogen that is known to put a person in a zombie-like state, able to function but unable to remember it afterward.
He was drugged.
My breathing is coming in pants now as I finish reading.
There is a heavy presence of several other naturally growing herbs, all of which are known to cause violence and aggression when used in excess. I stare at the incriminating words on the white page, so astounded that they practically blur together.
Luca has been poisoned.
I sink to the floor as I ponder what this means. Is he not cursed at all? There is no strange, dark affliction, only drugging? I know that he didn’t do this to himself. He wouldn’t. These poisons are very, very dangerous and Nightshade alone can kill with even a small amount. Angel’s Trumpet is highly fatal as well. Since only a trace is found in his blood, whoever has been drugging him is skilled. They know what to give him to produce exactly the reactions that they want to see without lethally overdosing him.
Who has access to him? Who would do this to him?
Adrian.
The name and face spill into my mind immediately, although I don’t know why he would do it. But he is the only one who has round the clock access to Luca. He’s the only one that Luca trusts completely and absolutely.
He’s like a brother to me, Adrian had said. I fell for it. Luca fell for it. Everyone fell for it because Adrian carries it off perfectly. He is perfectly charming, perfectly friendly. He’s very skilled at portraying that image.
I can’t breathe now.
Luca is about to leave on an isolated trip with Adrian.
Tonight.
I pull out my cell phone with shaking hands and dial his number.
No answer.
I leave a voicemail and try again.
No answer, so I leave another frantic voicemail.
Oh my god.
Oh my god.
Oh my god.
Without thinking, I run out the back doors and down the path to the beach and then I’m flying as fast as my legs will take me toward Chessarae.