Book of Love (30 page)

“
Illegal?
To whom? I guess
you’re going to tell me there are supernatural police now too,
aren’t you?”

He chuckled, kicking a rock on the ground.
“Sort of.” His gaze met mine, showing a noticeable tension over the
subject. I didn’t press further.

He changed the focus. “When I saw my brother
in your dream, I was mortified. It was my fault he was there. I
left myself open when I went there, and Greg followed.” His brows
stitched together. “I would be an idiot to say that what my brother
did hadn’t bothered me. It infuriated me.” His face relaxed. “It
had been my plan, after all.”

I was a little frightened
by the possession in his voice.
“Your
plan—what do you
mean?”

Max closed the already
small space between us, brushing a strand of hair from my face.
“Don’t you want to know exactly
why
I saved you?” His tone hadn’t changed.

“
Why?” I mumbled. I’d
thought to ask, but was afraid to.

He hooked his finger under my chin, tilting
it up until our eyes met. I felt weak against his wishes. “Because
there was something about you I couldn’t let go of. I feared that
if I let you die, I’d never know what that thing was. We live many
lives, Jane, but very rarely do we ever come across the same soul
twice.”

I felt my heart surging
with fear, but also curiosity. I knew what he was getting at. It
wasn’t hard to see it in the glimmer of his eyes, the same glimmer
Wes always had. Max had a
crush
on me, and he’d had it for ten years now. He kept
me alive in order to quench that desire. I swallowed hard. I wasn’t
quite ready to jump head first into a relationship with a man that
was not only something like a stalker—not that it was all that
bad—but was also stuck somewhere between alive and
dead.

He let go of my chin, looking a little
stung.

I felt sorry for thinking
it, but I couldn’t help it. “I’m sorry. It’s just that, I barely
know who you are, Max. I mean, I
really
don’t know who you
are.”

He forced a smile. “I’m not here to force
you into something. I’m just here to see what happens. I can wait.
I can wait as long as it takes for you to know me. After I saved
you, and became a part of your life, the reason why I wanted you to
live grew clear to me.”

“
But why me? I’m no
different than anyone else. I’m just an ordinary girl.”

The pain in his features faded, now alive
with a new emotion. “That’s what I’m trying to explain to
you—that’s not true.”

“
It’s not?” I tried to back
away from him, but he advanced until I was backed against the car.
His eyes blazed upon me, the hood still warm from the
engine.

“
Have you ever met someone,
and you just know right away that there’s more—like a
future?”

I thought of the day Wes and I became
friends. I knew right away that he was going to be important to me
in some way, though I was young—too young to even understand
that.

Max went on. “Everyone has connections. For
some it’s family, like my brother and I. For some it’s friendship,
like you and Wes. And for others, it’s something much more
powerful, something yet to be seen.”

I tried to sidestep away from him, wanting
to avoid the fact that I felt this connection with him, though he
scared me. His arm lifted to block my way, trapping me between the
side mirror and his body.

I swallowed. “Powerful like what?” I asked,
still trying to figure a way to escape.

He smirked, his face close to mine. There
was no answer, leaving my head swimming with possibilities. He was
close enough that I felt his breath, cold and seductive. His nose
grazed across my cheek, the touch so unbelievably soft.

“
I know you feel it, Jane.
You just don’t know what it is yet. You have no way to understand
or compare that feeling to anything else in your life.”

I let his breath surround me, enveloping me
with an intense feeling of comfort. I still wanted to hear the
reason. I wanted to see the words form across his lips.

“
How does it feel?” I
pressed.

He took a deep breath, his chest rising. “It
feels like a veil of safety, a notion that you’re not alone.”

I searched his eyes, listening to his words,
envisioning the veil.

“
More specifically…” his
lips spoke against my cheek “…it feels like…” A cold chill ran down
my spine as his words stopped, silenced by a kiss against my
skin.

I shut my eyes, the heat of my emotion a
direct contrast to his touch. He leaned against me, his hands
pressed against the car, holding me there. He kissed my nose, my
other cheek. I stopped breathing, and finally, his lips found mine.
They were soft like air, the pressure so delicate that it almost
didn’t feel like kissing at all.

My body felt weak, the cold tingle in my
spine spreading into a feeling I’d never felt before. I pictured
the veil surrounding us, holding us together. His body felt
powerful, his hands sliding from the car to my sides, grasping my
hips as his fingers arched my back.

Wes had been my first kiss, and where I
guess you could count Greg as a second, this kiss was still far
different than both. His lips were sugary as they intertwined with
mine, but sweeter than his brother’s had been—kinder. His hands
spread across the small of my back, his thumbs pressing against my
skin.

Just as quickly as he had leaned in, he let
go, backing away and leaving me stunned. My chest tingled, and I
remembered that I’d forgotten to breathe. My eyes fluttered opened,
meeting his. His cool ocean of blue washed over me, defusing the
warmth that had nearly overwhelmed my inhibitions.

“
Are you ready to go back
now, Beautiful?” He asked, as though he had done nothing more than
talk frankly with me for the past ten minutes.

I forced myself to nod, peeling myself off
the car. I fumbled for the door handle, clumsily finding it and
getting in. He rounded the hood, his expression filled with pride
as he got in on his side. His movements were calm and cool, but
also more alive than I’d ever seen. I cleared my throat, telling
myself to buck up and quit acting like such a wuss.

I swallowed, thinking of something to say.
“But if your brother is so evil, why not—” The word was hard to
think, let alone say.

“
Kill
him?”
Max said it as though it was
no big deal. His car door slammed and I jumped, finding the talk of
murder and loud noises hard to handle. He stretched his neck to one
side. “Simple. Since we’re twins, if he dies, then so do I. It’s
the way we were made. When I chose to stay behind, so did he, but
there had to be balance. Something had to be compensated in order
to make what had happened in our last living moments
fair.”

The answer seemed so
obvious once he’d said it, but the thought made me sick. How was it
I could even conceive that a world like this could exist! I
swallowed. I didn’t want him to die, right? I wanted Max to stay
alive, and I wanted Greg to...
die?

I chewed on the inside of
my lip, rolling everything around in my mind. I was assessing and
reassessing the situation. I thought of his brother Erik, trying to
forget about
murder.

“
How old
are you?” I ventured, seeing the wrinkles of Erik’s face in my
mind, reminding me of
their
age.

Max grinned. A grin void of such
wrinkles.

I laughed. “Come on. I know how old Erik is,
so there’s no use hiding it. I’ll find out eventually.”

He nodded as though seeing my point. “Nearly
one-hundred years old, but that’s young for an angel.”

I swallowed again, continuing to hope that
that simple act would allow me to digest this. I suspected Max
added that last part on purpose, as though it leveled our ages. It
was like saying that one human year is equal to seven dog years.
The car lurched. We were backing up to turn around.

“
Do you age
then?”

Max nodded, “Actually, Yes. But very
slowly.”

“
Well,
how old were you when you...
died?”
I ventured.

He tilted his head as though trying to
recall. “Seventeen?”

“
And how old are you now?”
He didn’t look much older than that.

“
Seventeen,” he replied
freely.

I let out an annoyed breath, rolling my
eyes.

He chuckled. “Okay,
maybe…
seventeen and a quarter
then, does that make it better?”

I gawked. “You’ve only
aged three months in the last
one-hundred
years?”

“
You mean eighty-one years.
You have to subtract the seventeen of that that I was alive, and
I’m not quite a hundred yet, mind you.”

I shook my head. “So
you’ve been the same teenage, hormone ridden, high school student
for the past
eighty-one years?”

Max was really laughing at me now. “I don’t
know about hormones, or school for that matter. I’m only there for
you.”

His remark made my stomach flutter.

His eyes found mine. “You do something to
me, Jane. You make all the death disappear—you make my past and my
current circumstances bearable.” He released one hand from the
wheel, reaching for mine. “You make me feel alive again.”

I concentrated on his cold touch as our
fingers weaved together, finding that the chill still did not
bother me, but rather calmed me. When I was dreaming, I also felt
calm—at home and safe. I hadn’t noticed before, but it’s that
feeling that had drawn me to Max. I was so confused when he was
with me that I hadn’t noticed how the confusion was really
peace—something rare to me.

I gazed at him, a warm
feeling flooding my chest. My throat tightened and a buzz filled my
limbs. It had only been two weeks since I first met him—two weeks,
and already I’d fallen for an angel—
my
angel.

Max adjusted in his seat,
hiding a smile as he cleared his throat. “What was all
that
about?” he asked
innocently.

“
What do you mean?” I tried
to fain ignorance.

He looked at my head.

I swallowed hard, fear
washing over me. “I was thinking about...
nothing.”
I pushed the dreamy
thoughts away, quickly thinking of something else. “Do you know
other angels other than your brother?” My voice was strained,
fearing the emotion inside me had been exposed.

He was looking over his shoulder at the road
behind us. “Yes.”

“
But your brother is a
Black Angel? What is that?”

I saw Max’s jaw tighten. “He’s a Black Angel
because of the murders. Like an angel of death and doom.”

I felt a sharp pang in my
chest, knowing that by
murders
, he was also including my
father’s. I changed the subject again, knowing the murders also
included
his
parents. “What’s the oldest angel you know of?”

His eyes looked into
mine.
“Old.”

I snorted. “Yeah,
but
how
old?”

He plumped out his bottom lip in thought. “A
couple thousand, maybe?”

My eyes grew wide. “A
couple
thous—”
My
mouth fell open. “How would you even remember how old you are
anymore?”

Max laughed. “History keeps records, but as
far as remembering it on thought alone, it’s impossible I’m sure.
They say you keep track for the first century or so, but after that
it all gets fuzzy.”

I laughed.

“
But they don’t often do
what I’m doing now, Either. For the most part they hate the human
race. For a lot of them, they have no idea what age they are
because they refuse to classify their age in human
years.”

I tilted my head. “But weren’t all angels
human once? So why do some hate us?” We were back in town now, and
nearing the school.

Max laughed. “Hypocrites, aren’t they?
There’s no real reason. They just figure they’ve earned the right
to act superior. It’s a lot like the wealthy apposed to the
poor.”

I giggled in return. “Yeah. We get a lot of
that here.”

He shrugged. “I guess
perhaps they’re jealous. They
want
to be human again, especially when the choice was
stolen from them.”

I looked out the window at
the dreary clouds in the sky. “Why don’t
you
resent humans?”

Max was silent for a moment, but there was a
light in his eye that told me he was thinking of something
pleasant. “Because. When I’m around them, I feel alive again. I
don’t want to distance myself from humans because I’m afraid I’ll
forget about my life before, as many of the elders have. When you
live that long, you simply forget. Choosing to become a guardian
was my way of holding on.”

“
Holding on? To what
exactly?”

He smiled and clasped my
wrist. His fingers pressed gently, finding my pulse. “The feeling
of life beats through you. I feel every pound of your heart because
of my special connection with you—because of my
drive
to protect you. It’s a feeling
so sublime, but to you, it just
is.
The blood in your veins thrives in this world—I
thrive on your blood because it keeps me grounded here.”