Under Zenith

  “I need to turn the sun back on!” I shouted. “Also, I never thought I’d utter that sentence.”

  “Isla, you’re getting really close to the edge. I suggest you figure it out quickly,” Hayden called, sounding surprisingly panicked.

  I wasn’t sure how he could see that I was getting close to the edge in the pitch blackness, but I assumed it was some sort of perk for being a Guide.

  I could sense my time running out as I continued on my full out sprint toward the ledge and all I could think was, “Left hand or right hand? Which one is purple?”

  “Isla!” Hayden called again, this time, sounding only two seconds away from really letting me have it.

  I must have been getting close to the ledge.

  “I don’t remember if the purple vial is in my right or left hand,” I yelled back, now completely frantic.

  I brought both vials up to my nose, trying to distinguish between the two scents, but knew I was almost out of time.

  “It’s in your left hand!” Hayden screamed at me.

  Without questioning him, I quickly drank the liquid in my left hand and felt my feet leave the ground for a breathtaking moment. Both vials dropped from my grasp and I hoped I wouldn’t need them any longer once I made it to the safe house.

  My feet hit the soft grass of the final podium and I immediately barreled right into a solid figure, sending us both sprawling onto the ground. The sun ignited itself once more and I looked up at Hayden who, for the second time since meeting him, I was lying on top of. Our chins were touching and despite the confusing feelings that were suddenly coming to life within me, I simply breathed out a huge sigh of relief.

  “Thanks,” I whispered to him.

  “Don’t mention it,” he returned, equally as breathless.

  For someone who was so bent on following the rules, it didn’t escape my notice just how many times Hayden had willingly broken them for me.

  Chapter 18

  There was something wrong with the safe house. Almost everything was identical to the rooms I had stayed in before this one, but one thing was missing that I couldn’t quite explain: Hayden’s rocking chair.

  I didn’t bring this fact to his attention, though I knew he was aware of it. My imagination had created each task and each safe house, and up until this point, I had always created a space for myself, and a space for my Guide. But for some unknown reason, today my mind hadn’t given Hayden his own space and I didn’t know if it was because somewhere deep inside of me I wanted him out of the safe house, or if, by some miracle, I wanted him to be forced to sit beside me.

  Either way, we both soon found ourselves sitting side by side on the wooden bed of the cabin-like safe house, staring at the crackling fire and not saying a word.

  Hayden’s knee rested against mine and it felt like there was an electric charge between us, though looking over at my Guide, he looked as if he could care less where he sat. He continued to stare at the fire, looking dark and misguided and just generally unpleasant.

  It was a safe bet that he wasn’t feeling whatever electricity I was making up between us.

  “Why did you help me? Again,” I asked quietly, looking down at my hands, which I was wringing in my lap.

  “I didn’t want you to get hurt,” he replied.

  It was a simple enough answer. Uncomplicated. But the fact that it was Hayden saying he didn’t want me to get hurt gave it a whole new meaning. He wasn’t exactly the type of person to care about the well-being of others and he took pride in revealing that little detail. It would have been all too easy for him to say he didn’t want to fail at getting another dead girl to her Destination, but he hadn’t. And suddenly, my brain was in full on ‘over analyze everything’ mode.

  “Won’t you get in trouble for breaking the rules?”

  “The way I figure it, it was a strategy test,” he reasoned. “You already figured out the strategy and knew what you wanted to do. Knowing which vial was in which hand wasn’t really part of the strategy aspect.”

  I turned this over in my mind for a moment, wondering if this really was a legitimate way around the rules. It seemed fair enough and if anyone would be aware of the rules it was Hayden. He was a rule follower if nothing else.

  “Well either way, I appreciate it,” I told him, still not looking over at him.

  It was odd how only a few hours ago I’d wanted to kill him. Most of the time I wanted to kill him actually. He was completely rude, self-centered, and just plain mean. But the longer he and I had been forced to be together, the more he had let his gruff exterior slip. He kept accidentally showing me that he could be nice deep down.

  The funny thing was, he was always at his nicest when he was completely panicked and had to make a split second decision. My daddy had always said you’d truly know a man when he was desperate. That’s when he’d let his true colors show.

  So was Hayden a nice guy pretending to be mean? Or was he a mean guy who would do the right thing when it came down to the wire?

  “Stop doing that, it’s annoying,” Hayden finally said, acting like his usual self.

  “Doing what?”

  “Stop thinking so loudly.”

  “Oh, what? You can hear my thoughts?” I asked skeptically.

  I had no doubt Hayden had some sort of power here, but I highly doubted his power spanned that great a distance.

  “Of course I can’t read your thoughts, but you’re wringing your hands and biting your lip. That’s what you do right before you say something you think is clever.”

  “But it’s not really clever?” I asked, trying not to laugh at just how mad I seemed to make him.

  “Not really, no.”

  “It must be hard for you here, Hayden,” I said, my voice dripping with mock sympathy.

  “Why?”

  “Being forced to be stuck with someone so beneath you.”

  “Most people are beneath me. You get used to it after a while,” he responded and for a moment, I thought he was being serious.

  Then he turned and looked at me with a hint of a smile on his face.

  “Relax, Isla. I was joking.”

  “You’re not really much of a comedian. You should stick to what you know.”

  “Which would be…what? Making you so mad that you try to jump off a cliff?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “You are quite amazing at that actually,” I conceded.

  “And what are you good at? Besides annoying me to no end.”

  “I’m a good singer,” I offered. “And no I won’t demonstrate.”

  “Thank goodness.”

  I gave him an icy look at his statement, but it quickly broke across my face into a smile. “My parents always made fun of me for majoring in vocal performance. They said I was paying a bunch of money to get a degree in something you didn’t need a degree for.”

  “They were kind of right,” Hayden pointed out with a fake wince.

  “Maybe. But I got to have the full college experience and I learned the theories behind vocal performance that I wouldn’t know otherwise.”

  “I’m sure that’s helped you out a lot,” he responded sarcastically.

  “Maybe if I hadn’t tried to break the windshield with my forehead it would have worked out well,” I joked back, though joking about my death put a bad taste in my mouth so I quickly went on. “My parents were always really supportive though, no matter how much they made fun of me. They were proud that I’d be the first person in our family to graduate from a university.”

  “What can you even do with a vocal performance degree?” Hayden asked, not sounding very impressed by my artsy major.

  “I can be a singer or I can teach voice lessons. There’s a lot I can do with it…could do,” I amended. “I’d sing at weddings sometimes or at the fair. Once I sang the national anthem at a baseball game. That was fun.”

  I hadn’t exactly had much time to use my degree, but I suddenly felt a sense of loss over the dreams I’d wanted to fulfill
that were now out of reach.

  “I wrote my own music,” I said proudly, looking over at Hayden with a smile and trying to turn this conversation into a happy one, rather than the pity party it was turning into.

  “Congratulations?” he asked.

  “Hey, that’s really hard to do,” I exclaimed, hitting him playfully on the shoulder.

  My boots were discarded on the wooden floor and I lifted my feet up onto the bed, tucking them underneath me so that my bare knees rested next to Hayden’s hip and I could get a better look at him.

  “I have about a dozen songs hidden under my bed. Music and lyrics all done and ready to be recorded,” I told Hayden, grinning as I recounted my little secret. “As a graduation present to myself, I was going to rent a recording booth and put all of my songs on a CD to send out to local record labels.”

  “Okay, you have to tell me honestly,” Hayden said, seeming to loosen up a little at my relaxed posture. Before we had both been sitting stiffly at attention. “Were you any good?”

  “I don’t know how to answer that without sounding conceited, but I was very good,” I said, laughing a bit at my own description of myself. “There’s no way to sound humble saying that, is there?” I asked, crinkling my nose up at him.

  “I don’t think so, but you put forth a valiant effort. Well done,” Hayden replied, now laughing as well.

  His laugh was deep and rich. It gave me goose bumps.

  “Please tell me you don’t sing country music or I’ll be forced to kick you out of the safe house this instant.”

  “What’s wrong with country?” I asked, sounding offended even though I wasn’t.

  “Everyone in the South fancies themselves a country singer and most of them are awful,” he said, giving me a look. “In fact, the entire genre is awful in and of itself so I can’t really blame the people who sing it. There’s just no saving that music.”

  “You are the most unpleasant person I’ve ever met,” I told him with a laugh, tucking my hair behind my ear.

  “Well I don’t sing country, so that’s not possible.”

  I resisted the urge to reach out and hit him again.

  “I like country,” I said.

  “Of course you do. You’re a backwoods hick from North Carolina.”

  “North Carolina isn’t even the South south,” I said defensively.

  “It’s south enough for you to have that terrible accent,” he pointed out, now openly grinning at me.

  It was a sight I wasn’t used to, and it threw me off momentarily.

  “Well you’ll be happy to know I don’t sing country.”

  “I think you’re lying,” he said, narrowing his eyes as if he were trying to read me.

  It was almost as if knocking Hayden over today (for the second time) had rewired his brain and he suddenly didn’t think it would be the end of the world if he joked around with me or acted like a decent human being. It was a nice change to say the least.

  “I swear,” I told him, holding up my hand. “Scout’s honor.”

  “Then what do you sing?”

  “I sing folk music,” I said smugly.

  “That’s the same thing!” he practically shouted, still grinning.

  “No it’s not! Folk is more like Mumford and Sons. They aren’t country.”

  “That’s true,” he agreed.

  “Plus they have those amazing accents.”

  “What, English accents? You think an English accent is nice?” he asked, sounding like that was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard.

  I guessed the look he was giving me was very similar to the look I gave people when they said they liked Southern accents. To me, I didn’t even have an accent so how could it be special or different?

  “Not that I would ever want to admit this to you, but I happen to have a soft spot for English accents,” I said, highly embarrassed to reveal this detail to Hayden.

  He looked slightly skeptical of this revelation, but leaned in closer to me, as if testing the theory. This was definitely not the Hayden I was used to. Normally he was doing anything he could to get away from me. Close proximity was not his thing.

  “A soft spot huh?” he asked quietly, still coming ever closer to me. “So do you think my accent is charming then?”

  Our blue eyes were locked on each other as he stopped his forward progression, so close to me that I could smell the clean scent of soap on him. His face was out of focus at this proximity, but I could see a distant look in his eyes, as if he were drowsy. Or maybe it was just content? I couldn’t tell, but I did know it wasn’t a look I’d seen him wear before.

  “When you aren’t saying terrible things it is,” I whispered, scared to death that I was misreading the signals he was sending me. “But you’re almost always saying terrible things.”

  My heart was pounding so hard that my hands shook, but miraculously, I didn’t have a million thoughts running through my mind like I should have. I only wondered if Hayden could possibly be getting ready to kiss me or if he was going to suddenly pull away and laugh at me for thinking he’d ever want to kiss me.

  His nose was touching mine now and his blue eyes were drifting lazily over my face and all I could think was, “This is the longest build up ever”. I had to admit though, the lead up to a first kiss was usually the best part, so I let myself enjoy it, without considering the humiliating possibility that it wouldn’t happen.

  Just as I thought his lips would touch mine, he tilted his head to the side and brushed his mouth gently over my neck, sending shivers all over my body. I closed my eyes and tried not to enjoy the sensation as much as I was as he created a little trail of kisses up my neck, stopping at the corner of my mouth. His lips lightly moved over mine, still not quite kissing me, but being close enough that I had to utilize all of my willpower to keep from pouncing on him.

  He inhaled deeply, making me feel like he was breathing me in and taking the air from my lungs all at the same time.

  “I’m sorry about that, Isla,” he finally whispered back to me, the space between us proving to be too much for him as he closed the distance and eliminated the practically non-existent gap.

  I tilted my head back, as his hands tentatively cupped my cheeks, resting gently beneath my jaw bone. I wasn’t sure what I should do with my shaking hands so I turned my body toward him, letting my fingers slide over his broad shoulders and link together behind his neck, playing with his hair.

  Despite the light touch in his hands, the kiss was deep and perfect. It was more real than the falling sensation I’d experience only days before when this very same man had pushed me off a cliff.

  We definitely had a dysfunctional relationship.

  He kissed me hungrily, nothing tentative about the way he leaned into me, and I felt like I could go on like that forever. After a while, though, I could feel Hayden’s lips curl up into a smile beneath mine. I could sense that he wanted to say something, but I didn’t let him, not wanting to end this moment quite yet. I leaned my body even closer to his, trying to eliminate any space that could possibly exist between us, and determined to enjoy every single moment of this too perfect kiss. His hands left my cheeks and travelled down my arms, coming to rest on my waist where the pressure of his fingertips sent goose bumps over my skin.

  It was almost painful how amazingly perfect the kiss felt.

  Until I felt a snowflake hit my cheek and my mind instantly went fuzzy.

  I stopped kissing Hayden, but kept my lips against his lightly, just barely touching.

  “Your mind has terrible timing,” Hayden said, tickling my lips with his speech and giving me one last kiss as I struggled to keep myself upright.

  “I don’t want you to go,” I said sleepily, not sure if my words were making any sense as he gently lowered me onto the bed.

  “I honestly never thought I’d say this to you, but I don’t want to go either,” he admitted.

  And with that, he brushed his lips over my forehead and I fell into a forc
ed sleep with the most peaceful smile I’d ever worn on my still tingling lips.

  Chapter 19

  When I woke the next morning, my head ached and the small amount of light coming in through the closed shutters was all too bright. I draped my arm over my eyes and pulled the quilt up to my chin, not really feeling like getting out of bed for my final cycle.

  I was lucky my sleep each night was forced or I was sure I wouldn’t have gotten any rest with the thought of my last task looming over me. I still hadn’t decided if reaching my Destination was a good thing or a bad thing and Hayden’s insistence that it was important wasn’t doing much to comfort me.

  Then, of course, there was the matter of our kiss the night before. I wasn’t quite sure how Hayden would handle the potentially awkward social situation today, but I knew that I was handling it exactly how I wanted to: curled up in bed, hiding from the world.

  Haden wasn’t really the doting-romantic-boyfriend type. I wasn’t under the impression that he’d suddenly be all cuddly and sweet. In fact, I would have worried about his sanity if he was. Of course that being said, I had absolutely no idea what to expect from a post-kiss Hayden. I wasn’t even sure how I felt about everything that had happened last night. Yes, I had wanted to kiss Hayden, no matter how much I tried to deny it, but that didn’t mean that I should have kissed him.

  What could I possibly gain from doing that?

  Today was my last task and I knew he couldn’t come with me wherever I was going, so I had just unintentionally complicated my last cycle over one stupid kiss.

  Well, one amazing kiss I guess. But still, that didn’t make it okay.

  The light had long since faded from my window, replaced by fog, and yet I still made no move to get out of bed and Hayden hadn’t come knocking yet. It looked like we were both avoiding the ‘morning after’ scenario.

  In a perfect world, Hayden would come storming into the room, sweep me off my feet into a kiss, and tell me how wonderful I was and how happy he was that we had finally wordlessly declared our feelings for each other.