I don’t know why I was embarrassed to answer that with a “yes.” There were plenty of women my age that hadn’t had sex yet, at least I thought there were. I just hadn’t found the right person yet, or I hadn’t been looking. Maybe it was because I was waiting for Julian.
He smiled gently at me and ran his fingers through my hair. “You know how we always joke about how it’s hard to tell sometimes where your body ends and mine begin?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I answered. “I like that about us.”
“I like that about us, too.” He smiled. “When I make love to you, Lisette, it will be the epitome of that feeling. Your body and mine will be one.”
“Is that how it was with the other four girls?” I asked.
I wasn’t trying to be hurtful. I was just hurt. I’m not sure why. It wasn’t like I had any right to be jealous about other girls that Julian had been with before we ever even admitted that we had those kinds of feelings for each other.
He stroked my cheek with his knuckles. “Anyone that I have been with was simply a diversion to keep myself distracted from how badly I wanted you. None of that matters anymore, okay? The only thing that matters now is us.”
“Okay,” I said as I leaned forward and kissed him back.
We laid in bed together for a while before I had to get up and go to class. I stretched out the time until I was too late to care and figured that I’d get to the lecture hall whenever it was that I arrived. Julian had a masterclass that day too, so I wouldn’t see him until later on that evening. Everything outside the door to my room was still awful chaos, but inside of my room, everything was perfect, and Julian and I were happy. That was why it was going to be so hard to do what I was about to do next. I had never been without Julian, and I never wanted to be. I had never lied to him or broken a promise we’d made, and I felt like there was a chance that there would be no coming back from this.
Aside from my mother, Julian was the most important person in the world to me. All I could do was hope that he would understand and that he cared about me enough that everything would still be okay. I should have told him that I was going to go to Adam and try to get into Lineage anyway, despite his advice and despite my promise to him. He deserved the truth from me and not to have to find out from someone else. But I knew that if I told him, he wouldn’t have let me leave at all. And as much as it terrified me to think about upsetting Julian or making him upset with me, I just couldn’t let go of my mother’s death. I couldn’t let my kind, hardworking mom, who had fiercely protected me every day of my life, die in vain.
Julian would understand. He would be mad at me for a little while, but then he would understand.
He had to.
When we left my room, Julian went in one direction toward his masterclass while I went in the other, toward the lecture hall. As soon as he was out of sight, I turned around and walked in the direction of Lineage. When I got to the edge of the campus, I retraced the same route along the edge of the tree line that led to Adam’s apartment. Then I knocked quietly on his bedroom window until he opened it and let me inside.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “I thought I told you not to come back here again.”
I grinned. “What can I say, I don’t take direction well.”
“Apparently,” he said as he rolled his eyes at me.
I peeked around his shoulders. “Is Michael here?”
“No, he’s in some meeting or something in the Dean’s office. Why?”
I nodded. “Because you and I need to talk.”
8
There’s a place on Lineage grounds that Adam said he goes to when he needs time away from all the people around him. It was too dangerous for me to stay in his apartment to talk with him; Michael could have come back at a moment’s notice, so Adam took me to his special place. I had no idea the campus was so vast and even less of an idea how beautiful certain parts of it were.
The cemetery seemed like an odd place to go sit and have a conversation, but I was surprised by how incredible it was once we got there. It seemed even more strange that a school campus would have a cemetery on its grounds, but I guess that shouldn’t have surprised me…it was Lineage after all. And in my mind, that word rang with the stench of death. I couldn’t believe how many tombstones there were. We walked between the old and crumbling tombstones until we found a small clearing of grass to sit down on.
“No one will find us here,” Adam said as he crossed his legs to sit down next to me. “I’ve been coming here for months, and I’ve yet to see a single person ever visit this cemetery. So, what is it that you wanted to talk to me about?”
“I want to come to Lineage,” I said. I wasn’t going to pussyfoot around it. There wasn’t time.
“You’re already here,” he said, looking confused.
“No, I mean, I want to attend this school.”
Adam made a noise that sounded like an amused snort of some sort. “That’s impossible. And why would you ever want to attend Lineage? You hate it here.”
“I don’t know,” I said as I scooted closer to him. “The cemetery isn’t so bad.”
“Well, I’ll remind you that beneath this lovely, gothic-looking graveyard, there are a whole lot of decaying bodies. Most of which were probably killed by people here, if we’re being honest.”
“What is it that’s going on here?” I said in a solemn tone. “What is this school covering up?”
Adam didn’t answer me. This wasn’t working, and I only had one shot at it. I needed to convince him to bring me here with him.
I scooted myself to sit close enough to him for our thighs to touch and then set my hand onto his lap. I looked into his dark eyes with as much urgency and longing as I could muster, and it surprised me when it didn’t feel quite as pretend as I had expected it to.
“Adam, you came back to the halfway house to see me. You broke into my bedroom window to come and warn me because you said you were trying to keep me safe. It’s no secret that you have feelings for me.”
His body seemed to lean forward slightly as if he were trying to breathe in each word that I said.
“I never forgot about you either. On the night my mother was killed, I forgot about everyone else there besides her…except for you. When I’m with you, I feel safe, and as much as I try to stay mad at you for keeping secrets, I can’t. You told me you weren’t responsible for my mother’s death, and I believed you. I also think that out of anyone here, you’re the best chance I have of not ending up meeting the same fate that my mother did.”
He scooted closer to me. “I would never let anyone hurt you, Lisette,” he said.
He was so close to me now that his slightly-open mouth gently touched mine, and his lips slid against mine in such a seductive way that I had to keep myself from losing my focus.
“I know you wouldn’t,” I whispered.
I was struggling not to lose my words as the tip of his tongue lightly traced across the underside of my lip.
