Tragic Magic [boyxboy]

Chapter Fifteen

It was a few days before Tristan was allowed home, and I think everyone had been expecting me to calm down by then.

                They were wrong.

                As soon Edwin and Gregory helped him into the house, he agitatedly pulled off the bandages covering his ribs and groaned quietly as his eyes blackened and he finally healed himself. Hovering his unbroken hand over the cast on his other, the plaster cracked and fell off, and the bones in his arm slid back into place as well.

                I watched all this from the landing as everyone else stood in the foyer, gathered around to welcome him home. He glanced around as he chatted to them, his eyes meeting mine for a moment before I turned and walked back up the stairs, not stopping until I got to my room, where I stood and pressed the heels of my palms to my eyes in annoyance. For all the anger coursing through my veins, I’d still felt a jolt along my spine when he’d looked at me.

                Things continued like this for much of the following couple of weeks. I walked around the house as freely as I had before The Incident, as I was now calling it in my mind, but whenever Tristan entered a room I was in, I calmly got up and left. I’m not sure what I was trying to achieve, I wasn’t trying to be a brat, I just knew I couldn’t be in a space with him without throwing myself at him in either anger or lust.

                Midway through the second week, I was sitting in the living room with Annabelle. She was doing yet another of her interminable puzzles and I was flicking through the TV channels aimlessly, when the door opened and I looked up to see Tristan walking in. He stopped when he saw me and we gazed at each other for a moment, until I broke the connection impassively and stood up to leave through the kitchen.

                ‘Cody!’ he called agitatedly, and I could hear him move to follow me. ‘Come on, you can’t just avoid me all summer.’ I kept walking, shoving my hands into my pockets so he wouldn’t see them shaking. ‘You’re being childish!’ he shouted after me as I jogged up the stairs towards the safety of my room.

                Luckily he didn’t follow me any further and once again I found myself hiding in the attic for the rest of the day, just avoid another confrontation. It felt bitterly unfair, since I hadn’t done anything wrong. I’d saved his life, for god’s sake. I shouldn’t have to tiptoe around the place in fear of running into him.

                This time, I decided firmly, it really was time to leave.

------------------------------------------------

‘I’m leaving,’ I said, looking at the dubious faces of Gregory and Edwin expressionlessly.

                ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ Edwin said eventually, glancing at Gregory. They’d returned to their respective jobs the week before, so Gregory looked tired in a well-tailored suit and Edwin still hadn’t changed out of his white paint-splattered overalls. I’d ambushed them as soon as they’d walked through the front door and I think they both wished they’d had a cup of coffee before entering into this conversation.

                ‘No,’ I said firmly, refusing to get drawn into a debate. ‘I’ve done everything you’ve ever asked of me; I helped rescue Kaley, I basically saved everyone’s ass from Aldrich, and I even-... Well, you know what I did,’ I finished quietly, still uncomfortable with the idea of bringing up sex in front of them. ‘I’m sick of being here, I’m unhappy here, and I want to leave. I’m not asking. I’m just giving you notice.’