Juliet Immortal

his hand away. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
    “I know,” I whisper. Hurting me isn’t what I’m worried about. At least, not in the way he means. He can’t know that his care is the thing that hurts, the thing that makes something deep inside me cry out in a way it hasn’t since I was real, since I was a girl with her own body and life and a sadness that felt bigger than the world.
    “And I won’t let anyone else hurt you either. I promise.” His fingers drift to my cheek.
    I know I should move away, reach for the door handle, get out of here before this moment gets any thicker, but I can’t.For some reason … I
can’t
. I am lost in him, in the passion in his eyes, the softness of his touch, the conviction in his words.
    “I have to go,” I say, but I don’t move. He doesn’t either. He just stares at me, his eyes flicking from my lips to my eyes and back again.
    “Then go,” he says, as he leans closer.
    “Okay.”
    Go, Juliet. Move! Now!
    But I don’t. I stay and let him come closer, closer, until I can feel the heat of his lips and imagine just how perfect they’ll feel, how perfect he’ll taste, how—
    “Thanks for the shirt.” I break the moment, lunge for the door handle, and half fall out of the car. My heart is pounding so hard it leaps in my throat as I pull the shirt over my head, hiding the evidence of how badly I’ve been hurt before bending back down to face Ben through the open window. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Maybe we’ll have some classes together.”
    When he speaks, his voice is as husky as mine. “Right.
Dulces sueños
, Mermaid.”
    Sweet dreams
. Not likely. Not after a shift that’s started like this one.
    “You too.” I turn and rush up the concrete steps and through the creaky screen door, cozy in my borrowed shirt if not my borrowed skin, the smell of ocean breeze and Ben following me in out of the night.

SIX
    T hat wasn’t the same boy you left with.” Ariel’s mom—
my
mom—stands in the center of the kitchen, hands fluttering from the neck of her blue robe to the tie at her waist and back again. She leans to one side, peering around me through the screen door as Ben drives away.
    Her blue eyes are a different color than Ariel’s. But the rest of Melanie Dragland—white-blond hair, narrow nose, thin lips, willowy frame—is nearly identical, as if she created her daughter from a piece of her own flesh. She’s pretty, or would be if it weren’t for the tension that sours her features.
    “What happened to Dylan?” she asks, voice rising. “And what are you wearing? What happened to your new shirt? Andyour makeup?” She sucks in a scandalized breath as she crosses the kitchen, wide eyes roaming over my face. “It looks like you rubbed it all off. All of it!”
    “It’s fine, Mom, I can—”
    “It’s not fine. I can see everything,” she says, the pain in her voice making me flinch. The pain is
her
pain, but it would be so easy to take it personally. It would be so easy for Ariel to look into her mother’s horrified eyes and believe that
she
is the thing that’s horrible.
    I would have fallen into the same trap if it hadn’t been for my father. He was always there with a hug and a smile, balancing the cold consideration of my mother. In her eyes, I was simply a reminder of her failure to give my father a son. If they’d been my only reflection I would have gone mad.
    It’s no wonder Ariel has such a distorted view of herself. The mirror Melanie holds to her is warped, cruel. I have to find some way to change things in this house or I can’t see Ariel’s life improving in the near future.
    I take a deep breath and try my best to keep my dislike for this woman from my voice. “Dylan and I went to a party on the beach. I got some spray on my face. I guess it washed my makeup off.” My eyes roam around the kitchen as I think how to explain why Ben drove me home. Unfortunately, there isn’t much to look at. Just white cabinets stenciled with blue Danish wooden shoes and windmills, cracked white countertops, and linoleum that was probably new around the time Melanie was born.
    She obviously doesn’t choose to spend her nurse’s salary on home improvements. The kitchen feels cold and unlived in and smells of cheap coffee, bleach, and … cabbage. It doesn’t bode well for the rest of the house.
    “It’s too cold to be down at the beach.” Melanie crosses her arms over her chest. “It’s barely fifty degrees
here
, and