Sunburst

“You heard Seven?” he asked, his voice carefully calm and measured. He was covering his apprehension.

“I think so,” I shrugged a shoulder and met his gaze.

“You didn’t see her?”

“Nope,” I shook my head once. “I just heard her.”

“Coming?” I watched my father grow more uneasy. He sat forward on the coach, pulling his glasses from his face and holding them between his thumb and forefinger.

“No, she was saying….” The farther removed from the barn I became, the more I doubted myself or why I felt so much fear. This all seemed so silly. So what? She said my name. She didn’t even try to engage me. “I heard my name. Truthfully, I’m not even sure if it was Seven, it just…. sounded like her.”

“She spoke to you?” My dad pressed. I got the distinct feeling he was hoping this was more than it actually was.

“Whispered,” I croaked, finally feeling as ridiculous as I sounded.

“Pardon?”

I cleared my throat and said more clearly, “She whispered my name. Just whispered it.”

“Stella,” my dad sighed. He rose from the couch and walked over to me, wrapping me up in a comforting hug. “We’re going to figure this out.”

I tilted my head up at him, resting my chin on his chest. “You mean, you don’t think I’m being silly? It was just a whisper. I should know better. I should-“

“Stop,” he commanded and I did. “This is war, Stella. We are at war. And they are not going to play fair. So stop beating yourself up. We are going to end this, and her. Just stay focused on those things and you will make it through.”

A little choked up, I sniffled, “Thanks, Dad.”

“Sure, sweet pea,” he kissed the top of my head and then straightened. “Tristan’s here. I can hear his truck.”

Sure enough there was the distant rumble of his oversized tires over the wet gravel drive. I gave my dad another squeeze and then walked to the front door and out onto our wrap-around porch.

The farmhouse we lived in was big but really old. The stairs creaked no matter how softly you walked on them, the porch was sagging near the middle and I’d heard my dad tell Jupiter the house needed a new roof. But this was home. Cozy, safe and familiar. Our home sat on acres of land that stretched out in rolling farmland and Tristan and I had every inch of the property memorized. Just like we knew every square foot of his parent’s property too. There wasn’t a whole lot to do in our small farm town growing up. So if we didn’t want to get stuck working with our parents, we spent time swimming in the pond on the back of his property, jumping hay bales, hiding out in the rafters of the barns or walking the corn fields, up one way and then back and then up and then back.

It was life on a farm, and we loved every minute of it.

The air was still cool, the heavy rain still hanging in the air, but no longer falling from the sky. Tristan’s old barely-white pickup kicked up mud and gravel as he drove down the drive. I had to laugh at his windshield covered in mud. He must have been out joy-riding with Lincoln and Rigley earlier, because his truck was a mess.

He pulled up in front of me and shot me a roguish smile through the filthy driver’s side window before opening his door and hopping down.

He was dangerously beautiful as he walked up the stairs to meet me. His head was freshly shaved, his emerald green eyes dark and needy and his full lips pulled up into a smirk of possession.

We stood apart for thirty seconds, taking each other in, breathing the space between, before I flung myself into his arms. This was how I met Tristan. Since forever, I threw myself into him and he caught me. He would always catch me.

He clung to me just as tightly and pulled me securely against his chest. He smelled like rain and hay, and Tristan. My head spun with all the events of the last several hours, but here, in Tristan’s arms they just didn’t seem to matter anymore.

“What are you doing here?” I asked into his chest, noticing how hard his heart was beating against my cheek.

“I needed to see you,” he answered. His fingers trailed back and forth across my lower back and I shivered at his gentle, barely-there touch.

“I needed to see you too,” I confessed.

We held each other for a few more moments before letting go of each other. We’d been keeping our relationship in check for long enough that we were painfully familiar with the boundary lines we weren’t allowed to cross. All hugs came to an end before they could be considered intimate- or more intimate than what was normal for us.

“What have you been doing today?” I asked him as I sank onto the porch swing that hung from the ceiling. The cushion was a little wet from the rain earlier, but I didn’t let it bother me.

Tristan sat down next to me and set us to swinging with one of his toes anchored on the ground. “Rigley and I were out mudding during the rain.” He was so casual, so nonchalant about it, I almost laughed.

“Mudding?” Meaning, they were out driving their trucks all over Rigley’s parents land in the most dangerous way possible. There were only certain stunts that splashed mud on top of a truck with extra-large tires. “That’s a little dangerous, don’t you think? Do you have a death wish I don’t know about?”

Tristan reached out and smoothed out my raised eyebrow with his pointer finger. “Do I have a death wish? Nope.” His eyes were intense again and his attitude too cavalier. “Driving around in my truck is perfectly safe. Fighting demons and psychopaths on the other hand….”

“Not fair,” I argued. We’d been doing this a lot lately, going back and forth about my fated future. “I don’t have a choice.”

“There’s always a choice,” Tristan said in a low voice.

“Fine, there’s always a choice,” I agreed. “Then this is what I want. I want to make this planet safe, I want to-“

“I don’t want to fight anymore,” Tristan cut me off by pressing his fingers against my mouth. “I came over because I couldn’t stay away from you anymore, I couldn’t…. Stella, I just wanted to be with you; that’s it.”

I nodded against his hand, relaxing because of how nice that sounded. I kissed the pads of his fingers as a gesture of surrender, tasting his skin on my lips. He watched my mouth, his eyes darkening with a heat that could burn even me.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he pulled his fingers from my mouth and then wrapped his arm around my shoulders. I snuggled into him and laid my head against chest. His heartbeat steadied, but I smiled at the idea that it wouldn’t take much from me to get it going again.

“Stella, this weekend, I want to take you out,” Tristan said gently, carefully.

“Sure, like Friday?” I asked.

We were both into our spring soccer seasons, but there weren’t very many Friday games. Usually we played Tuesday or Thursday nights and got Friday off. Friday night in the spring turned into a big date night throughout the high school. During the fall, we had football games, and during the winter basketball games, so with track meets that took place during the day and soccer games during the week nights, the weekends were almost completely free.

“Yeah, Friday,” Tristan confirmed. “But, Stel, I want this Friday. It’s mine. I want this to be a date.”

My chest ached at his words, knowing how impossible that would be. It wasn’t just that I couldn’t pick Seth because of Tristan, it was also that I couldn’t pick Tristan because of Seth. Love triangles were always so sexy in books, but in reality they were heartbreaking and crushing. I felt suffocated beneath the weight of this trifecta relationship, even while I knew who my choice would be in the end.

I could never pick Tristan.

I could never be with Tristan.

No matter what my heart wanted.

“I can’t go on a date with you,” I whispered, my throat thick with emotion.

I felt him tense underneath me, his whole body going rigid with frustration. “Yes, you can.”