Kissing Skulls *Revised*

Chapter 23

He took a step forward as I stumbled back, but the look on my face made him stop in his tracks.  My body hit the hard wall of a nearby warehouse and I had to lean against it just to keep standing. 

My legs shook.  My bottom lip trembled.  Any moment I felt like I was going to cry, and then I was.  Big, blotchy tears streamed down my face before I could help it, smearing everything into a shapeless blur. 

“Leave me alone,” I whispered as the dark blob that was Demitri reached out for me again.

He made a tortured noise in the back of his throat.  As if someone were twisting a knife in his gut.  As if he were in so much agonizing pain that words couldn’t voice it. 

Any other day, I might have cared.

But now, all that mattered was that he stayed far away.

  “Please.”  My voice shook so badly that I barely understood my own words.  “I don’t know who M-Maryne is—but sh…she’s not me.  She’s not me!”

He looked confused—so painfully, horribly confused, that a part of me flinched at the sight.  But then, his eyes darkened, and smoothed over into blank emptiness in the blink of an eye.

I didn’t see him move.  I could hardly see anything, and with my hands shaking I reached up to wipe the screen of tears away.  I only felt a tug on my throat—making me jump—and a subtle clink like that of metal snapping.

Blinking, I looked down to find his arm outstretched with the broken chains of Melanie Maloney’s necklace trailing from his fist like torn wings. 

With a smooth motion he tucked the necklace into his pocket. 

“Sorry,” he said on a frigid whisper.  “I must have mistaken you for someone else.”

Then, he turned his back to me, and I could only watch as he disappeared into the shadows of the Pier, leaving me alone to sink to the dirty ground as my trembling legs finally gave way. 

_____________

            What the hell just happened?  The logical part of me tried to rationalize that, while the irrational part blubbered and sniffled all over the front of Dustyn’s borrowed sweatshirt. 

            I was freezing.  Even the icy breeze whipping up from the river wasn’t enough to cut the achy burn I could still feel all over from when he kissed me…

“What the hell?”  It takes me a moment to realize that the pitiful moan was my own.  I’d been muttering the words over and over without even realizing it.

What the hell, what the hell…

Without the sham of the nightmare, it took a full minute to sink in that this was real.  Really, really real.

I had jumped from the window of Dustyn’s apartment and landed without a freakin’ scratch.  I had wandered all the way to the Pier from the other side of the city.  I had just walked up to some random dude and kissed him like…

Like he was a whole lot more to me than just some dark, handsome stranger.  Like I knew him—wanted him—and that part of me mourned as I watched him go. 

What the hell was happening to me?

I was gasping.  Every breath seemed to sink into my chest like a punch, and it was getting so hard just to keep breathing.  I was hyperventilating, I realized somewhere at the back of my mind.  If I didn’t get a hold of myself soon, I would pass out.