Flutter (The Discover Series) (41 page)

Flutter

Thirteen

Spitfire

He roared the minute I opened the door.

I had expected it and didn’t show any emotion to his furious question.

“Well
,
‘hello’ to you too.” I answered sarcastically, shutting the door behind me. “But is that really anyway to greet your niece at almost one in the morning?” I made a tsking sound at him and attempted to make a quick exit for my room. He was standing in the middle of the living room and I walked fast trying to pass him.

No such-freaking-luck.

“Sara.” He warned.

Ooohh, he was using his stern voice. Bring it on.

He stopped me, mere feet from my door and I sighed, dropping my head forward. Let’s get this over with, I thought.

“I’m tired Andres, I don’t know if I mentioned it, but it’s one in the morning and I have to work in the morning. So if we can’t avoid this all together, can we at least speed this up? I want to go to bed sometime soon.”

I knew he was beyond angry and frankly I was so over the angry males tonight.

“Do you want to tell me where you’ve been tonight?”

“Hmm, I could tell you, but that would mean we would actually have to communicate with each other and that might involve telling the truth and we all know how that’s frowned upon in this house. So to answer your question, no Andres, I don’t want to tell you where I have been tonight.”

He was staring at me, he had moved on from anger to hurt. Andres didn’t know how to deal with an unruly teenager, he had been lucky in that area before now. I refused to feel anything, but my own earned anger
toward
him, he chose for things to be this way.

“Anything else? I should warn you now though; I’m not going to actually answer any of your questions. So if you would like to skip this portion of the argument, I’d be happy with that.”

He sighed. “I know you’re angry with me Sara, and I know you want answers from me, but I promise you
,
everything will work itself out.”

I wanted to scream!

“What does that even mean?! God, I am so tired of hearing your excuses and your riddles. All I want is the truth. Ever since I was pulled out of hell frozen over, I’ve been lied to and I just want it to stop.”

“I’m sorry Sara.”

“I don’t need you to be sorry! I need you to be honest.”

“I’m trying to be-”

“Yeah
,
right! If this is you
trying
,
you completely suck at it.”

“I don’t enjoy this. I’m not happy that you’re so angry with me, with life, with everything that’s happened to you.”

“To
us!
” I corrected. “It happened to you too!”

He didn’t respond to that, he just stared at me looking completely helpless with the situation. No matter how much I screamed, cried, fought, he wasn’t going to tell me anything more then he already had. Which was nothing. I didn’t know if he was waiting for something or if he never planned on telling me anything. I could see his posture change and that only meant one thing.

He was preparing for a fight.

“I don’t want what happened tonight to happen again.”

“Yeah well I want a lot of things too, but haven’t you heard? Life’s a b-.”

“Damn it Sara!” He yelled.

I wasn’t expecting
that
and I jumped. He was use to me being surly for most of our conversations and he usually didn’t say anything back. Tonight was not going to be one of those times.

“You’re angry, fine. You want to avoid me, okay, but you
will
not be out all night like this again. Do you understand me?”

I wanted to fight him, but I was too tired to do anything, but agree. “Fine.”

“Next time you’ll be grounded.” He threatened.

“Whatever you say. Can I go now?”

“Just so you know I really wish things were different.”

“Ugh, I’m so tired of hearing you say that! This is
your
fault! You did this to us. So stop telling me how you wish this and want that. You can stop this at anytime, but you
choose
not too. I’m going to bed.” I headed for my room not bothering to stop for his last comment.

“I expect to see you for our workout in the morning.”

My slamming door was my answer.

Spitfire!

Adan had called me
spitfire
!

Now that I had time to stop and think about Adan’s goodbye, my mind was racing and I didn’t know how to calm it long enough for me to gather one thought at a time.

Spitfire.

The simple word was enough to send another whirlwind through my body.

I tried again to wrap my mind around this as I fell into bed feeling like a zombie. I tried to focus on the buzz I was feeling and the look on his face when he spoke the name, trying to decipher if there was something more to it then a simple coincidence. There had been that look of insurgence in his expression right before he said it.

Or I could be making this all up in my head
, I thought biting my lip. The overwhelming need of wanting Adan to have been in my head that day was enough to push me into thinking there was more to the name then there was. He had made the comment about the name of my nail polish seeming fitting for me.

Lying back on my pillows, I wondered to myself how I had been able to even get into bed with the amount of energy I was hanging onto. I had no idea why I felt this exhausted, but I could barely hold myself up by time I was ready for bed. I wondered if I could be getting sick, but other than feeling like I was one of the dead, I didn’t have any other symptoms. I just decided to chalk it up to the day’s events and I pushed it away.

I had bigger things to think about.

I knew the odds that it was by pure coincidence that Adan had called me by the nickname, was probably a zillion to one. There had been only one other time that I had been called that and that conversation had taken place far, far away from here and inside my head by someone I had made up. At least I had thought I made him up.

I was so confused and frustrated that I didn’t know what I could trust anymore. I thought the voice inside my head that day had been a coping mechanism for the torture I had been facing. He wasn’t supposed to be real, but even as I told myself that, I didn’t fully believe it. There were a lot of things that shouldn’t have been real, but that didn’t stop them from happening to me.

Here is what I knew

Adan was real. My connection to him, my feelings for him, they were all real, and more then anything in the world I wanted the voice that consumed my memories to be Adan.

I kept repeating Scott’s question inside my head over and over, but I had yet to come up with an answer I felt satisfied with. I knew what I wanted, but I didn’t know if that was the right choice.

Do you like him or do you still want to be with me?

Scott or Adan?

I don’t care what anyone says, having two guys to pick from, is not something every girl wants.

Lifting myself up on my elbows, I looked through the glass doors of my room searching the night for those almond shaped eyes. There was nothing. Sitting up I realized this was the first night since my wolf had shown up that he wasn’t out there stalking the woods, watching me. I couldn’t feel him. I felt something, but it wasn’t as strong as it was. I laid back down wishing he was there, wanting that comfort I felt whenever he was around. It reminded me of how I felt with Adan.

I groaned dramatically and curled onto my side. It was official; I had reached the pathetic part of my
thing
with Adan.

Sleep was what I needed now. Sleep would provide release from thinking, over analyzing, and hitting rock bottom.

My eyes drifted close, and only one word, one voice, one face lingered through my fading thoughts.

Spitfire.

I woke up feeling even worse then I did before going to bed.

It took all I had to finally open my eyes, but even then they continued to only stay open for seconds at a time before closing on their own again. I blamed it on my regretted four hours of awful sleep. I had tossed and turned most of the time, not able to fall into a deep enough sleep where I could finally be free of my own thoughts. I was paying for that now as I tried to pull myself into a sitting position.

It was still dark inside my room, but that was normal for this time of the year, but it sure did make it hell to keep from trying to crawl back into bed and pull the cover over my head, blocking out the world. I knew though if I didn’t get out of bed now, I would have Andres giving me ‘I told you so’ looks all through out our work out and that gave me enough energy to throw my legs over the side of the bed.

That’s when I could feel it.

The dim morning light was shining in through the windows that made up one side of my wall. I could see the marking on my leg clearly, the black handprint stood out, even against my tanned skin. I hated looking at it and I hated
feeling
it even more. I could feel my leg burning, not painful, but uncomfortable enough. Even though I couldn’t see it moving, I could feel it twisting around my ankle and no amount of flexing and turning that I did seemed to make it stop.

It was so quite inside the house and I was so focused on the disturbing mark, that when I heard the voice I jumped nearly choking on my own scream.

“Sara.” It came again.

The French doors leading out to the back deck were wide open and the sheer curtains were blowing softly, but I wasn’t entirely sure that there was any wind on the other side of the doors.

“Sara.”

I could hear my heart pounding, getting faster with every eerily whisper of my name being carried out by the wind. It was then when I realized that I wasn’t actually awake. I wrestled with myself, my eyes going from the small table next to my bed and back to the open doors.

The light outside wasn’t bright enough for me to make out anyone or anything past the wall of my room and I didn’t trust what I couldn’t see. The dark emptiness continued to whisper my name and I wanted to hurry up and end this nightmare. Never looking away from the open doors I fumbled around with one hand on the nightstand behind me until my fingers grasped what I was looking for. With a shaky grip I brought it around until I could look at the silver pin I had kept there.

I brought up my other hand, holding out my finger and used the pin to make a tiny prick in the middle of my finger. It wasn’t hard enough to draw blood, but I gave enough pressure that I hoped it would wake me up. I gave another small stab and waited for something to happen, but if I was awake now I couldn’t seem to tell the difference. I waited, listening for sound of my name and hoping that I wasn’t going to hear it.

“Sara.” It came again and my heart sank.

So much for that idea, I thought.

Angry I threw the pin across the room and it was quiet enough to hear it land with a pink on the floor somewhere. I sat there chewing on my lip wondering what I was going to do next. I hadn’t thought of a plan b after coming up with plan a, I had hoped that I wasn’t going to need one, wrong.

My legs were shaky and weak when I finally stood up and I stood there for a second making sure I wasn’t going to crumble back down. I could still feel the burning grip on my ankle and the feeling only intensified when I took the first step
toward
the doors. I heard my name again and froze
,
not moving a single muscle as I waited. The sound of my name swirled around my head; it came closer this time, almost as if someone had been behind me. I held my breath waiting to see what was going to happen next.

When it didn’t come again I took another step and then another when I didn’t hear anything else. When I reached the door, I quickly glanced around, but I still couldn’t see anything past a few feet from the house, everything after that was cloaked in pure darkness. That seemed odd, but so did the wind calling my name and let’s face it, nightmares didn’t exactly make sense.

I had no intention of exploring the woods in search for who was calling my name, some things were better left unknown and I decided this was one of them. I just needed to close the doors and hope that I could lie back down and go to sleep or wake up, which ever made this go away faster.

I took a step onto the patio and silently cursed that the door opened outwards instead of inward so I didn’t have to step outside. My feet touched the hard surface of the wood deck and the cold surface only seemed to make my leg sizzle against the temperature change. I looked down at it, always expecting to see something happening on my skin, but other then the mark, nothing else seemed different. I slowly let it take the pressure of my body as I leaned further outside not wanting to have step completely outside. I figured as long as one foot stayed inside I was okay.