Chapter Fifteen: Bradley Endless
1124 Words
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Bradley Endless
As Clark went into the estate, I heard a bleating sound coming from behind me. “Molly, no!” a familiar girls voice called as the sound of a bell jingled across the lawn.
I glanced behind me and looked over my shoulder to see Adelaide March running towards me. “As I live and breathe,” I muttered, making my way over to the girl who was trying to keep a sheep from going into the maze. “Adelaide March. I should have known that I’d run into you sooner or later when I came back home. How the hell are you?”
The young woman, who was Emma’s age, looked up at me. She had pretty, long, brown hair she kept pulled back into a bun, a round face, and was wearing a sweater, work boots, and overalls. She bent over to pick up the wayward sheep, carrying it in her arms even though it probably weighed more than her.
“Bradley!” she smiled at me and wrapped her arms around me. She smelled like sheep, and mud, and hay. All the things that came with helping her parents run a farm. “I hadn’t intended on coming over. I figured you all would need some time, after the Harvest. But Molly here had other plans, and you all know I don’t like looking for lost sheep in faerie anymore than Louisa does. How are you?”
I ran a hand through my hair. “Honestly, there’s been so much going on that I haven’t been able to really take in the fact that my sister is gone. Louisa talked to her the other night, and said she seems fine. Entirely confused by Oberon’s behavior, but that’s to be expected.”
“Right,” Adelaide laughed, “I remember when he came for her sixteenth birthday. Not a nice guy.”
“No,” I agreed, “but Emma thought she could escape marrying him by someone else, and now we’ve got some poor, love sick, young adult author here who managed to get cursed by Oberon.”
“Never a dull moment at your place,” she said, and smiled, “you look…you look well, Bradley. I’m glad. After everything that went on with your Mum, you seem a little lighter than you were. Even with everything going on.”
I chuckled. “Well, that’s the booze you see, and then the drugs.”
“Don’t even joke,” she said with a stern look at me.
“You want to come in?” I offered. “We’ll put Molly in the kitchen for a bit, and you can have tea.”
Molly struggled in Adelaide’s arms, trying to get out. “No, I’m afraid I’ve got to get this one back home to her pen. But um, do you want to come with me?”
I glanced back at the house. I was sure Clark was waiting for me, but I had no desire to sit and wait for Hecate to appear. “Sure,” I said, “I’ll come with you.”
I walked with her back to her farm. The farm was right across the way from us, the place where I had spent much of my childhood at. Whenever father and mother had needed time away, they would send us over there.
Adelaide had been my closest friend, the first girl that I had ever had a crush on. When I went away to school, we drifted apart, and I had never had it in my heart to reconnect with her the way that I wanted to.
“Mum still asks about you, you know,” Adelaide told me after we had walked in silence for some time, “every time I break up with someone, she always asks, ‘whatever happened to that nice Bradley Endless’?”
“Ha! Well, clearly she doesn’t know anything about me, or she would not use words like ‘nice’.” I grinned at her.
“You were always nice to me,” Adelaide said, “and you were my first kiss you know.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Was I?”
“Yes,” she said, “don’t you remember? Emma’s fifteenth birthday party.”
“Well, I was probably drunk,” I admitted.
“You were,” she said with a nod.
We had reached the gate that was between the property line of our two homes. Compared to ours, the fence that separated the two properties was an ancient, wooden thing that she had her resources had to continually fix things.
Adelaide dropped Molly the sheep back down on the ground, over the gate that was probably as ancient as faerie magic itself. “Adelaide?” I said, my cool breath showing up in front of us.
“Yes, Bradley?”
“Would you…I mean….”
“If you don’t kiss me right now, I’m going to be very, very, pissed mate,” she said, smiling widely, revealing the smile that I had known since childhood. The smile that had been the first smile that I had fallen in love with.
“Alright,” I said.
I wrapped my arms around her waist, pulling her close to me. I stroked her face, brushing back a strand of her hair. “God, you’re beautiful,” I told her.
She blushed. “Are you going to kiss me?”
“I’m going to kiss you,” I answered, “but I do want to live in this moment for a little bit. Give me that, will you? I mean, I am the one who just lost his sister to a sadistic faerie king.”
“Okay,” she said, pressing her forehead to mine, “one more moment.”
“Two.”
“Down to one,” she said.
She locked eyes with me. She locked eyes with me, and everything in that moment felt right. Except, in the back of my head, I could feel the dragon stirring. Oh, she smells divine, the dragons voice whispered in the back of my mind.
“I’m sorry,” I yanked away from Adelaide, “I’m sorry. I have to go.”
I pulled away, and ran from her, across the field, not stopping until I reached the French doors of the estate.
- Writer
