The bell rang and we all got up to empty our trays or throw away our trash. Not at all excited about my Anatomy class; I took my time separating the items off my tray.

“Hey, take a walk with me?” Tristan asked softly from behind me.

I turned around and knew before I even looked into those forest green eyes there was no way I would ever say no to him. “I’ll be late for Anatomy,” I tried weakly.

“I have a pass from Coach, I’ll just add your name to it,” he lifted his eyebrows waiting for my eventual cave.

“Where are we going?” I asked without much hesitation at all.

“I just have to run down to the equipment storage room and grab some of the old practice jerseys. Coach sent the ones we usually use to be mended, so we have to wear moldy, shredded ones until we get the other ones back,” he explained as we left the crowd of exiting students and headed toward the stairs to the basement.

“Mmm…. important mission,” I laughed. “Obviously Coach Donovan is very concerned about your academic career.”

Tristan laughed with me, a deep throaty sound that made me smile wider. “Yeah, I don’t know why he’s having me do this right now for him….”

“Well, I’m glad he is,” I confessed. “Anatomy might be the most boring class in the history of school.” I groaned as we made our way down the dark, creepy steps that led to the equipment storage rooms, locker rooms and boiler room. The locker rooms were on the outer sides of the basement, close to the stairs and accessible from the gym, the interior of the school and the outside doors that led to the football fields, but once you passed the locker room doors the basement of the high school became a maze of hallways and rusted metal doors, dimly lit and perfect for a B-rated horror movie.

“I’m glad he is too,” Tristan whispered, turning on the hallway light at the bottom of the stairs. The long florescent lights flickered to life but didn’t let off anything much more than a dim, stuttering illumination.

“Ugh, I hate it down here,” I admitted, leaning closer to Tristan.

“You’re not scared, are you?” Tristan teased, pinching my side. I jumped from his hand, but then he reached his arm around my back to reassure me and I leaned in closer, craving the comfort of his closeness.

“Tristan, my job is to protect this planet from everything scary, of course I’m not scared,” I scolded him, but my voice came out breathy and unsure. Ugh, basements gave me the creeps.

“Are you ever going to tell me what happened Friday night?” Tristan paused at the door to the equipment room, playing with the keys in his hand. I leaned against the wall to wait for him, but he leaned in with me and suddenly we were standing very close together.

“Are you ever going to tell me what happened Friday night?” I turned the question on him, brushing my fingers gently under his bruised eye.

“No,” he whispered leaning in closer.

I didn’t know what changed between us, whether it was Seth’s arrival or the threat of me leaving him, but Tristan had changed. He seemed more determined about our relationship…. more protective.

Yes, he definitely seemed more protective of me, but it was more than that. He seemed….

Hungry.

As I looked up into his half-lidded eyes, his long dark lashes giving him a sexy quality I usually tried to ignore, I saw how hungry he was now. How hungry he was for me.

“I don’t like this, Stella,” he confessed seriously, his deep baritone voice dropping to a husky tone that sent shivers down my spine. “I don’t like that you’re a part of something I can’t be, that you’re out there, risking your life and fighting bad guys and there’s nothing I can do about it. I want to protect you. I want to be the one fighting with you.” His gaze had frozen me, speared me against the wall and one of his hands had somehow landed on my hip, burning through my thin sweater with the heat of his body and weight of his words.

“You can’t protect me,” I reminded him in a raspy voice that I had desperately wanted to sound authoritative.

“I know that….” He ran his free hand over his shaved head and looked down the hall for a moment. “And it’s killing me,” he sighed, his voice breaking in the softest, most desperate way. His free hand came to rest aggressively next to me on the metal door, making it echo down the hallway. I jumped at the sound, inching us closer together.

“Tristan….” I breathed, wanting to say a million things, remind him of a million different reasons we had never crossed the invisible line between friendship and more, but my lips stopped working at his name.

“That’s not all that’s killing me,” he sighed, closing the last few inches between us. My body pressed against the wall again as his lean, muscular frame rested against me. His right hand gripped my waist, pulling me into him and his left hand moved slowly to the nape of my neck, tipping my head toward him, towards his lips.

I was helpless to stop him. There was a voice screaming inside of me that this was wrong, that Tristan and I could never be anything more than friends and we should never even entertain the idea. We had gone our whole lives without crossing this line, and now was definitely not the right time to start blurring boundaries. If we did this, there was no going back…. and that terrified me.

Still, there was another voice not nearly as panicked, but just as solidly confident, an old voice, one that had lived there for as long as I could remember that urged me forward, whispered to me how long I’ve wanted to press my lips against Tristan’s and feel how soft they are, how I’ve wanted to be held in his arms as more than a friend, but as something he cherished…. even longed for.

Something he desired.

Tristan’s gaze fell to my lips, and his eyes turned starved. His tongue swept over his bottom lip as he prepared himself for something I wasn’t yet ready to admit to myself was happening. A shudder, hot and trembling, worked its way over me. I gave up the weak battle I had been waging and leaned into him, ignoring all reason left within me.

He hovered above me for a seemingly infinite amount of time, caught in indecision. The air crackled around us, ignited with sparks of a deeply buried desire and the whispered reminders that what we both wanted, what we both were desperate for, was absolutely forbidden. What would happen next would change our relationship; there would be no going back, no pretending that nothing happened. But it would also change us…. completely.

To kiss Tristan meant going against everything I had been born to achieve. It meant going against my parents, and Heaven and…. Seth. Still, the guilt and reasoning that had held me back before weren’t strong enough to affect my will now as I lifted my hands against his chest, feeling the frantic beating of his heart underneath his thin t-shirt. In that moment, I was more than willing to pay the consequences; I was willing to risk everything to taste Tristan’s lips against mine.

I probably should have been scared of how strongly my feelings seemed to suddenly burst forward for him.

But instead of fear, something much more like clarity settled over me.

And then something moved to my right, something in the shadows of the basement. I told myself to ignore it, to deal with it later. This was more important than some silly battle, or spies, or….

“What was that?” Tristan jumped, suddenly startled. He looked to the corner I had suspected the Shadow to be lurking and stepped back a few feet.

I peered into the darkness with him, trying to get my bearings again. My head was spinning from what almost happened between us. I trembled from the excitement of the moment and left over fear from what could have been a very dangerous situation. Had we really almost kissed?

My breathing was coming out in short, ragged breaths and I forced my vision to focus on the illusive Shadow.

“Um, you saw that?” I asked in a small voice I hardly recognized.

“What was it Stella?” Tristan asked in a low growl. I noticed for the first time that he was breathing hard too and although he had put quite a distance between us, he seemed as disoriented as I was.

“A Shadow,” I explained, not able to find a reason to tell him anything but the truth. “It’s part of the Darkness, like the infantry part.”

“That’s what it is though, right? It’s an actual shadow?” he asked, finally gaining some lucidity.

“Yeah, kind of.”

“I’ve seen them before,” he admitted, turning to look at me for the first time since he almost kissed me. The fire was gone from his eyes, but they still held me with all of the concern and adoration he was capable of. “On Friday night, they were at the party. And…. and I’ve seen them other places too.”

“You shouldn’t be able to see them. Humans don’t usually notice them,” I explained but my argument sounded weak. I trusted Tristan, if he had seen them before than I believed him.

“What does that mean?” Tristan asked, half laughing as if I was accusing him of not being human.

“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. “I’ll ask my weapons trainer about it. But in the meantime, let’s get these jerseys and get out of here.” I shivered from the dank cold this time, and Tristan nodded his head in agreement.

He put the correct key into the old lock and paused before opening the door, “Hey, listen, about what just happened…. or what almost happened, I-“

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” I shook my head as if it were no big deal, although I could still see the after effects of glow on my skin. “Let’s just chalk it up to the romantic atmosphere down here and move on, Ok?”

Tristan laughed at that, but shook his head like it was the best idea I’d ever had, “Yeah, Ok. I forgot how the smell of mold and sewage gets you all feisty.”

“Don’t forget the possibility of dead rodents,” I continued the joke, laughing out loud with him. “A girl hardly knows what to do with herself in situations like these,” I smiled and batted my eye lashes coyly, continuing the humor and easing the tension between us.

But something had shaken up inside of me that I was having trouble piecing back together. Disappointment rang out inside my head and a longing so fierce my mouth had gone dry and my internal organs actually hurt from frustration.

I needed to distance myself from Tristan. I needed to put this all out of my head and go back to the way things used to be between Tristan and me, or how they should be with the addition of Seth.

Oy.

Chapter Eleven

“Do you have everything packed up?” I asked Seth over the sudsy water we were washing dishes in. He and Jupiter were moving to their rental tonight, so my parents had hosted a farewell dinner for them even though we would still see them on a daily basis.

“Yeah, I think so,” he replied as he dried the last plate and set it on a stack of other identical ones.

“Need help carrying anything out?” I motioned toward the pile of suitcases by the kitchen door waiting to be loaded into Jupiter’s recently purchased Chevy pickup truck. The truck was a new model, but nothing too flashy or attention seeking. My father had suggested to Jupiter that the best way to fit in around here was to have a moderately priced truck; it was the sad, but honest truth.