Authors: Gwen Hayes

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Horror & Ghost Stories

Falling Under (17 page)

BOOK: Falling Under

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“Stop it.” My voice was small, but firm.

The charge in the air evaporated instantly. Haden’s face returned to, well, too handsome for words, and Amelia blinked a few times. Everyone else looked at me like they wondered what I was trying to stop exactly.

“Stop interrogating Haden, Don,” I said quickly, covering.

Haden looked at me, really looked at me then. In his face I recognized the sheepish boy and the dangerous man all blended together. I knew, in my soul, that he was indeed the Haden from both worlds. He was far from innocent and at the same time somehow as naïve as I was.

“May I speak with you in the kitchen, Haden?” I stood, my legs a little wobbly.

“Of course,” he answered, unfolding himself from the chair with the kind of grace normal people just didn’t have.

When we got to the kitchen, I turned to him to begin a likely stilted conversation because I had no idea what I wanted to say, but I stopped before a word escaped my lips. He was right there, so close, with just a breath between our bodies. He blinked slowly and inhaled deeply, like he was smelling a flower.

I ached to press my lips against his eyelids, to feel the soft thicket of his lashes on my skin. When he opened his eyes, the moment stood still, trapping us both in a strange tenderness that we hadn’t yet experienced together. I reached into the pocket of my khaki pants and pulled out a black petal I’d saved from the other morning. It rested gently in the palm of my hand, perfectly preserved yet not made of silk, and I brought it up between us, forcing him to see it.

He stared at the tear-shaped petal. “Not today, Theia.” He released another sigh. He lowered the timbre of his voice until it tugged my heart with its pleading tone. “Just for a few hours, can we forget? I know it’s a lot to ask, but please. Please, can we just have
one
afternoon?” Haden’s voice shook. “It would be a gift, and I would treat it as such, if you’d just allow me to be … me … for a little longer.”

“I don’t understand. You want one afternoon of what exactly?”

“Just to be normal. Just to be here. With you. Your friends. I can’t explain how much it would mean to me if you could find it in your heart to forget about everything else for just one afternoon.”

I searched his eyes for something to explain his request. “You have to promise not to do that … whatever you were doing to Amelia.”

He nodded his assent, looking hopeful.

“Will you answer me one question?”

“I suppose it will depend entirely upon what you ask.”

Tell me again he was seventeen because he certainly didn’t speak like it. “Why won’t you touch me? You avoid it like I’d burned you.”

“Will you believe me if I say it’s for your safety?”

My expression must have said no.

Haden leaned towards my hair, his breath warming my ear and setting off a trail of warm, tumbling sensation throughout my whole body. He whispered, “I can’t touch you because I
want
to touch you more than anything in the world.”

I swallowed around my heart, which had edged its way into my throat.

“If I give in to that,” he continued, “all will be lost.”

Learning to listen to your intuition is an important life skill that will keep you out of danger, save your life, and win you a huge mound of cupcakes.

Either that or Amelia was cheating at poker.

After an hour or so of failing to get any studying done, Gabe came up with the idea of poker. Donny suggested we play for clothes, but Haden thought perhaps cupcakes and cookies could suffice as the chips. I’d never played poker before. Also, as evidenced by my small stack of cookies, I wasn’t what one would call a natural.

All I had left were animal cookies, which I liked, especially the pink ones, but I was coveting the chocolate chip cookies that everyone else had. Looking at my cards, it was obvious I wasn’t going to win one in this hand either.

“Don’t even think about it, Theia,” Haden said. His voice, still full of mischief, also sounded relaxed.

“Think about what?”

“I see you eyeing my chocolate chip stack.”

“I am not,” I protested. Weakly.

He shared a small smile with me and it spilled over my soul like sunshine poking through the clouds.

Donny pushed two cookies into the middle of the kitchen table. “I told you we should have played for clothes, Theia. Just think, you could be eating cupcakes right now. Of course, you’d be completely
naked
and eating cupcakes, but at least there would be sugar involved.”

Haden blushed again and tried to hide it behind his cards. I was used to Donny’s brassy comments and they normally didn’t bother me. When I stuck out my tongue at her, I realized they didn’t bother me in front of the company either. She inferred nakedness—
my nakedness
—in front of three boys, one of them Haden, and I didn’t really care. I was having too much fun.

The kitchen seemed homier, pleasant and well lit. I brought my iPhone dock downstairs and we put Donny’s phone on it for music. The table was small for six of us, but we all crowded around it amiably. Mike and Ame were the quietest of the bunch, although part of me thought it was because Ame was putting all her energies into being a cardsharp. Gabe was really good at putting everyone at ease and keeping us joking, and he excelled at keeping Donny in line. And Haden sat next to me.

I felt … happy.

“So, Mike,” Donny began, “if you weren’t here being fleeced by Amelia, what would you be doing tonight?”

Amelia and I leaned forward. It was an interesting question. He’d been so quiet, not really coming to life at all unless food was mentioned. He understood the trig, so he had functioning brain cells, but I couldn’t help but feel that personality-wise he was sort of like a block of tofu. He didn’t have one of his own; instead, he absorbed everyone else’s.

Mike shrugged for an answer, and I sat back in my chair and exchanged an exasperated look with Donny. Ame, on the other hand, pinned her with a “shut up now” look, but Donny pretended not to notice.

“What do you like to do?” Donny tried again. “Besides eat.” Because Lord knew he’d done enough of that to qualify for an Olympic event.

“I like video games.”

Donny waited for more words that didn’t come and then answered, “Ame can kick everybody’s ass at
Call of Duty
.”

“Really?” All three boys answered, suddenly very interested in the blushing Ame. It was another of her contradictions. She was very concerned with world peace—yet she excelled at first-person shooter games.

“I guess I picked the wrong girl,” Gabe muttered. I couldn’t see Donny’s hand, but judging from his harsh curse, she pinched him under the table.

Mike looked at Amelia a little longer than usual, the skin above his nose creasing like maybe he was surprised to see her or something. She looked over her cards at him and smiled shyly.

I wondered if that was all it would take.

Another deal. Another bad deal for me. I folded. Again. And after Haden put his last cupcake in, he leaned towards me with a chocolate chip cookie between his fingers.

I leaned towards him too, as if we were alone in a room full of people. “Are you teasing me?”

Our faces were very close and he smiled, completely unguarded and without a whiff of his sardonic attitude. “I feel sorry for you is all.”

I took the cookie, and even though we didn’t touch each other, a brush of our hands couldn’t have felt more electric.

“Dude, you can’t give her your cookies,” complained Mike.

I took a quick bite before anyone made me give it back.

“Cheater,” Mike teased.

“You’re going to ruin it for the rest of us, man,” said Gabe, looking directly at Donny. “Now they’re
all
going to expect to be coddled.”

Donny rolled her eyes and raised him another cookie.

By the end of the hand, everyone conceded that Amelia was by far the best of us. With our admission of not being worthy, she granted each of us a cupcake, since she’d won them all.

I couldn’t remember having a better time while I listened to Gabe and Haden discuss baseball as they cleaned the kitchen. Mike, still a little clueless if you asked me, and Amelia had sunroom duty, and Donny came with me to put the music away.

“The sneetches are growing on me,” Donny said, flopping on my bed. “I feel so dirty.”

“How do you think Ame and Mike are getting on?” I asked.

“He’s a little … slow on the uptake. I’m not sure I understand the draw.”

I had to agree, unfortunately. “What do you think of Haden?”

“Honestly?” She stood and walked to the door.

I held my breath.

“He’s out of my league. I can’t get a handle on the guy. Sometimes he seems so into you, and other times he’s … sort of the Antichrist.”

“That about sums him up,” I agreed, joining her.

We got to the stairs and she stopped me. “How do
you
feel about him? That’s the important thing.”

I shrugged. “Up is down. Down is up.”

“And that means … ?”

“I’m probably half in love with a boy I don’t really like.”

Donny nodded. I had a feeling she understood exactly what I was saying.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I
t shouldn’t have been surprising to wake up someplace other than my bed, but it always surprised me nonetheless.

“I have to admit, the trollop dress was becoming, but I find your virginal nightgown pushes the blood through my veins with greater force.”

I rewarded Haden with a sidelong glance. No longer dressed in his jeans, he seemed older again in his Regency-era finery. And he definitely didn’t have the shy-boy look in his eyes anymore. He was back to his devious self, yet a sadness tinged him.

“Thank you,” I replied, as though it was a compliment and not a poke at my always apparent bashfulness. If I was completely honest with myself, I’d worn the gown a little bit on purpose. I could have gone to sleep in sweatpants and combat boots—but I chose to continue wearing the nightgown.

I took in my surroundings. The riverbank again, I decided, though instead of sunshine, twilight cast a bluish lens to the scenery. “The river is beautiful.”

“Is it?” He raked a hand through his thick hair. He was at odds again. “It’s called Fleuve des Larmes. It’s a river of tears, lamb, the tears of mothers. You’ll notice it never recedes from the banks, as there is always plenty of misery to feed it. A never-ending bounty of pain has always been bestowed upon mothers.”

I inhaled sharply at his description.

“My world is no place for you, Theia.”

Straightening my spine, I put aside the anguished look on his face and persevered. “Tell me about the night you fell from the sky.”

Haden’s dark eyes flashed. “I wish you’d never seen that.” He closed his eyes against the unwanted memory, but we both knew he still saw it. We both did.

“I gave you the afternoon, Haden. It’s past time that you explained everything to me. I deserve to know what is going on. I know there are billions of things I don’t understand about where I am right now as opposed to where we were this afternoon. And I know, for you and me, it started with you falling from the sky.”

As if to show I had all the time in the world, I eased onto my side, bending my elbow and propping my head on my hand.

Resigned but not defeated, he lowered himself to the ground in front of me. “It was a penance of sorts. For coming to your realm. The first time a person goes through the veil that separates our worlds, they burn. And now there will be another kind of penance, only I fear it’s you who will pay the price.”

A shiver coursed down my spine. “What is my price?”

Haden shook his head. “I don’t know. That’s why I hoped you’d stay away.”

BOOK: Falling Under

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