Falling Under by Gwen Hayes Page B

why I haven’t been kissed.”
    I regretted the words and my tone instantly. What if he told me what I already knew? That I was lacking. Not interesting or pretty enough.
    “You were waiting.”
    My blood surged, and I watched his lips now. Studied them. Like they were the answers I sought. “Are you going to kiss me?”
    “No.”
    The slap of rejection wounded me, and I reeled back. I had to turn my eyes away. I couldn’t let him see how much hurt he could inflict upon me with just one word.
    “You were wrong.” The weight of his hands settled on my arms psychically , though he hadn’t put them physically on me. It was a poor substitution, but once again, I met his eyes and was dazzled by the earnestness I saw there. “It’s true that I never want to hurt you. But I can’t promise you that I never would. I want to kiss you, Theia, but I won’t.”
    “I want you to.” I ached for him. The longing, like a vine, coiled around me and stretched out towards him, wanting to twine us together. I needed more than a psychic touch.
    I needed him.
    “I can’t.” He ground out the words even though he moved closer to me.
    We were close enough to make it happen right then. I angled my head slightly and whispered, “I want you to be my first.”
    Our bodies tried to make the decision for us, bringing us impossibly close, our breath mingling and hearts thumping in unison.
    “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered. “Sometimes I daydream about your heart-shaped mouth for hours.”
    His will was breaking. It chipped off him little by little. He desired me and, surrounded by his scent, I desired to lose myself to him completely. Nothing else made sense but this. Yet he fought a war with himself, even though I offered myself freely. The anguish in his eyes triggered a flash of something I’d seen before. Something recent … something …
    I gasped and stumbled backwards.
    I’d seen the suffering in those eyes once before.
    “You’re the burning man.”

CHAPTER SEVEN
     

     
    T he impact of waking so suddenly sent me scrambling out of my bed before I even realized I was awake. I glanced around my room wildly, trying to make sense of where I was. My heart slammed against my rib cage like a trapped animal desperate for escape, and I trembled violently as my conscious self met up with the rest of me.
    There would be no more sleep for me that night.
    After my pronouncement, Haden had recoiled from me in horror. In the blink of an eye, he disappeared—reappearing several feet away and telling me to wake up.
    Haden could not possibly be the burning man. That man had died in front of me, and I had watched him turn to dust. If that had even happened. Everything was so confusing. Up is down, down is up.
    What I couldn’t discount was the bone-deep awareness that Haden had suffered and that somehow it had something to do with me.
    I couldn’t sit still. It was too late to try for more sleep, yet too early to get ready for school. The walls felt like a cage, and I suddenly hated everything in my room. Oh, I’d never really liked it much—it was fine for a catalog but not for a real girl. But now it mocked me. Where were my posters, my dirty clothes? A small concession was given by way of a corkboard with a few snapshots and movie tickets. The rest of the room was staged perfectly for a photo shoot or a real estate tour.
    Empty of anything that defined it as real.
    That was how I felt sometimes. I existed in a world made for show, not depth, not feeling.
    And then along came Haden.
     
    Haden stared at the bathroom mirror instead of going to class. The face looking back at him was what they saw when they looked at him, but his reflection lied. If they knew why he was here … what he planned to do … they would see him as he really was.
    A monster.
    He’d been waiting for this chance his whole life. To experience humanity. To be a part of it, to understand the feelings he’d been born with but never allowed to express. And