Tempting Faith (Indigo Love Spectrum) (8 page)

Chapter 4

Faith climbed Kayford Mountain to the secluded wooded area high above her parents’ backyard. She had brought one candle with her. Faith wanted to make her birthday wish far from the curious stares of her family and friends, so now she was sitting on a thick, fragrant bed of pine needles and damp earth at the highest point in town, looking up at a sky full of twinkling stars waiting to hear her wish. Surely the heavens would grant her the one thing she wanted if her request had so little distance to travel.

As dusk fell, heavy rain clouds moved in to darken the purple-pink sky, giving it an ethereal beauty made more extreme by the rustic location she’d chosen to make her wish. With the wind picking up, the orange flame of her tiny pink candle had struggled to live long enough for Faith to accomplish her task. With her one desire filling her heart and a long draw of air expanding her lungs, she pursed her lips and blew, trading the life of the flame for that of her wish.

The wisp of smoke vanished into the wind, and Faith drew her knees to her chest, hugging them tight. Pinpoints of starlight tried to break through the cloud cover, and Faith thought the hectic sky her loveliest birthday gift. The wind picked up as though determined to drown out the music of the crickets and owls serenading her as she closed her eyes and tilted her head back, musing on her wish.

“Hey.”

That single syllable startled and exhilarated her as she whirled around.

Alex had come up on her like a creature born to the mountain woods, magnificent in his faded blue jeans and threadbare T-shirt.

“It came true,” she said breathily.

“What?” he asked.

“Hi.”

“Hey,” he repeated. “What are you doing up here?”

“Just watching the sunset. The sky is so pretty tonight. I’ve never seen it like this. All troubled and restless.”

He sat close to her, lacing his fingers together with his elbows braced on his knees. “I never get tired of the view from up here,” he said. “It’s like a scene from a movie.”

“Today’s my birthday,” she blurted, suddenly nervous.

He turned toward her, his eyes violet in the twilight. “Well, happy birthday, Faith.”

“Thank you.”

“Eighteen,” he murmured. “Bet your folks gave you something real nice.”

“Yeah, they did.” Not particularly anxious to discuss her gift, she cleared her throat. “It’s a combination birthday and graduation gift.”

“The Camry is a good, solid car,” he said, keeping his eyes on the tumultuous sky.

“How did you know they got me a Camry?”

He shrugged. “Everybody knows everybody’s business in Booger Hollow. Of course, some things can be kept secret, if you’re careful.”

“I don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to keep our thing a secret,” she sighed. “Darlene Cross keeps asking me where I’ve been ‘disappearing’ to after school lately.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That if she didn’t stay out of my business, I’d tell her boyfriend that she’s got your old yearbook photo taped up in her gym locker and that she kisses it every day.”

Alex chuckled dryly. “Cool.”

Faith gave him a poke with her elbow.

“Would you really rat her out like that?”

“Only if she forces me to,” Faith said. “I can keep a secret, but not at the expense of having my own leaked. How did you know I was up here?”

He picked up a cluster of fragrant white pine needles and passed their length between his thumb and forefinger. “I followed you.”

Her parents and those of her friends always talked about Alex as though he were the boogeyman. But painting him as an ill-bred, uncouth vagabond who roamed the nights peeking into their daughters’ bedrooms had the opposite effect of what they had intended. Rather than scaring the girls away from him, the warnings had fed their fascination with him, and Faith’s fascination had led to friendship.

“I saw Jefferson Winslow pestering you after your dance class today,” Alex said. “Thought I would have to sock him in the jaw if he didn’t leave you alone.”

“I can handle Jeffy Winslow,” she responded, referring to him by the name she’d used since their first day in kindergarten. “Our folks married us off in the crib. Trouble is, I’d rather throw myself off this mountain than spend the rest of my life in Raleigh County married to a bratty Winslow.”

“Me, too,” Alex replied wistfully.

“You mean you don’t want to marry a bratty Winslow either?” Faith teased.

Alex blessed her with a rare smile. She took his arm and rested her head on his shoulder.

“I’d rather die than spend the rest of my life in Dorothy,” Alex sighed.

The yearning in his voice tugged at Faith’s heart. She shivered, and she wasn’t sure if it was because of Alex or the sudden chill in the wind.

“You can leave town anytime you feel like it,” she said. “I still have another month of school, but come fall I’m starting at New York University. One more summer in Dorothy, and my life, my real life, really begins.” She quietly cleared her throat. “You know, you could leave too, if you wanted.”

“Where am I supposed to go, Faith?” he asked sadly.

“There are lots of things a resourceful guy could do in New York City.”

“With what money? I got nothin’, Faith. I couldn’t even get hired at your daddy’s mine. What makes you think I could get a decent job someplace else?”

“You could go to college,” she suggested. “You’re smart, you—”

“You just don’t get it, kid,” he said, shaking his head. “You don’t understand how the world works.”

“I understand plenty,” Faith said, stubbornly crossing her arms over her chest. “And don’t call me kid. You’re only a year older than I am.”

“I didn’t have the grades for college,” he said. “Honors American history didn’t compensate for the way my grades fell toward the end of my Lincoln High career.”

“Only because you were out sick so much.” She took his left hand, her fingertips grazing the network of scars that represented the nature of his sick days. “I could talk to my dad,” Faith offered. “If he met you, I know he’d give you a job.”

He’d looked at her then, and his sadness brought tears to her eyes. Alex had touched her face just below her ear, and his gentle caress raised her to her knees, drawing her face closer to his.

The wind had gained in force, bending the trunks of the youngest trees and thrashing them with the branches of the bigger ones. Faith’s hair lashed her face and Alex’s hand as they moved closer together, aware of nothing other than each other.

“You’re legally an adult now,” Alex murmured. “A grown-up woman.”

He brought his lips to hers, touching them with such tenderness she felt the tremble in them. Alex wasn’t like the boys at school because there was so little boy left in him. Faith had been kissed before, but never like this. Never had a boy gently parted her lips with his tongue to touch hers, the resultant jolt of electricity leaving her breathless and limp as she melted into his arms.

She was loath to separate from him even to breathe, her mouth seeking his as his head shifted, his nose sweeping hers in passing. She smiled through their kiss, thrilled by the rasp of the stubble above his upper lip and the taste of his mouth.

She could have reveled in his kisses from that moment until forever if he hadn’t torn away from her.

“We should go,” he said.

The gravity of his tone returned her to the mountainside, and for the first time she noticed the rumbling sky. The sky, which had been as pretty as a present, was angry, black, and layered with storm clouds that seemed to weigh heavily on the treetops.

Alex took her hand, pulling her roughly to her feet. Faith moved into the protective circle of his arms, blown there by instinct or by the violent wind now forcing the trees to dance crazily. When the rain came, it fell all at once, as though the sharpened tips of the tallest evergreens had ripped open the cloud bellies.

Carefully picking their way down the mountain, Alex stayed in front of Faith, helping her maintain her footing even as torrents of rain made their path precarious. He lifted her over hollows and caught her when she stumbled over a large rock. The rain saturated their clothing instantly, leaving his T-shirt nearly invisible and plastered against the hard muscle of his arms and torso. Her sweet pink blouse and blue jeans soaked through, Faith shivered.

Cold was the least of her worries when the ground began to shudder. “Alex?” she called over the howl of the wind. “What’s that?”

His fearful expression sent terror through her. “The mountain.”

His terse explanation made no sense until she looked behind them. Her first impression was that a tidal wave of hot cocoa was bearing down on them. But then she grasped what Alex had already figured out—the storm was washing away part of Kayford Mountain.

Alex’s grip on her hand tightened, and he began running. His hold was the only thing that allowed her to keep up with him, but as the water overtook them, Alex drew her closer and braced their bodies against the thick trunk of a white pine.

Her face hidden in his chest, Faith was too frightened to do anything other than cling to him. The muddy wave carried debris past them, the trunk of a dead tree battering their white pine hard enough to shake Alex’s hold on its lowermost branches. The cloudy brown water reached Faith’s waist and was climbing steadily higher.

“We can’t stay here,” Alex sputtered, shaking filthy water from his long dark hair. “The water is going to take this tree down the mountainside.”

Faith sobbed. She saw nothing of the idyllic mountain she had known all her life. The patchy groves of hardwood trees, the fields of sparse grass—all swallowed by the onrush of angry water.

“I know this mountain,” he said, his brittle smile doing little to ease her fear. “We can’t outrun the water, but we can hide from it.”

He made a move to leave the safety of the tree, which had become increasingly unsure as each wave of water left it bending closer to the ground. Too scared to move, Faith clung to its branches.

“Will you trust me?” he shouted over the roar of the water and a booming crack of thunder.

She nodded, blinking tears and dirty water from her eyes. Her teeth chattering from fear and cold, she could barely squeeze out the words, “With my life.”

Alex maintained his hold on the tree with one hand and used the other to shift Faith. “Climb on my back,” he told her. “And when I let go of the tree—”

“Don’t let go!” she cried. “We can wait here until the rain stops! My parents will be looking for me, and someone will find us.”

He roughly took her chin and forced her to look at him. “The roots aren’t going to hold this tree in place much longer.” As if to illustrate his point, the white pine lurched, sweeping Alex off his feet. “None of your father’s heavy machinery can do anything until after the water crests. Our best chance is to ride the runoff to the mudstone at the hollow. The rock will shelter us until the flooding stops.”

“I can’t,” she whimpered. The pine made another wrenching shift, and Faith screamed.

In that instant, Alex simultaneously flipped her onto his back and let go of the tree. Faith pressed her face into his shoulder and held onto him with all her strength. The current was so strong, her legs floated behind her as the water threatened to rip her away from him. With her arms wrapped around Alex’s neck so tightly, she wondered how he could breathe as he rode the murky wave toward the side of the mountain.

Debris crashed into him, and he struck something solid and hard hidden beneath the sloppy waves. Knocked off his direct course, he fought his way back toward the outcropping of mudstone by catching the branches of trees not yet uprooted by the flood.

Faith’s muscles burned but she held onto Alex, silently trusting that his plan would work, that he would find a way to save them from the violently eroding mountain. “Hold your breath!” he shouted only a second before he sank beneath the surface.

Faith clamped her eyes shut and pressed her face hard to Alex’s back, protecting it from the unidentified objects in the water that battered and scraped her body. Her lungs burned for want of air, and several times she feared she would be ripped from Alex. The muscles of his back and shoulders were rock hard as they worked within her grasp, and she wished that she could do something other than impede him with her stranglehold.

Hungry for air, her lungs pulsated painfully, but she forced her lips to stay pinched shut, her airways to remain closed. A more complete form of darkness began to overtake her when she felt her hands being pried apart under Alex’s chin. Only vaguely aware of a tumbling sensation, the thud of her body against a hard, cold surface yanked her back to her senses. She drew deep breaths, coughing out the water that had sneaked in with the air.

Once her eyes cleared, she saw a curtain of brown water filled with rocks, branches and the other detritus of the mountain rushing past her. Wiping soggy locks of hair from her face, she looked around and saw that she was snug in a cave-like crevice in the mudstone. Just as Alex had said, the space was protected, the rock overhanging it acting as a ramp off which the floodwater ran into the hollow below.

Trembling violently, Faith realized what Alex either had not known or hadn’t wanted to tell her—the shallow crevice was big enough for only one person.

“Alex!” she screamed, shifting carefully so as not to slide off the wet rock floor and into the hollow. Sitting as close to the edge as she dared, she scanned the water below, seeing only the misty backsplash of the polluted water pouring into the hollow. The water ran fast and hard. A tree fell into the hollow, and the force of the water striking it smashed it in half.

Clasping her hands to her mouth, Faith sobbed, the force of them shaking her bloodied and bruised body. “Alex,” she cried, murmuring his name over and over until she had no voice left.

* * *

“Alex!” Faith gasped, jerking upright. Panting, she struggled to free herself from the bed sheet tangled around her legs and hips. She tumbled out of bed, went to the open window and took deep breaths of clean, cool air.

Her recurring dream was also her recurring nightmare, only this time she woke up angry instead of miserable.