Unearthly (26 page)

“Don't cry,” he says. “That's not fair.”

I laugh and sob at the same time.

“It's okay,” he whispers. His fingers brush at the tears on my cheeks. “Don't cry.”

Then he puts his arms around me, wings and all. I curl my arms around his neck and bury my face in his chest and breathe in the smell of the river on him. Somewhere in the woods a crow caws. A blackbird answers. And then we're kissing and everything goes away but Tucker.

“Okay, wait,” he says after a minute, pulling back. I blink up at him in a daze.
Please, please,
I think,
don't let this be the part where you change your mind.

“Is it okay to kiss you?” he asks.

“What?”

“I won't get struck by lightning?”

I laugh. Then I lean in and brush my lips lightly against his. His hands on my waist tighten.

“No lightning,” I say.

He smiles. I run my finger along the length of his dimple. He lifts a strand of my hair (which has popped free from my ponytail) and inspects it in the sunlight.

“Not red,” I say with a shrug.

“I always felt like there was something off about your hair.”

“So you thought you'd torture me by calling me Carrots?”

“I still thought I'd never seen anyone as beautiful as you.” He drops his head and rubs the back of his neck, embarrassed. He's blushing.

“You're a real Romeo,” I say, blushing, too, trying to cover it by teasing him, but then he puts his arms around me again and runs his hands over my wings. His touch is light, careful, but it sends a wave of pleasure straight to the pit of my stomach so strong that my knees get weak and wobbly. I lean into him and press my cheek to his shoulder, working to keep the air going in and out of my lungs as he strokes slowly up and down the length of my wings.

“So you're an angel, that's all,” he murmurs.

I kiss his shoulder. “Part angel.”

“Say something in the angel language.”

“What should I say?”

“Something simple,” he says. “Something true.”

“I love you,”
I whisper automatically, shocking myself yet again. The words in Angelic are like murmurs of wind and stars, a low, clear music. His arms tighten around me. I gaze up into his face.

“What did you say?” he asks, but his eyes tell me he heard me loud and clear.

“Oh, you know. I just kinda like you.”

“Huh.” He kisses the corner of my mouth and pushes a strand of hair away from my face. “I really,
really
like you, too.”

So I'm in love. That crazy, forget to eat, float around in a daze, talk on the phone all night and bounce out of bed every morning hoping to see him kind of love. The days of summer fly past, and every day I find something else I love about him.

It feels like no one else knows him the way I do. I know that he doesn't really dig country music, but it's part of the whole Western scene so he tolerates it. He admits that he inwardly cringes every time he hears the twang of a steel guitar. I think it's hilarious whenever we hear it, knowing that. He loves Cheetos. He believes one of the greatest tragedies in this world is the way the land keeps getting eaten up, all the wild spaces filled with condos and dude ranches. He both loves and hates the Lazy Dog, for that reason. His recurring fantasy is to go back in time and ride the range in those days before fences, out in the heat with the little dogies, driving them across the land like a real cowboy.

He's good to people, respectful. He doesn't cuss. He's kind. Thoughtful. He likes to pick me wildflowers, which I weave into garlands for my hair so I can smell them all day long. He doesn't make a big deal about me being different. In fact, he hardly ever brings up the whole angel-blood thing, although sometimes I see him looking at me with a kind of curiosity in his eyes.

I love how he sometimes gets embarrassed by the mushy stuff between us and then his voice gets all gruff and he tickles me or kisses me to shut us both up. Boy, do we ever kiss. We make out like champions.

Tucker never takes it too far, though I sometimes want him to. He'll kiss me, kiss me, kiss me until my head swims and my body goes light and heavy at the same time, kiss me until I start tugging at our clothes, wanting as much contact as I can get. Then he groans, grabs my wrists, and moves away from me, closing his eyes and taking deep breaths for a minute.

I think he seriously believes that deflowering an angel could mean an eternity in fiery hell.

“What about church?” he asks me one night after he pulls away, gasping for breath. It's the first week of August. We're lying on a blanket in the bed of his pickup truck, a riot of bright stars over our heads. He kisses the back of my hand and then twines my fingers with his. For a second I forget the question.

“What?”

He laughs. “Church. Why doesn't your family go to church?”

Another thing I usually love about Tucker: He's unflinchingly honest, forthright to a fault. I gaze up at the stars.

“I don't know. My mom took us every Sunday when we were kids, but not since we got older.”

He rolls over to look at me.

“But you know that there's a God. I mean, you're part angel. You have proof, right?”

What proof do I really have? Wings. The speech thing. Glory. All powered by God, or so I've been told. God seems like the most likely explanation.

“Well, there's the glory thing,” I say. “How we connect with God. But I don't know a lot about that. I've only felt it that one time.”

“What was it like?”

“It was good. I can't really describe it. It was like I could feel everything you felt, your heart beating, your blood moving through your veins, your breath, like we were the same person, and we felt this incredible . . . joy. Didn't you feel it, too?”

“I don't think so,” he admits, glancing away. “I was just so crazy happy to be kissing you. And then you were glowing. And then you were shining so bright I couldn't look at you.”

“Sorry.”

“I'm not,” he says. “I'm glad it happened. Because then I got to know who you really are.”

“Oh yeah? Who am I?”

“A really, really
spiritual
, spoiled California chick.”

“Shut up.”

“It's cool, though. My girlfriend is an angel.”

“I'm not an angel. I don't live in heaven or play a golden harp or have heart-to-heart conversations with the Almighty.”

“You don't? You don't have a big Christmas dinner with God?”

“No,” I say, giggling. “We have our own traditions, but we don't actually get to hang out with God. My mom says that every angel-blood meets God eventually, though, after our purpose on earth is fulfilled. Face-to-face. I can't really imagine it, but that's what she says.”

“Yeah, but that's the same for everybody, isn't it? Humans too?”

“What?”

“We all supposedly get to meet God. When we die.”

I stare at him. I've never thought of it like that before. I assumed the meeting was like a kind of debriefing about our purpose. The idea has always terrified me.

“Right,” I say slowly. “We all get to meet God someday.”

“So maybe I should keep going to church.”

“Church couldn't hurt.”

I stroke his cheek, totally loving the hint of stubble under my hand. I want to say something profound, something about how grateful I am that he can accept me for who I am, wings and everything, but I know that would sound cheesy beyond words. Then I'm thinking about church. Mom and Jeffrey and me in church when I was little, sitting in the pews, singing and praying with everybody else. Falling under the colored light of the stained-glass angels.

We're bumping along a dirt road in Bluebell and I'm trying to behave myself, keep a Bible's worth of space between us so that we will actually end up fishing, unlike last time. But then he reaches over to shift, and when he's done he puts his hand on my knee and I instantly get all quivery.

“Ruffian.” I grab the offending hand and trap it in mine. His thumb strokes over the top of my knuckles, sending my heart into overdrive.

“Sometimes you say the weirdest things, I swear,” he says.

“It's from having a mom who's over a hundred years old. And the language thing,” I explain. “I understand every word I hear. Gives me an awesome vocabulary.”

“Awesome,” he teases.

“Exemplary, as a matter of fact. Hey, have you talked to your sister lately?”

“Yeah, a couple nights ago,” he says.

“Did you tell her about us?”

He frowns. “Am I not supposed to?”

I smile. “You can tell her. But I think she already knows. I talked to her yesterday and she was acting all funny.”

“So
you
didn't tell her.”

“No, I thought that might be weird like, guess what, I'm dating your brother. I thought it'd be better coming from you.”

“I told her,” he admits. “I can't really keep secrets from Wendy. I've tried. Doesn't work.”

“But—” I hesitate. “You didn't tell her about—y'know.”

He gives me a fake clueless look and says, “What? Is there something about you I should know?”

“Just call me angel of the morning,” I sing.

He laughs. “Of course I didn't tell her. I wouldn't know how to tell her something like that.” Then he adds quietly, “But it will be hard, when she gets back.”

I look out the window. The truck whizzes past lodgepole pines on both sides of the road, aspens here and there that are beginning to turn colors. It's hot, even by Wyoming standards. The air smells dry and dusty.

Then everything starts to look very familiar. Like the worst case of déjà vu ever.

My hand tightens in Tucker's.

“Stop the truck,” I gasp.

“What?”

“Just stop!”

Tucker hits the brakes, sending a cloud of dust around us. Before the truck has even stopped moving I scramble out. When the dust settles I'm standing in the middle of the road turning in a slow circle.

Then I walk in a daze toward the side of the road, brushing past the shadow of a big silver pickup in my mind's eye. I turn, one foot leading the other, and move off into the forest. I faintly hear Tucker calling me, but I keep walking. I don't know if I could stop even if I tried. I push on through the trees. Once I stumble, slipping to one knee on the needle-strewn ground, but even then I keep going, deeper into the forest, not even bothering to brush myself off.

And then I stop.

It's all here. The little clearing. The ridge.

The air's full of smoke. The sky a golden orange. Christian wearing his black fleece jacket, his hands tucked up into his pockets, hips slightly shifted to the side. He's standing very still, looking up at the top of the ridge.

Oh God, I think. I can see the flames. I step toward him. Everything's so dry. I lick my lips, glance down at my hands, which are shaking. It's like I'm leaving my whole life behind in this moment. I'm so sad I could cry.

“Christian,” I croak out.

He turns. I don't know how to read his expression.

“It's you,” he says.

“It's me . . . I'm . . .”

He crosses toward me. I keep walking to him. In another minute we both stop, arm's length away from each other, and stare. I feel like I'm on drugs or something. I want to touch him so badly it feels like pain not to. I reach out. His hand wraps around mine. His skin's so hot, feverish. I close my eyes for a second against the wave of sensation. Recognition blasts through me.

We belong together.

I open my eyes. He steps closer. His gaze brushes across my face like a touch. He looks at my lips, then my eyes, then my lips again. He lifts a hand to touch my cheek. I'm crying, I realize, tears slipping down my cheeks.

“It's really you,” he whispers. Then his arms are around me and the fire rushes at us, moving swiftly over the ground like a monster stalking us, clouds of thick, white smoke curling from its nostrils, crackling and roaring its warning. I press my body into Christian's and summon my wings, grab at the air with all my strength, and push us skyward.

Only I don't fly. I sink to the ground on the forest floor, my hands clutching at empty air, because Christian isn't there. And then everything goes black.

I become vaguely aware of being carried. I know without even having to open my eyes that it's Tucker carrying me. I'd be able to identify his sun-and-man smell anywhere. My head's lolling back across his arm, my arms dangling.

I've had the vision. Again. If vision is even the right word for it now. I've done so much more than see it. I've been there.