Eternal Hope (The Hope Series) (10 page)

At the top of the stairs, Daniel paused and looked down at her. His face was drawn and serious, but he seemed a little more relaxed. “Are you tired? Do you want to go to sleep?”

“No,” she lied. “I’m fine. I don’t want to leave you just yet.”

He nodded, heading past the door to Charlie’s old room where all of Farley’s things were, and walked down the landing. He stopped when he reached the door at the very end. A hot pulse of anxiety flowered in her belly while he jimmied the handle open with his elbow. “You okay?”

She must have looked scared. “Yeah, it’s just that I never saw your room back in the hangar. I don’t… I don’t…” She didn’t know what she was thinking. This felt like a stupendously big step for some reason. She knew it was hard for Daniel to share parts of himself with her. Her room at home was her sanctuary. She could only imagine that this was his.

He gave her a soft smile and laughed. “Don’t freak out. It’s just where I sleep.”

Or maybe she was wrong. Maybe it didn’t matter to him. Yet when they entered the room that obviously wasn’t the case. It was much bigger than Charlie’s room. There was more than enough space for the gargantuan bed under the picture window on the far side of the room. It was made up with simple grey cotton sheets, folded with military precision at the corners. A beautiful mahogany dresser stood against the left hand wall, and a blue t-shirt hung discarded over the back of the chair pulled up alongside it.

A stack of books sat on a low bedside table, and from the doorway she could make out the title of the one resting on top: Catch 22, one of her favorites. His copy was battered, the pages curling at the edges, the cover so cracked and worn that the print had almost disintegrated altogether. Aside from the books by his bed, other books were stacked like the crenels of a castle around the edges of the room. They appeared to have no particular order, like he had picked them up or abandoned them at random.

His guitar was propped against the wall in the corner of the room. A complicated looking sound system sat on a shelf above it, along with a seven-foot long row of CDs. They were slightly slanted to one side, looking like a row of skinny dominoes, frozen mid-tumble. She made a mental note to nose through his collection before she left.

When she saw the right hand side of the wall, Farley’s throat constricted. It was covered in a sea of mismatched frames, just like the collection in her house. Her mom had been crazy about putting those photos up. They were the first things anyone saw when they came through the front door. Farley playing netball at St. Jude’s; Farley the eight-year-old’s toothless grin; Farley in a cheerleading outfit from the first year of high school when she’d cared about fitting in. It was every moment her mother had been proud of or loved, and she hadn’t been shy about sharing them with the world.

In contrast, Daniel was a private person, his memories secret things. He shared so few of them of them, and now here he was sharing some more. It felt like he was giving her a gift. She wiggled her legs, wanting to be put down.

“No,” he whispered, “not yet.” Despite his words only seconds befor
e, he suddenly looked nervous.
He carried her over to the bed and set her down. The room smelled so deliciously of him; she allowed the totality of it to overcome her. There was nothing else to dilute it- limes and the smell of fire. Moonlight poured in through the uncurtained window and Daniel fidgeted by it, looking out over the midnight forest beyond. He raked his hands through his hair and then shoved them into his jeans pockets. He took them out a second later.

“Can I look now?” Farley whispered. He turned so that the silver glow from outside lit up one side of his face, throwing the other side into darkness. He smiled, making the lines of his profile grow soft.

“No.”

Farley dropped back against the bed, groaning. “You’re cruel.”

“I know,” he sighed. She felt the bed dip as he sat beside her, falling back so that they both stared up at the ceiling. His hand found hers, and suddenly it was painfully obvious that they were both laying on his bed in the dark. It was a wonder her hand wasn’t sweating. She needed to think of something else. “How long have you lived here?”

For a while, the slow pull of Daniel’s breathing was the only sound to break the silence. “Too long to remember,” he said eventually. His quiet voice was the sound of fingertips against dry paper.

“And before?”

“Before we moved around a lot. And before that… the Quarters.”

The idea of Daniel ever living in the Quarters seemed dangerous, and yet he had once called it home. He’d lived with the Reavers until Aldan had discovered Jacob’s sick penchant for having him thrown him into a box and repeatedly drowned in the ocean. But, of course, that had been when Daniel was a boy. Things had changed when Daniel grew, suspended on the narrow cusp between boy and man.

Farley rolled onto her side, carefully allowing her hand to rest on top of Daniel’s chest. He rolled his head to the side to look at her. There was a hint of pained recollection in his eyes, as though he were remembering being locked in that box, too. Then something changed. A fierce expression took over. He leaned forward and kissed her, slipping his hand gently around the back of her neck so that he could pull her forward to meet him. When his lips touched hers, Farley felt her body sag, as the weight of the vision and the fear gripping its claws around her insides finally melted away. She sighed against his mouth. He responded by reaching around her waist, closing the gap between them so that their chests and hips and knees all pressed together.

The kiss, already intense, quickly ramped up into something she didn’t have words for. It didn’t leave room in her mind for her to think about anything, just the way his tongue tasted sweet and hot, just the way his breathing sped up to match hers. Her hand travelled to the bottom of his t-shirt; she tugged nervously at its hem before it all became too much and she gave in, working her way underneath. He froze when her hand touched the bare skin of his stomach. He pulled back and regarded her with a heavy, cautious look. She stared back up at him, wondering if she’d done the wrong thing. He didn’t move.

She slowly brushed her fingers upwards, watching for his reaction, until she reached his collarbone. She traced the length of it and then drew the flat of her palm softly downwards so that her hand rested over his heart. His eyelids fluttered for a second before he closed them, his breathing more than shaky. He pulled her to him again, crushing his lips against hers.

The warmth of his body pressed a fever-like heat through her; she sucked in a ragged lungful of air and pushed back against him. There was no way to get close enough. Without thinking, she rolled over so that she was suddenly kneeling over him, her legs straddling his hips. Daniel’s heavy, surprised exhalation blew hot against her neck, sending shivers through her whole body. She sat back and he followed after her, leaning forwards and running his hands up the outsides of her thighs. In one swift movement he lifted her at the waist and drew her legs out from underneath her so she could wrap them around him. Farley fisted his t-shirt in her hands, pulling at it in a way that let him know she’d prefer that he wasn’t wearing it.

This halted him in his tracks. He stopped breathing, staring up at her with the moonlight playing over his neck. She fought to calm her own breathing, her eyes fixed on him as he slowly lowered his hands from her waist. He moved them behind his back to prop himself up against the bed.

She knew a confused look was forming on her face. Her heart, racing only instants earlier, crashed to a halt, as though the brakes had rapidly been applied. She twisted off his lap and curled into a ball on the bed, facing away from him. She couldn’t say anything. There was nothing to say. It was frightening how out of control things had gotten in that moment, and he had been the one to stop it. It should have been her, but it wasn’t. It had been him.

Daniel let out a low, miserable groan and collapsed back onto the bed at her side. With her back to him, Farley couldn’t see what kind of expression he wore. She wasn’t going to turn around and look. After a moment of heavy, laden silence, he moved up behind her and curled his body around hers. His hand found hers in the dark. She lay there, his heart thudding out a slow rhythm against her back, wondering what had just happened. Neither of them spoke. The silence filled Farley’s head until it was so loud she could hardly bear it, and then she fell asleep.

The door closed with a soft click. When he turned around, Tess stood in the hallway with her arms folded across her chest. The power fluctuated inside Daniel, reacting to his surprise in an instant tempest.

“Fffugh-” he breathed out, hard. “Tess, you can’t sneak up on me like that.”

“Why not? Have you got Cassie in there?”

The first weak rays of the morning sun hit his back through the window, warm. His shadow fell across the golden-skinned girl with the untamable hair in front of him. She narrowed her suspicious eyes at him. He glared back. “No, of course not. You need to let that go, okay? You’re not helping matters.” He pushed past her, careful to avoid the floorboards he knew to be the creakiest as he made his way to the bathroom. It sounded like the house was still sleeping.

“Well, you’ve got
someone
in there. You wouldn’t be sneaking out so quietly otherwise.”

Daniel halted and looked back at her over his shoulder. “Farley’s asleep. She’s exhausted after yesterday. I want her to get better, now would it kill you to stop being so hostile?”

Tess shifted her weight to one hip, tilting her head to the side in a way that screamed bad attitude. “I’m worried about my friend. Her life’s insane right now. Can you blame me for wanting to protect her?”

“No. I can’t blame you for that,” he sighed. “But I care about her, too. There are plenty of things Farley needs protecting from, but I’m not one of them.”

“You give me your word on that?”

“I do.”

“Fine. Just know that-”

“Can we not do the whole threatening thing right now?” Daniel snapped, “It’s too early in the morning.”

Tess gave him a tight-lipped smile. “Okay. It’s assumed.”

“Yes,” he gave her a mock salute, “it’s assumed.” When he reached the bathroom, he paused with his hand resting on the doorjamb. “Hey, Tess?”

“Yeah?”

“Is Oliver awake?”

The girl nodded, looking a little uncomfortable. “He doesn’t sleep much these days. He’s probably out in the woods. He likes going there in the morning.”

Daniel studied the way her shoulders seemed to round in on themselves. Her crossed arms no longer looked defensive, but as though she were holding herself upright. “Is everything okay?”

“Uh-huh.” She disappeared back into her room and closed the door without a sound.

******

He was in the shower when the noise downstairs started shaking the foundations of the cabin. The vibrations were enough to topple over the dented can of shaving cream on the shelf in the shower, revealing a dirty orange ring on the tile. Daniel swore under his breath and finished up quickly, barely drying off before throwing on some clean clothes. The noise, a dull
thump thump
while the water had been pummeling his head, was actually music of some description, and it was coming from the kitchen. He charged down the stairs, light on his feet, to find Kayden stooped over the cooktop in nothing but his boxers. The whole ground floor smelled like burnt butter and caramelized sugar. On the counter, a stack of small pancakes steamed on a plate. Daniel took in the scene for a moment before stalking into the room and snapping the volume control on the stereo down to zero. It was the one from his bedroom.

“Hey!” Kayden cried, shooting him a disgruntled look. “What are you doing?”

“No, what the hell are you doing?!” Daniel hissed. “Tell me you didn’t just go into my room and wake Farley up so you could steal my sound system?”

A look of amusement flashed over his face. “There was no one in your room. I knocked and everything.” He turned back to the frying pan he had on the stove and began pouring a thick batter into it. The gloopy mixture solidified on contact, hissing.

“Kayden…” His name huffed out of Daniel like a reprimand. Why couldn’t he even
try
and be congenial, just for one single day? “It’s six thirty a.m. Why are you blaring out offensive music when people are trying to sleep?”

“No one’s asleep. I checked. And this music isn’t offensive. It’s Glassjaw.” He gave him a saintly grin. “I got it from your room.”

“
I know
.”

“So chill out.”

Daniel did his best to ignore the overwhelming urge to smash the other guy in the face. Kayden had always known which buttons to push in order to provoke a reaction. Invading Daniel’s personal space was just about the worst thing anyone could do, and so Kayden had made a habit out of finding as many ways as he could to do that. Nothing was sacred where he was concerned. He’d even hacked his email account a few years back and changed all of his passwords.