Nine Lives Caryl Novels & Stories

"Thank you." She smiled, warm and reassuring, and for a moment I felt like maybe I wasn't completely alone. …….. The knock on my door jolted me out of my restless half-sleep. I wasn't expecting anyone and the thought of facing another human being made my stomach turn. I was constantly nauseous and very edgy of late. But the knocking persisted so I dragged myself to the door. Dorian Carrington stood on my doorstep, perfectly dressed, smiling like he hadn't just shown up unannounced at eight in the morning.

She carefully picked up each piece from the trash. She worked patiently to put them back together. There were exactly ninety-nine make-up cards. She remembered five years ago when she had looked at the cards with sincerity and said, “Yoel, don’t worry. I’ll never give you a chance to use them.” She also remembered all the times she had casually offered to use them over the years. The feelings she had worked so hard to save had been wasted in the two years with Connor until they were completely gone. Yvette, who had always been careful about numbers, seemed to lose all sense of the ninety-nine make-up cards whenever Connor was around.

I gave a soft, bitter laugh and slowly slipped our documents back into my pocket. “This makes ninety-nine.” “What?” “This is the ninety-ninth time we’ve tried to get our marriage registered.” I turned toward the subway entrance. “And the ninety-ninth time you’ve left me hanging because of him.” I heard her heels stop on the pavement, then suddenly start running after me. “The first time, you bailed on our trip because he was on the night shift and scared of the dark. You took a red-eye flight just to be with him. “The second time, we were practically at the door of the courthouse. You heard he fainted from overwork and left me standing in the snow alone for an entire day.”

I waited for eight years. What I got was his ninety-ninth canceled wedding, watching him hold another woman in his arms while feeding her drinks, and him forcing my hands onto broken glass just to make another woman happy. That was when I woke up from the dream. When I opened my eyes, dawn was already breaking outside. Pale light spread across the ocean’s surface. The pillow beneath my face was damp, though I didn’t know when I had started crying. The things happening back in Corholt reached me through the Anderson family’s intelligence network.

Dozens of pages. His grandfather had documented everything. He flipped through them quickly until something caught his eye. One page had been torn out. Cleanly. Deliberately. The missing page had been numbered... NINE. Adrian frowned. "Someone removed page nine." Evelyn's face lost all color. "No..." "What?" "It wasn't removed." "What do you mean?" She slowly closed the journal. "It was taken." "That's the same thing." "No." She looked directly into his eyes. "Page Nine is the First Cipher."

"Now, darling, can you tell me what happened?" It was obvious he intended to scare her into not admitting it, which was happening because she felt frightened but it made Nine wonder about how many girls he'd done the same thing too. Fortunately for her, Mom saw the look and latched on it with a wicked look. "Refer to me as Madame Dalia, thank you. My daughter, Nine, was doing her late night shift in the pub she works in when this drunk man, out of his wits completely, asks her to drive him here and take him to a room which she does, because my Nine's a hard worker, you see. And then, she does as he asked and is about to leave when he takes advantage of her!"

When I finally called him out, he pulled me close and whispered: "Babe, you're the only one I love. She's just a thrill—something to shake up the routine. Once I'm done, I'll come back. You're my Luna, my forever. So be generous, yeah?" It wrecked me. My wolf howled. No air. No thoughts. Just pain. I wanted to walk away. But I couldn't unlove him—not after everything we were. So I dug out the ninety-nine love letters he wrote me—and made a choice. I'd forgive him. Ninety-nine times. Every time he crushed me, I'd burn one. And when I torched the last? I'd be gone. Tonight, I lit number ninety-seven. Watched his words burn, thinking, 'Only two left, Brian.'