The Taking (The Taking 1)

I swallowed, grimacing. “And that guy, Agent Truman, asked me some weird questions that made me nervous. I thought about how you said people thought my dad might have been involved in my disappearance, and at first I wondered if he maybe thought that, too, because he wanted to know what all I remembered—which is almost nothing.” I wrinkled my nose when I said the next part. “But then he asked me about fireflies.”

“Fireflies? Why? What about them?”

“I have no idea, but my dad asked me the same thing. They both wanted to know if I remembered seeing fireflies. . . .” I nodded toward the darkening horizon. “The night I was here.”

“So did you?”

I closed my eyes and inhaled the tang of the rain-swollen air. I felt one tiny drop on my cheek and then another on my nose. “I don’t know. I’m not sure I know what they look like, really.” I opened my eyes and looked at him. “Do you?”

He frowned, concentrating. “I mean, sort of, I guess. Do we even have them around here?”

I shrugged as more raindrops fell on me.

“So what do you remember?”

“We were coming back from my game, and I got out of the car because my dad and I were fighting over college, and about Austin, and I was going to walk to prove a point. I tripped because I couldn’t see where I was going, and my dad was yelling for me. But before I could answer him, something really weird happened.”

“Fireflies?”

I smirked. “No. There was this intense flash of light. It was so bright that I couldn’t see anything else.” I shut my eyes, and for a moment I was transported back there again, and I could hear my dad’s screams, and I was blinded by the light that was everywhere all at once. And I felt tingly. All over.

Tyler’s touch brought me back to the present as he wiped my cheek. I felt tingly again, but in an entirely different way. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I told him, letting him wipe away yet another tear that was mingled with the rain, and then another, as the tiny raindrops became a full-on deluge around us. Neither of us moved, or flinched even, as we were drenched, drowned by the sudden downpour. I blinked the rain away so I could keep looking at his perfect, beautiful face. “If I hadn’t vanished that night, then I wouldn’t have come back, and I wouldn’t have had the chance to know you now. Not like this.”

And like that his lips found me. They didn’t find my forehead this time but captured my lips, and I couldn’t breathe when they did. They were demanding and sweet all at the same time.

Fire flowed through me while rain drizzled down my face. Our tongues teased and touched and danced together, and he crushed me against him in a way that made me believe he’d never, ever let me go.

I’d never been so alive, and I knew this was why I’d come back. To be here, right now, in this moment, with Tyler.

I clung to his shirt. Everything was dripping—me and him, our clothes. Water splashed up off the ground as soon as it struck.

Tyler’s hands were as impatient as mine as he made restless fists with my T-shirt. And then, slowly, painfully, he withdrew his lips from mine while his fingers moved up to clasp the back of my neck tenderly.

I blinked dazedly at him. An unhurried smile found my lips, which pulsed, throbbing to the beat of my pounding heart. “Damn,” I whispered.

Like some sort of idiot, I couldn’t stop grinning. I grinned almost the entire drive home. I grinned when Tyler pulled into my driveway to drop me off at my house—even though it was right across the street from his. I grinned more than I thought was possible when he kissed me again, and that kiss was even better than the first one, because it was slower and sweeter, and he lingered as he held my eyes with his. And then I went inside and grinned some more while I stripped out of my wet clothes and toweled my hair dry.

I was pretty sure my face was going to bust if I didn’t stop all this stupid grinning. But I couldn’t help it. How had I gone from completely displaced and struggling to find my way, to utter and unrestrained bliss in just six days flat?

Oh yeah, Tyler Wahl.

Damn. The boy was that good.

After I’d changed into dry clothes and tossed my wet ones in the washer, I came back to my room and checked my phone. There was a message on it from my mom:

Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be home soon.

Weird.

I wondered if Grant had said something to her about me being in Logan’s room last night, and she’d taken it as a sign I was ready to become one with her perfect little family.

I sighed. I seriously hoped that wasn’t the case. Sure, I was fine with taking a baby step toward getting to know them if it meant making things better—and by better I meant actually talking to my mom again. But I certainly wasn’t ready to don matching Christmas sweaters or go on family picnics or anything.

Besides, what was the rush? Even if I was softening toward them, we had all the time in the world. It wasn’t like I was planning to vanish again or anything.

I was just about to tell her as much, maybe something along the lines of I’d rather poke my own eyes out with a fork than listen to you say “my brother” again when a noise from out on the street drew my attention.

It wasn’t even two o’clock yet. My mom had just texted saying she was on her way, so it couldn’t be her, and Grant wasn’t due home for several more hours. Stuffing my phone into my pocket, I went to the front window to take a peek. I was grinning again because I was totally hoping it was Tyler, back in my driveway to pick up where we’d left off.