In the darkness my eyes immediately focused on another face. This one was real, not just a fuzzy memory. Dayne was right beside mine. The soft brush of his cheek rubbed against mine, and the warmth of his breath exhaled over my ear. His face contorted with fear and concern and utter horror. I had never seen that face before. He whispered my name, the most beautiful sound in my ears, just like that night in the woods. His arms wrapped around me, hugging me so close to him his muscles quaked with the strain. I had fought against my feelings for too long, and in those last few moments, I was too weak to fight the battle any longer.
I had tried to hate him. I had forbidden myself from even picturing his face. But in those last few seconds, when I knew my life was about to end and it wouldn’t matter anymore, he was all I wanted. I forgave him for everything he had done to me and knew he forgave me, too. I wrapped my arms around him, curled into his chest, and let myself fall in love with him. “I love you,” I whispered. They were the only words I had ever wanted to say to him. One night, I thought he wanted to hear them, too. But, when he rejected me, forgetting them was the only way to live with the pain.
It wasn’t something I could explain. I knew it wasn’t rational, the way I felt about him. But I didn’t care. My short little life had been pretty miserable until he came along and fanned hope’s dangerous flames somewhere in me. I didn’t want to remember the loneliness that had consumed my life, the hurt and guilt I had suffered through, the secrets I kept from everyone I knew. That wasn’t what I wanted to remember about my life in the last few seconds I had on this earth. I wanted to remember him— how alive I felt wrapped in his arms, the dreams I dared to believe when he was with me. Those were the moments I wanted to hold onto. If his memory was with me in those last few breaths, it made up for the pathetic existence I had known in this world.
I let go of my life and held onto him. The windshield was inches away now, but wrapped in his arms, I was ready to go.
His body sheltered me from the chaos as we burst through the windshield with a blast that rivaled a cosmic supernova exploding against a jet-black sky. Light and glass flew everywhere.
I waited for the pain, but nothing came. I waited for the wetness of blood on my body, but never felt it. I knew the hard crash to the pavement was inevitable, but there was nothing.
I slowly opened my eyes and he was there— barely enough room between us to breathe. Relief washed over his face, but his eyes stayed closed, relishing the moment. His muscles flexed tight around me, pulling me closer than I already was. He sighed when his fingers found the soft, warmed flesh of my neck.
“Faye,” he whispered over my ear, his voice breaking with relief.
I must be dead.
Chapter 15
Enlightenment
But I wasn’t dead.
Dayne arched his back, creating enough space to drag his fingers down to my chest. They hovered over my heart, resting on the thin denim fabric of my shirt, feeling it’s rhythm. His head moved toward mine, and I knew he was about to kiss me. The anticipation of his lips touching mine raced through my body, a squeal of suspense bubbling in my throat.
As if in slow motion, his lips approached. He licked them slightly and left his lips parted, just so, waiting for mine to slide into his. We were just about to make contact when the world went black and white.
I’d seen it all before, the morning the vision had practically tossed me from slumber to Rose’s den floor. Before I knew being wrapped in his arms could make me feel like I was the only girl in the world. Before my awful mistakes had ruined everything. Before I had known there was something different about Dayne.
The touch of his lips brought the warmth of life pulsing into me. He was so careful with me, like I was as fragile as glass. His breath hummed in my chest, rattling me, waking me. I thought I’d never get enough of his lips on mine.
Until he pulled away and looked at me with emerald green eyes glowing like lighting bugs against the black night sky above him.
I gasped for breath, choking when I found none. My lungs refused to suck air in, and I thought I might drown in the deep green pools staring at me.
Dread seized my body, forcing my adrenaline to heart attack levels. I pushed away from him, rolling onto my side and jumping to my feet, ready to run.
“Shhhh…..” his voice was soft and warm in my ear the moment I stood up on the slick asphalt. It sent a hot chill running over my neck and tingling along the length my spine. I rubbed my ear over my shoulder, trying to make it go away. A breeze caught my hair, spilling it over my face, giving me a few precious private seconds to think.
Dayne had been laying on the ground a heartbeat before. In a flash, he was right beside me, so close I could hear the soft cadence of his exhales. I sucked in a ragged breath, thankful that at least that part was back to normal.
He hovered at my back, not touching me, but forcing every nerve ending near him to spark like a live wire. I struggled to catch my breath, but the best I could manage were huge, faltering gulps that rattled me to the core. I knew Dayne was keeping secrets. I had known that for a long time, but I didn’t think they were the kind of secrets that could pull me off a crashing bus without so much as a scratch on either of us. That was the stuff of fairytales.
“It isn’t a dream this time. Is it?” Still, I kept my back to him, watching his head shake ‘No’ from the farthest reaches of my periphery vision.
“Unless you want it to be.”
Unless I wanted it to be?
I looked around me through the strands of golden curls whipped gently by the breeze. Wet asphalt was under my feet, just as the ground had always been. Black sky hovered above, still holding the moon in orbit and twinkling stars all around. Tall field grass swayed in the breeze as it had every night before. No, this world was exactly as I remembered. It was real. Dayne was the only thing that wasn’t anymore.
Slowly, I turned to him, relieved to see his eyes were back to their normal dark green. If I could’ve forgotten the last five minutes of my life everything would’ve been normal again. But it was impossible to forget something like that; and impossible to deny after seeing it with my own eyes.
I looked to him for an answer. He said nothing, only watching me with a gaze so intense it tightened his entire face. The moonlight’s silver glow cast a shadow over his burdened expression, making his internal struggle almost palpable.
He was offering me my old life back, a gift he seemed eager to offer, but hesitant to actually give. Wash the night away, my memory cleaned of everything that had happened since I left Clonlea. Make me just as blind as the rest of the world, and forget what he had done to snatch me from the jaws of death.
Tempting as it was, there were two problems with that option. One—I hated my old life. I didn’t want to go back to feeling like the pathetic freak, the disappointing daughter, the shy girl holding up the walls.
Two—I didn’t want to forget Dayne. Not again. I’d spent all afternoon crying over that ugly reality. That wasn’t an option for me either.
But there was something else I realized as I stood there, deciding if my next step would be backwards or forwards.
I wasn’t horrified, or really even surprised, to discover Dayne possessed the kind of powers you only ever read about or saw in movies. Part of me had suspected it all along. What I hadn’t seen coming was that he would ever use those powers to save me. All summer long, I’d wrestled with my feelings for Dayne, told myself it was a stupid waste of time.
It didn’t really seem too stupid anymore. Not after he’d saved my life, and finally shared the secret he’d been keeping.
No, I certainly didn’t want it to be a dream. I was tired of waking up and having nothing but fake memories left of Dayne. I was tired of questioning my sanity when the lines of reality blurred.
I turned away from him, just to be sure my decision wasn’t being made by the crazy things my body did when he was near. I rubbed at my forehead, studying the little black ribbon of roa
d snaking into the distance.
“No,” I finally whispered, my breath a puffy cloud. I swept a glance back at him. His eyes were closed, as he inhaled deeply, held it, and blew it out slowly. His perfect lips pursing around the exhaled breath.
I’d kissed those lips in my dream the night Ali was born. The night his eyes had glowed green and he’d breathed life back into Hannah. Both of which I’d just seen him do again. So that dream was definitely real—a thought that made little butterflies dance in my tummy.
He’d fought an epic battle to save me that day in the woods, with strength that defied logic. I’d never really believed that one was a dream, but after pulling me from a crashing bus, I knew that one was real as well.
Yet there were all the other dreams. The little fantasies I indulged in to fall asleep or settle my mind. My cheeks blushed hot crimson at the thought. Had those been real too?
“Not all of them,” he answered my unspoken question. I gasped and turned back to him. Relieved that the burdened lines had lifted from his brow.
“You can read my mind?” My jaw hug slack, thinking of all the thoughts, good and bad, I’d ever had about him. Those were way worse than the dreams. He smiled, his lips pulling over teeth so white they glowed.
“No.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “I can hear your heartbeat. It sped up. Not too hard to guess.” He shrugged as if it wasn’t totally outside the realm of normal.
“Well how did you know there were more dreams than ones you faked?”
“I didn’t….until just now,” he said, biting at one side of his smile and giving me a wicked wink.
“Oh.” My cheeks were hot as fire and it didn’t seem like a single plausible thought was capable of forming in the empty sponge occupying space between my ears.
Think! I shouted in my head to try and focus the chaos. He read my heartbeat...he had impossible strength...always seemed to show up when I needed him, without being called...and I couldn’t forget how unfathomably good-looking he was.
An involuntary giggle tumbled out of me to think about how blinded I had been. If I had only listened to Rose and April—and even Phin— and their stupid stories I would have known this ages ago. If I hadn’t been so sure my American sensibilities were far superior to the superstitious ramblings of Irish villagers. My giggles stopped abruptly and I sighed.
The only problem was that part of me had known all along, and hoped it wasn’t true. Because if he wasn’t really real—if he was one of them—he certainly could never feel about me the way I felt about him.
The thought broke my battered heart right in two.
“You can ask me,” he said, looking down at me.
His words snapped me out of my thinking daze. I realized I’d been staring at his chest, fingering one of the buttons on his black cotton button down. And he hadn’t stopped me. I jerked my finger away, biting my lip as I stared up at him.
“What are you?” The unfaltering strength of my tone belied the sudden rush of nerves tumbling down the length of me.
“You already know that one,” his eyes studied me with measured concern as his hand came up to rest over the button I had just released. His fingers tracing the same trail mine had.
“Fai…” I was about to say fairy when his finger shot up to my lips, pressing the puckered line to silence me.
“Don’t say that word.”
“Why?” I mumbled around his finger, hoping he never took it away.
“Because we can hear you.” I swear his eyes flashed strobe light green the moment he said the words and the night seemed to turn instantly blacker around me. Terrified, I spun away from him, half expecting a hungry looking mob of fairies to jump out of the tall grass by the roadside. Instinctively, my body began backpedaling, but I quickly ran into the solid wall of Dayne’s chest. It actually soothed me to feel him so near.
“Are you scared now?” he whispered into my ear, his hands resting on my upper arms. I whimpered in a good way.
“I’m never scared with you,” I answered honestly, peeking though my lashes at his hand on my shoulder, thinking how good it looked right there. He sucked air through his teeth and stalked away. I spun around, wild with the fear that he might be leaving me.
“Then I’ve failed to show how dangerous this is,” he said, running a hand over his head and dragging it down his neck in a frustrated way.
“You’re not dangerous. You saved me.”
“If you think a bus crash is the most dangerous thing you faced tonight, you really have no clue,” he sneered, his eyes dulled with anger. “Don’t you know what we do?”
“You aren’t going to suck my soul, Dayne.” I gasped when I realized what I’d just said, how easily the words spilled out, even if they were true. I knew what Dayne was capable of. I’d read that much in Phin’s box of secrets, but I knew Dayne would never hurt me. “You could’ve done that a hundred times, and I couldn’t have stopped you.” I started to walk over to him, but stopped when his eyes flashed wicked and dark.
“You really don’t have a clue.” It wasn’t a question, but I breathed a sigh of relief when his eyes softened and he looked away. “You know I’m not the only one.”
Immediately my vision went black and white and I saw the cold blue eyes that haunted me. I wanted to scream, to run away. But I didn’t.
“You said you wouldn’t let him hurt me,” I argued, remembering Dayne’s promise in the woods.
He turned to me, shaking his head and balling his fists at his side at the memory. I sidled closer to him, and just as I hoped, his hands found me again—one circled my arm, the other cupped my chin and turned my face to his. I thought he might kiss me again. I closed my eyes and swooned into his arms, letting him know I was ready.
He didn’t. Instead he flung his hands from me and stepped away, creating plenty of space between us.
“Ugh! This is so wrong. I never should have done this.” He tore at his face, dragging his hands down his cheeks and over his neck, as if physical pain might take away some of the mental anguish he was suffering.
“Done what?” My voice wavered, still reeling from his almost kiss.
“Us! This?” He waved his fingers back and forth between us. “Could never happen for real.” He explained, loosened mahogany curls slapping at his face when he shook his head. “Selfishly, I just wanted one moment with you. One moment when you knew what I really was before I wiped the memory from your mind.”
“Why?” My heart fell to my toes.
“Because I’d hoped it wouldn’t matter to you.”
“It doesn’t.”
He approached me again, his eyes heavy with the regret, pained somehow by my words.
His fingers traced down both sides of my face, soft as silk. Inside, my stomach lurched up from its depths and lodged in my throat, wanting more than anything to feel his lips on me again. His body tensed, and he leaned closer, barely brushing his lips over mine.
The adrenaline spiked in my veins again, this time causing my knees to buckle, and I fell against him. His arm circled my back, holding me to him.
Then he kissed me. Closing the distance between us, and planting his satin pillow lips over mine. My chest hummed again. This time it was my heart, beating like hummingbird wings to feel his kiss and know he wanted it just as badly as I did. He pulled away with a pained sigh, his lips still lingering on mine.
“I’ll take the memory of this kiss to eternity,” he mumbled against my lips. His fingers tracing up my cheek, continuing to hold me close with the other hand. I was so drunk on his kiss I didn’t care where he put those hands of his. Until they traced over my temple and found their way to my brow.
My eyes flew open and I pushed out of his arms, catching him off guard.
“You’re not taking this from me, Dayne. Not this time,” I shook my head as confusion curled his brow.
“You can’t know these things, Faye. Revealing our world to humans is forbidden. I could be put to death for this.”
�
��So you offered me everything I’ve ever wanted just to take it all away?” I was panicked by the thought of losing it all. His face twisted in bittersweet anguish.
He nodded once and looked away.
It was the first thought that came to my mind. If he couldn’t catch me? He couldn’t make me forget.
I took off like a streak of lightening down the road. Arms and legs pumping harder than they ever had before, running with a purpose.
“Faye!” Dayne called behind me, dragging my name out like I was being utterly ridiculous. Maybe I was, but I wasn’t going to let him leave me again, not without putting up a fight.
A sharp bend curved the road up ahead. If I could make it there—I reasoned— he couldn’t see me and I could find a place to hide long enough to maybe think my way out of this. Maybe.
He hadn’t caught up to me by the time I rounded the bend, and I was beginning to think my hair-brained scheme might work.
My feet stuck to the pavement like it was quicksand when I saw what lay at the end of the curve.
Twisted wreckage, crumpled into a heap of metal against a tall stonewall, steam and smoke hissing into the night with long curling fingers. Lifeless, not a single plea for help or wail of pain. The scene was silent as the grave, expect for the constant drips of leaking fluid splattering to the asphalt and the creaks of the steal-bodied beast sagging into its new shape. The only other sound was a near deafening hum that echoed in my ears. I didn’t recognize it as my own pitiful moan until Dayne’s hand rested on my shoulder, pulling me away from it all.
I curled into his chest, unable to believe the fate he had pulled me from.
“Are they all…?” I said through tears, muffled against his chest.
“No. They’re...sleeping,” he answered, rubbing a hand down my back to soothe me.
“How?”
“I froze time. It was the only way I could save your life. The other passengers were never in danger, and won’t remember any of this. You, on the other hand, would’ve died right there.” His hand left my back long enough to point at a nearby rock to the left of the roadway.
Heir of Earth (Forgotten Gods) Page 22