Page 39 of Impossible

My heart is pounding in my chest by the time I crest the hill, both from the exertion and the fear of getting caught. I’m sweating like a pig and shivering from the cold and clammy all over.

Hopefully Rose and Cam will be together, hanging in their dorm’s common area. I don’t know if I’ll get caught by the dorm minder if I try to go in, but there’s a big bay window out back, so I can scope it out before trying anything.

I stick to the shadows of the campus I know so well, an ache growing at the memories that live here. The spot where Rose planned a surprise birthday picnic for me when I turned fourteen. Our favorite lunch table in the springtime. The cherry blossom tree where we watched Cam kiss his girlfriend last year, my stomach dropping out as their lips brushed.

I shake off that memory—I don’t want to think like that, not right now. I want to find out what’s happening with the play, what people are saying about my absence. Are they saying anything at all? Or was I as much of a ghost as I felt like, some weird hanger-on lingering after graduating?

I’m so excited about getting to the dorm that I almost stumble over a couple, sitting on a bench in the shadows.

“Oh, sorry,” I say as I veer too close to the pair, wrapped in each other’s arms, stealing some quiet time alone. The sounds of their kissing are wet and sloppy. They pull apart to see who the doofus is tripping over them, and the moonlight illuminates their faces.

Rose and Cam. Cam and Rose. Kissing.Loudly.

“Oh.”

“Indie?” Rose’s voice is frantic. “What… where have you been?”

I realize I stopped breathing and force myself to inhale, trying to reconcile the horror in front of me with reality. That’s when I scent them. Like Styrofoam packing peanuts and printer ink. Just like the hillside on Friday. The smell I was looking around for when my spike started. When the stampede began.

Revulsion washes through me.

Cam lurches away from Rose, but she feels no such urgency. She lets her hand linger on his leg, and my eyes fix on that.

Everything is a jumble—the hurt mixes with their nauseating scents. Everything I thought I wanted but didn’t deserve snatched away, just before I have the chance to realize I don’t want it. Not even a little bit.

I ache for the safety of Leon’s arms. None of this would hurt as bad if I were bathing in the richness of cloves and cedar rather than the chemical odors that Cam and Rose emanate. I want Leon, I want his strength and protection and arms around me and solid, steady purring to give me something to match my heartbeat too. I’m hot all over.

“Sorry. This was a mistake,” I mumble.Leon was right. I shouldn’t have come.

I turn and rush away, ignoring their voices calling out behind me. How long have they been doing this? Rose knew about my feelings for Cam, has known for years. Was she sitting on her own crush that whole time? Was sherelievedwhen I disappeared? Were they doing this before I left? Behind my back?

Tears cloud my vision and I stop paying attention to where I’m going. I think I might throw up. I don’t know if they’ll chase me. I don’t know if I want them to.

I half tumble, half run down the hill, not realizing it’s shallower because I’m at the far end, veering into the woods rather than the field. Every slap of my feet on the ground hurts.

I fall and stay down, chest heaving, sobs wracking my body. I try to get up and stagger forward, but the headrush hits almost instantly and I go down again, falling to my knees in the dirt. My heartbeat is erratic, too hard, threatening to burst from my chest.

“Excuse me? Miss?” a male voice calls out to me, a little raspy.

I try to get up again, stumbling forward a few steps before crashing back down. Something in my knee crunches, pain blooming. Humiliation courses through me as the man approaches.

He kneels down next to me and time freezes.

He is woodsmoke, a bonfire, thick and intoxicating. Laughter on a summer night. The freedom of dancing like nobody is watching. Like everybody is watching, and you just don’t care.

The most gorgeous chocolate brown eyes I’ve ever seen, in a young face under a thick mop of chestnut-colored waves, held back by a black elastic band. A gold ring through his septum, matching gold rings in each of his earlobes, a few on each side. He is a contrast of angles and softness, full lips and hollow cheeks, a sloping nose and deep-set brow.

“Are you—” his voice chokes off and I watch his eyes glaze over. The glow in my stomach is instant, all of my pain from a moment before sublimated into need, pulling me towards him.

“I—” my words are cut off by his lips crashing into mine.

I should be shocked. Logically I know that. But my body doesn’t. He’s warm and his arms come around me, pulling me to his body, hot and muscled and strong. He floods my senses, woodsmoke and power and lust. I’m holding him too, my arms around him, my fingers splayed and feeling the bones and muscles of his back.

I realize it’s my first kiss, and maybe I should be alarmed by some stranger in the forest taking it from me, but I can’t. I’m drunk on his scent, pulsing heat growing between my legs as he pulls me into him.

But then his hands begin roaming, up my waist, around to my non-existent breasts, and I freeze in his grip.

“Stop,” I murmur, trying to squirm away, but I can’t. I’m too weak, and he’ssostrong. I’m such a fool, part of me doesn’t want to stop, but this is wrong, I’m hyperventilating and I realize I’m still crying, even with his lips crushing against mine.

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