The Rising
Page 77

Ash, Kenjii, and I walked along the main street, dirt now, though they’d already paved the road into the town. Daniel and Corey lived on the edge of the lake nearest that paved road, next to the main community building, where Chief Carling had her office.
As we walked, someone hailed us. It was Antone. He came around his house, hammer in hand, Moreno trailing behind, beer in hand.
“Ah, Daniel’s party,” Antone said, waving at the picnic basket and wrapped gift. “Say happy birthday to him for me.” He shifted the hammer to his other hand. “So, we’re still on for Sunday dinner?”
He looked anxious, as if he expected us to back out. We’d been doing Sunday dinner every other week for six months now, but I think he kept expecting us to make excuses. We didn’t. It wasn’t an easy relationship. Maybe it never would be. But Ash and I understood how important this was to him, and even if we’d never be a family in the way he’d dreamed of, we’d be something.
I assured him we were coming.
“If it’s still warm, we’ll eat on my new back deck,” he said. “Which I hope to have done . . . if someone exchanges his beer for a hammer.”
“Hey, I have two hands,” Moreno said. “So, kiddies, are we still on for our dysfunctional family moment? Lessons at the range next week?”
“Wednesday after school,” I said. “We’ll be there.”
“What?” Antone looked at Moreno sharply. “Guns? You are not teaching them—”
“They asked. Well, Ash did, and God forbid Miss Maya should miss out on anything.”
“I just want to be ready in case you ever pull a gun on me again,” I said as we resumed walking, leaving them to argue it out.
Climbing a cliff side. After a birthday party. Zooming up alongside Rafe as our friends cheered us on. It all felt very familiar. How much changes . . . and how little changes.
When we mentioned we wanted to rebuild our climbing wall, Antone said they’d get a construction team on it right away, recreating exactly the one we had in Salmon Creek. Which was more than a little creepy, really. So we insisted on doing it ourselves. I’d noticed footprints in the soft earth between our building sessions, telling me they were coming out to check our work and make sure it was safe, but they said nothing, just left us to it. Which was, so far, Sean’s approach to us in general. He’d supply whatever we needed and he’d happily do things for us, but he seemed even more pleased if we did them ourselves. They wanted independent-minded, self-directed, capable young adults. And that’s what we planned to be.
So now I was throwing a seventeenth birthday party for Daniel, just like he’d thrown my sixteenth one for me. And we were in another forest, climbing another wall. Rafe was beside me, for the final race, and as we climbed, it was just like the first time, me looking over, seeing his grin, feeling him there, swearing I could hear the pounding of his heart, spurring me on.
The same. Yet not the same.
Something had changed between us in the last eight months. I’m not sure when it started. There seemed to be no start. Just a gradual . . . change. I looked over and I saw him and his grin made my heart beat faster, but it was a different kind of beating. It was adrenaline and excitement and happiness. Nothing more. Maybe that’s all it had ever been. Maybe I’d misinterpreted. Sometimes I wonder if Sam was actually right, and what Rafe and I felt—that crazy whirlwind of emotion—really had been just animal attraction. Like calling to like. The thrill of meeting another skin-walker, hormones twisting it into something else, something my brain mistook for love.
Or maybe it had been something, and with nothing to feed the flames, they just cooled and, eventually, extinguished altogether. We’d decided to back off and be friends, and there’d been a time, in the first few months, when I’d be with him and I’d want more, and I could tell he wanted more. But then those times came more rarely, until I could look at him now and see a friend. Just a friend. And I could tell he felt the same when he looked at me.
How did I feel about that? A little sad, I think. Part of me mourned what we’d had. It had been so new and so raw and so thrilling. And then, when it faded, it left me feeling . . . a little frightened, I guess. How can something that strong disappear so easily? No, not disappear. Mellow. Morph. Change into something good and real, but still, not the same, never again the same. I’m happy with what we have, but I do grieve a little, for what we had.
“Maya! Come on! He’s gaining on you!”
I looked up and the sun hit me square in the eye, setting me blinking. Then a head moved in front of it. My spotter. The guy making sure I didn’t fall. The guy who would always make sure I didn’t fall.
Daniel grinned and it was like that sunlight hit me again, and I faltered.
“Hey! No! Keep going! You’ve gotta show him who’s still top cat around here.”
Rafe yelled something up. I didn’t quite catch it, just kept staring at Daniel’s grin, feeling tiny firecrackers igniting in my gut.
This had changed, too. My feelings for Daniel. Or not so much changed, as slid from the darkness and into the light.
I loved Daniel, and it wasn’t a BFF kind of love or a brotherly kind of love. It was real and it was wonderful and it was absolutely terrifying, because the more I accepted it, the more I started to wonder what he really felt for me. Was it anything even approaching my feelings? I had no idea.
When I looked up at Daniel, I didn’t feel what I’d felt for Rafe. It wasn’t that consuming, blind, must-be-with-him-now need. It was a different need, more grounded, just as intense, stronger even, in its way. I wanted to get to him. Just get up there, feel his arms around me, inhale his scent, hear his laughter, and be with him. I wanted to grab my picnic basket, say good-bye to all our lovely-but-temporarily-inconvenient friends, and take Daniel for myself, someplace quiet, where we could be alone and . . .
And . . . Well, that was the obstacle I hadn’t quite overcome yet. While I was happy to just be with him and talk to him and goof around with him, I could think of more I’d like to do. Enough to make me very glad no one could tell I was blushing. I settled for averting my eyes and focusing on the climb.
“Almost there!” Daniel called. “Pick it up a little! You can do it. You already beat Ash.”
“My hand slipped,” Ash muttered from somewhere above.