I turn to Raph, and the expression on his face touches something in my core.
“That’s amazing, Jaz,” he says quietly. His voice is different than I’ve ever heard before.
“Thanks,” I reply, smiling shyly at him. Something flickers in his eyes as he watches me.
I feel the blush creeping on my cheeks, so I skate away towards the center of the lake where there are twin arches of ice and a canopy of delicate icicles hanging between them.
Raph follows me and I know that Lance and Keller are somewhere in the ice garden, too. But I feel like we’re the only two people in the forest, on this planet even.
“I think there’s one thing missing, though,” Raph says, as he moves closer to me in this sanctuary that I’ve created.
“What?” I ask, though it’s a wonder that I can speak through the pounding of my heartbeat in my ears.
“Snow.”
I look up to see the blanket of snowflakes falling around us. I close my eyes as I let the flakes of snow fall around me, feeling the cool kiss of the snowflakes against my cheeks.
I hear a sharp intake of breath and when I open my eyes, I see Raph staring at me. Like fully staring. The way he’s looking at me, reminds me of that first night in my bedroom when I told him about my past. The look has the same confusing effect on me now, as it did then. Maybe I shouldn’t be confused. Maybe I just need to see it for what it is. Because what it looks like is that he wants to kiss me.
I should be alarmed at that. The thought should make me run as far away from him as possible. This guy hated me not so long ago. He made my life a living hell. The hate is gone, but it doesn’t change who and what Raph is—so devastatingly beautiful, that it’s almost unreal, and he has an entire planet at his feet. He could have anything and anyone that he wants. I’m way out of my depths with this guy. I have zero experience with any of this and testing the waters with a guy who has the ability to shatter my heart into a million pieces if I let him anywhere near it, is a dangerous idea. One that I shouldn’t even be considering.
And yet … yet I can’t stop myself from looking up into those impossibly blue eyes as they look into me, through me. I don’t pull away when he draws closer, although I feel like the air around us is so charged, that I’m finding it difficult to even breathe.
He does something that surprises me, as he brushes those sensuous lips against my closed eyelids, the sensitive skin of his lower lip brushing against my lashes.
When I open my eyes to look at him, those blue eyes are so intense, that it’s difficult to keep looking without feeling like I’m falling through the sky.
“You had snow on your lashes,” he murmurs and he’s so close, that I can feel his words almost on my lips.
I realize that he’s going to kiss me. Oh God. Panic and something like fear races through me, but still I don’t move.
His mouth brushes against mine in the softest of touches, once, twice. It’s nothing more than the brushing of lips, but oh God, it’s everything. Everything I didn’t feel in that kiss with Baron—the fire, the flutters, the heat. It’s all there and it’s insane, because it’s not even really a kiss.
I can hear the sound of my own pulse roaring in my ears and my heart is pounding so hard, it feels like it’s going to come out of my chest.
But everything stops when Raph pulls back as if he’s just been burned. He looks at me in something like horror, and then I’m the one who feels like I’ve been burned.
He curses, as he takes another step back, and it feels like a slap to the face.
“Shit. That was a mistake. I shouldn’t have done that,” he says.
I take a step towards him, although I have no idea why, because it feels like I’m stepping into the path of an oncoming train.
“What—” I have no idea what I’m even trying to say, but Raph cuts me off as he holds his hand up to stop me and I clamp my mouth shut, feeling the humiliation wash over me.
His eyes take in my stricken expression, and he runs his hands through his hair in frustration.
“Dammit—I can’t do this with you.”
His face becomes shuttered, closed off like the first time I’d seen him on the beach. I can’t ignore the clawing that I feel in my chest or the feeling like someone has just stabbed me right in that same spot. When he speaks again, his voice is as cold as the ice surrounding us.
“This can’t happen.”
I’m saved from having to say anything as the delicate snowflakes falling around us turn to large droplets of rain, pouring down on us in what is an entirely appropriate representation of everything I’m feeling. Because I sure as hell feel like I might cry.
“Sorry to interrupt this touching moment,” Lance calls over to us from another section of the ice garden, which is now starting to melt. There’s a wry look on his face which is mirrored on Keller’s.
I tear my eyes away from Raph, who is still just standing there, stone faced.
Something like anger washes over me, and I focus on it because it’s familiar. It’s safe.
“You weren’t interrupting anything,” I call back to Lance, although I’m really speaking to Raph. Take that, fucker.
I walk away from him and join Lance and Keller on the edge of the lake.
I don’t bother to wait for Raph.
Keller walks ahead with me and is watching me in a way that tells me she can sense something is wrong. But I tell myself that there’s nothing wrong. No, in fact this is just right. What was I thinking?
That was a mistake. His words echo through my ears and I feel like screaming. But why should I be mad?
Raph probably realized, just as I should have realized, that whatever it was that happened, is wrong. He probably just remembered that he’s the future king of Eden and has the entire planet in his hands, whereas I’m a half human nobody who can’t even use her powers properly. But fuck him. Because he started this. He asked me to stay, he offered to help me learn how to use my powers, he was the one who started sleeping in my bed, sitting with me at lunch and in classes, touching me and making me feel like I was actually beginning to trust him.
Then I laugh at myself for my own naiveté. Because it’s my own fault for reading too much into things. Raph was probably being just Raph—flirting is like breathing to him. He’s charming without even trying, he can get girls to fall for him without even meaning to. So, the joke is on me. But I feel that familiar wall of stone closing around me because I will never let that happen again.
“Did something happen back there between you and Raph?” Keller asks, as we near her motorbike. Yes, that’s right, this kickass girl actually has her own motorbike.
“No,” I lie. But she, of course, doesn’t buy it.
“Well, it sure felt like it, because I haven’t felt so much awkwardness in the air since that time in sophomore year when Lance walked in on Baron balls deep in Lance’s Winter Ball date.”
I laugh at the mental image, despite myself.
Keller looks at me expectantly.
“It was nothing,” I say.
“I just forgot for a second who Raph is,” I add, after a moment.