Angel

25

DYLAN GAVE MY hand a squeeze and smiled weakly. Out of nowhere, I had a vision of kissing those soft, perfect lips. Then Fang’s face flashed before my eyes. I fell into a sudden coughing fit and dropped Dylan’s hand like a dead fish.

“You okay?” Dylan asked, rubbing my back. When I glared at him, he, thankfully, had the decency to change the subject.

“It’s later than I thought,” he said. “I say we camp out in the desert tonight, spy on the school from a distance, and maybe find a way to sneak in tomorrow morning.”

“Huh,” I said. It was a plan that I might have come up with, probably would have come up with. But all I heard, all I focused on were the words, “camp out in the desert tonight.” The two of us. Alone. And my heart sped up.

About a mile from the Gen 77 school, there were canyons, striped with layers of red, peach, and cream-colored rock. We flew toward one of the higher buttes and found a natural cave with an excellent view of the school. Then it was Dylan and me, alone together.

If he tried anything, I’d knock his teeth out.

You’re meant to be together, the Voice said suddenly. I groaned so loud that Dylan looked startled.

“It’s nothing,” I muttered.

“Okayyy,” he said quizzically, and I was back to wanting to punch him. “Hungry?” Dylan reached into his pocket and pulled out a couple of protein bars. I took the chocolate chip one. It tasted like sawdust mixed with chocolate chips. I was glad to have it. I contributed a bottle of warm water. We shared it in silence.

“I hope the others aren’t too worried,” I said, trying to make conversation, my voice sounding weirdly loud in the still night.

“They have to know by now that you can take care of yourself,” said Dylan. I nodded in agreement.

For long moments, we lay on the ledge on our stomachs, watching the school. With Fang, silences were comfortable. With Dylan, they were awkward. After a while, Dylan leaned over my shoulder and pointed up.

“Ursa Major. And Pegasus, the winged horse. Kinda looks like us.” I followed as his finger traced the shapes. The stars were bright and so numerous that it looked like someone had taken a handful of diamonds and thrown them onto black velvet.

“Or, no, there’s you, Max. Cassiopeia, the queen.”

“Oh, come on!” I cuffed him on the shoulder, and he tucked his head down, laughing. Still, I felt my face getting warm.

“Where’d you learn all that stuff, anyway?” I asked seriously. He shrugged.

“Back at the house in Colorado. When you were—away.” He cleared his throat, and I gulped. He meant when I was away with Fang. “The rest of us watched the stars. They said Jeb had taught you guys about them back in the day. Don’t you remember?”

Now it was my turn to shrug. I’d blocked out most of my good memories of Jeb.

“I was interested, and I had a lot of time to myself over there. So I read up on it. I’m curious about stuff, I guess. I just sort of absorb information.”

I thought of our Max’s Home School sessions, about how the rest of the flock had resented me for wanting us to learn something. I kept my eyes focused on the school building below.

“Do you think you could, like, teach me some of that stuff sometime?” I asked, in a small voice that didn’t even sound like me. It sounded cheesy.

Dylan didn’t laugh. “Of course,” he said. I felt his deep turquoise eyes looking right into me. “Anytime you want, Max.”

“Thanks,” I whispered, then trained my eyes back on the facility. Lights were on in the building, but no vehicles came or went, and no one seemed to step foot outside. I tried not to notice the warmth coming from Dylan’s body, or how every once in a while one of his sneakers nudged mine.

“I’m luckier than you are,” Dylan said unexpectedly.

“How do you figure that?” I asked, looking at him in the dark.

“I know you’re torn up about Fang,” he said. I cringed. “I don’t blame you. And now I’m here, and everyone’s pushing me at you, including me.”

My cheeks burned. This was exactly the kind of horrible, embarrassing, emotional stuff that I try really hard to avoid. Maybe if I talked about how to skin a desert rat, it would kill the romantic mood…

“But for me, there’s only been you,” he continued, looking off into the distance. “I don’t have to make any decisions. I don’t have to figure things out. You’re the only choice I have, the only one I want. For me, it’s really simple.”

I swallowed, feeling like there was a large brick in my suddenly dry throat.

“You don’t know me,” Dylan said. “You and Fang—you kind of talk the same, figure things out the same, know a lot of the same stuff, have a lot of shared history. You and I are more… combustible,” he said softly.

I couldn’t look at him. I felt as if looking at him would somehow break down every barrier I’d put up between us. I knew without a doubt that I loved Fang. But Dylan had hit the nail on the head—he and I were combustible. If I were mad at Fang, it was more like stubborn opposition, irritation. If I were mad at Dylan, it was fury, white hot.

I’m a girl who has been tamping down her emotions and keeping them tightly guarded her whole life. And that works really well for me. But that approach didn’t seem possible with Dylan. He provoked me; he got under my skin. And now I felt like my shell had a dangerous crack in it. Without much more effort on his part, it would split wide open, and my enormous river of emotions would gush out—the bad and the good.

It was pretty much the scariest thing I’d ever thought of.

I rested my head on my arms and closed my eyes, unable to say a word. It had been a long, hard day. I tensed when I felt Dylan’s fingers smooth my hair, then slowly trace a line down my back. When I didn’t say anything, he lay next to me quietly and put his arm around my shoulders.

He didn’t speak again, and gradually my muscles relaxed in his warmth. And I noticed how well my body curved into his… a perfect fit.

As if we were engineered that way.

I fell into a deep sleep tucked in that little cocoon, a deeper sleep than I might have had in years.

Right up until someone kicked me and said, “Gotcha!”