Book of Life (32 page)

Greg just laughed. “Whatever, Avery. Keep pretending.”

Avery’s anger peaked, and before I knew it, she had the bow leveled with her eye, ready to shoot.

“Go ahead,” Greg teased. “See if you can beat
me—
” his eyes suddenly grew wide, his speech halted as though Avery had already shot him.

I didn’t understand what had happened. Avery was as confused as I, dropping the arrow from her gaze in order to better understand.

Greg’s gaze reeled back to Max, pulling my attention back to him as well. Max stared blankly at Greg, head slowly shaking before he slid to his knees. Greg’s hand slipped from the dagger in his hand, Max’s hand now wrapped around the handle. Max had finished what Greg had threatened, plunging the dagger into his own heart. Soon after, Greg too slumped to the ground. He grabbed his chest as a shimmery, damp darkness began to pulse from a wound identical to that of his brother’s.

I sprung forward, grabbing the dagger from Max’s chest with my teeth. I pulled it out as he fell backward into the snow beside Greg, eyes fading. I discarded it and stood over Max. There were so many things I wanted to say to him, so many things I needed answers to.

Max heard me in my thoughts. “Life is not always what it seems, Wes. Remember that.” He smiled bleakly, looking to where his brother suffered beside him. “You were right, Greg. Neither of us ever belonged here in this way. Jane made the right choice in moving on. She was right in showing me the way back to a human life.”

I pawed at the wound on Max’s chest, Lacy and Stella now falling to his side as they uncovered the wound, hoping to remedy it. His blood felt cold against my paw, oozing slowly from a heart that was already so close to death.

“
Love will trick you a million times, Wes, but it only takes one time to get it right,” he went on. By now his voice was forced.

No one tended to Greg, no one cared.

Avery grabbed Max’s face. “Why, Max?” was all she asked.

“You
know
why,” he replied.

Avery only nodded.

Max’s hand found hers as she held his face. “You can have your light back now. You’ve shown me so much, proved to me that there is hope. That’s all I ever wanted from this life.”

A crystal tear fell from Avery’s eye as her gaze brightened with each second of life Max lost. Slowly, her growing light illuminated a dim circle around us.

The strength in Max died suddenly.

His eyes were closed, his mind asleep. For a long moment I couldn’t accept it. I looked to Greg, seeing the same death overcome him. In a split second everything had changed. In a split second, I’d found myself lost all over again.

We stood there for a long while, waiting for something to happen, wondering if this had really been it. Hours passed and the stench of death began to dissipate as the Black Angels retreated around us. Daylight began to trickle through the trees, but still the brothers did not move. Come daylight, we had accepted the new fate, and here in the woods, we buried them together.

It was over before it ever really began.

MAX:

I opened my eyes to find myself standing in a field.

“Hello.” A young girl stood before me in the tall grass. A breeze came by and caught her yellow dress, taking it dancing. “My name is Eliza.”

I nodded. For some reason, I’d known that already.

“Shall I show you the way?” She urged me forward.

I took a step, shocked by how light I felt. “Please,” I replied. It was as though a burden had been released, a burden so heavy that I had forgotten what it felt like to be free. I knew where she was leading me. There was no point in lingering when there was so much ahead. I had to chase my love.

Eliza led me toward the village. I remember letting everything go as we went, sloughing off decades of hate, remorse, and sadness. I was hopeful for the first time in a long while. Jane was out there to be found. She was waiting in a world where I would not know the way, but had to have faith that I’d shown enough grit in my past life to hope for a miracle. This next life was finally it going to be it.

Reaching the tree, I was ready.

WES:

I didn’t know what to say to Emily. I guess I was relieved in some small way. “You guys should get going. This war may be over, but another is about to start for you.” I couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of my mouth.

She searched my eyes, her own filled with a well of tears that were about to spill over. “I’m sorry.”

I didn’t really care to hear it. The truth was, I knew she wasn’t sorry, and either was I. After all Emily and I had been through together, and after all I’d been through with Jane, I was prepared to leave the Taylor sisters behind. I didn’t mean that in a mean way, but rather from a point of knowing it was time to grow away from this.

Emily backed away from me and into Jake’s arms. Seeing them like that was once something I dreaded, but actually living it I saw it to be something far more beautiful. Max had left us with a world of mysteries left to solve, but we had been granted the chance and time to solve them.

I watched as they turned and walked away into the woods. Emily looked back only once, her pace slowing only briefly. Her auburn hair burned among the snowy trees, and for a long while, I watched as it faded into the distance. I hoped that somewhere in time I’d meet her again, but given the world of fleeting moments her and Jake were sure to find themselves a part of, I figured that hope to be slim.

I turned to Avery then. She was watching them leave as I was. “What will you do?”

Avery’s eyes were electric as she looked at me, then at Stella and Lacy. “I made a promise to Max. I promised him I’d help him find Jane. I won’t stop until I do. I won’t stop until I find the both of them.”

I wanted to nod, I wanted to feel happy, but I didn’t. That was, until I caught Stella’s eye. She was watching me, her hands knotted before her. Her golden eyes hid behind her hood, snow caked on her knitted shoulders. The world around us melted away, and I found myself stepping toward her. I stopped as our toes nearly met.

She smiled bashfully. “Are you going to stay?”

My gaze scrolled along the freckles on her cheeks, leading like footsteps to her long lashes and limitless golden eyes. “Where else would I go?”

I heard Lacy giggle from somewhere behind me, but I ignored it.

Stella shrugged. “I just thought . . . you’ve been such a good friend. I wouldn’t want to lose you.”

“Friend?” I challenged.

She smiled and nodded.

I nodded along with her. “I can start with friends . . .” I took her hand. “But, you never know.”

. . . to be continued

Eighteen years later . . . in another life

JANE:

We sat on the beach, my best friend and I, our towels blowing in the wind. I wasn’t sure why we
had
to go to Florida instead of Mexico for Spring Break, but she had insisted. All of our other friends had gone on the Cabo cruise, but,
no,
Florida was the place to be. Why she was so adamant about it, I was not sure. At least the weather didn’t suck too bad.

“I wonder what everyone else is doing,” I said tartly, adjusting the sunglasses on my nose. “Probably having a lot more fun than
this.
I think you made the wrong pick coming here,
Avery
.” Glasses positioned, I wiped the sweat from my brow and inspected the way the sun was bleaching my already bleached blonde hair. “We’re all alone, there are zero guys, and it’s seriously lame. All I’m going to get is a sunburn.” I was in a particularly bitter mood today.

Avery turned to face me, sliding her sunglasses from her nose. She had a way of doing this that made any man in the vicinity take notice. Basically, anything she did made them take notice. “Chill out,
Jane
.” She was naturally gorgeous, her skin perfect, her hair always just so. I hated her for it. Though my looks could mimic her on a good day, I was still nothing in comparison—It was like she never aged.

Avery had moved to Charlotte last year. She arrived at our school out of the blue and rocked it like a sudden earthquake. She had sass, confidence, and a way with men that no man saw coming—as I was saying. We’d become instant best friends, so instant it frightened me, like she’d had her sights set on me before she’d even moved there, like she knew me already. She was a strange kind of girl, but so was I. It worked.

“Come on, Jane. I’ve been waiting for this trip for eighteen years.”

I laughed. “Eighteen years? You haven’t even been alive that long. You don’t turn eighteen until this summer. Stop being dramatic.” I shook my head, thinking she was horrible with Math. “You say that stuff all the time. I don’t get it.”

She gave me a half smile, her bright blue eyes glittering in the sun, shaded by the mass of perfect platinum blonde hair atop her head. “Right, well, you know what I mean.”

I shook my head. “No. I don’t. But, that’s you, I guess.”

She slid her glasses back over her eyes. “Trust me. We’ll meet some guys. Fate has something good in store for us.”

“You and your infatuation with
fate.
I swear I don’t even know why I attempt to be friends with you anymore. You’re always knocking my pick of men and—”

“Because they’re not right for you,” she cut me off.

“How do you know they’re not right for me if you barely give me the chance to say
hi
to them?” I protested.

“Because I know just the kind of man that is right for you and you haven’t found him yet.”

I hated when she got this way. She was so stubborn, so matter-of-fact as though she knew it all. She was seventeen going on seventy. Personally, I thought she could use to relax a little.

I flipped over and nestled my head into the towel.
“Whatever.”

She drew in a long, deep breath. “I have a feeling you’re going to meet him really soon.”

I rolled my eyes. She’d been saying this for weeks, ever since we’d booked this dead end trip. “Have you seen any boys, because I haven’t. Maybe if we were in
Cabo
. . .” I let my remark trail on purpose.

I could hear her sit up then. “Not
soon
enough.” She murmured.

I rolled over again, the sun glaring down on me. “Not
soon enough
, what?”

She popped to her feet. “Hey!” She yelled.

What was she going on about now?
I sat up, shielding the sun from my eyes as I tried to erase the bright spots it had left me with. I could see her silhouette running toward the water, the strings on her bikini dancing about.

“Hey,”
I heard her say again, this time in her saucy voice.

I was still squinting, but able to see the two male silhouettes that had joined her side.
Of course.
Figured the only boys for miles would find their way to her. She was like a fly trap hanging on the wall. I laid back, not in the mood to watch as the boys inevitably fought over her, only taking me as the loser second prize. Her voice was drowned by the waves of the ocean—my mind drowned in it, too.

I tried to let myself fall asleep before she came back, just in case she wanted to introduce me. Between the waves and her giggles, I hardly noticed his proximity until his shadow fell over my feet.

“Excuse me.” His voice was gruff, smooth.

I felt my jaw clench. What had she said to him to make him come over? What embarrassing story had she chosen? I opened my eyes and looked up at the figure standing a few paces from me. It appeared, despite the new set of bright spots, that he had a football in his hand.

“That’s your friend there, right?” He pointed with the ball at Avery.

I couldn’t help but find the way his hand wrapped around the ball to be sexy. It took effort to look away and down over my feet at Avery. She was chatting away with the other boy.
“Unfortunately.”

He laughed nervously. “She,
uh,
figured you’d want to come over. She wants to play football with us. I told her I’d be happy to get you.” His sexy hand was now tapping the ball against his sexy thigh.

Of course she would.
“Uh, yeah.” I sat up, brushing some sand off my arm before noticing the free, non-football hand he’d extended toward me.

“Let me help you up.” I looked up at him, my eyes finally adjusting. He had dark hair, sharp features and a well tended body. “My name is Max, and that’s my brother Greg.”

“Max . . .” I repeated it, but didn’t know why. “I’m Jane.” I took his hand and he easily hoisted me to my feet.