by C. G. Blaine
By morning, Jesse’s rested enough to finish out the trip. I settle back in beside Hannah and end up sleeping more than I have in the past week. Only, when I wake up, Gabe’s fucking hand is touching me again.
After twenty miserable hours in a cramped space with people I either don’t know, can’t stand, or keep receiving icy stares from, we arrive at our hotel in Daytona Beach.
One day down, five to go.
From our first step out of the vehicle, it’s a constant parade of skimpy swimwear and easily acquired alcohol. Neither of those I ever thought I would complain about—except, after a while of bouncing between beach parties, keeping track of Hannah becomes exhausting. She’s in a sexy red bikini top and jean shorts that show off those legs, so my eyes have no problem staying on her, but she easily disappears unless I’m right next to her. At first, she throws daggers at me if I get too close. But as the crowd gets liquored up and rowdy, she checks over her shoulder more often, making sure I’m there.
We’re following Terra past a DJ’s stage when the feeling comes on fast.
I touch Hannah’s arm, and she turns. “You okay?”
Her eyebrows pull together, and she nods.
Fuck. My eyes frantically scan over the hundreds of heads gathered in the area, looking for any sign of a portal, then they shift to the stage.
The platform beside us stands four feet off the sand, the turntable on one half. Three couples are dry-humping to music on the other. One oily guy pulls his sunglasses down, checking out the rack of another oily guy’s girl. The girl quickly brings it to the attention of oily guy number two.
I reach for Hannah’s arm just as one oily guy charges for the other and tug her back toward me, her chest hitting mine. A second later, the men crash off the stage onto the ground where she would have been standing. They’re both throwing furious punches, other people jumping at the chance to join in. As I tuck her against my side and move us farther away from the brawl, Jesse does the same with Terra on the other side.
Once we clear the crowd, the sensation subsides, and I let her go. She stays close, though, her arm still touching mine while she searches around for Terra.
“She’s with Jesse,” I say. “You ready to go back to the hotel?”
She nods, studying me. “How did you know?”
“Built-in danger detector, Hannah.”
“I meant, how did you know they would fall off the stage?”
Not having a clue how to explain it, I shrug. “I see how one action will lead to the next and domino from there.”
One side of her mouth turns up in the closest thing to a smile she’s given me since before the bar. “If I didn’t know better, I’d make a joke about you using a crystal ball to predict the future.”
I shake my head as I walk away. But at least she’s talking to me again.
After the beach beatdown, Hannah’s interest in the party scene vanishes. She spends the next few days exploring museums, art galleries, historical places, and everywhere else that sparks an interest in her.
The glacier between us gradually begins to melt, and the outings might even classify as enjoyable, if not for the hundred-and-eighty-pound Beaver Cleaver that accompanies us on every one.
On the third day, Gabe hijacks her plans to visit the ruins of an old plantation, asking her to go to the mall. Because why learn about history when you can find designer sunglasses at fifty percent off?
“You look too gorgeous in them for me to decide,” says Gabe. “Buy both.”
“I don’t need two pairs of sunglasses.” She switches back to the darker frames for the fourth time and turns to me. “What do you think?”
I’m playing with a display, and I don’t even glance at her. “I think you don’t need either because they’re ridiculously overpriced, and you’ll lose them before we go home.”
Just as I look, she takes them off. “You’re right.”
Much to Gabe’s dismay, both pairs go back on the counter. “But they’re on sale.”
“So are these.” I pick a cheap pair of black ones with gold-winged tips and put them on her. “Marked down to five ninety-nine from twelve.”
Her nose wrinkles, and she laughs. “They’ll look great with the helmet and leather jacket.”
I smile as she pulls them off. She’s wrong. They’ll look hideous. But I make sure she buys them anyway.
Our next stop is a clothing store that smells like every high school boy on his first date. Gabe pushes for Hannah to try on outfits, and she finally agrees, taking a few to the changing room. After she disappears, he takes an armful of shirts into the dressing room on the other side of the store.
Other than a cashier distracted by her phone behind the counter, no one else is around. And I have one of the better ideas of my entire existence.
I check under the two doors, finding feet under the second one. “Hannah.”
As soon as the handle turns, I push my way into the dressing room with her. She’s fully dressed, the clothes just hanging on the hook, untouched.
“What—”
My hand cups over her mouth as I shoulder the door shut. “We’re getting out of here before he comes out of the dressing room.”
She pulls my hand away, and I expect her to object, but she grabs her bags off the bench in the corner. I don’t move out of the way when she reaches past me for the handle.
“We’re not walking out of here.”
I lunge at her, catching her as she jumps backward. Everything but Hannah drops away until we’re at the plantation she originally wanted to visit. Now our vacation can continue without unwanted interruptions.
Late in the afternoon, we walk through the lobby of the hotel and run into a waiting Gabe.
“What the hell, Hannah?” he says, storming toward us.
“I wasn’t feeling good,” I say. “And her phone died, so she couldn’t text you.”
She holds out her phone, showing him the black screen. Part of me wishes her thumb would bump the button, lighting it up, but she puts it down too fast. Even if he wanted to try to poke holes in our story, Terra steps out of the elevator with Jesse and squeals on her way toward us.
“Guess what!” She grabs Hannah’s hand, swinging it back and forth. “We’re doing a bonfire tonight on the beach.”
Hannah glances up, expecting me to tell her no, which is exactly what I want to do. Dark, isolated, and an entire ocean’s worth of room for a demon to lurk in—it sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. And yet, I discreetly nod at her. Maybe it’s the humidity messing with my head or the fact that we’re getting along for more than thirty-minute intervals.
She smiles at me as Terra drags her toward the elevators, not waiting for the rest of us.
When I get to my room, I stretch out on the bed. I can hear the two of them through the wall in Hannah’s room. Terra’s always been loud. She’s the reason I stopped using the spell that allows me to listen through the crystal ball. Nothing said ever proved useful anyway, so it was more like putting on the TV for background noise.
After a while, I go take a shower. I come out, towel wrapped around my waist, and it’s quiet. I grab a shirt from my bag, but before I pull it on, someone knocks at the door between our rooms. I rake a hand through my hair, swinging it open.
“Oh.” Hannah looks away from my bare chest. “Sorry. I was going to see if you were ready to go to the lobby for dinner.”
“Give me a minute.”
She hovers between the rooms while I head back into the bathroom with my clothes. She’s in tight black jeans with rips at the knee and a short-sleeve shirt that hangs off her shoulder.
“Is that what you’re wearing tonight?” I ask.
“Why? What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing.” I’m still yanking the shirt over my head as I walk out. “But you’ll be cold the second the sun goes down.” I dig out a sweatshirt and toss it at her.
“Thanks,” she says, drap
ing it over her arm.
“I’ll add it to the list of shit I’ll never see again.”
“If you mean your jacket, you can have it back anytime you want. You just have to ask.”
Before I can do just that, someone knocks from the hallway on her side. I flip off the lights in my room and follow her into hers. Hannah opens her door to Gabe, who’s standing there with a sweatshirt in his hand. His attention goes to the one she already has and then straight to me behind her. I give him a smug grin, really enjoying being in his way again.
Rather than leave Hannah and me alone while he goes back to his room, he totes the damn thing around with him the rest of the night. We eat dinner at a crowded place that only serves chicken wings. The goal of everyone there is to talk louder than everyone else around them. Gabe slides into one side of the booth, and just to push his buttons, I scoot in right next to him. Sabotage is so much more fun up close and personal.
The beach is a harsh contrast to the restaurant. Every hundred feet or so are small groups of people gathered around a fire ring, but the ocean seems to swallow up every noise outside of a laugh here and there. One interesting thing unchanged about man since the beginning is their weird sense of camaraderie surrounding certain activities. Harvest has always been a big one and anything to do with fire another. Perhaps it’s the sense of power controlling something so destructive.
We light ours as the sun sets and spread out towels on the sand to sit on. Jesse starts pulling bottles of beer out of Terra’s oversize bag and passes them around.
“I’m good for now,” Gabe says. “I was thinking about going for a walk down the beach.” He pauses, and I wait for it. “You want to come, Hannah?”
Her attention stays on the waves rolling onto the shore. She’s close enough that I nudge her shoe with mine. She looks at me first and then Gabe. “No, thanks though.”
He hesitates, reconsidering his plan, but she goes back to watching the water, so he gives a small, defeated smile and wanders off. Fuck, I almost feel bad for the guy. If not for demons and me, he probably could have had a chance at a white-picket-fence ending with her.
“I’m going to meet our neighbors.” Jesse collects a few extra beers to distribute.
“I’ll come.” Terra dusts off the backs of her legs as she stands up off the sand. “You two want to be sociable for once?”
We both shake our heads, and then it’s just us and the fire. As night takes over, I lean back on my palms and look up at the sky, trying to see any changes from the last time. A complete impossibility, but it never stops me. It doesn’t take long for Hannah to move over next to me, bringing a blanket with her. She wraps herself up before offering me enough to cover my leg closest to her.
“Hannah Grace Kelley, always thinking of others.”
“Hey, you come with a built-in heating system. You’ll be fine.” She pulls her legs under the blanket and stares up with me. “What’s that star called?”
Given the vicinity in which she points, I assume she means the brightest one. “Regulus.”
“And that one?”
“Alioth.”
“What about—”
“Is this what you plan on doing all night? Because I can drop your ass at the planetarium at any time.”
Her hand disappears back under the blanket. “You stare at the sky like my mom used to stare at the ocean.”
“How’s that?” I ask, sitting up.
“Like it brings you peace.”
The last time I saw Samy, he mentioned something similar but said it made me look alive. Then he slapped me on the back and told me to stop looking up and find something down here that could do the same. Whatever the fuck that meant.
Hannah’s watching the ocean again, her eyebrows pulled together.
“You figuring out the meaning of life?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I’m thinking about the last time I was on the beach at night.”
Fuck.
The blanket falls off her shoulder as she picks at the fringe running along one side. “Were you at my parents’ funeral?”
I swallow hard, already knowing where this train is heading, and fuck if I don’t want to get off it. “I was close by but not there.”
She nods. For a second, I think she might drop it, but then she says, “And when I went to California after?”
She looks at me through her eyelashes, and I don’t need to answer her. It already hangs in the air between us. What happened after she spread her parents’ ashes into the ocean. When she walked into the dark water with the urn. How she swam out, and then she just … stopped.
It was the moment I almost lost everything.
“You pulled me out of the water,” she says. “You pulled me out, and then you made me forget you.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t make you forget the entire fucking thing.”
“Why didn’t you?” she asks, not missing a beat.
I avoid her eyes and shrug. “Because when I got to you, you were fighting. At the last second, you changed your mind. You needed to remember what it felt like to lose everything and still find a reason to survive.” I hesitate, forcing myself to look at her. “I needed you to remember, so I wouldn’t have to find out what it felt like for myself.”
It happens fast. She leans in and gently presses her lips to mine, then she’s already pulling away. “I’m sorry. I—”
“Stop talking.” My fingers wrap around the back of her neck, bringing her mouth back to mine.
It’s all Hannah at first. Her soft lips and warm skin burn through me before I even sense any light. And it’s fucking incredible. Her lips part, and I brush my tongue against hers. Light pulses through me then in a familiar rhythm. I move my hand to the front of her neck. The same cadence beats under my palm, slowly gaining speed. It’s never occurred to me the two would match, but it makes nothing but sense.
Her hand runs through my hair, the other on my cheek. She pulls me closer, wanting me as much as I want her. I start to move her onto my lap, but a voice breaks through the waves.
“Hannah,” Terra calls.
Her lips leave mine when she looks away, and I hang my head, knowing they won’t be coming back.
“I should go.” She gets up, taking the blanket with her. A few feet away, she stops but doesn’t turn around. “Cass.” Not even a glance over her shoulder. “Thank you.”
The two words hit harder than I thought two words ever could, ripping their way far enough into me that they’ll never leave. I’m watching when she reaches the next fire down the beach, and I’m watching as Terra pulls her over to join the group, and I’m watching each and every time she glances over her shoulder, looking for me. And I feel her when she finds me sitting where she left me. The girl I thought was an obstacle between me and everything I could ever want. But that’s not Hannah anymore, and maybe it never was. She’s so much more. She might actually be the everything I stand to lose.
Unsurprisingly, Cass and I don’t talk about the kiss on the beach. Not while walking down the hall of the hotel or before he cuts through my room to his and shuts the adjoining door. In fact, we barely talk at all other than him asking if I want syrup for my pancakes at breakfast. But this is what we do. We hit a point of vulnerability neither of us is comfortable with, blur the line between us, and then avoid each other until our situation forces us back together.
It’s a merry-go-round. The longer we’re on it, the faster it spins. What worries me is what happens when one of us falls off.
Since it’s our last full day in Florida, we all spend it on the beach together. We find a quieter area away from the madness still going on in certain parts. Jesse brings his football and makes the poor life choice of trying to teach Terra and me how to play. Every time she gets the ball, she just starts running, not even caring if it’s in the right direction. I’m not any better. He throws me the ball, and I duck, letting it bounce across the sand on the other side of me.
A laugh comes from behind me, and I spin around to see Cass shaking his head while reading. He’s stretched out on a towel next to Terra’s “shit,” which she ordered him to watch.
“You’re wasting your time,” he says when Jesse jogs by to retrieve the ball. “They kicked her off the volleyball team in junior high for the same reason.”
“What?” I push away the hair the breeze keeps blowing in my face. “Mom said they politely asked me to resign because the team was full.”
“Don’t listen to him.” Jesse stops in front of me. “He’s just trying to get in your head. You got this.”
As he backpedals away, Cass looks up from the book, focusing on me.
“Ready?” Jesse shouts from about fifty feet down the beach.
I nod, and his arm pulls back. The ball spirals toward me, and proving his confidence in me is completely misplaced, I wince and close my eyes. They fly back open at a loud smack, Cass’s hands only a few inches from my face with the ball in them. He stares down at me, eyebrow raised.
I swipe the ball from his hands. “Danger detector go off?”
“Nope. That one was just obvious.”
I laugh, and a dimple appears along with his half-smile. For a second, the spinning doesn’t feel so bad. It almost seems like it slows down a little.
We lounge around the rest of the afternoon, finally going back to the hotel to clean up for dinner. I’m not surprised to see Gabe in the hall when someone knocks after my shower. He’s been relatively reserved around me since the bonfire last night. Part of me thinks he saw me with Cass.
“You ready to go downstairs?” he asks.
“Yeah, let me grab Cass.”
He catches my arm as I turn. “Is he the real reason we’re not together, Hannah?”
I adamantly shake my head. “No.”
“Then why? Because I don’t buy the school excuse. Anytime we talked about it, we—”
The door between our rooms opens. Cass’s eyes lock on Gabe’s hand on my arm, his jaw tense when he looks at me.
