Александра Адорнетто - Halo

“I can’t say I don’t know what you mean,” he admitted. “It feels like the end of the world, doesn’t it?”

“Like the end of all happiness,” I agreed. “Of everything you’ve ever known. That’s what happens when you make one person your reason for living.”

Xavier smiled. “I guess we weren’t too smart then. But I wouldn’t change it.”

“Neither would I.” I was quiet for a few minutes, and then I nudged his fingers with the tip of my nose. “Xav . . .”

“Yes?” He bowed his head and nudged me back.

“If a few days apart nearly killed us, what happens when . . . ?”

“Not now,” he cut in. “I only just got you back; I don’t want to think about losing you again. I won’t let that happen.”

“You won’t be able to stop it,” I said. “Just because you’re a rugby player doesn’t mean you can take on the forces of Heaven. There’s nothing I want more than to stay with you, but

I’m so scared.”

“A man in love can do extraordinary things,” Xavier said. “I don’t care if you’re an angel, you’re my angel, and I won’t let you go.”

“But what if they give us no warning?” I asked desperately. “What if one morning, I wake up, and I’m back where I came from? Have you thought of that?”

Xavier narrowed his eyes. “What do you think my greatest fear is, Beth? Don’t you know how much it scares me that one day I might go to school and you won’t be there? That I’ll come here looking for you, but nobody will answer the door. Nobody in town will know where you’ve gone except me, and I’ll know it’s a place where I can’t go to get you back. So don’t ask me if

I’ve thought of that, because the answer is yes, every day.”

He lay back and stared angrily at the ceiling fan, as if it were to blame for the whole situation.

As I watched him, I realized that my whole world was right in front of me, just over six feet tall and lying on my bed. I realized at the same moment that I could never leave him. I could never go back to my home, because now, he was my home. And I was filled with a strange and overwhelming desire to be as close to him as I could possibly get, to meld with him in a promise to both of us that I would never let us be broken apart.

I got up off the bed and stood scrunching my toes on the floorboards. Xavier looked at me curiously. I returned his stare without speaking and slowly pulled my top up over my head and let it drop to the ground. I didn’t feel any sort of self-consciousness; I just felt free. I slipped off my pajama bottoms and let them crumple around my feet so that I was standing before him, fully exposed and vulnerable. I was letting him see me at my most defenseless.

Xavier didn’t speak, it would have broken the hum of silence that had fallen across the room. A moment later he stood and mimicked my motions, letting his shirt and jeans fall in a heap on the ground. He came over to me and ran his warm hands down my back. I sighed and let myself sink into his embrace. The feel of his skin on mine sent a warm glow flooding through my body, and I leaned against him, feeling whole for the first time in days.

I kissed his soft lips and ran my hands over his face, feeling the familiar nose and cheekbones. I would have recognized the shape of his face anywhere; I could read it like a blind person reading Braille. He smelled fresh and sweet, and I pressed my chest against his. In my eyes, he didn’t have a single physical fault, but I wouldn’t have cared if he did. I still would have loved him if he was scarred or dressed in rags, just because he was Xavier.

We lowered ourselves onto the bed and that was how we stayed—until we heard Ivy and

Gabriel downstairs—just the two of us, holding each other. Molly would have thought it was crazy. But it was the contact we wanted. We wanted to feel like the same person rather than two separate individuals. Clothing concealed us. Without it, there was nowhere to hide, no way to mask any part of ourselves, and that was what we wanted—to be completely and utterly ourselves and feel completely safe.

Angel of Destruction

The next morning Xavier came back to have breakfast with us before school. As we ate, Gabriel tried to talk some sense into him. We all knew that Xavier was furious about Jake’s duplicity and was ready to take him on single-handedly. That was something Gabriel wanted to avoid at all costs, especially as we didn’t know the extent of Jake’s power.

“Whatever you do, you mustn’t confront him,” Gabriel said soberly.

Xavier looked at him over the rim of his coffee mug. “He threatened Beth,” he said, his shoulders tightening. “He forced himself on her. We can’t just let him get away with it.”

“Jake is not like the other students. You mustn’t try to deal with him alone,” Gabriel said.

“We don’t know what he’s capable of.”

“Can’t be too dangerous, he’s pretty scrawny,” Xavier muttered under his breath.

Ivy gave him a stern look. “You know that his appearance has nothing to do with it.”

“So what do you want us to do then?” Xavier asked.

“We can’t do anything,” Gabriel said, “not without drawing unwanted attention to ourselves. We can only hope that he means no harm.”

Xavier let out a short laugh and then stared at Gabriel. “You’re serious?”

“Deadly.”

“But what about what he did at the prom?”

“I wouldn’t call that evidence,” Gabriel said.

“What about the accident with the cook and the deep fryer?” I said. “And the car crash at the start of term?”

“You think Jake might have had something to do with those things?” Ivy asked. “But he wasn’t even at the school when the crash happened.”

“He only needed to be in town,” I replied. “And he was definitely there that day in the cafeteria—I walked right past him.”

“I read about a boating accident at the jetty two days ago,” Xavier added. “And there have been a couple of fires recently that the paper said were started by arsonists. That’s never happened around here before.”

Gabriel put his head in his hands. “Let me think about this,” he said.

“That’s not all,” I cut in, feeling guilty to be the bearer of so much bad news. “He has followers, everywhere he goes, they’re right behind him, acting like he’s their ringleader, or something. It started off as just a few, but every time I see him, there are more.”

“Beth, go and get ready for school,” Gabriel said quietly.

“But . . . ,” I began.

“Just go,” he said. “Ivy and I need to talk.”

___

After the prom, Jake Thorn’s popularity seemed to grow with alarming speed, and his followers doubled in number. When I went back to school, I noticed they all walked around with vacant looks, like drug addicts, their pupils strangely dilated, their hands thrust deep in their pockets. Their faces only came alive when they saw Jake, taking on a disturbing, adoring expression that suggested they would drown themselves in the ocean if he instructed them to do so.

Acts of random vandalism also seemed to be suddenly on the increase. The doors of Saint

Mark’s church were desecrated by obscenities, and the windows of the municipal offices were shattered by vandals, using homemade explosives. Fairhaven reported a virulent outbreak of food poisoning, and many of its residents had to be transferred to the hospital.

And it seemed that wherever disaster struck, Jake Thorn was there. He never allowed himself to be implicated in any way; he was always an observer, hovering at the sidelines. To me, it seemed he was bent on causing pain and suffering, and I couldn’t help thinking that his motivation was revenge. Was he showing me the consequences of my rejection?