Gravity (The Eclipse Series, Book 1 of 2)

by M. Leighton

  We watched a popular comedy that I’d actually wanted to see. I was a little disappointed that he hadn’t chosen a scary movie. Although I hated the thought of employing such embarrassing feminine tactics, I would have gladly scooted close to him and hid my face against his shoulder during a scary part. Heck, I would’ve done that during the opening credits if I’d thought I could get away with it.

  As it was, I only laughed during the movie when Trace did. I paid so little attention, I didn’t have a clue what was going on, much less if the dialogue was amusing. I didn’t care, though. I could rent it and watch it later. All I wanted from that night was to be close to Trace and enjoy his company.

  When the movie was over, rather than being disappointed that the night was about to come to an end, I felt the thrill of excitement humming along my nerve ends like ribbons of electricity. I was already thinking ahead to being alone with Trace in his truck, to the possibility that he might try to kiss me when we arrived at my house. Oh, how I hoped he would try to kiss me! Mentally, I dared anyone to interrupt us again, Brady included.

  After ejecting the disc and putting it away, Trace picked up our glasses and reached for the popcorn bowl.

  I held it away from him. “I’ll carry it. I want to say goodnight to your Mom anyway,” I explained.

  I followed him through the house to the kitchen. Rebekah was sitting at the small table in the corner, her feet curled beneath her in the chair, leafing through a magazine and sipping a cup of what smelled like coffee.

  I put the popcorn bowl in the sink and then approached her.

  “Thank you so much for having me over. It was very nice to meet you.”

  With a big smile, Rebekah stood and enveloped me in a big hug. “It was my pleasure, sweetie. Come back any time.”

  I felt that strange heaviness invade my head and limbs again, but it dissipated nearly as soon as it had begun, leaving me feeling a bit confused about the whole thing. I smiled weakly when she released me and stepped back.

  I turned around to find Trace. He was standing in the kitchen doorway watching us, waiting for me. For just a moment, a halo of hazy white fluff surrounded his head. I blinked, again feeling as if there was something amiss with my vision.

  I noticed a small frown pinching his brows together. He must’ve noticed my difficulty. Without hesitation, he stepped forward, grabbed my hand and said, “Come on. I’ll take you home.” And without further ado, he led me from the kitchen, leaving me to call back over my shoulder to his mother.

  “Thanks again, Rebekah.”

  She said nothing.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  We had just pulled out of the driveway when Trace glanced over at me and spoke. I was a bit surprised by his question, thinking he’d have been most interested in what I had found out from his mother.

  “So, what happened in there? In the kitchen. You looked like you were about to hurl.”

  “Oh,” I said, shaking my head as I mentally switched gears. “Uh, I don’t really know. I kept seeing these really strange blurry spots and a couple times I just felt kinda funny. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just tired.”

  “Hmm,” he grunted, noncommittally. He didn’t seem any more reassured by my explanation than I felt. “Well, did you do any good with your alone time?”

  I frowned, dreading bringing up the sensitive subject of Trace’s father’s death.

  “Um, she just told me that your father was killed in a hunting accident. That’s pretty much it.”

  Trace nodded absently, his eyes pointed straight forward, trained on the road ahead. When he said nothing, I felt the need to end the strained silence, so I continued.

  I spoke quietly, gently. “She said that you blame yourself. That you always have. But that it wasn’t your fault.”

  “It’s strange the way the human brain works. I can remember more of the feelings of what happened than the actual events. I mean like, I can’t remember seeing him actually get shot, but I can remember feeling like he was being taken from me and I should’ve done something to help him, to stop it. I don’t know what. It’s not like I could stop a bullet, but ever since that day, I’ve always just felt…haunted by the fact that I should’ve done something. What if I could’ve saved him?”

  With that question, Trace looked to me. I quickly lost all ability to focus on the conversation. My eyes were drawn to a fuzzy white cloud about the size of a fist that seemed to hover just above the skin in the center of his forehead.

  “What?”

  It wasn’t until he spoke that I realized my mouth was slightly ajar. I snapped my teeth together with an audible click, wishing that I had been able to conceal my reaction a little better. I would much rather have had some time to mull over the strange happenings of the night before coming clean about them with Trace. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option, as I was a terrible liar, even more so when cornered.

  “What?” I asked almost reflexively, but it was also a completely ineffective stall tactic.

  Trace made a frustrated noise. “What are you looking at?”

  He reached up to swipe the back of his hand across his forehead, scrubbing in the general vicinity of where I’d been looking. He examined the back of his hand and then looked back at me.

  “Did I get it? What was it?”

  His action hadn’t disturbed the haze in the slightest. It hadn’t even appeared to shift under his hand, but rather seemed to float over top of it as if his hand wasn’t even there.

  My eyes dropped to his. He was waiting expectantly. “Well?”

  “No, it’s still there.”

  “What is it?”

  “I…I, um…I don’t know. It’s like a blurry spot almost.”

  “A blurry spot?” he repeated. “Like the other spots you’ve been seeing tonight?”

  “Yep.”

  “And it’s on my head?”

  “Yep.”

  Trace leaned to his right and peered into the rearview mirror, no doubt looking for any evidence of what I was seeing. When he resettled back into his seat, he glanced back over at me.

  “You still see it?”

  “Yep.”

  He paused, trying to sound casual even though he looked concerned. “Maybe you are tired.”

  I nodded, both of us knowing perfectly well that wasn’t the case. “Probably.”

  A pensive silence fell between us like a veil, each of us lost in thought about what I could be seeing and what it could mean.

  And then I heard the whispering.

  I couldn’t stop the gasp that stole past my lips when I realized the implications of what the voices were telling me, what they were teaching me, revealing to me. Well, I guess it was more like all the possible implications, as I wasn’t really sure what the implications actually were. There were literally dozens of possibilities.

  Unfortunately, once again, Trace was alerted to something I’d much rather have waited to share.

  “Peyton? What’s wrong? What is it?”

  “Um, nothing. It’s nothing,” I said, smiling over-brightly at him.

  He tossed me a look that said he didn’t believe me for one second. “Peyton, you’re a terrible liar. Tell me.”

  “Seriously, I’m just…I just thought I…”

  “Stop trying. You’re only making it worse. Tell me what’s going on.”

  I saw the determination glittering in his eyes. It was there in the firm set of his lips and in the clenched muscle at the corner of his jaw. I sighed in defeat. He wasn’t going to be letting it go any time soon.

  “Trace, I think your mother might be a witch.”

  His gaze flickered between me and the road twice before he guided the truck onto the shoulder and pushed the gear shift into park. He didn’t turn immediately to me or say anything for what seemed like an eternity. My guess is he was mulling it over.

  “Well,” he said, much more calmly than I might’ve expected. “I guess considering what you’ve said about me and Brady, and what we saw in the m
eadow, nothing should surprise me anymore. I’m just not sure what that means exactly.”

  I shrugged. “Neither am I. But there was magic all over those pictures. That’s what I’m seeing.”

  “You mean the fuzzy spots?”

  I nodded.

  “Like the one you see on my forehead?”

  Trace’s voice had grown a bit higher in pitch, concern evident.

  “Um, yeah.”

  He turned to face me fully. “Is it still there?”

  I looked. And it was.

  “Um, yeah.”

  “So you’re saying there’s magic on me? Does that mean she’s doing something to me?”

  “I don’t know. All I can tell you is that, to me, that’s what magic looks like. But even now it’s fading. I think I can only see it when I’m close enough to her to sort of experience her power, or the source or whatever.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “That’s something else that I can do since all this started. Like, when I’m close to people with some sort of…ability or whatever you want to call it—whatever it is that makes some of us different—I can almost absorb their power for a while. It’s like I can feel it or it influences me or something. It’s hard to explain.”

  “So right now, you can feel what I’m feeling?”

  “No. It’s not like that. It’s only when you’re in your…other form. It must have some sort of emotional tie. I’ve seen it most when people are either really angry or something happens to make them really want something.”

  One of Trace’s golden brows arched.

  “Something they really want? Like somebody?”

  It only took me a second to understand what he was asking. And as soon as I did, I felt my cheeks blaze in reaction.

  “Not like that. I don’t want to name names, but one of the girls at school is a succubus. When she is around someone she really wants or she gets really…hungry or whatever, I feel what she feels. I sort of experience it with her.”

  He was quiet for a moment.

  “You don’t have to answer me, but it’s Lacey, isn’t it? Is that what was going on in the bathroom when I got to your house the day of the birthday party?”

  Although I said nothing and I maintained his eye contact, making every effort not to betray my best friend, I knew that he knew. The corners of his mouth tipped up the tiniest bit before they fell straight again.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “I think the bigger question here is what magic is going on inside your head? And why around those pictures?”

  My attempt at a subject change was immediately successful. Trace shifted mental gears and was right there with me.

  “If you were around her again, would you be able to find out more?”

  “I have no idea. I barely know how any of this works, much less how to really make it work in a specific way or for a specific purpose.”

  “But we could try? Would you be willing to do that for me?”

  I avoided saying what I was thinking which was that there was little that I wouldn’t do for Trace. “Of course.”

  “Good,” he said, settling back into the driver’s seat and reaching for the gear shift. “Then it’s a date.”

  I couldn’t help but smile.

  ********

  That night, I lay in bed struggling to calm my frustration over Brady’s childish display when Trace and I had arrived at the house. Well, that wasn’t the sole reason for my frustration. The fact that he’d ruined yet another chance for Trace to finally kiss me was what drove me craziest.

  He must’ve been listening for the throaty rumble of Trace’s truck, because, no sooner than Trace had pulled into the driveway and shifted into park, Brady was out on the front porch. In the back of my mind, I was thankful he hadn’t done anything truly egregious. In fact, he hadn’t even come off the porch. But he hadn’t needed to. He’d simply stood there—barefoot and smiling, arms crossed over his chest, rocking back on his heels—and waited. Words were not necessary, so clear was his message. He might as well have used a bull horn.

  I had been both surprised and oddly impressed when Trace had slowly turned toward me in his seat, blatantly ignoring my ridiculous brother. He hadn’t seemed the least bit ruffled. I was the one who had been most unnerved by his display. If I hadn’t quickly said my goodbyes, Trace might well have kissed me regardless of Brady’s attempts at intimidation. It was a moot point, however, as I had been unwilling to test the theory. In my mind, Brady might’ve gone ballistic, and I didn’t want to risk spending the night picking vampire fangs and werewolf teeth from their throats.

  Angrily yanking on the covers, I turned over onto my side to face the window across from my bed. I watched the shadow of the tree outside paint shifting shapes in the pool of moonlight that spilled onto my carpet. I could all but feel the breeze as I let the sway of the branches lull me into a much more relaxed state. My eyelids were finally getting heavy when a delicious mixture of calm and excitement washed over me.

  Even before I saw his shadow, even before I heard his light knock on my window, I knew it was Trace. Whether it was my relaxed state and I was more receptive to him or something else I wasn’t sure, but I knew with an undeniable certainty that it was him.

  Butterflies fluttered in my stomach as I slid from beneath the covers and padded to the window. When I parted my sheer blush-colored curtains, Trace was standing outside on the lawn, hands stuffed into his pockets, waiting. He wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t fidgeting. He wasn’t frowning. He was simply watching.

  Our house had the old style windows that push out, so I unlatched the right side and pushed it toward Trace. He’d apparently taken several steps back after he’d knocked, so it didn’t come anywhere near him.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked quietly, hyper aware of what Brady’s reaction would be if he found Trace at my window. Luckily, Julia was still gone, although I doubt she would’ve cared anyway. She wasn’t exactly maternal.

  I leaned against the window sill, waiting for Trace to speak, but he didn’t. He just stood perfectly still for about thirty nerve-racking seconds.

  Finally, the light breeze carried his raspy voice to my ears.

  “There was something I wanted to tell you.”

  “Okay.”

  He took one step forward. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you tonight.” Another step. “In fact, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you for a while.” Another step. “It’s just getting worse. But tonight,” he said, taking the step that would bring him within a foot of me. “There was something else.”

  I felt breathless with anticipation. I saw his honey eyes, turned dark gold in the dim light, flicker to my lips and back.

  “And what’s that?”

  “Something I’ve wanted to do for a while, but tonight I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep until I do it.”

  “What’s that?” I repeated, my own voice barely a whisper.

  “I want to kiss you, Peyton,” he confessed, shifting forward just enough to put his face within six inches of mine. “I need to kiss you.”

  Slowly, as if giving me plenty of time to tell him to go home, plenty of time to stop him before he went any further, he raised his arms and cupped my face in both of his hands.

  “I need to kiss you,” he said once more, almost reverentially. And then, inch by agonizing inch, he lowered his head until his lips met mine.

  As though someone had flipped a switch to turn it off, the world disappeared the instant his mouth made contact with mine. At that moment, it seemed that all I would ever need to live would be provided through the touch of his skin. I didn’t have to open my eyes to know that there were threads from our souls stretching from the center of our being and meeting in the air around us. I could feel them joining us together, bonding us forever.

  Trace tilted his head and deepened the kiss. My lips fell open and his tongue slipped easily between them. It slid along mine, teasing me with the sweet
taste of his mouth as he moved one hand to the back of my head.

  I reached up to hold on to his biceps, needing more contact, but unable to get it with the wall between us. They twitched beneath my fingertips causing a thrill to race down my spine.

  Much too soon, Trace wrapped up the kiss and pulled his mouth away from mine. He looked down into my face and smiled, a gesture so gorgeous I thought my heart might stop.

  Happier than I could ever remember feeling, I smiled in return. But then a sad, troubled look fell over his face like a dark curtain. And I felt doom knocking at my door.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “I also came to say goodbye,” he announced, rocking my world to its very foundations.

  “Wh-what?”

  “I’m going to find my father.”

  “But what about the magic and trying to figure out what’s going on with your mother?”

  “I still want to do that, but I just got this feeling in my gut like I should go back to the meadow. I think my father might be there.”

  “Trace, that’s crazy! What if he’s not the only one there? What if there is a repeat of last night?”

  “That’s a chance I’m willing to take. This is just something I have to do,” he said, taking a step back away from me. “I just wanted to see you before I left, just in case…”

  “Don’t talk like that!” I felt almost panicked at the thought of never seeing Trace again. “This is…it’s…it’s crazy!”

  “I know, and if this wasn’t something I truly felt that I had to do, I wouldn’t go. I’d wait until I had some more answers. But I just feel like I need to go tonight.”

  I let his words sink in as I debated my best course of action. It seemed, however, that logic and reason and sensibility were all taking a back seat to the overwhelming fear that Trace was walking out of my life forever, that something might happen to him and I’d never see him again. I knew that I literally couldn’t survive without him. I knew that if he didn’t come back that I would be torn apart by all that was happening around me. Instinctively, I knew that he had been made specifically for me, and I for him, that we were necessary for each other’s survival.