Tethered (The Avenlore Series)

Tethered

By Tasha Van Der Hyde

Tethered copyright © 2013 by Tasha Van Der Hyde

Chapter 1

I knew something was off.  He was distant, trying not to be but, distant all the same.  And not in the “I have a lot on my mind distant.”  This was like a siren going off in my head, like the kind that warns a nuclear attack is imminent.  Nuclear attack sirens and red flags and flashing lights all warning me of the danger I was in.  And not physical danger, I would have welcomed that in comparison.  I knew what was coming and it was going to hit me hard.  Even in the heated car I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold November night. 

“What’s wrong?” I asked nervously.  I already knew the answer though.

“Nothing.” he replied with a smile that was so forced it almost hurt me to witness it.  His eyes darted around nervously and he couldn’t really look at me. 

The sirens in my head got louder.

He was waiting.  We were on our way back from town where he’d played the most focused game of mini golf known to man.  You’d have thought he was playing a Master’s tournament and that funky green blazer was on the line.  Another warning sign.  Usually, he was laughing, joking, circling me in his arms and placing kisses on my jaw…but not tonight. 

I knew what was coming.  It made
me nauseous to think of it, my heart already breaking.  He was stalling though, waiting until he could look me in the eye and break it to me.  That was proper, that was right and that was the way he did things.  He would wait until he could look me in the eye when he shattered my world.  He was a decent guy.  Better than decent really, he was good, kind, considerate, and good looking to boot.  It had always muddled me how I ever ended up with him in the first place.  He was out of my league and I had always known that.  If we were wines, he would be something expensive and French and impossible for me to pronounce or afford.  I, on the other hand, would be Boone’s Farm. 

“Something is wrong, I know you.” 
I pushed, doing my best to hide the anxiety in my voice and failing royally. 

I waited for his response and watched his jaw jut side to side as he gr
ound his teeth.  This was a telltale nervous tick for him.  “Let’s talk when we get back.”  He said kindly.  He was nervous and uncomfortable because confrontation of any kind really was not his thing. 

It was, however, my thing.

I bit the inside of my cheek to concentrate on something other than the panic and pain threatening to take over.  I pushed up my coat sleeve and rubbed the birthmark on the inside of my left wrist, trying to get lost in the sun shaped figure a few shades darker than my fair skin, my own telltale nervous tick.  Tears welled in my eyes and I tried to blink them back, but only succeeded in sending them racing down my cheeks, one after the other. 

Turning my head toward the window, I breathing in and out slowly trying to quell the
apprehensive sludge that was pumping slowly through my body, heavy and thick like molasses.  I couldn’t sit idly by and wait for him to bust up my heart on his terms.

“No.  No, if you’re gonna do it, just go ahead and do it.  Let’s not wait for a setting in which you feel more comfortable breaking my heart.”
I spat at him, only just managing to reign in the sobs trying to escape my chest.

He let out a long breath, staring out at the road as he drove.  “Where do you see us in five years?” 

“Together.” I answered in a tone that said this was the obvious
and only answer to the question.

His eyes slid slowly toward mine and he gave me a look…a look filled with pity.  It was the way you look at a small child before you tell them their puppy got run over or Santa doesn’t really exist. 
“Dani, I…I just think we’d miss out on too much if we don’t go our separate ways and see what else is out there.  We’ll be graduating soon and then we’ll be off to college and there’s just so much out there….” He trailed off, letting the words hang in the air between us.

A lump formed in my throat and the air in my esophagus struggled to flow around it. 
After some effort I formulated a response.  “How long have you known we were headed here?”  Disbelief colored my tone as it sank in that this breakup was the result of drawn out, logical thinking.  I could see it written on his face in the way he looked at me like he felt sorry for me that I thought we’d stay together, like I was a silly little child who didn’t know any better and he pitied me for it.  But, he’d known.  He was that guy, nothing spur of the moment.  Everything in his world was carefully planned and thought out. 

“Dani…” he sighed, his voice pleading.

“How. Long.”  My words were clipped as they slid between my clenched teeth.

“I mean, it’s not as i
f I had it keyed into my Blackberry!”  He glanced at me and I watched as the guilt passed over his face. 

Maybe it wasn’t literally in his Blackberry but, it may as well have been.

I started laughing, quietly at first and then a little manically.  “I am so stupid, so foolish.”  And suddenly I was angry.  Angry at him for his stupid, logical decision making process, for his ability to hide his plans just well enough that I was able to dismiss his subtle changes as the result of stress or a busy schedule or a bad day.  I knew, in my heart of hearts it was coming, I did but, I reasoned it away making excuses and justifying his actions in my head. 

My temper flared. 
“Why would you hold onto me all this time, Jones?  You should’ve just let me go, let me get on with my life!  I could have been getting over you instead of stupidly falling more for you every day!”  I was raging now, my voice getting louder with each word.  I paused to reign in my emotions and leveled him with a look.  In my most even tone I asked again.  “How long?”

“I, I don’t,” he glanced at my face and resigned himself to answer
my question.  “I first started thinking about all this about…about six months ago.”  He glanced at me again, his face apologetic.

I was struggling to hold it together now, the levy was about to break
again and I knew it so the words came out in a rush.  “Then you should have just done it then!  You should have just let me go!”  My voice was torn between pain and anger, cracking on the last word as the pain won out.

“You would rather we hadn’t been together these last six months the
n?”  He sounded wounded, incredulous even.  He pulled off to the side of the two lane road we’d been traveling to look at me as if I’d just sprouted antlers.

My breathing hitched and I struggled to get it under control so I could speak clearly.  Tears
were once again welling in my eyes, threatening to spill over.  The thought that I would actually prefer to be set free rather than stay with him for his allotted amount of time hurt him.  But, he had hurt me, cut me, made me bleed.  I wanted to cut him back for this.  I turned to look at him, staring into his eyes for a moment before delivering my answer.  “Absolutely,” I replied calmly and turned my head to stare out into the night.

“Dani, I’m sorry.  It
’s just that, I really think we’d miss out on too much if we stay together.”  I felt him touch my hand and instantly recoiled. 

As the tears escaped again to spill down my cheeks
, I turned to look at him once more.  “I guess that’s the difference between us then.  I thought whatever I was missing out on, you’d be worth it.”  Then I popped open the door to his car and ran off into the black night.

Chapter 2

I was at a full out run by the time I hit the tree line some 20 yards in. I heard the door slam shut as Jones climbed out of his vehicle.  Fortunately, tonight was a full moon and it was easy to miss the low bushes and fallen branches.  I booked for a willow oak nearby and hid myself beneath the low hanging branches, my back against the trunk of the tree. 

I heard twigs snapping
beneath his footfalls as he came closer to my hiding spot.  “Danielle?”  He called softly.  I pressed my back harder against the tree and absently traced my fingers over my birthmark. 

“Dani, come on, I know you can hear me!  Where are you?  Don’t you think this is a little dramatic?” 
His voice was louder and I could hear him blowing out a long breath, picture him raking his fingers through his short, sandy blonde locks.  “Dani, this is insane!”

He knew me well enough to realize that he could walk these woods until daylight and I would never emerge for him. 

I concentrated on making no sound, biting back tears as my index finger nervously worked in circles over my birthmark.  Nearby, Jones was still unaware of my presence and angrily took it out on an unsuspecting tree.  I heard his boot strike repeatedly against the bark as he let out an angry growl and cursed under his breath.  He paced for maybe ten or fifteen minutes more, alternating between cursing under his breath and calling out my name.  His defeated huff sounded and then his footsteps retreated toward the direction of the road.  I waited silently until I heard the engine turn over and rev as he drove off into the darkness.

My body went limp against the tree as I succumbed to the painful emotions inside.  Drawing my knees to my chest, I let the sobs ripple through me as I tried to figure out what I had done wrong.  I’d had it bad for him since I
’d first laid eyes on him in the fourth grade. 

If you placed us side by side and were told we were a couple it would laughable. 
He was tall with short, stylishly spikey sandy blonde hair and chocolate brown eyes set in a classically handsome face and with a nice body.  I had auburn hair that I had to keep down to the middle of my back.  This kept the natural ringlets weighted down enough to convert them to loose curls, it was my best feature, my only feature really.  At least when it wasn’t raining or humid.  My eyes were a boring greyish blue and my nose had a lovely bump in the middle of it and my lips were a little too big.  And I came in at a whopping five foot four, one hundred and twenty pounds. I know, try and contain yourself.  On my best day, I was only barely pretty.

The
product of exposure to too many fairytales, I had an overly romantic heart.  I thought he was my prince, I thought this was my happily ever after.  But, I was no princess. 

I stayed huddled against the tree in the cold for a while wallowing in my sadness, the only attendant to my pity party. 

By where the moon hung in the sky, it was very late.  My aunt,
Vera Deveroe, who I lived with, was probably unaware of my absence.  She’d long ago given me a generous amount of freedom, not because she had so much trust in me…it was more like she was glad to be rid of me when I started to want independence.  She spent the better part of her life going for cocktails with friends after work or shopping. The only sister of my dad who had been killed along with my mother in a car accident when I was 8 months old had been my caretaker for these past 17 years.  She wasn’t really a bad person, but she wasn’t particularly interested in me. 

Running my fingers through my hair,
I blew out a shaky breath.  I stood and brushed myself off, readying myself for the hike to my home, about three miles from here.  Without warning, the earth beneath me began to tremble and the faint sound of hoof beats started to sound.  It sounded like a stampede, at least I guess it did, though I’d never been present for one before.  My knees locked and my heart jumped into my throat.  I couldn’t move.  I just stood there staring wide eyed in the direction of the sound. 

Slowly, in the distance I began to make out what appeared to be billowing black clouds too close to the ground in the distance
maybe 100 yards out.  I tried to will my body to move, but to no avail.  As the cloud barreled closer, it took on a more defined shape.  It was not a cloud at all, but many black cloaks whipping behind their riders in the night.  The hoof beats I thought I’d heard were indeed that, created by no less than ten horses beneath the figures in black cloaks.  I could feel the adrenaline as it began pumping madly through my body at this realization, calling upon a basic human response.  Fight or flight. 

No question here. 

Flight.

I turned on the spot and threw myself into a manic run,
not towards the road, but deeper into the woods away from the riders.  My legs worked furiously beneath me, arms pumped back and forth at my sides. 
Wait!  Arms?
  Coat sleeve still pushed back, in the darkness it was easy to make out my birthmark which was now glowing a faint blue on the inside of my wrist.  I could see it flash in and out of view as my arms swung back and forth. 

No time to muddle over that now though, as the calls from the riders became audible behind me.  They were of course gaining on me.  I couldn’
t outrun a horse, but I
would
damn well try.