Falling by Kailin Gow Read Free Book Online Page A

much blood she has lost. She’s wary, her gun extended before her ready for the slightest hint of a threat. Yet we don’t come up against any opposition. There are bodies though, laying on the floor wherever they have fallen. Some are Faders, while some are obviously the Others.
    I’m not looking at them. Instead, as my eyes adjust to the semi-dark of the cave, I find myself wondering why it is only semi-dark. It’s then that I realize it. There’s something glowing towards the back of the cave. I move towards it quickly. Almost as soon as I do though, it stops.
    “I have a torch here somewhere,” Annette announces. That makes me smile, because even though I know she’s just using the English word for a flashlight, it makes me think of explorers wandering through caves with flaming torches.
    Her flashlight illuminates the cave a little, and we move back, trying to get a better view. Almost as soon as we do, the glow returns, and now I can see what it’s coming from. It’s emanating from a rock, which is almost spherical, and looks a bright gold in the darkness of the rest of the cave.
    Annette reaches out for it, putting away her gun.
    “I really wouldn’t touch it, if I were you, Annette.”
    I know that voice. I’ve been daydreaming about that voice for most of the last day. I’ve been wondering if I’ll ever hear it again, and trying to work out what I’ll say if I do. I almost don’t dare to turn around, but I do. In front of me is a tall figure, his face hooded and hidden by a scarf, wrapped up against the cold.
    “Jack!”
    “Celes,” Gray’s hand stops me before I can run to him. “You don’t know for certain if it’s-”
    But I know, and a second later, I have the proof. Jack removes his hood, and pulls down the scarf, letting me see the features I’ve wanted to see since I left the desert. Even by the light of a single flashlight and a glowing rock, it can’t be anyone else.
    “Celes.” He almost whispers it.
    “Jack.”
     

 
     
    EIGHT
     
     
     
     
    G rayson can’t hold me back then. I run to Jack. I have to see him. I have to hold him. I know it will disappoint Grayson, even if they have taken the memories of us together from him, but I can’t hold back. Not when I’ve spent so much of the last day or so wondering if Jack was alive or dead.
    I fall into his arms, wanting to kiss him so badly, so urgently that I can barely stop myself. I only manage it because I’m all too aware of Grayson standing there, and there are some things I don’t want to do in front of him. So I hold him by the dim light of the cave, looking up into those clear blue eyes of his.
    Jack doesn’t seem as willing to hold back as I am. He bends down to kiss me, and when he does, I don’t stop him. I need this. I need to feel it. To know that it’s real. His lips meet mine, and for several long seconds I’m caught up in the moment, caught up in just kissing Jack back until I can’t do anything else.
    When we pull apart, I’m actually out of breath from it. “Jack…I thought…I thought you were…”
    “Dead,” Jack says. “I know. I’m sorry. For a moment or two there, I thought I was.”
    “So how did you escape?” I ask. It hardly seems possible that Jack could have gotten away from the situation we left him in.
    Jack shakes his head. “It’s a long story. One I promise I’ll tell you someday, but right now-”
    “Now we have to get out of here!” Lionel’s voice booms from behind us all. He’s still carrying his machine gun, slung over his back in a way that doesn’t really fit with the rest of him. He has to have run from the helicopter to have gotten here this quickly. “Or had you forgotten the Others? They will be sending more people out here when they can’t get anyone to answer their communications.” He glances over to Jack, giving the other man a brief nod of acknowledgement. “Good to see you back, boy. I knew you had it in you.”
    “Thank you, sir.”
    Lionel shakes