Peering up, I sought the top of the trees. Spiralling high until they touched the sky, they provided a sturdy canopy from the light rain and I managed to pass under the leaves relatively unscathed from the wet elements; apart from when a large droplet would gather and roll off a leaf, splatting onto the top of my head.
I didn’t care.
The trees pulled me deeper. Further. Until I rounded into a clearing and found him.
He didn’t see me. I stopped, teetering on the spot. An instant rush of bile hurled up my throat.
Why was he here? I wanted to be the only one out here in the freedom providing woods. His broad shoulders were turned to me, his golden hair glinting in the leaf diffused clearing. Bent over a sketch pad, Tristan Prince’s attention, thankfully, was focused on his piece of paper. I froze, unable to move, a deer trapped between the headlights of a murderous, careening truck.
Turn away, my survival instinct screamed as my throat pulsed, the bruises from our meeting only hours before, still stiffening my flesh.
But, I couldn’t. I wasn’t given to homicidal tendencies, but I stepped closer, and then closer again. That same intense desire I’d felt even as he stalked away from me the night before took over. That pull I’d had in Mrs Cox’s office to go in search of him—it was there, inside of me. Deep within the centre of my body, the need to search for him abated.
I still wanted to stab him with a pole and parade him at the entrance to the nearest bridge. The two opposing forces warred within me.
Although I was silent in my approach, his shoulders stiffened. “Don’t come any closer.” With his quiet words, my legs trembled and wobbled.
My chest tightened until every breath stung. Yet still I stood there. The trees waved and watched as awkward silence spun around us. I scanned the page his hand rested on. Sensitive pencil strokes had drawn the leaves hanging overhead. How could the fingers that had nearly squeezed the life from me have produced such a sensitive and light touch? I gasped. Under the leaves was me, outlined in slate grey. Same eyes, same nose and lips. Only my dress was different. In the place of the trainers and skinny jeans I’d worn the night before was a simple cotton dress which hung to the floor, hinting at the curves I kept safely hidden beneath layers of baggy outerwear.
The forest began to darken, stealing shadows creeping into the edges of my vision.
I took an instinctive step towards him. The pulsing repulsion which made me want to hurl sharp objects at him, jarred against the need to know what it was about this place, about those repetitive dreams.
“Don’t come closer,” he repeated, and my stomach flipped and dived like on the rollercoaster at Coney Island. I clutched my tummy.
“Why are you drawing me?” I edged an inch forward as he snapped the cover over his drawing.
“I said stay away. Have you got a death wish?”
“Have you?” I sneered a little, the anger and hatred taking over from my curiosity. “You tried to kill me last night. Who says I would have shown the restraint to walk away?”
He had walked away the night before. Now I was seeing him here, the night before focused into a clearer picture. Somehow, he’d managed to walk away before he’d actually killed me. That thought lit a spark of realization. What was I supposed to feel? Gratitude? What was that turning my stomach, at war with the hatred?
The tendons in his neck knotted, a dark flush burning under his tanned skin.
“We can’t be near one another, Mae.” The way he said my name made my mouth go dry.
“Why?” Another step.
His eyes flickered in my direction and the pain in my tummy intensified until it felt like I was being stabbed with a kitchen knife. I glanced down to check I wasn’t bleeding out.
He was almost shaking, his skin white, his hands clenched so tight the pencil in his grasp snapped. With the rise and fall of his shoulders, any hope I might have irrationally held that he would answer me was dashed. “Because I want to kill you.” He turned then, and the mask on his face was a split between furious repulsion and anguish.
“Why?” My fingers shook. My feet were telling me to run.
“I don’t know.” I wished I couldn’t see his face with its desolate confusion.
“Do you hate all Americans you meet?” His smouldering dark gaze ate away at my insides.
“Just you.” He turned, breaking off our conversation. Using all my efforts, I managed to move my feet away from his spot in the wooded grove, the whole time mumbling about his dickwad behaviour. A few paces away, I hesitated as he swung back around. “You’ll thank me for not killing you.”
I pulled a face: infantile and ridiculous. Honest, if I had to live in this place much longer I might take him up on his offer.
Mae. I chided myself. I’d lived through the accident which had killed my family. Life shouldn’t be joked about. Especially not when you’d nearly been strangled to death the night before.
I turned and found him staring at my retreating form. We watched one another for a long moment until my heart ached as though it were bruised. Then I ran.
I ran so hard, blindly flying through the trees. Droplets of rain mixed with my tears against my cheeks. I hated this place. I wasn’t meant to be here. It was hell. I’d rather be back in Queens with a fake family and boyfriend, than here with the dreams, and him, and…
I fell to my knees, a twisted root of a tree pulling me down onto the soft mushy earth. “Shit.” I rubbed at the nasty gash scored across my kneecap. This was why stupid school uniform skirts shouldn’t be worn.
I kicked at the tree root with my
