Falls Boys (Hellbent 1)

I fall into a tree, breathing hard and looking around.

“Aro!” Stoli shouts. “I’ve got vodka!”

And I laugh, surprising myself. I know they’re playing—well, maybe not Schuyler. She’d probably chop off all of my hair for making her bleed twice.

But I can’t go back to Weston. Not while things are still unsettled with Hugo and Reeves, and especially not without my sister and brother.

Something shines ahead, and I peer around the tree trunks, making out moonlight on water.

Blackhawk Lake.

I run, seeing racks of canoes that haven’t been put away yet, the dock, and dark buildings barely visible around the water and under the shadows of the trees.

The camp. Hawke and I didn’t go inside any of the cabins last night, and they’re probably all locked, but I race for them anyway. I can hide in between.

But just then, a figure runs out in front of me, and I suck in a sharp breath before I recognize that it’s Hawke. I smile, but he looks pissed. He swoops down and picks me up, throwing me over his shoulder. He runs, and I grunt, his shoulder digging into my stomach.

“I can run, you know?” I tell him.

Why the hell is he carrying me?

He climbs a small set of stairs, I hear a lock twist, and we’re inside an enclosure, the scent of campfire and Axe Body Spray heavy in the small space.

He slams the door and whips around like he’s scanning the cabin for danger. I try to hold in my laugh, but it escapes.

He came after me.

He always comes for me.

God, I love him. I—

I freeze, still hanging there on his shoulder.

I love him...

The words are only a breath in my head, but my heart swells so hard it hurts.

I close my eyes. My arms feel too empty—everything feels empty when he’s not around, I…

I was ready to kick that bitch to the moon for talking about him that way. I couldn’t allow it. It should never happen. She’s not fit to know him, and I’m sick to think she ever got to touch him.

I can’t love him.

But I do.

“Fuck,” I mumble.

“You okay?” he says, hearing me.

He sets me back on my feet, and I shake off everything in my head and the stupid, damn epiphany that I just had. “Yeah, they’re just fooling around,” I explain.

I hold out my wrists, and he pulls out his keys, slicing off the plastic band. “He was going ninety miles an hour, Aro. I’m going to kill them.”

“Four against two?” I remind him. “They’re trying to take me back to Weston.”

He frowns.

We hear shouts in the night, and Hawke walks to the window, peering through the cracks in the shutters that are already secured over the windows for the winter ahead. The moonlight hits the tattoo on his neck, and I’m paralyzed. Was he thinking he’d get it removed someday? Does he already regret it?

Or maybe he’ll keep it forever, always having a reminder of me. That once, we were here together.

The words are soft but clear, and I don’t even try to stop myself. “I love you,” I tell him.

He turns his head away from the window, toward me, but not all the way.

I take a step toward him. “Don’t say anything,” I blurt out. “Please. I don’t want to know if you don’t love me too, and if you say you do then I’ll worry you’re just saying it because I said it. I just…”

I can’t breathe all of a sudden. A week ago, I wouldn’t have thought I’d be the first person to ever say ‘I love you’, but when he goes off to college, I want him to know this was real. That he was important to me.

“I want to crawl inside of you sometimes,” I whisper. “Sometimes I want you to be all that I can see and hear. So that nothing exists in the world to me but the feel of you.”

Something passes by the cabin—a rustle of leaves, someone running, an animal—but neither of us register it enough to hide.

Hawke slowly turns, and I can just make out his blue eyes in the shadows.

“I’m scared, Hawke. I’m always scared.” I take another step. “You don’t see it yet, but your life will change, and I won’t be able to keep up. I know this will end, but I need you to know that you’re incredible and you’ll be my favorite memory. I’ll miss you so much.”

I stand there, my stomach in knots because I’m dying to know what he’s thinking, but a weight’s been lifted off my shoulders now too. I’m always hiding, but I needed him to know that.

He doesn’t speak, though.

Instead, he rushes me, and I catch him in my arms, both of us grabbing for each other as he backs me into the wall.

He catches my lips between his teeth. I can’t breathe. Hawke…