Paranormal Realities Box Set (47 page)

Out of the corner of my eye, a movement.
Holden was following me. The boulder in my stomach bounced up into my lungs.
Suddenly, the punch bowl wasn't a good idea. Escaping to the girls' room seemed
a much better option. He couldn't follow me in there and no confrontation of my
insecurities would be necessary.

 
I made it into the hall just outside the gym before Holden
caught up with me.

"Eve." His deep voice called
from behind me. "Why are you running away?"

A hesitation hitched my step then I spun
around to face him.

"You know my name," I
exclaimed.

"And you know mine is Holden."

He stepped closer. He had to be at least
five foot ten to my five foot five. But it was his eyes that really got me. I'd
taken enough art classes to know you couldn't find this color straight from the
tube. A special mixture with cerulean and a bit of umber
might
achieve
the color. But the mixture would probably need a topping of a lapis glaze.

"When did we meet?" I asked.

A smile quirked the right edge of his
lips. "A long time ago," he answered, edging even closer so there was
barely a foot between us.

"Why can't I remember?"

"You will," he said. "But
that doesn't matter as much as our dance."

"What dance?" I forced out the
question past that persistent boulder.

His smile widened, showing a beautiful
row of white teeth. "The one you were going to ask me for before you
chickened out."

"Oh," I whispered into his
chest, unable to meet his eyes any longer. "That one."

Holden took my right hand in his and
lifted it. Turning it palm up, he traced the lifeline with his thumb.
"Won't you dance with me, Eve?"

"Here?" I glanced around me.

"Why not?"

Yes. Why not? We were alone in the
darkened hall. The music poured through the open doors of the gym and was almost
as loud as it was inside its confines.

I'd barely nodded before Holden tugged my
hand and brought me against him. Our eyes locked. My right palm molded against
his left with our fingers intertwined. With his arm around my waist, mine
around his shoulders, we swayed in time to the slow beat. Neither of us spoke.
I couldn't know exactly what he was feeling, but he looked at me as if I were
the most important person in his world.

That pesky boulder exploded and the
fragments transformed to fizzy soda pop in my stomach. I never wanted to go
back to the ordinary me. I wanted to bask in the specialness forever. Luckily,
the next song was also a slow one and one dance became two. I think a third one
came and went also. That might have been a J-Lo upbeat disco mix but we treated
it like a ballad.

In the midst of the third dance, I saw
something in his eyes. He stopped swaying and we stood chest-to-chest,
stomach-to-stomach.

The fizzy soda pop in my stomach
intensified into Alka Seltzer and exploded outward, filling my entire body.

He was going to kiss me. My very first
kiss...ever.

I would have licked my lips, but I was
afraid he'd feel the slobber and get repulsed. What should I do? Open my lips?
Keep them shut? Pucker?

Damn I hadn't had a breath mint since I got
in the car with Quinn an hour ago. What if my breath was bad? What if—

His head lowered toward mine, his lids
drifting shut. I leaned upward going on tiptoes, my own eyes closing.

We were going to kiss. Nothing could
break us apart.

Nothing that is except Quinn, Ronny and
Lashonda.

"Where is Eve?" Quinn's voice
came from just inside the gym. "I saw her coming this way."

"I thought you said she was a crazy
bitch," Ronny observed. "Why do you want to find her?"

"She shoulda been back with the
proper attitude by now." Quinn huffed.

"Why don't you just leave Eve
alone," Lashonda piped in.

"Why don't you leave Chase
alone?" A petulant demand came out of left field.

"Petra Pie," a male
voice—Chase—said. "It was just one dance. What are you getting
so mental about?"

Make that Quinn, Lashonda, Ronny, Petra
and Chase breaking us apart.

"C'mon." Holden stepped back
and pulled me with him a few steps down the hall where we could take cover
behind a bank of lockers.

Peeking around the cool metal gave us a
view of the bickering group. We could have just joined them, but it made me
giddy that Holden didn't want to. Hiding away with him was like the two of us
against the world. Besides, we were so new I didn't feel up to sharing him with
Lashonda just yet.

"Why the freak are you following me,
Petra?" Lashonda demanded.

"I'm following you to warn you
and your weave
about trespassing on my guy."

"I'll have you know this is all my
own hair and you better not be touchin' it again or you'll be wearin' your left
nostril as a toe ring."

Petra turned on Ronny. "Why don't
you keep your girl in line? Don't you care that she's running after my
boyfriend?"

Ronny's gaze darted to Quinn before going
back to Petra. In that split second his face spoke volumes about what was in
his heart. Ronny loved Quinn. He was here for Quinn, not Lashonda. If I hadn't
been here, apart from the rest, I probably wouldn't have noticed it. The needy
expression was there and gone in a flash. Poor Ronny. Quinn wouldn't be an easy
object of unrequited affection.

"Lashonda's a free agent,"
Ronny said. "I'm not threatened if she wants to dance with another
guy."

"Yeah," Quinn added.
"Ronny's on the football team. He can get any girl he wants. He doesn't
have to settle for the friends of crazy whacked out bitches."

I almost laughed. Holden held a finger to
his lips, shushing me. He pulled me further down the hall with him to a metal
fire exit door, which I knew led to a staircase.

Once we'd escaped through, we were up
half of the first flight before I asked, "Where are we going?"

"The roof," Holden said,
continuing up.

"The door to the roof is probably
locked." Stopping, I pulled at his hand.

He turned to smile down at me from one
step above. "I can get us through any locked door."

"What are you a lock-picking criminal?"
I joked.

"Something like that."

When we reached the top, he fiddled
briefly with the door before it swung wide. He turned back to me, beaming.

"Success." Holding the door
open with one hand, he bowed and made a sweeping, ushering-in gesture, with his
other arm. "Your rooftop awaits, my lady."

"Thank you, kind sir," I said,
hoping the giggle at the end of my statement didn't sound too ridiculous.

Fortunately, even though it was fall, the
South was so temperate that the night wasn't cold. In fact, the cool breeze
felt good against my overheated skin. A perpetual blush had covered me since I
first spoke to Holden.

I passed through the open doorway and
Holden followed. The metal door clanged shut. When I turned towards him, he
held out a beckoning hand. Going to him with my own hand outstretched seemed
the most natural thing I'd ever done.

Hand-in-hand we walked to the center of
the roof. Holden removed his gray sport coat, revealing a navy blue,
open-collared shirt he wore over his jeans. Like a knight of old, he spread the
coat on the flat, tar roof and invited me to sit.

When I had settled on it with arms
wrapped around my knees, he sat beside me. We must have stared at the sky
together for at least five minutes before the tension of being alone with a
cute guy really got to me and I had to break the silence.

"So what is that star constellation
up there?" I asked pointing to a clump of bright lights in the sky.

"I don't know," Holden answered
with a smirk. "I never really learned anything about astronomy."

Neither had I. My knowledge was limited
to how to activate the stargazing app on my cell phone and the phone was
downstairs in the gym at the bottom of my purse.

Arching an eyebrow, I adopted the same
teasing tone he had. "So you don't know whether that really bright one
over there is a planet or a star."

"Well...." His compressed lips
told me he was suppressing a smile. "I do know enough to recognize the
lights on a passenger jet."

"Oh yeah. Right," I said,
trying to hold back a snicker.

My effort didn't work and when the laugh
broke from me, he joined in.

"So why are we up here if you didn't
want to show me the stars?"

The smile slipped off his face and his
gaze became serious and intent. "I'm here for you." Holden took my
hand from where it rested against the roof, lifted it and touched his lips to
the back. "I'm always here for you."

I didn't understand exactly what he meant
but the kiss had sent more soda fizzing through my veins and somehow I couldn't
really care to analyze every word.

"I brought you up here to talk to
you," he said.

"What about?" The question came
automatically, but my real attention was on the curve of his lips. I just
wanted him to speak some more so that I could watch them move.

"It's—" He hesitated,
staring down at our still clasped hands, he then continued. "I'm not sure
how to begin."

"Why don't you tell me a little
about you? Did you just start coming to school here? Where did you go to school
before?"

"I went to school in Miami
until...two days ago, almost three."

"You're family moved so soon after
the start of the school year? That had to be hard."

His eyes went back to our joined hands.
"Yeah."

"So you probably don't know much
about Savannah."

"Nothing," he said.

"I wasn't that thrilled about moving
here either so my dad forced me to take a walking tour. It was actually pretty
interesting.

He smiled. "Tell me something."

"Okay." I cleared my throat and
made my tone as professorial and pompous as I could. "Founded in 1733,
Savannah was the thirteenth colony. General James Oglethorpe and about a
hundred and twenty settlers arrived on a ship called the 'Anne'. He laid out
the city with twenty-four park-like squares at the center of each ward. Most of
the architecture dates back to the eighteen hundreds since Savannah was one of
the few cities not burned by Sherman in his march to the sea during the war of
Northern aggression."

When I glanced at Holden I could see his
smile had widened to a grin.

"Are you sure you want to hear
this?"

"Maybe not."

We fell silent as we gazed up at the sky
again.

Soon, my mind was turning over the
question of how Holden could be so familiar.

"I've never been to Miami," I
said, breaking the silence. "Where did we meet before?"

"Don't you remember anything?"
he asked.

"No," I said. But even as the
"o" hung in the air, sudden prickling tingles radiated from the
contact point of our hands. The tingles reminded of the pain of a limb
awakening after I'd slept on it all night. Nice but painful at the same time.

Memory flashed, ricocheting against the
interior walls of my brain. I saw and felt myself being kissed by Holden. His
lips on mine, gently moving. His arms wrapping me in an embrace I never wanted
to leave. At the same time, the pain of the moment took my breath away. As I
recognized the sorrow in my heart, the memory changed and I saw myself gazing
down at a grave with eyes so full of tears I couldn't see the name on the
headstone. I was gulping down so many sobs I could taste the morning fog.

Jerking my hand out of his as if scalded,
I shouted, "What was that?" Before he could answer I scrambled up and
stepped away from him.

Holden rose and took a step towards me
with hand outstretched. "Eve, please don't be afraid."

My mind racing with wonderings, I stepped
back again like an automaton.

"No, Eve," Holden warned.
"You're getting too close to the edge."

Over my shoulder, I saw that the back of
my foot was barely six inches from a drop of at least fifty feet. My eyes flew
to meet Holden's. He must have realized I was frozen because he rushed to my
side and pulled me to a safe distance from the edge.

Wrapped in his hug, I felt his hands
caressing my back and I pressed myself to him. For a moment I rested my cheek
against his chest. The familiarity of the moment both pleased and stunned me at
the same time. Why?

But while I didn't know the answer to
that question, I knew what I wanted to do next. Raising my head, I stared into
his beloved eyes before lifting myself on tiptoes to press my open mouth to
his.

Our lips touched.

In an instant, the touch became more
insistent as our mouths pressed together in a seemingly seamless blending. Our
arms wrapped around each other, the embrace was a wordless reunion. A first
kiss and yet not a first kiss. Mouths moving together as if we'd kissed dozens
of times before.