Earthbound - Aprilynne Pike

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      I look up at her, suspicious; this is more than she usually delves. Or maybe I just haven’t noticed, but today everything makes me feel paranoid.

      “I’m only asking,” Reese says quickly, “because I need to visit a client out of town in the next week or so. I wondered how you would feel about me being gone for a couple days.”

      “Oh, that would be totally fine,” I say, too fast. “Is Jay going with you?”

      “Don’t I wish. He’s got a new project. There’s no way they’d let him take a week off now.” She’s leaning against my door frame, her voice distant—wistful. If she weren’t answering a direct question, I would wonder if she was talking to me or herself.

      Then, abruptly, she straightens, and looks at me and smiles. Big.

      I like Reese; I really do. But she tries so hard. Too hard, I guess. Jay takes everything more naturally, and it’s easy to sit and joke when it’s just him and me. Or even all three of us. When I’m alone with Reese, it takes effort.

      “Dinner’ll be ready in about ten minutes,” she says cheerily. “I made lasagna.”

      I grin and she interprets it as excitement for the lasagna—which is understandable. It’s great lasagna! But really I’m laughing at her use of the word made. Because in my opinion, the guy at the deli made the lasagna. All Reese can take credit for is slipping it into the oven and setting the timer.

      That might be baking, but it’s definitely not making. When Mom made lasagna, she’d spend hours rolling fresh noodles and crushing tomatoes and chopping oregano. Nothing came from a pouch or a can or a deli; for Mom, food was art. Reese’s lasagna is different—just like everything else in my new life. So different that it doesn’t seem entirely real sometimes. There are days when my life here feels like I’m at an exotic summer camp and after a few more candlelit meals and nights under my silky down comforter, I’ll go home and my parents will be waiting back in middle-class Michigan.

      Other days it feels so different that the fact that my old life is gone seems all the more real.

      And depressing.

      Luckily, most days are somewhere in the middle.

      “My favorite,” I blurt at last.

      Reese plays with the edge of her untucked blouse as her mind churns almost visibly. She’s trying to think of something else to say.

      I avoid the tension by looking out the window at the frothy Piscataqua River and almost choke in surprise, my heartbeat immediately back up to full speed. “You know what, Reese? I’m kinda hot. I’m going to go outside for a little bit.”

      I hope I sounded sufficiently casual as I squeeze past her and make it halfway down the stairs before she can respond, my leg throbbing as I nearly run.

      “Dinner in ten,” she yells after me. “You need to eat!”

      But I barely hear her.

      I burst out the back door, my eyes scanning, searching. Please don’t let me be too late, I mentally beg.

      But I’m not.

      He’s still there. Crouched on the riverbank.

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      He doesn’t seem to take any notice of me as I walk up, blinking furiously and trying to make sure I actually see him. That he’s real.

      But as usual, there’s no flickering, no glowing. Not like the woman by the realty office or the triangle at the house. Just … him. Real and solid. I’m both relieved by and afraid of that.

      The jacket and hat are gone, but he hasn’t exactly replaced them with jeans and a polo. He’s wearing a linen shirt tucked loosely into brown canvas breeches and his feet are bare, toes half buried in the rocky sand. I glance around at the ground next to him and don’t see any shoes. But then, if he was crazy enough to come to my house uninvited and unannounced two days in a row, maybe he walks around barefoot, too.

      In March.

      As I watch, the air frozen in my lungs—is my heart even beating?—he lifts a hand and tucks a strand of that silken hair behind his ear. Then he bends forward, the linen straining across his shoulders, and picks up a small rock. With a leisurely motion he swings his arm around and releases the stone to go skipping over the face of the river.

      The stillness is gone.

      A hot fountain of anger and need and want and fury bubbles up in my stomach and as I cover the distance between us, I’m not sure which are stronger—the feelings holding me back or the ones propelling me forward.

      Then I’m there. Beside him.

      He doesn’t look up. Doesn’t give any indication that he knows I’m standing here at all.

      It just makes me angrier.

      “I saw you,” I say, just loud enough for him to hear—I don’t want to draw anyone’s attention, especially Reese’s. “Yesterday. Today, I mean. Two in the morning.”

      I wait for him to explain, to defend himself. To lie even. But he says nothing.

      “And then on Park Street too. I don’t like that you’re following me and I want you to stop.” My teeth nearly clamp down on the lie I didn’t know was a lie until it came out of my mouth.

      But at least I got it out. Benson would be proud.

      Still the guy says nothing. Just reaches for another stone and lets it fly, like the first one.

      “I’m serious,” I say.

       I’m not.

      “I want you to leave me alone.”

       I want you to talk to me.

      He’s still. Still and silent.

      “Hey!” I snap, folding my arms across my chest. “Are you even listening to me?”

      He reaches for another rock and I move in front of him to block his throw.

      “You can’t just—” I look down at his face and my words cut off.

      It’s the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen.

      Leaf-green eyes look up at me with a calm as deep as the waters of Lake Michigan. His jaw is angular, but the curve of his mouth softens the lines and his sooty lashes do the rest. As I drink him in, a strand of golden hair slips loose from behind his ear and casts a dark shadow across his cheek. Air hisses through my lips in a gasp, and though I’m trying to form words, my mouth doesn’t obey.

      As if sensing that he’s the source of my distress, he looks away, back over the water, and I can move again.

      “I beg your forgiveness,” he says, and his voice is deep, but soft. Dark chocolate. “I approached you badly. Botched it all up.” His words sound a little off—accented maybe, but not with any lilt I can place.

      I don’t know what I was expecting, but an instant apology wasn’t it. Excuses, denials, that’s what I was ready for. I’m stunned by his admission and, for a moment, stand with my mouth slightly open.

      “I ought to have introduced myself in the traditional way.” His eyes meet mine again and I can’t look away.

      “Yeah, that would have been better than standing outside my kitchen at two in the morning,” I force myself to say.

      “I frightened you.”

      Again the bluntness. I want to deny it—to insist I wasn’t afraid at all. But I was. Terrified and exhilarated in equal measure.

      “But I am not the one whom you should fear.”

      I study him. There’s … something. Something familiar,

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