Authors: Melissa Darnell
Crave
Savannah
A wave of pain rose up to slam into my stomach and chest, wiping the smile right off my face. This was an ache I knew far too well. It hit me every time he came within a hundred yards of me, usually before I even saw or heard him.
Michelle let out a dreamy sigh, confirming what my body already knew.
“Please let me trip him,” Anne muttered once she'd glanced back over her shoulder and spotted him, too.
I kept my gaze on Michelle, though the tiny blonde's moonstruck expression was tough to watch. Anything to keep me facing forward.
Just a few more seconds and he'd pass right behind me. I told myself I didn't care, even as my skin tingled with some secret knowledge all its own that he was drawing closer.
I groaned inside my head. How did he
do
this to me?
Tristan
Even in the middle of a noisy mass of students, one girl's laugh grabbed my attention.
I couldn't figure out how she did it. The hallway was loud, with at least a hundred students all talking and yelling in a space only a few yards wide and a hundred yards long. But every time Savannah Colbert laughed, the husky sound somehow managed to reach out and twist up everything inside me.
I and all the rest of the descendants of the Clann had been forbidden to have anything to do with Savannah. Supposedly she was a dangerous influence or something. Whatever she was, she was definitely on the Clann's list of social outcasts. And Mom made sure I knew it, too, constantly pounding it into my head for the past five years to “stay away from that Colbert girl.”
And yet I couldn't stop myself from turning to look at her now.
Melissa Darnell
Dedication
As always, thanks goes out first to my hubby, Tim⦠not just for being my soul mate in every sense of the word, but also for being my best friend, the bouncing board I run all my plot ideas by, my confidant and therapist, the best short-order cook I've ever seen, the ultimate beta reader, not to mention so romantic you put me to shame and inspire me daily to write another story! Thank you for showing me just what a true romantic hero should be like! I thank God every day for bringing us into each other's lives.
To my boys, Hunter and Alexâ¦you gift me with tons of laughter and smiles and hugs every single day, fueling me to keep on keeping on. I hope that I can make you proud of your mother. I love you guys!
A huge THANK YOU also goes out to my editor, Natashya. You are truly one of the great unsung heroes in the publishing world, and this story would not be even half what it is without you! Thank you for believing in me and my characters and helping make them so much better. If they live on in even one reader's mind, it is because of you and your genius suggestions! Also, thank you to everyone at Harlequin TEEN for your awesome ideas and creativity and support for this series!
Thank you to my agent, Alyssa Eisner-Henkin, for your enthusiastic support and all your hard work. You are an amazing and tireless warrioress for authors, and I am truly blessed to get to work with you!
To my friends Melissa, Mandi and Corrieâ¦you have shown me the true meaning of lasting friendship over the years, no matter how much or little we had in common (or how bad I stank at sports!), and regardless of how time and miles and crazy schedules have separated us. I miss hanging out with you guys and think about y'all every single day.
And last, but NEVER leastâ¦thank you to my family. You have taught me how to be strong, have faith and have the courage to keep reaching for my dreams. Thank you for your love and your support!
Savannah
I edged closer to my unconscious boyfriend cuffed to a chair nearby.
My judges gathered in a tight half circle a few feet away.
Probably so they could see me better as I failed their test.
The guard's face looked bored, as if to say this was nothing personal. Which was a lie. This was totally personal. And all my fault.
He reached inside his inner jacket pocket and took out two itemsâ¦a syringe and a scalpel. Their clear plastic protectors made loud snicks as he removed them.
I gulped, the air rushing in and out of my lungs in noisy gusts I couldn't hide within the silence of the cold cement room.
The guard stepped closer to us. My thigh muscles tensed, the instinct to fight pulsing through me, and the guard's eyes grew cautious. He knew I was desperate. But that didn't make me stupid. The guard was big, built like a linebacker beneath
his badly fitted suit. And even if I could somehow fight him off, my audience of judges would step in to stop me.
I struggled to breathe, calm down and think straight. Time for logic, not emotion.
Okay. So we were in deep this time. But we weren't totally doomed. Yet. The judges had promised that I had only to pass one test, and then my boyfriend could go free.
An innocent boy who wouldn't even be here if I hadn't fallen in love with him. My fault he was in dangerâ¦
No, no time for a guilt trip right now. I had to focus on passing this test so we could go home.
Just one test to pass.
A test I was genetically destined to fail.
Savannah
The last day I was fully human started off like any other April Monday in East Texas. Oh, sure, there were all kinds of warning signs that my entire world was about to come crashing down around me. But I didn't recognize them until it was too late.
I should have known something major was wrong when I woke up that morning feeling like utter crap, even though I'd just snagged a full nine hours of sleep. I'd never been sick before, not even with the flu or a cold, so it couldn't be anything like that.
“Good morning, dear. Your breakfast is on the table,” Nanna greeted me as I shuffled into the kitchen. As usual, she was the ultimate in contradictions, her voice and smile a Southern mixture of sweetness and steel. Like your favorite old baby blanket wrapped around a mace. “Eat up. I'm going to go find my shoes.”
I nodded and plopped down into one of the creaky chairs at the table. When it came to cooking, Nanna rocked. And
she made the absolute best oatmeal in the world, maple and brown sugar with a ton of butter just the way I liked it. But it tasted like flavorless mush today. I gave up after two bites and dumped it in the trash can under the sink seconds before she came back.
“Finished already?” she asked before slurping her tea. The sound grated over my nerves.
“Um, yeah.” I set the bowl and spoon in the sink, keeping my back turned so she couldn't see the blush burning my cheeks. I was a horrible liar. One look at my face and she'd know I'd just thrown out the breakfast she'd made me.
“And your tea?”
Oops. I'd forgotten my daily tea, a blend that Nanna made just for me from the herbs she spent months growing in our backyard. “Sorry, Nanna, there's no time. I still have to fix my hair.”
“You can do both.” She held out my mug, her cheeks bunched into a bright smile that didn't do much to disguise the snap in her eyes.
Sighing, I took the cup with me to the bathroom, setting it on the counter so I could have both hands free to do battle with my wild, carrot-colored curls.
“Drink your tea yet?” she asked ten minutes later as I finished taming my hair into a long ponytail.
“Nag, nag, nag,” I mumbled.
“I heard that, missy,” she called out from the dining room, making me smile.
I chugged the cold tea, set down the empty mug with a loud thump she'd be sure to hear, then headed for my bedroom to grab my backpack. And nearly fell over while trying to pick it up. Jeez. I must have forgotten to drop off a few books in my locker last week. Using both hands, I hefted a strap onto my shoulder and trudged back down the hall.
Nanna was at the dining table digging through her mammoth purse for her keys. That would take a while.
“Meet you at the car?” I said.
She gave an absentminded wave, which I took for a
yes,
so I headed through the living room for the front door.
As usual, Mom had been on the couch for hours already, talking on her cell phone while drowning in stacks of paperwork and pens she'd be sure to lose under the sofa cushions by the end of the day. Why she couldn't work at a desk like every other safety product sales rep was beyond me. But the chaos seemed to make her happy.
Even as she ended one call, her phone squalled for attention again. I knew better than to wait, so I just waved goodbye to her.
“Hang on, George.” She hit the phone's mute button then held out her arms. “Hey, what's this? No âgood morning, Mom,' no hug goodbye?”
Grinning, I crossed the room and bent over to hug her, resisting the urge to cough as her favorite floral perfume flooded my nose and throat. When I straightened up again, my back popped and twinged.
“Was that your back?” she gasped. “Good grief, you sound worse than your nanna today.”
“I heard that,” Nanna yelled from the dining room.
Smothering a smile, I shrugged. “Guess I practiced too much this weekend.” My beginner ballet and jazz classes would be performing in Miss Catherine's Dance Studio's annual spring recital soon. As the days ticked down to my latest impending public humiliation, I'd kind of started freaking out about it.
“I'll say. Why don't you take it a little easier? You've still got two weeks till the recital.”
“Yeah, well, I need every second of practice I can get.”
That is, if I wanted to improve enough to avoid disappointing my father yet again.
“You know, killing yourself in the backyard isn't going to impress your father, either.”
I froze, hating that I was so transparent. “Nothing impresses him.” At least, not enough to earn a visit from him more than twice a year. Probably because I was such a screwup at sports. The man moved like a ballroom dancer, always light and graceful on his feet, but I didn't seem to have gotten even a hint of those genes in my DNA. Mom had tried enrolling me in every activity she could think of over the years to help me develop some grace and hand-eye coordinationâ¦soccer, twirling, gymnastics, basketball. Last year was volleyball. This year it was dance, both at Miss Catherine's Dance Studio and at my high school.
Apparently my father was fed up with my lack of athletic skill, judging by Mom's argument with him over the phone last September when I began dancing. He really didn't want me to take dance lessons this year. He must have thought they were a waste on someone as uncoordinated as me.
I was out to prove him wrong. And so far, failing miserably. Mom sighed. “Oh, hon. You really shouldn't worry so much about making him happy. Just dance for yourself, and I'm sure you'll do fine.”
“Uh-huh. That's what you said last year about volleyball.” And yet, in spite of taking her advice to “just have fun,” I'd still ended up hitting a ball through the gym's tile ceiling during a tournament. When the broken pieces had come crashing down, they'd almost wiped out half my team. That had sort of ended the fun of volleyball for me.
Mom bit her lip, probably to keep from laughing at the same memory.
“Found 'em!” Nanna sang out in triumph from the dining room. “Ready to rock and roll, kid?”
Sighing, I pulled up my backpack's slipping strap onto my shoulder again. It scraped at my skin through my shirt, forcing a hiss out of me. Youch. “Maybe I should grab an aspirin before we go.”
“Absolutely not.” Nanna strode into the room, keys jingling in her hand. “Aspirin's bad for you.”
Huh? “But you and Mom take it all the tâ”
“But
you
don't,” Nanna snapped. “You've never taken that synthetic crap before, and you won't start polluting yourself with it now. I'll make you more of my special tea instead. Here, take my purse to the car and I'll be right there.”
Without waiting for a reply, she shoved her forty-pound purse into my hands and headed for the kitchen. Great. I'd be late for sure. Again.
“Why can't I just take an aspirin like everyone else in the world?”
Mom smiled and picked up her phone.
Four very long minutes later, Nanna finally joined me in the car. She thrust a metal thermos into my hand. “There, that ought to fix you right up. Be careful, though. It's hot. I had to nuke it.”
I bit back a groan. Nanna hated the microwave. The only button she'd learned how to use was the three-minute auto-heat. I'd be lucky if the tea cooled off at all before we reached my school, even if it was a ten-minute drive.
We lived in a small, somewhat isolated nest of houses five miles outside of town. As I blew on my tea to cool it, I watched the rolling hills pass by, dotted here and there with solitary houses, big round bales of hay, and cows in all shades of red, brown and black. Out here, the thick pine trees that had once covered all of East Texas had been cut back to make
room for ranches that were now broken only by rows of fences, mostly of barbed wire, sometimes wide slats of wood turned gray by time and the weather. You could breathe out here.
But as we neared the city limits, the strips of trees became thicker and showed up more often, until we passed through a section of nothing but pines just before reaching the junior high and intermediate schools. The first traffic-light intersection marked the start of downtown Jacksonville, where all of a sudden it became nothing but streets and business after business, mostly single-story shops and a few three-and four-story buildings for the occasional bank, hotel or hospital. And more pines winding around and through every area of housing large and small, even butting up against the edges of the basket factory and near the Tomato Bowl, the brownstone open-air stadium where all the home football and soccer games were held.
I used to love my hometown with its cute boutiques and shops full of antiques where Nanna sold her crocheted designs. I even used to love the town's ribbons of pines and the way the wind in the trees added a subtle sighing to the air. When the fields of grass and hay turned brown and dead in the winter, you could always count on the pines to keep Jacksonville colorful all year long.
But the town's founding families, locally referred to as the Clann due to their Irish ancestry, had ruined it for me. Now when I heard the wind in the trees, it sounded like whispering, as if the trees themselves had joined the town's grapevine of gossips. Those gossips had probably produced the long line of famous actors, singers, comedians and models that Jacksonville's relatively small population of thirteen thousand residents was so proud of. Growing up here, where everybody talked about everybody else, either made you want to live
here forever or run away and become something special just to prove the gossips and the Clann wrong.
I wasn't sure I wanted to be famous. But I definitely wanted to run away.
We made the daily turn through the neighborhoods that led to Jacksonville High School, the drive made shady by still more pines and a few hardwoods that lined the modest streets. And then the blue-and-yellow home of the JHS Indians exploded into view, its perimeter choked by woods thick and shadowed, and I felt my shoulders and neck tense up.
Welcome to my daytime prison for the next four years, complete with a guard shack and a guard who lowered a heavy metal bar across the driveways on the dot of 8:00 a.m. every weekday, forcing you to accept a tardy slip in order to gain entrance when you were late. Unlike a teacher who might be convinced to let you slide, the guard was notoriously without mercy, ruling our school's entrance as if it were the gates to some medieval castle.
If JHS were a castle, then its royalty would definitely be the twenty-two equally merciless Clann kids who ruled the rest of the campus.
The Clann kids had probably learned their bullying tactics from their parents, who ran this town and a good portion of Texas, inserting themselves into every possible leadership role from county and state even to federal government levels. Local rumor had it that the only way the Clann could do this was by using magic, of all things. Which was total bull. There was nothing magical about the Clann's power-hungry methods. I should know. I'd had more than enough of their kids' idea of “magical” fun at school. After graduation, I was so out of here.
While Nanna pulled up to the curb by the main hall doors,
I sucked down a quick slurp of tea, adding a burnt tongue to my list of pains for the day.
“Better take that with you.” Nanna nodded at the thermos. “You should feel it kick in pretty soon, but you might need more later.”
“Okay. Hey, don't forget, today's an A day, and I have algebra last period, soâ”
“So pick you up in the front parking lot by the cafeteria. Yeah, yeah. I'm old, not senile. I think I can keep up with your alternating A-B schedule.” Her twinkling green eyes nearly disappeared as her plump cheeks bunched higher into a wry smile.
The front parking lot was closer to my last class on A days. The first class in five years that I'd shared with Tristan Colemanâ¦
“Savannah?” She shifted the car into Drive then looked at me with raised eyebrows, a silent prod to get moving. I climbed out into the pine-scented warmth of the morning, shut the door and gave her a wave goodbye.
Tristanâ¦
His name echoed through my head, fuzzing up my mind with old memories and emotions. An answering tingle rippled up the back of my neck and over my scalp. Ignoring it, I stuffed the forbidden thoughts back into their imaginary box and turned to face the main hall doors. The day was sure to be miserable enough without my stewing over backstabbing traitors like him.
Sure enough, I shoved through the main hall's heavier-than-normal glass front doors and slammed right into the Brat Twins, two of the Clann's worst members. Yep, the perfect start to a fabulous day.
“Watch where you're going, idiot!” Vanessa Faulkner said,
brushing off imaginary dirt from her latest Juicy Couture purse.
“Yeah, try looking before you just barrel in,” Hope, her mirror-image sister, added. She reached up and patted her perfect platinum curls, the tiny mole to the left of her smirk the only difference between the two sisters.
I glanced around. We already had an audience for my daily humiliation. Great. My hands itched to try and smooth my own wild curls as my stomach twisted into knots.
Why
did the Brat Twins have to treat me like this? Just because I couldn't get a tan? Because my hair was the wrong color, too frizzy, not shiny enough?
“Well? Aren't you at least going to say you're sorry?” Vanessa demanded.
For a moment, the anger drowned out everything else. What would happen if I slapped that smirk off her face? She couldn't go crying to her precious Clann for the usual revenge. Nanna was retired, Mom worked for a Louisiana-based company and my father owned a national historical-home restoration business. The Clann couldn't touch my family.
Or could they? Several members of the Clann were politicians at the federal level. And Louisiana was within easy reach of East Texas. So maybe they did have enough connections to at least get Mom fired. Crap.