Chapter 23 THE PENDANT LIE
He stopped.
I looked at him and he looked at me.
"Damn, man. I looked everywhere," he said.
"Oops. I was wiser."
"Yo. Fuck you."
We had a short laugh. Then, I held my fist out.
"Give it to her."
He looked at it and then he looked at my face.
Something moved through his expression that I could not fully read.
"Alexander...."
"Take it," I said quietly. "Take it to her."
He was still for a moment.
"Why?" he said.
"Because that is what she needs right now. Someone to come back with it and tell her it is going to be okay."
Jake looked at me for a long time.
"And if I am the one who gives it to her," he said slowly. "That means something to her."
"Yes," I said.
"And the plan moves forward," he said.
He looked at my hand and then he reached out and took the pendant from my hand.
He looked at it in his palm.
"You found it," he said quietly. "Not me."
"She does not need to know that," I said.
Jake looked at me.
The expression on his face was one of careful consideration.
"Alexander," he said.
"Go," I said. "Bus leaves in ten minutes."
He held my gaze for another moment. Then he closed his fingers around the pendant and turned and walked back down the stairs.
I stood alone in the empty visitor stands. The afternoon light was going thin and grey.
I looked at the row where she had been sitting.
Then I turned and followed Jake down the stairs.
Lily's POV:
I did not expect him to actually find it.
I had told myself on the ride home that it was gone and that a small silver crescent pendant in a football stadium full of hundreds of people was definitely gone.
I had made my peace with it. Or I had tried to.
I sat by my bedroom window when I got home and turned the empty chain over in my hands and thought about my mother's face when she had given it to me.
"It belonged to your father," she had said. "I want you to have it now."
I had asked her once, in the past, about what he was like.
She had been quiet for a long time.
"He was a remarkable man," she had said finally.
And I had never pushed.
I tried to tell myself it was just a necklace but it was not just a necklace.
I felt so bad, knowing I would break my mom's heart and I couldn't even imagine telling her.
My phone buzzed.
It was Jake. My heart skipped.
"Are you home?"
I looked at the message.
Yes, I typed back.
Three typing dots appeared, disappeared and reappeared again.
Stay there. I'm on my way.
I looked at my phone, looked at the window and looked back at my phone.
Fifteen minutes passed. Then I heard the gate.
I was standing up to go meet him before he knocked on my window.
I jumped.
He was standing right outside my window in the night with his jacket in a hot, burgundy hood with his hair slightly windswept and his hand held out.
In his palm was the silver crescent pendant.
I stared at it. Then I looked at his face.
"Jake," I gasped with my heart immediately swelling.
"Found it," he said simply with a smile.
He swung up and climbed up onto my windowsill. I felt so much love and excitement. I couldn't even believe my eyes.
I reached out and took it from his palm.
It was real.
I looked at it for a long moment.
"How," I whispered.
"I looked," he said.
"The stands were...."
"I looked carefully," he said.
I looked up at him. He was watching me steadily.
"Thank you so so much," I said. My voice came out smaller than I intended.
"It mattered to you," he said. "So it mattered."
My eyes were already gathering tears. I pressed my lips together.
"Hey," he said softly. He stepped closer. "Hey it is okay. You have it back."
"I know," I said. "I am not.... I am fine now."
"You are allowed to not be fine too though," he said.
"I am fine," I said again.
He looked at me. I looked back and then I reached up and kissed him.
Not on the cheek but on the mouth, soft and sudden and completely unplanned.
I pulled back immediately and stepped back.
"I am sorry," I said quickly. "I did not mean.... That was.... I am so sorry, Jake. I do not know why I...."
He kissed me back. He stepped forward and cupped my face in both hands and kissed me back slowly and deliberately and with the full attention of someone who had decided.
I went very still. Then I kissed him back. His hands were warm on my face. He kissed me the way he did everything, easily and naturally.
When he pulled back he did not go far. His forehead touched mine. His hands stayed on my face.
"Do not apologise," he said quietly.
I looked up into his eyes.
"Okay," I said.
"Okay," he said.
He pulled back slightly and looked at me properly.
"Saturday," he said.
"Saturday," I said.
He smiled.
He pressed his lips to my forehead and stepped back.
"Get some rest," he said. "You had a big day."
I laughed, small and slightly undignified. "That is an understatement."
He grinned, turned and walked back down the path.
At the gate, he looked back.
"Lily," he said.
"Jake," I said.
"Fix the clasp before Saturday," he said, nodding at the necklace in my hand. "I want to see you wearing it."
I looked at the pendant in my palm.
"Okay," I said.
He waved once with two fingers and walked away into the night.
I stood still until he turned the corner.
Then I pressed my fist against my chest.
This was it.
Jake at my door. Jake finding what I lost. Jake kissing me back in the dim light like I was someone worth coming back for.
This was everything I had wanted.
I was on my way to third period when I heard my name.
The janitor was mopping near the side corridor. Mr. Banes. An older vampire with a youthful look, grey beards and kind eyes who always nodded at my greetings in the hallways when nobody else bothered.
He looked up when he saw me and stopped mopping.
"Miss Danvers," he said. "That pendant of yours. The one you lost at the field."
I stopped walking. "Yes?"
"I saw the Hollander boy out there yesterday," he said casually, wringing out his mop like it was the most ordinary thing.
I stood very still.
"Alexander," I said slowly. "Alexander Hollander was searching through the field."
"Yes miss." He nodded. "He found something too near and held it up to the light." He smiled. "He seemed pleased with himself."
I said nothing for a long moment. Jake's face came into my mind. His warm smile when he handed me the pendant at my door. The way he had said he found it like it was easy.
I had kissed him for that. I had replayed that kiss a million times before falling asleep.
"Thank you Mr. Banes," I said quietly.
He nodded and went back to his mopping.
I stood in the empty corridor for three more seconds. Then I went to find Alexander.
He was at his locker.
I walked straight to him.
"You found my pendant," I said.
He looked at me. "Good morning to you too."
"Did you or did you not spend an hour digging through the football field yesterday looking for my pendant?"
Something moved across his face, quick and small and carefully buried.
"No," he said and turned back to his locker.
"Alexander."
"I did not dig through any field, Lily."
"Mr. Banes saw you," I said. "He knows you specifically."
He pulled a textbook from his locker and looked at it like it contained something interesting.
"Mr. Banes is an old man," he said. "His eyesight...."
"....is perfectly fine," I said immediately. "He recognised you clearly. He's also a vampire."
He closed his locker and turned to face me.
"I did not find your pendant," he said.
I looked at him for a long moment. He looked back without flinching.
"Then why did Jake tell me he found it," I said slowly. "When he did not."
A vein in his jaw clenched.
"I would not know what Jake told you," he said.
"Alexander."
He exhaled, looked at the ceiling briefly and then back at me.
"Fine," he said quietly. "I found it."
I stared at him.
"I found it and I gave it to Jake," he said. "Because I told you I would bring the two of you together and that was an opportunity." He shifted his bag on his shoulder. "Jake showing up at your door with something precious to you. That is the kind of gesture that makes girls fall for boys, Lily. I was helping."
I searched his face.
"You took your time, digging through a field...." I said. "....for me. And then gave the credit to someone else."
"Uhm.... It was strategic," he said flatly.
"It was...."
"Strategic," he repeated. "Do not make it something it was not."
I looked at him for a long moment.
His face had its most unbothered expression.
"Okay," I said quietly.
"Okay," he said.
I turned and walked to class in confusion at what had happened.
How had Jake just pulled that off professionally?