AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“About half a mile south of the party.” He pointed. She could see the glow of fire on the beach. “Do you want to start walking?”
Becca shivered. She wasn’t ready to go back to that house. Not yet. She shook her head, then had to hug her arms across her chest. “He had a gun.”
“He was firing blindly. He couldn’t see us.”
“He had a gun.”
He nodded, looking at the water again. “I know.”
She’d seen that bullet pierce the water, close enough to touch. Tyler hated Chris and his brothers enough to kill them. She shivered again.
The water rolled up the sand to drift over her bare feet. It felt warm again, tropical almost.
In September.
Her head snapped sideways, but she couldn’t see Chris clearly in the darkness. He was looking out at the water, his expression resigned.
I need a frigging rainstorm. A drizzle. Fog, even.
“Do that again,” she said.
He didn’t look at her, but the water pulled higher along the sand, hanging for a moment to warm her, then receding with the tide.
She licked her lips, unsure how to proceed. Another swirl of warm water wrapped around her legs to drift down the beach again.
Chris scooped a handful of water out of the surf, letting it pool in his palm. He held it there for a moment, then spread his fingers to let the water trickle between them.
It never reached the wave below. The water dripped from his fingers to turn into steam in midair, where the wind caught it and pulled it into nothing.
She was just staring, when she really wanted to grab his hand and look for a hidden heater or something.
So she did that. His hand felt normal, warm and steady. Not even waterlogged, like hers felt.
“Show me again.”
He moved closer, scooping the water while her hand was attached to his. Water trickled between their joined fingers, turning to steam that wrapped around her wrist before drifting into the night.
She lifted her gaze and met his eyes. “So ... did you do the fire, too?”
“No.” He paused. “That was Gabriel.”
Her breathing caught, just for a moment. “And the wind was Nick?”
He didn’t volunteer anything further, just nodded and glanced over as if unsure what he’d find on her face.
“How?” she said.
He had to think about that for a while. Then he rolled forward onto his knees and drew a circle in the sand with his finger.
“Imagine everyone in the world lives inside this circle,” he said.
When she nodded, he drew a five-pointed star inside the circle. “Think of each of these points as one of the elements.”
“I’m assuming you’re not talking about the periodic table?”
He smiled, and there was a shred of relief to it. “No.”
“So fire, water, air, earth—” She thought of the landscaping business, the way she’d run from the house that first night and the grass had grabbed her sneakers. “Michael, right?”
