Break Away (Away, Book 1) (26 page)

My eyebrows shot up. “My head isn't going
anywhere near your crotch.”

“I meant your feet, Dafne.”

“The same goes for them.”

He let out a deep sigh and closed the book
with a snap. “What is it that you really want?”

“I found this loveseat first.” I decided to
give him a roundabout, childish answer. “There are other places
where you can go and sit.” I said, looking over at the upholstered
chair across from me.

“What? We're back to elementary school, now?”
he said, narrowing his green eyes in annoyance.

I crossed my arms in answer.

“Fine,” he snapped and bent to lift the pile
off the floor.

I scolded myself inwardly for being a coward.
Even if the short distance between us made me uncomfortable, I
should've put up with it. But something was nagging at me deep
down, because those few inches shouldn't have
mattered
. They
should've
bothered
me, and that slight difference held too
much consequential weight to delve into it.

Ian sat down across from me in silence, with
the pile of books on the small, rounded table next to him. He
flashed me a dark, furious glance before going back to the pages
between his hands.

I took in a deep breath and pulled up my feet
to the loveseat. I eased back to lie down, bending my knees up so
my body would fit, and fluffed the small, square pillow behind my
head. Several minutes later, two books had already passed under my
scrutiny, with no signs of Chimera. I was on number three when the
cloak of sleep fell down on me, wrapping my entire body with
lethargic heaviness.

Before I knew it, my eyes had closed and I
was dreaming.

White. Everything around me was a radiant,
dazzling white. I had to shut my eyes to slivers so the light
wouldn't hurt them. I walked and walked through the pristine
brightness, surrounded by absolute nothingness, until the ground
under my feet faded to a pale gray. And the more I moved, the more
the white brilliance dulled and turned into dimness.

I was now enfolded in darkness, the silence
permeating the black air a haunting melody that clutched my heart
with its whispery fingers. I turned, looking for a way out, but
nothing more than choking fear came as an answer. My breathing
picked up and shifted its rhythm to the one of a steam locomotive
at high speed. I was a step away from a panic attack. I took in
deep, long breaths and counted to ten. My heartbeats began to
steady, but for some reason, my breaths weren't grasping the
calming pace. A shaky, broken edge rimmed them, as if I was
sobbing. That's when I realized they weren't mine.

Someone was behind me.

I whirled around and…stopped breathing.
Buffy. The shadows of a flickering candle danced on her profile.
Her blonde hair was glued to her face, damp with sweat, and she was
crying. Wet trails ran down her hollow cheek and slipped past a way
too sharp jaw. She looked awfully thin, spent, and dirty.

“Buffy?” I whispered pleadingly.

She turned and her sunken eyes met mine.

I sucked in a breath. “What happened to you?”
Her face was etched with sorrow, as if the whole world's misery had
fallen on her shoulders.

“
Please,
” she uttered.
“
Help…
”

Desperately, I stretched out my hands, trying
to reach hers, but only found empty air. “How?
How?
” I
asked, my eyes bright with tears and worry.

“
Help…me…
”

“Where are you?”

“
Please…
”

I started crying hot rivers, choking on the
sadness clumping my throat. “I don't know what to do,” I told her,
feeling lost and helpless. “I beg you…tell me how to bring you
back.”

She gave a slow shake of her head.
“
Can't…
”

“Why?” I said, my voice pained.

She opened her pale mouth to answer when
darkness sucked her back in a blinding jerk. “Dafne!” she screamed,
agony curving every letter.

“Buffy!” I called and my body started
shaking. “Buffy!”

“Dafne!” Her voice blurred into a low,
masculine one. “Wake up!”

I snapped my eyes open and found Ian's
worried face next to me, his hands shaking my body frantically.

“What…” I mumbled, still halfway between
dream and reality.

“You were having a nightmare,” he explained,
releasing my shoulders.

“I was…” I shook my head, driving away the
drowsy sensation, and propped myself up onto my elbows. “Buffy. I
saw Buffy,” I said, her name ending in a whisper.

“Yeah,” he sighed, “I heard you calling
her.”

I paused, looking at the dark velvet skies
through the tall window across the room. “How long did I
sleep?”

“Not that much, about half an hour.”

I shifted my body, dragging my legs off the
loveseat, until I was sitting. I looked at him. He was a few inches
away from me, his body in a half-kneeling position. The compassion
softening the planes of his face must've opened a weak door inside
me because I carried on with explaining the dream. “Buffy. She was
crying. She was asking me to help her.” I heard my voice fading,
dying away with remorse and pain. “I…I should've helped her, Ian. I
should've helped her before she was taken…away.” My words broke
into a muted, piercing sob.

Ian rose and settled next to me. Then, he
took me in his strong arms, wrapping them around me in a gentle,
firm embrace. My first reaction was to retreat from his touch, but
he tightened his hold on me, not allowing an inch to come in
between us.

I fisted his shirt in my hands and felt a
storm of strangling emotions thundering through me. Unable to take
the pressure, my walls cracked and my defenses shattered. I buried
my face in his chest and, as if a dam had burst, a torrent of tears
came down my face. If possible, his hold tightened around me.

I don't know how long we lingered like that,
in silence, with my shower of broken sobs suffusing the air around
us with sorrow. When pain wasn't crowding my senses, or when images
of a consumed Buffy weren't flashing through my mind, I could feel
Ian's hand brushing my back up and down, sending waves of soothing
warmth all the way through my body.

It wasn't until I reached that emotional
numbness—that usually comes after a crying downpour—that I let
myself pull back and look at the huge, wet mark on Ian's shirt.
“I'm so sorry,” I told him, laying a hand on the damp spot, and
jerked it back immediately once I realized I was touching his
chest.

He dropped his stare to where my hand had
been and gave a small smile. “Don't worry,” he said, looking at the
wet stain with…fondness? The soft light and the swell of my eyes
could've tricked me, but when he pulled his emerald eyes to mine,
the warmth shinning in them, like rays of light through a lush
canopy of leaves, reflected that exact feeling.

I averted my eyes, tingling with the
intensity of his stare, and paused for a moment. “Did you find
something in those books?” I finally asked.

“Not a single thing,” he said calmly, his
voice holding a musing tone, as if he was still thinking about
something else. My heartbeats picked up. He cleared his throat and
produced his cell phone. “That's why I Googled it. But unless we're
talking about Greek mythology and a monstrous fire-breathing female
creature, all that stuff of Chimera being a place in another
dimension is pretty much nonexistent.”

I nodded, tangled in a mess of disappointment
and nervous tension. I lifted my hand to brush it through my hair
and stopped with a frustrated sigh once I reached it. It seemed my
emotions weren't the only things that were a mess. My ponytail
nearly had come undone and was bent to the side. A couple of
strands hung loosely, others threatened to free themselves from
their confinement. “Everything is a mess, isn't it?” I said without
thinking, dropping my hands on my lap.

“What do you mean?” Ian asked, confusion
lacing his voice like a thread of silk.

This
, I wanted to say.
Me feeling
soft towards you all of a sudden
.
Me desiring things I
shouldn't be craving. Me having thoughts that should've never
blossomed in my mind while my sister lies in bed, waiting for
someone to help her.
But none of those words crossed my
lips.

“How are we going to help Buffy if none of
this Chimera stuff is true?” I opted to voice one of my worries.
“How am I going to bring her back? I can't lose her. I already lost
my parents. I can't lose her, too,” I said, lowering my
tear-brimmed eyes, amazed at how water had seemed to survive my
previous downpour. “I…I don't want to be alone.”

Ian closed the distance between us, one side
of his hip touching mine, and placed his hand over my fingers.
“Buffy is going to come back to us,” he said, stroking the back of
my hand with his thumb. “She's strong and knows a lot of people are
waiting for her over here.” He moved his hand, slowly, on top of
mine. “And you're not alone, Dafne. You have your grandma, your
best friend, Linda, your aunt—even if I know you think she doesn't
love you—and, well, you also have…me.” He slipped his fingers
between mine and held them close. “Let me help you.”

I gazed at our hands, together in a tender,
overlapping hold. The last time they'd been like this and he'd said
those words to me, my reaction hadn't been so…gentle.

It was on my second day at high school in
Berryford, after I'd seen him kissing, or for better words
eating
that girl's face in the cafeteria. I was struggling
to open my locker, pulling and rattling the door that didn't seem
to obey, when out of nowhere, someone placed his hand over my tight
one and said, “Let me help you.”

I turned my head and was surprised to find
Ian smiling at me. One corner of his mouth was pulled into what I
came to know a couple of weeks later as his lady-killer smile.

“This one is a pain,” he said, moving his
eyes to the locker. “I had it last year and—” He trailed off,
staring into my eyes with fascination. “Your eyes…they're kind of
purple. I've never seen anything like it.”

For a second, I plunged into the bright
satisfaction of his compliment, but then, I remembered the scene in
the cafeteria and glared at his hand—the same hand that'd grabbed a
girl's butt the day before. “I don't need your help, thanks,” I
told him bitterly, yanking my hand free from his touch.

“Oh, but you do,” he said, amused by my
reaction. “You'll never be able to open it.”

“I already opened it yesterday,” I said,
giving him an irritated, smug look.

He bent forward and put his face a few inches
from mine. “That's because you found it on a good day. On bad days
though...” He pressed his lips together, as if pitying me.

“What's your point?” I urged, irked at having
him so close to me.

“You need the trick,” he whispered, like it
was a matter of crucial importance.

“I don't have time for this, just give it to
me.”

“Nothing is free in this life.”

“Say it, then. What do you want?”

He leaned against the stubborn locker with
his arms crossed. “Your company. Friday. Eight o'clock.”

I snickered. “You're so out of your league,
lover-boy. I don't date womanizers. Ever.”

“Meaning me?” he asked, feigning
innocence.

“Yes, you, who, if I remember well, was a
step away from having sexual intercourse in the middle of the
cafeteria yesterday.” I shrugged, throwing him a sweet smile. “I'm
not into that. Sorry.”

He looked down, as if pondering the
situation. “What if I tell you it's not like that with you?”

“I would say you're full of crap and that I
don't want to waste my precious time with a player like you.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “A strong opinion for
someone who doesn't know me.”

“I don't need to know you to see what you're
planning. Being part of your 'flings anthology' doesn't interest me
at all. Not now, not ever.”

He’d stared at me in silence for a few
heartbeats, whether upset or tickled, I didn't know. His face was
as blank as a fish. As if he'd made a choice, he straightened and
gave a short nod. “Nice to meet you, then,” he said and was about
to leave when he turned around. “Oh, and,” he punched the locker
door lightly in the middle and opened it. “Welcome to
Berryford.”

I watched him walk away.

I'd always wondered how things would've been
if I'd said yes to him that day, if we would've ended up as
friends, or something more than friends, and not enemies. Looking
at our entwined hands under the quiet light of the library, I
thought about it and agreed to the possibility of the first option.
Because the second one would've never been in the cards for us—too
many differences that would've led to way too many clashes.

I looked at him. He was watching me,
curiosity flapping in his green eyes like a hummingbird in a
meadow, certainly wondering what the thoughts swirling in my mind
were about.

I let out a deep sigh. “Why do you insist on
helping me when I've treated you so badly all this time?” I asked
him, the question that'd floated above all the other doubts waiting
to be solved.

He paused, looking down at our laced fingers.
“I know you've seen me as an asshole since day one. Your opinion of
me has always been…obvious,” he said with a glum smile. “But I'm
not like that. At least, I'm not like that since that day I spoke
to you in the hallway, in front of the locker. Remember?”

“Yeah,” I said, smiling at the fact that we'd
both been thinking of that moment.

“Well, that day you made me realize some
things.” He brought up his eyes to mine and locked them there.
“That if I didn't change, all the good girls were going to pass me
by.” The words
like you
hung in the air.

Something inside of me squeezed at those
silent words, cutting the air flow in my throat for a few seconds.
I'd never wanted to accept the truth: that Ian had changed. Weeks
later, after the scene with the locker, no more girls had been
spotted following his tail or smashed against his face in a
liplock. I'd believed Buffy had been the true reason behind
that—which had been the true reason behind my hatred towards him.
Deep down, I'd always resented the fact that he hadn't pursued me,
that he hadn't fought for me, that he'd ignored that deep
connection we'd both felt, and that he'd passed on so quickly to
someone else. The fact that my sister was that someone else had
been a sharp, ringing blow. But now, knowing it was
me
who'd
stirred that change in him made me feel…flattered and…