Downcast (20 page)

"I am sorry for this morning," he whispered, his lips brushing my ear and causing my mind to blank completely for a moment. "I am sorry for frightening you yesterday with the violence within me. I am sorry for all the times I have made you uncomfortable. But, you must know, I am frightened as well. I am terrified I may not be able to find you again."

"What do you mean?" I breathed.

"I never meant to frighten you," he sighed into my hair. "I just need you to understand me. I need it so badly that it hurts."

“I want to understand you, just as badly,” I pointed out. “But, I never get any answers.”

“I know. I know, and I hate that you are confused and scared. I hate that this makes you run away from me.”

His arms tightened around me to the point where I was effortlessly lifted to my toes. He lowered his head so that his lips almost brushed mine as he spoke, "I'm tired of chasing you. I want to catch you, Stephanie Starr."

Something stirred deep inside me, a yearning so intense that it engulfed every emotion, every sensation, every thought. It would be so easy to say yes, to take shelter in his arms, to let myself be adored by him, to let my dark fantasies play out.

"Not yet." I didn't recognize my own breathless voice at first.

"Why?" he ground out, his jaw tensed and eyes full of agony.

"You will always frighten me until I know what's going on," I replied miserably, struggling out of his grip. "There's too much I don't understand about you. About Zack. I'm not really into conspiracy theories and paranormal—that's Morris' department—but, I can't just ignore what I've seen with my own eyes!"

"What have you seen?" His voice was deadly quiet.

"Disintegrating the locker?" I retorted. "The fight yesterday? The desk this morning? Even Zack told me you could be violent. You're always on edge around me, and that puts me on edge around you. I'm scared of what you might do if I say no, and I'm scared of what you might do if I say yes."

Haley had gone chalk white, and his black eyes were wild. His lips were slightly parted, but he barely seemed to be breathing. He closed the distance between us, and I could have sworn that somehow, he was just an inch or two taller, towering over me. In half a heartbeat, he had one arm locked around my waist, holding me inexorably against his steely frame, and his other hand cradled my cheek with a gentleness that was as frightening as it was incongruous.

"Do you need to be protected from me?" he whispered, brushing his thumb over my bottom lip.

“I don’t know, do I?”

"I think you need to be protected from yourself."

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You are extremely dangerous, in more ways than one.”

"I am not!" I exclaimed.

"Yes, you are," he said and lowered his lips to mine.

I was drowning in ice. A bone-chilling cold flooded into my body, freezing my anger and forcing me to offer up all the heat I possessed.

Nothing could have been better, more complete, more right, than his kiss. It lasted no more than three heartbeats, but tendrils of him had crawled into me, and me into him, twining our untouchable beings together, half and half into a whole, finally and forever.

My eyes fluttered open as he broke the kiss, and for the first time, I knew my eyes pulled at his soul as much as his had done with mine. I saw him swallow hard and felt him draw in a deep breath.

"We should get back," I blurted out, and my heart skipped unevenly as he grinned slowly at me, a seductive, triumphant, radiantly happy grin.

"If you insist, princess," he murmured, ducking in for another kiss, wrapping his body around mine, and mine around his.

“Can you give me any answers now?” I said, my words forming kisses against his lips. Yup, that was me, like a dog with a bone. Able to single-handedly ruin a perfect moment because I couldn’t let things go.

With a low groan, he raised his lips from mine, leaning his forehead against mine.

"I...not yet," he gasped, his breathing sharp and dry. "Damn it, not yet!"

“What ‘not yet?’” I asked.

“I can’t tell you,” he answered, his face a mask of frustration.

"Why not?"

His eyes glittered and jaw tensed, as if he was struggling to say something. He finally sighed.

"I can't," he replied, sounding bitter but resigned as he gently traced my jaw with his fingers. "But, if you are patient and will trust me, I can help you figure it out. We need to be quick about it, though."

"Why?"

"Because Morris Chow is absolutely right."

"WHAT?" I SHRIEKED.
"How do you know that? Wait, how do you know about Morris and the weather thing?"

"I was in the library that day you and he were talking," Haley said mildly, tangling his fingers in my short hair and gently bringing my face close to his. "I heard everything."

"I’ve never seen you in the library before. What were you doing in the library?"

"First the grocery store, now the library. I’m just a humble mortal with a European paper history due, too."

I wasn't so far gone in the moment that I couldn't give him my best side-eye. He laughed and kissed me again.

Once more, I was lost to the sensation of crystalline fractals racing over my skin. My body responded with a love-fed warmth that made my fingers and lips hot to the touch.

I felt Haley shudder and clutch me closer to him, as if he were desperate for my touch. He rained kisses like drops of sleet onto my eyelids, forehead, cheek, and neck. Each kiss stole the hot breath out of my lungs.

A blast of icy wind stirred the dead leaves into a crackling twister around our ankles, and I shivered, huddling closer to him, memorizing the feel of every muscle and bone beneath his skin.

***

My world both expanded and shrank to be nothing more than grey trees, thick fog, and brown, dead leaves. And Haley.

I listened to the sound of his breathing, noticing a thousand little things about him like the way the collar of his shirt brushed the skin of his neck and the hint of stubble on his jaw. Time measured itself in heartbeats and breaths, and I reveled in the new sensation of being loved.

 The distant sound of the bell shook my bliss, and questions began to bubble up to the surface again. Apparently, Haley could be selectively deaf, as he didn’t seem to hear or care about the bell. He just continued kissing me and holding me in a silence full of meaning.

The second bell rang, though it sounded miles away to my kiss-addled brain.

"Hang on," I gasped, pulling back from his kiss. "Stop!"

He made a small sound of annoyance but complied, and when I looked up at him, I saw that he was smiling like there was not a thing wrong in his world.

"We need to talk about Morris," I said.

"I can't think of anything I want to talk about less at this moment," Haley chuckled. I knew I had, at most, three seconds before he started kissing me again and making me forget about everything else.

"So if Morris is right," I babbled breathlessly. "Are we looking at some kind of weird global warming crisis, or weird meteorological, um, cataclysm, or something?”

"What kind of cataclysm?" Haley murmured with a playful gleam in his eyes and began dropping kisses along my jaw.

"The m-metorlgicl cat-calysim," I stammered, stumbling over all the syllables as his kisses moved down my throat. "Snow in September. Everything's dying."

His lips instantly stilled against my skin, and he lifted his head to look down at me, a different kind of passion burning in his gaze.

"That's the way of things in nature," he said quietly. "Everything dies."

"But, it comes back in the spring!"

"The same leaf never returns to the sun."

"But it's the same life, um, life force that makes it all grow again. Different leaf, same plant, same sun."

"Yes, but there’s also the force that makes everything end. Nothing has a beginning that doesn’t have an end."

"Wait, how did we start talking about this?"

"You're worried about a meteorological cataclysm?" he reminded me, smiling and tracing the lines of my eyelids with his fingers.

"Right. What do you think?"

"Hmmm. I think Morris is very close to something very real.”

“Oh, that’s perfectly clear. Solves everything. Thanks.” Wildly in love or not, getting riddles for answers still left me irritable.

“Morris is correct that the weather is behaving unusually,” Haley said, leading me over to a log and sitting us both down on it. “He’s looking in the wrong place for the reasons for it.”

“You mean he shouldn’t be looking at AccuWeather? Or NOAA or whatever?”

“I mean this doesn’t have anything to do with meteorology.”

“But…but, it’s
weather
.” I felt silly for making such an obvious statement, but if weather didn’t have anything to do with meteorology, then what else was there?

Haley remained silent, looking down at my hand clasped in his. He seemed just as frustrated as I was.

“Can you tell me what you think the cause of the weather is?” I hazarded finally.

“No.”

“Oh.”

“Not directly, I can’t.”

 "Can't or won't?" I demanded, tingles of foreboding shivering in my heart and toes. I folded my arms and began to pace.

"Can't."

"Well, at least you would if you could, so I guess that’s something. But what about you and Zack, and all my questions earlier?"

"I can’t actually tell you that directly, either."

My irritation faded at the desperate, forlorn look on his face. I leaned my head on his shoulder and sighed.

"Whatever's wrong, Haley," I said. "I can try to help you figure it out and fix it, but I honestly suck at solving puzzles. I never figure out mysteries before the end of the book."

"I have absolute faith in you," he stated, wrapping me in his arms. "You will figure everything out. You have come so far. You’re closer than you know.”

His vote of confidence didn’t really do much to pull me out of my pout, but he kissed my frown lines smooth and smiled down at me.

“We should go back," he murmured. “Though, I don’t suppose you’d consider just running away with me.”

“Someone has to keep Helen from murdering Zack,” I replied.

“Why?” He made the question sound genuine, and I laughed.

He kept his hold of my hand as we turned and walked back toward the school.

“Speaking of Zack,” I said after a few minutes.

“Do we have to?”

“Why did Zack tell me to talk to you and try to get answers from you? Was that just an excuse to get me to talk to you?”

Haley’s grin grew broader, and he threw back his head and laughed. “Let’s just say that my brother is a romantic at heart.”

“That’s not helpful!” I groaned.

His laughter settled, and he kissed the top of my head. “On the contrary, it has been…very helpful.”

As we walked, the mist grew thinner and dissipated all together as we emerged onto the soccer field. I glanced back at the woods, and there was no trace of the beautiful, isolated world where Haley had kissed me. The woods themselves seemed thin, empty, and ordinary.

I hadn't been lying about my inability to solve mysteries. The only thing I had going for me was that I was determined and had good instincts about things, but that wasn't saying much. I needed to have a pitilessly logical, cool, practical brain and a practically genius-like level of knowledge about science and meteorology. Neither of which was going to happen for me. But for someone like...

Helen. And Morris. The two most logical beings on the planet.

"I need to go find Helen and Morris," I announced, blinking rapidly and slipping my hand from his as we reached the parking lot.

"Oh?"

"Yes. Very important."

"Really?"

"Yes. Meteorological cataclysm thingy."

"Ah."

Entering the gym lobby, we saw Mr. Applebee waiting. My step faltered, but Haley put his hand on the small of my back and kept me walking forward with him.

"And where have you two been, Miss Starr, Mr. Smith?" he intoned, obviously enjoying flexing his disciplinary muscles. "This looks rather bad for you, Mr. Smith, after yesterday's violent attack."

Caught somewhere between wanting to cry and wanting to pee, I looked nervously at Haley. I didn't want to get in trouble, and I really didn't want
him
to get into trouble. Not again.

Haley smiled sardonically at Mr. Applebee, who started to turn a strange shade of pinkish purple.

"We haven't been anywhere except in our classes," he replied smoothly, and maybe it was my freakovision, but I could have sworn his eyes had little points of light dancing in them.

Mr. Applebee's eyes began to roll back, and I tensed to catch him in case the man was having a stroke or a heart attack or something.

Haley chuckled and nuzzled my hair, but I noticed he kept his eyes locked on Mr. Applebee. Up close, I could definitely see tiny, bright white flecks in Haley’s black eyes. I couldn't tell where his pupils were or the shadings of his irises. It was like looking at a night sky, full of stars.

Mr. Applebee made a strangled noise and went completely stiff.

"What was that?" Haley asked calmly, his thumbs lightly rubbing my waist through my shirt. "I'm sorry, but I didn't hear you. Were you looking for us?"

"N-no," Mr. Applebee croaked, his eyes and tongue starting to bulge.

"Then we'll be leaving. No need to trouble you further. Is there?"

Mr. Applebee shook his head mechanically, and Haley shrugged and looked away. The man's body went slack and then he coughed, straightened his tie and walked away, looking completely normal.

"What..." Words failed me as I spun around in his arms. "What was that?"

He smiled enigmatically at me.

"Oh, wait," I huffed. "This is part of what you can't tell me."

 His smile widened a fraction.

"Got it, but let me tell you that if that's real mind control mojo, I'm officially freaked out. Wait, I was freaked out already. Consider this a high anxiety amendment."

He laughed and kissed my forehead.