Among the Flames Read online

  “What is it?” He asked carefully, both hands on my shoulders now.

  The weight of his stare, the color of his eyes, the gravitational strain, the fire coursing through my veins... and I couldn’t think of a single word to say to express it all.

  I couldn’t begin to even fathom what individual words I could string together to let fall out of my mouth and best express these things, these feelings. My mind couldn’t even begin to think of the words to use to describe it, but apparently, another part of me did, and that was the part that spoke next.

  “I love you.” Dammit, I thought immediately. I didn’t mean that, did I? No, I couldn’t have. I didn’t say that. Maybe he didn’t hear me. Does he hate me now?

  “What?” He said simply. I could feel him retreating, his hands lifting, like clouds of smoke, away from me. His entire composure shifted. He leaned on the back of his feet instead of the front, all of the sudden. His hand immediately rose to run his fingers through his hair as he always did, or so I had thought, but now I saw he was just sliding them down gently toward the burn on the back of his neck; carefully he caressed it in a curious and awkward stroking.

  There was a split second I thought I almost saw a slight smile, but maybe that was just the tiniest sliver of hope slipping away from me.

  I shook my head; he hates me. But instead of denying it, I came to odds with it and accepting that it already happened and now something else needed to follow that. “Please don’t make me say it again...” I choked out in a timid whisper, finding it suddenly harder to look into his eyes.

  “But,” he whispered. I could just see him shaking his head, and I was suddenly glad I had looked away. “You can’t.” His voice was pained.

  “I can’t?” I couldn’t help but come across like a wounded animal. I felt betrayed, but not by him because evidentially I damn well could, and better yet I do.

  “With how everything is going with me and Chloe...” Now I looked at him, but he refused to look back at me.

  “Oh, right. I’m sorry. I forgot you two must have a plan to get back together” I pretended to check an imaginary watch on my wrist, using the intense sarcasm to hopefully take away the pain that was forming tears in the corners of my eyes. “Wednesday? I’ll just tell myself not to have feelings then; I’d hate to inconvenience you.”

  I had no reason to be mad at him; it was unjust. But when there was such intense emotion flooded throughout the body, it was impossible to just get rid of it all. The best way to describe it was that emotion was like energy. Emotions cannot be created nor destroyed; instead, it simply transforms from one form to another.

  I think that was why heartbreaks hurt so much because the love is so strong when it’s replaced with sadness.

  “That’s not what I-,” He muttered.

  “No, it’s whatever,” I said feeling whatever was left of my ‘calm façade’ crumbling and shattering under the weight of acceptance that I might have ruined it all for good. “You just don’t feel the same way, and I get it-,”

  Now he was directly in front of me, seemingly closer than before. His hands had returned to my shoulders, his gaze had returned to my eyes, and his voice had returned to an audible tone that was even. “That’s... Not... What I meant.” He said slowly.

  “Then... What?” I said mimicking his tone with a slightly uneven breath.

  I could feel his light breath against my cheek as he sighed, his head shifting back-and-forth ambiguously. “I don’t,” he choked out surely, pain causing his words to seem hesitant. “Deserve you.”

  Finally, I was broken from my painful overload of emotion. “But you deserve her?” I squinted at him, desperately fighting for understanding, but he said nothing. “Does she even make you happy?”

  His unresponsive stare said it all.

  “Then why do you deserve that?”

  “Because I’m weak,” he said finally. “Because I’m broken, and she’s broken, and it just works that way because she doesn’t expect me to fix it any more than I expect her to. There is no loss or gain; there’s just perfectly stable instability, and we’re both comfortable with that.”

  “You’re weak?” I asked him, mostly without question and just to repeat him to express how little I believed it to be true.

  He nodded slightly, his glances shifting around the room to mask his apparent shame.

  “And you don’t deserve me because you’re too weak,” I said simply, fighting the urge to laugh to myself.

  He looked at me, his dark eyebrows furrowing.

  “I don’t need you to be strong for me; I don’t need anyone to do that because if I need strength, then that’s something I can figure out on my own, for myself. You think you’re weak? So what? You think you’re broken? Join the club. I don’t need you to be perfect, or to think that you are. I want you because whatever you’re doing, you just make me happy. You make me want to be a better version of myself. You make me feel alive and consider living not to be the worst choice of my options. Seeing your strength somehow makes me stronger, and seeing you weak makes me feel something and want to do something outside of myself for someone else. You make the world clearer,” I could feel my voice shaking, but I didn’t care. I needed to say it just as much as he needed to hear it.

  “I love you,” I repeated. “And by saying that I don’t expect you to drop everything in your life and love me too. I don’t expect anything from you. But I do; I do love you, and you should know that.”

  Now he was close to me, and I could feel that we were both shaking uncontrollably. The AC must have shut off while I was speaking because the only sound filling the otherwise silent room was our uneven breathing. “So what does that make us?” He asked, his hands finding their way wrapped around mine.

  I took my left hand away and steadied it on his forearm, “Complicated.” I whispered jokingly.

  He smiled, still breathing heavy.

  “Can I kiss you?” I asked suddenly, my entire body a ball of nerves.

  After everything I still expected him to say ‘no,’ but instead he just smiled at me, got really close to my nose and whispered, “Please.”

  And so I did, I kissed him while my hand wrapped comfortably over the scar on his neck. I found it was the place that connected us, in the most perfectly imperfect way.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Noah

  Her hand rested smoothly on my scar; it was the part of me that Chloe had always avoided. But she wasn’t Chloe; she was different. At some point, we pulled away from each other, and she lightly rested her forehead on my shoulder.

  “Noah,” she said in a hushed tone. I couldn’t stop myself from smiling; my cheeks actually hurt from being so happy. It was the best kind of pain.

  “Yes, Hayden?”

  She didn’t respond. Instead, her body just fell limply against me.

  “Hayden?” I tried to stand her up, but it was no use. Her eyes had shut, it was as if she had just fallen asleep. “Goddammit,” I mumbled to myself, laying her gently on her bed.

  I ran from the room, searching for where I placed my phone. “Dammit, Goddammit, Goddammit...” I mumbled in a hopeless chant. “Hayden!” I continued calling her name while she laid unconscious.

  Finally, I found my phone lying uselessly on my dresser, and without thinking I dialed my first number on speed-dial. “Cameron! Hayden passed out, and I don’t know what to do!” I whined helplessly. “Please come over, she won’t wake up. I need you!” and I shut the phone, not considering who else I could call. The police didn’t even occur to me as a second thought.

  Instead, I just ran back to her, calling her name and waiting for her to wake up.

  She was everything I had left. I was a dying match, and she was a firework display. Take me instead! I cried, and then, I prayed.

  Something must have worked, because minutes later, she opened her eyes. Tears leaked from them like a faucet, but she was awake.

  Her lip quivered as she struggled to whisper something to me.
>
  “What is it?” I begged her, “What’s wrong?”

  “I remember.” She muttered.

  I wanted to ask her what, but just as I was going to Cameron rushed into the apartment. “What happened? Is she okay?”

  “She just woke up.”

  “I remember.” She said again quietly. “I did it, it was my fault. I killed my parents.” And that was the last thing she said that day. That was the last thing she said to me.

  Everything else I heard through Kara, the only person she spoke to.

  Hayden

  “I shouldn’t have left.” I whispered gently to her.

  She looked at me as if I had betrayed her, I still wasn’t quite sure why. “It wasn’t your fault-,”

  “IT WASN’T MY FAULT? I was the one that snuck out that night. I was the one that used Eric’s kerosene lamp to get home. I threw the keys so she couldn’t leave, and I was the one that left them there to burn. I did that.”

  Finally she was quiet.

  “My dad, he found out.” I said slowly.

  “Found out what?”

  “My mom’s affair. When we were gone, that’s why he tried to run him over.”

  There was a long break of silence, “Are you okay?”

  My best friend had an affair with my mom, the reason they were fighting, the reason she drank, the reason they died. “I’m okay.”

  “You don’t have to be,” she whispered. “It is okay to not be okay.” She rested her hand gently on my shoulder.

  I shook my head, “It’s not okay. I’m not.” I need to run. I need it all to go away, and disappear.

  “Do you want to talk to Noah? It’s been days, he’s been worried sick.”

  “Not now,” I choked out, the sadness taking over, “not yet.”

  ***

  It took days to find the right one, without internet, lanterns like this one were hard to come by. Flashlights just weren’t the same.

  Footsteps made their way closer to my door, I hadn’t been back here since I remembered; Kara’s apartment just wasn’t the same, though.

  He noticed.

  The lights were off but he slowly pressed the door open, “Hayden?”

  I sniffled, not ready to speak yet.

  “I’ve missed you.”

  “I miss you too.” I flicked on the lantern, letting it illuminate the room in harsh oranges and blues.

  He looked at me for a long time, studying my expression illuminated by the light. “I love you, Hayden.” He whispered, stepping closer.

  “Do you want to get lost with me?” I asked, ignoring him.

  “Where? Let’s go.”

  I stared into the light, “Among the flames.”

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  About the Author

  Lya Lively resides in the southern United States with her family and three dogs. Her first stand-alone book Among the Flames, a New Adult novel that will keep readers guessing at every turn, will be released in early 2016. Vacant, a novel about a teenage girl learning to cope with the loss of loved ones, will be releasing later in the year.

  Read more at Lya Lively’s site.