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Authors: Tara Fuller

Perigee Moon (8 page)

BOOK: Perigee Moon
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“Yeah, they just go to bed pretty early.”

He nodded his head absently, lingering in front of me like he had something he wanted to say.

“I’m really sorry Tyler. I know I wasn’t much of a date,” I said hoping I could at least salvage our friendship. He remained quiet so I turned to put my key in the lock, but he grabbed my elbow before I could get any farther.

“Rowan wait.” He paused as I turned to look at him. “I know that things are hard for you right now. I can’t even imagine. But I like you.” He laughed, his cheeks flushing under the yellow porch light. “I
really
like you,” he whispered as his fingers tightened around my elbow, pulling me close. He ducked his head down and I could feel his breath hot and sweet against my face as he hesitated, giving me one last chance for escape. I waited for the spark, for my crazed teenage hormones to take over and carry me towards his lips but they didn’t. Suddenly everything in me was screaming in protest. I squeezed my eyes closed and took the out, moving my face to his shoulder before his lips could land on mine. I wrapped my arms around him.

“I’m sorry Tyler. I just can’t.” My words were muffled in the hollow of his neck.

His arms fell around my waist and held me there for a moment before releasing me. He smiled and shrugged as he pulled away.

“I know,” he said, the hope all but gone from his voice. “But you can’t blame a guy for trying, right?” He winked and hopped down from the porch without looking back. I breathed a sigh of relief as I watched him disappear into the shadows, the sound of his engine roaring to life in the dark.

I sank down onto the steps, my key still hanging from the lock and buried my face in my hands, breathing in the lingering aroma that the sand had left on my skin. The wind was picking up and it blew through my hair, plastering the silk top I was wearing against my body. I suddenly found myself remembering Rebecca Foster and her words. I imagined that my mother was the wind. That she was wrapping around me and running her fingers through my hair, whispering that everything was going to be alright. It seemed like hours that I sat like that lying to myself, but when a rustling sound shattered my vision my eyes snapped open, and my chest tightened with panic. I couldn’t be sure of how long I had been sitting there, but I knew it was too late for a friendly neighbor to be dropping by. I scanned the darkness as I scrambled for the door. The footsteps were closer now. I turned to take one last glimpse and froze. That’s when I recognized the movement, melting out of the shadows.

“Rowan?” His voice stopped me in my tracks. I turned to face him. He stood in the shadows; his eyes, pools of midnight water, sparkled under the glow of the porch light. He was wearing the same white t-shirt and faded jeans, but this time he was donning a black leather jacket. He looked dark and beautiful, like he’d been born from the night. He took a pronounced step closer and my heart stopped. It had been a week since I’d seen him last. A week of telling myself that I would never see him again. A week of trying to convince myself that it was crazy to care.

“Alex.” His name rolled off of my tongue, lingering sweet on the outskirts if my lips long after the word had passed. He smiled and lowered himself down onto a porch step, the wood creaking under his weight. I let my fingers fall from the doorknob and sat down beside him as if we had known each other all our lives. Strange, how it really did feel that way.

“What are you doing here?” I breathed, not really caring about the reason. Just caring that he was here, infusing me with warmth and life for reasons I couldn’t understand.

He looked up at the blackened sky and I watched his eyes trail the dizzying swirl of stars overhead. “To be honest I don’t even know anymore. I’m done trying to convince myself that this is wrong.”

“You know I have no idea what you’re talking about, right?”

He laughed. “I know.”

We sat silently for a moment, all of the words we wanted to say filling up the silence between us. All I could hear was the sound of my heart pounding against my ribcage and I wondered if he could hear it too.

“Can I ask you something?” He twisted his body around until his shoulders were square with mine. He was so close that I was breathing his breath.

“Sure.”

“Who is he…the boy that just left?” He motioned towards the curb where Tyler’s truck had been parked.

“Who? Tyler?” I said, confused. He nodded silently for me to continue. “Tyler’s just a friend.” I wondered if that was still the case after the rejection I had just handed him.

“He tried to kiss you. Why didn’t you let him?”

“You were
watching
me?”

“Are you avoiding the question?”

“No…I just…” I scooted an inch away from him. Just for a little space. An ounce of clarity. He glanced down at the empty space between us and frowned.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You don’t have to answer. I was just curious.”

I studied the ribbon-like curl of his eyelashes, the way he chewed the inside of his cheek, the way the wind rustled his wispy black hair between his eyes, causing his nose to twitch.  I could feel the nervous flutter that twisted his gut. He wasn’t someone to be scared of. He was just…a boy.

“Because I didn’t feel it with him,” I finally said.

“Feel what?” He looked confused.

“The spark,” I said, remembering how my mother’s eyes would shine and her cheeks would blush as she recounted the memory of her first meeting with my father for me time and time again.

“Is there anyone who does?” He stared down at the steps between his legs and picked at a piece of splintered wood. “Make you feel that way I mean.”

“What… like a boy?”

“Like me?” If the wind wouldn’t have died at that moment I’m not even sure I would have heard him. Closing my eyes I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts that were now so muddled I could barley find the words to speak.

“Let me get this straight. You stalk me for weeks. You refuse to speak to me, and when you finally do you tell me that it’s wrong to want to know me, and then you disappear with no explanation. And now you show up in the middle of the night and want to know how you make me feel?”

He smiled. “Yes.”

“Confused. That’s how you make me feel.” Traces of anger were bubbling up through the unruly mass of butterflies in my stomach, blocking out his gentle wisps of desire, and the perplexing thud of his heart.

“I’m sorry for that. I don’t mean to.” He looked away and pressed his lips together. “Things are just…complicated for me.”

“I don’t know anything about you.”

“But I know things about you,” he said.

“What could you possibly know about me?” I asked, praying that he wasn’t about to make me regret trusting him.

He laughed again and my head swirled with the sound. When he laughed it was like music, but no song I’d ever heard.

“Just enough to drive me mad,” he said.

He paused and slightly shifted his body so that his knees were now mashed up against mine. I tried to ignore the whispers of electricity that were dancing across my legs but it was impossible. It was as if every nerve in my body was standing on end, hungry and searching for the feel of his skin on mine.

“I know that you look sad when you think that no one else is watching. You don’t smile very much but when you do it’s staggering.” His eyes tightened and he averted his gaze to the splintered steps below us. “I know that you have trouble sleeping. You sit by your window at night and stare into the trees as if you’re waiting for someone.”

His eyes were back on my face now, drifting over me as if he were trying to peer into my soul and decipher my darkest secrets.

“But I don’t know why you’re sad. I don’t know why you can’t sleep, or who you could possibly be waiting for while the rest of the world is sleeping.”

My cheeks flushed with color and the heat that had been building with his every word suddenly burst behind them. I hoped that the blush that Bevin had forced me to wear would hide it.

Just an hour ago spilling my secrets to some strange boy had my stomach twisted into knots, but now as I sat there staring into his liquid-blue eyes, which were filled with an emotion I couldn’t fathom, I found myself twisting into knots for an entirely different reason. Suddenly my secrets weren’t my secrets anymore. The secrets I‘d fought so hard to keep. The ones that I would never dream of telling another soul. And before I could stop myself the answers were spilling from my lips.

“My mom died. That’s why I’m sad. I can’t sleep because at night when I’m alone I can barely breathe through the pain. I’m buried in the memories. And when I stare out my window…I’m looking for you,” I admitted, my voice shaky and insecure. “I’m always looking for you because you are the first person that has been able to make me feel alive in so long, and I don’t know why.” I knew I should feel embarrassed admitting these things, but I didn’t. Not with him.

He brushed a strand of hair from my face and tucked it behind my ear. The heat from his touch expanded across my face and sent flames searing down my neck. It was a good heat. The kind that thaws you from the inside out. He smiled and closed his eyes, his hand lingering against my cheek.

“I want to know things about you too.” A lump filled the back of my throat as I waited for him to find another excuse to leave.

“What do you want to know?” His hand fell away from my face, and my nerves went into a frenzy, wanting more.

“Where do you live?”

His face looked torn again, but he finally answered. “Close by.”

“Why do you wear the same thing all the time?” I knew it was a silly question but I was truly curious.

He laughed. “Does it bother you that I wear the same thing all the time?”

“No.”

I still felt confused. He wasn’t giving me real answers and he knew it. It was enough to drive me crazy.

“Okay…where are you from?” He looked confused as if I had repeated a question. “I mean your accent. You’re obviously not from around here.”

“I moved here with my parents from England around four years ago,” he said, and to my surprise I was satisfied with his answer. It was the first clear answer he had given me and he didn’t even hesitate. “My family wasn’t exactly accepted back there and we came here hoping things would be different,” he said, a bit of acid lacing his voice.

“Is it? Different I mean?” I said.

He looked away as a hint of pain flashed across his face. “No.”

“Why is it wrong for you to want to know me?” I asked, shivering as a gust of bitter air pierced through my thin silk top like a thousand icy shards of glass.

“You’re cold. You should go inside.”

I wrapped my arms around myself defensively. “No. I’m fine. Answer the question.”

He looked at me for a moment. “Because we’re not the same, Rowan. I come from a very different place than you and that could be dangerous, for both of us.” I panicked as he stood up and retreated toward the shadows.

“Wait. Will I see you again?”

“I’d like to say no, but I think it’s a little late for that now.” He smiled, his white teeth glistening through the dark.

“Promise me you’ll be back,” I insisted as I rubbed my arms, hoping the friction would keep the cold at bay for just a few more minutes.

“I promise,” he called out before disappearing behind the tree line.

Chapter 9
 

Jealousy. It is an ugly emotion and tonight it ran through me like wild fire. To see another man leaning in to claim her that way. I wanted to cast a spell on him that would crush him into dust. It was more than I could bear. Rowan. God I want her so badly it drives me mad. The fact that my desire for her outweighs my will to survive is maddening. And now after tonight, my battle is lost. I won’t stay away now. There is no lying to myself. My only hope is that she can resist this. Because I cannot. I am a fool. I am in love. And I will die for it.

~ Alexander 1692

***

I could barely see through the thick haze that was sifting through the trees. The forest floor was damp and the humidity was making it hard to breathe. I felt hot and sticky as I wiped a bead of sweat from my forehead and trudged through the blanket of dark grey shadows that were blocking out the sun. I didn’t really know why I was there; I just knew that I had to find him. I was clutching Rebecca Foster’s leather bound grimoire to my chest, feeling its strange energy permeate into my bones. That’s when I saw him–through the trees just ahead there was a small clearing. Alex was standing silently, his hand outstretched, beckoning me forward. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. My eyes drifted over the perfect lines of his chest and it was almost more than I could take. It was like I was in a trance. My feet carried me swiftly to his awaiting arms where he smiled and pulled the book away from my chest. I grasped for it but he held it out of my reach and then dropped it onto the ground. I didn’t go after it. His electric blue eyes had already drawn me in and I couldn’t break away from his gaze. My heart hummed nervously as he lowered his face and brushed his lips along my jawline, making his way around to my mouth. His face was flushed as I placed my hand on his chest and pressed each one of my fingers into his bare skin. His heart pulsed wildly beneath my fingertips, each throb forcing a bolt of electricity to course through my veins. A warm, golden energy was churning in my chest like a tiny sun, bouncing around the walls of a cage, begging to be set free. And Alex was the key. I stared up at him wordlessly, confused and exhilarated.

BOOK: Perigee Moon
7.4Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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