Secrets you keep

I did not have time to attack him that he grabbed my wrists and pulled myself to the mattress and him, squeezing me in a playful embrace from which, in the end, I no longer ran away. My body stopped rebelling immediately, letting go to the warmth of his.

The smell of clean clothes and the beating of the heart, together with the faint smell of tobacco left between his fingers, rocked me in a kind of vague drowsiness. If I were not afraid to stay here longer than agreed with Catherine, I would probably let myself go to the bewitching call of Morpheus.

My friend voice, still mixed, tries to keep me glued to reality: «What happened to you, honey? You have disappeared these days...»

I rub my head against his chest, trying to get the sleep off completely: «I could say the same about you» I mumbled then. This is the perfect opportunity to ask him about the quarrel, and yet I would like to wait, enjoying the moment for a while. Charlie taste of home, of the safe place to return to after a day too heavy: if its walls were to collapse I would not know where to go.

However, I ask anyway, because the language pinches and curiosity wears me out: «What's up with my three musketeers?» I raise my head to be able to look him straight in the face, so that he can't tell me lies.

«Nothing that hasn't happened in the past already» he says, rummaging around the head of the bed, where he keeps wallet and cigarettes. He's trying to abort the speech immediately, visibly reluctant to the idea of making me a participant in the matter.

As soon as he puts the yellow filter between his lips, I take the lighter out of his hands, to prevent it from turning on the cigarette and changing the subject.

I am categorical, I want to know.

With a swift movement I put myself on the knees: my back to the window, my eyes to him.

«Really? So what does it cost you to tell me about it?» I warn him.

Charlie sighs, then he runs the hands over his face, covering his huge blue eyes: «Come on, I don't want to start useless discussions. We were so comfortable here doing nothing!» His plaintive tone has something of a boyish nature, but it is not enough to silence my desire for knowledge. Am I not also part of this stupid group? So why can't I be in the round?

My gaze does not leave him for a second, becoming more and more intense. It is a challenge to those who give up first, but given what is at stake, surely I will not be the one who will lose - the visceral desire to restore peace between Jace and Seth is stronger than his will, I am sure. And then, if they stopped fighting, I could evaluate Morgenstern's kiss and confession more clearly.

My best friend leans over with a rush, his face comes a few inches from mine. The tips of the noses could graze, while the eyes have already begun to get lost in each other's with an intensity that is hardly typical of Benton. He still snorts: «Why do you want to get in the way?» He asks, placing his forehead against mine. When he breathes a light tickle caresses my cheeks.

«Because I don't like this situation».

And in the end, as expected, it is he who gives in: «Your brother has been bothered by the fact that you remained at Seth's, alone» he confesses, making me turn away from him at once.

Our bodies separate, but not the looks, those remain anchored together with wonder and resignation. There is no longer any fraternal tenderness to unite us.

«Are you kidding me? Did they fight for this?» I shake my head over and over again, incredulous. Charlie tries to grab my hand, perhaps in an attempt to calm me, but I avoid him, slipping away from his bed: «What's wrong with Jace? It is certainly not the first time I sleep outside! I've stayed here with you dozens of times and-»he finally manages to catch me. He interrupts me in mid-sentence, showing off a seriousness that bothers me to see on him.

«It's different, Jane» the hard line of his lips doesn't have anything pleasant anymore, he doesn't comfort me: «Here we are in half of a thousand... there are my parents and I sleep downstairs. But at his place? You were alone, okay? And you were drunk» even if veiled, I feel a kind of disapproval in the guy's tone.

Suddenly, hearing his words, I feel tears overwhelm me. Maybe I disappointed him too - but why? After all, I didn't do anything wrong, did I?

I shake my head again.

Benton gets up, goes back to being incredibly close. I feel his warmth slip over the edges of bare skin and, instinctively, I feel I want both to push him away and to hold tight.

«I love them both. They are my best friends and I'd give a kidney for them, but you know how Seth is. His fame is not built only on bullshit» he says softly, so that no one can hear us. And it's true. Terribly. Yet while I hear him say it, something in me, a kind of self-defense, is triggered. I grit my teeth and tighten my grip on his fingers, the same ones that are trying to hold me back.

«So you take it for granted that he put his hands under my clothes?» I hissed through clenched teeth, making an impassive, angry glance fall on him: «Do you really think he could have done that with me without paying attention to the consequences of such a gesture?» I ask, feeling a strange tremor shakeing my inside.

I have no idea what makes me react like this, but it happens and I can't control it.

Charlie shakes his head, waving his slightly auburn hair: «I'm not saying he did, but he cou-»

He stopped him before he could finish, untangling our hands: «So you and my brother think I'm a easy one?»

«Good heavens Jay, no!» He grabs me again, this time putting both his hands around my arms and bending a little to be at my height: «I ... I could never think this of you, okay? Just as I would understand if you want to be with Seth» he wets his lips, then sighs, narrowing his eyes. It almost seems as if it costs him a lot to talk about this, giving the idea that something got stuck in his throat.

«I understand that you might like him, that it's easy to fall for him, but remember that he's not the perfect guy and it's normal that to be alone with him, at night and at his home, frighten Jace. He loves you more than anyone else... and he knows how bad a broken heart hurts» he lets out with resignation after a few moments of silence.

I'm still staring at him, suddenly realizing how much my brother had nothing but my own fears. We made a useless war fighting for the same reason. But it hurts me to know that if I had to choose to really be with Morgenstern, without limiting the possibility to some daydream, he wouldn't be on my side.

Shouldn't he stay close to me for good or for bad? On important days and on difficult ones? So what's it costs him to go along with it?

I feel Charlie's grip on my arms hesitating a little and I see in his eyes a doubt, so similar to fear - it's almost like being back in front of Molly who welcomed me, because they have the same gaze and the same expressiveness.

I look forward to something, maybe a last heartening word, but his phone starts ringing, distracting him.

He puts his hand in his pocket, then takes it out. On the display the alarm clock marks the time of departure: in half an hour it must be in the store, probably to catalog the new arrivals or finish to fix something. So he sighs: «I have to go» he mumbles, completely letting me go.

«Yes, of course...» but my assertion is only a matter of circumstance, because I would like him to remain instead, to tell me what he has not yet had the courage to say: that he is on his side, that he flanks Jace in this fight between peers.

*****************

An hour and a half, this is the delay I've accumulated on the pass that Catherine had given me.

But with Charlie time becomes liquid, it expands. I lose myself floating in the peace of the senses, in laughter and, unfortunately, sometimes in unpleasant conversations like the one we had today.

So I run along the driveway, trying not to add even an extra minute to the ninety already usable to make me the umpteenth rebuke worthy of note. I open the front door with my heart pounding in the middle of the chest, a prey to tachycardia that testifies my lack of familiarity with physical activity and, once inside, I allow myself the luxury of a sigh.

"If any deity up there is looking at me, please let me know that my mother is not at home or, if it seems too much, that she has not noticed my return."

I have already suffered enough for today, and even having her chilling shrieks it would be to much.

I wait for a while, with my shoulders pressed against the door and my breath short, but she doesn't come. The sound of her heels does not echo on the walls, her "office" scent does not hover threateningly in the air: it almost seems as if she's not there, were it not for her laughter that suddenly breaks the silence.

"Can my mother laugh?"

One step at a time, more confused than astonished, I push myself towards the room from which that crystalline sound comes and, startled, I realize that she is not alone: there is someone with her, someone who is not my father.

The panic comes over me and the heart takes a new surge. That Catherine has a lover? Possible? I thought my mother capable of many things, but certainly not this one. Dad has always treated her like a queen, I don't want to believe that she can repay him this way.

In my almost eighteen years of life I could never have imagined discovering such a thing, getting the woman who brought me into the world into the act of crime - I don't even know how I should react or whether it is right to do so; but would I be able to live with such a secret? Would I be able to look Dad in the face and not start crying, feeling like crap or who knows what else?

«I swear, Miss Raven, your daughter ate like an ox!» The comment, followed by another light laugh, has a strange familiar stamp. It is a voice that I have already heard, that I know and that I have repeatedly recalled in my memory, especially in this last period - but is it possible? Couldn't it be just another dream or an auditory hallucination? Maybe my mind does not want to accept the presence of a strange man in what has been, but still is, my parents' love nest.

"However..."

I lean out just beyond the jamb, determined to understand how much of what surrounds me is real or not and, once the kitchen is in focus, I recognize the outline of a person who, perhaps, should not be here and who, least of all , should pose as if nothing had happened.