Angelfire
Page 71

"You were great," he said with a gentle smile as he caught his breath. A gash on his neck was slowly closing. I reached up to touch it, to touch him , because I knew it would be my last chance. His smile faded as if he'd read my mind.
"What's wrong?"
I bit my lip to keep from grimacing as something popped inside me, trying uselessly to heal. "I'm all right."
Will's eyes flashed brightly as he cupped my face with both hands, smoothing my hair back, examining me for damage. He knew. He hadn't found the wound yet, but he knew it was there. "You're hurt. Where? Please let me help you. Where is it?"
As his heart broke in front of me, tears slid down my cheeks and I pulled away, refusing to let him see. I didn't want it to be real for him. Not again. The sudden movement caused me to cry out and double over. Will screamed my name and fell over me, throwing his sword away and pulling me close to him as my knees hit the ground. Red drenched my dress and pooled around me, soaking the ground with darkness like a pit leading to Hell.
Will pulled me against his chest, cradling me gently. He pulled the torn bodice of my dress apart to examine the wound. I stared into his face as he saw the extent of the damage and clenched his eyes shut, sucking in his upper lip and setting his jaw tight. He took a deep breath and looked up into my face, tucking my tangled hair behind my ear and thumbing my cheek tenderly. He opened his mouth to say something but closed it again. He wouldn't lie to me and tell me I'd be all right. He never lied to me. He leaned over me and pressed his forehead to mine, his body shuddering from a pain different from my own.
"Will," I breathed. It hurt to speak and I could barely look at him, but I had to do both. For him. I studied his face, the jewellike color of his eyes, the curve in his lips, memorizing every part of him. "I'm sorry."
He pulled back and shook his head. His thumb traced my bottom lip gently. "Don't be sorry for anything. Ever."
"I'll come back to you," I promised.
He nodded, tears budding in his own eyes. "I know. And I'll be waiting. I'll wait for you forever."
I woke with a death grip on the sheets. I released them and sat up, furiously trying to remember the nightmare I had just had. I touched my bel y and was relieved to find it smooth and uninjured. It felt almost as if Wil were stil touching me, and it tingled where I remembered that he had. In my dream he'd thought I was going to die, but I wasn't sure if I did in the end. That part never happened in the dream.
Was it a memory or just a dream? I couldn't even tel the difference anymore.
difference anymore.
In the real world, Wil stood with his back to me, looking out the window. When the blankets rustled, he turned toward me. I blushed for no reason at al when I saw his face. The Wil from my dream stared back at me with his beautiful, kind smile, and it took another moment for me to distinguish reality from my memory. He felt so far away, and he'd been so close to me moments before in my dream.
"How'd you sleep?" he asked. He leaned against the wal and folded his arms over his chest.
I stretched my arms wide. "I had a dream about you."
"I hope it wasn't an embarrassing one."
"No," I said. "But it wasn't a good dream, either."
His eyes fluttered to the side for a moment and he said nothing.
"Do you think it was a memory?" I asked.
"It could have been," he said. "What happened in it?"
I explained it to him: the battle with the reapers, and me lying in the street, but I left out the more intimate parts. He kept his expression blank and he nodded a couple of times.
"Was it real?" I asked.
"Yes," he said. "It was in New York, just before the Civil War broke out. I'm happy your memory is coming back to you, but I wish you had remembered something else."
"Did I die?" I whispered.
His gaze was strong on mine and he said nothing. He didn't need to. His face told me the answer he didn't say aloud.
"At least you're remembering," he said softly. "We can be thankful for that."
"I am," I said, but I wasn't so sure. As much as I hungered to learn more about my past, I was afraid of learning other things, too--mostly about death and despair, and dark corners of the globe. I prayed that those memories wouldn't come back to me, because I felt in my bones that some things were too frightening to remember.
25
NOVEMBER WAS DULL. KATE AND LANDON NEVER mentioned about the bathroom incident on Hal oween, and there was no way I was going to ask. If they didn't want to talk about it, then it was fine with me. At least Landon seemed to be uninterested in me, final y, so I didn't have to worry about leading him on or hurting his feelings.
One night after a tough training session, I sat at a rickety desk in one of the old offices in our warehouse, scrambling through a pile of algebra homework while Wil sat serenely in a broken chair across from the desk. Trying not to flunk out of school while balancing hunting reapers was becoming increasingly difficult. This wasn't the first time I'd had to bring my homework to our sparring sessions. We'd spar, I'd do a vocab sheet or something, and then we'd spar again. I was going to lose my mind.
"You know, if you're going to be looking over my shoulder, you might as wel help me out with this," I grumbled. "I am tel ing everyone you're my tutor. Make yourself useful and tutor me."
"I'm being useful," he retorted. "I'm listening. And besides, I have no idea what any of this even means."