Savior by Laury Falter Read Free Book Online

composure, I stretched out my neck as if that would help, and asked, “Where are you?”
    “Right here,” he said, strolling out from beneath the eaves of his roof and into the moonlight. He was still dressed as he had been in the morning and, still, naively seductive. The jeans he was wearing hung a little lower from his chiseled waist, and his shirt was wrinkled and draped over his waistband. Obviously, he had been busy today also.
    “Why are you awake?”
    “I could ask you the same,” he ventured.
    I hesitated, knowing my response would sound ridiculous, for some reason. But there was no getting away from the truth now. “I-I was coming to see you.”
    Surprised and genuinely interested, he asked, “Why?”
    Reverting back to my line of questioning, I asked, “What are you doing awake?”
    He suppressed a grin at my obstinacy before saying, “I was thinking about coming to see you.”
    “Ironic…,” I mused.
    “Is it?” he asked, allowing a sly smirk to break through.
    He reached out his hand to offer me assistance across the water, and I took it. The warmth of his fingers left me longing to hold on even after I landed safely on his dock, but he unwound them.
    We stood there in silence for what seemed like a long time, our eyes locked on each other, not daring, but waiting for the other to speak first.
    “Should we go inside?” he suggested.
    I nodded slowly in agreement, unsure of where this would lead.
    He closed the door behind us, blocking off what little illumination the moonlight had been providing. I turned toward him, letting the hood slip from my head.
    Silence filled the room and I found that I was more conscious of his presence nearby than I had ever been before. The smell of his skin – a woodsy scent – permeated the air, while the way he rolled from toe to heel and back again captivated me.
    Trying to distract myself, I moved to the lantern that had been placed next to the door, intending to ignite it.
    “Do we really want to answer to our families tomorrow as to why we were up late at night?” There was rigidity in his tone, a lack of emotion that disturbed me.
    Good point, I thought, and set the lantern back on the floorboards.
    “Are you-Are you mad…at me? Is that why you were coming to talk?”
    He became motionless. “No….” he hesitated. “No, that’s not the reason.”
    I breathed a sigh of relief, even though he remained planted by the door.
    “Then what is the reason?”
    He lowered his gaze to the floor, but only fleetingly. His eyes were back on me the next second, burning with intensity. “I wanted to apologize. I shouldn’t have said all that on the way to breakfast this morning. I should have….” Again, his eyes drifted and he shook his head.
    “Jameson,” I whispered, a lump in my throat keeping me from speaking any louder. I cleared it and continued. He needed to hear what I was about to say clearly. “I understand The Sevens…the way they work, they think, their motives. Everything you said in the boat was true. But what I didn’t get a chance to say…is that I also understand how they control us. They do it through fear. Fear , Jameson.”
    His head was shaking back and forth again. “I wasn’t talking about our enemies. I was talking about pressuring you to confess how you feel-”
    “I know,” I cut him off, determined to say what I needed. “I’m getting to that….” I paused to take a deep breath and steady the flutter of emotions running through me. “Fear is what drives them, Jameson. Fear is what they have tried to instill in me, in all of us. And when they assessed me as I stood in front of them during Reception, when they didn’t react or respond to my demands for my mother, they took time to judge me, to appraise me. They didn’t kill me right then, even though they know how dangerous I can be. They did it because they were learning something…that they had failed.” Without any effort on my part, a smile surfaced on my lips.