Sweet Oblivion (Sweet Series #1), Page 76

  #8

  His favorite.

  I needed to hear his voice. Always, since the moment he walked through that traitorous tree I once called ours, every call went straight to voicemail. But that right there was the only thing that had carried me through this excruciating week. The three seconds I got of his voice he’d recorded for his voicemail greeting.

  I wouldn’t with Mycah. I couldn’t.

  It hurt too dang much to even think of the sound of his voice in my head. But that didn’t even matter - because he didn’t have a voicemail greeting. Apparently there was no cell reception in their home land. Our home, I guess...A strange place filled with mythical creatures, or so Mycah says, and I was just supposed to up and accept it. Yeah, right.

  An entire week and I still couldn’t comprehend any of this.

  Now, I was eighteen and for the first time in eight years Rydan wasn’t here to tease me about being older than him. It wasn’t by much, but he still liked to call me Ms. Oldie-pants for the entire day.

  I couldn’t take it! I was going crazy being left behind like this. Not to mention the psychotic break I experienced from the conversation Mycah and I had right before he left me.

  “You healed me, Nariella. You did it. Not me. You.” He tucked my long, dark brown hair behind my ear, waiting for my reaction. I could hardly make out his scent from the strong smell of briny ocean water that enveloped us.

  “Huh?” was all I could muster. I think I heard my brain crack. Or maybe it was the sound of my world beginning to shatter...

  “You’re not human, love. Don’t you know that? You couldn’t possibly think someone with sparkling violet eyes like yours would be human.” He lightly chuckled as he searched my eyes for the truth. His English accent that painted his velvety voice was way too sexy, but the words did not escape me, and they made for a good distraction to how alluring he was.

  “What are you saying? Of course I’m human. My eyes...it’s just a strange anomaly. That’s all. I am human. I mean, sure I’ve always known I wasn’t normal but only in the sense of my craziness. I’m human, Mycah.” I pulled back from him and started to walk away in the opposite direction of where we stood on the beach along the Atlantic Ocean. I couldn’t take this. I wasn’t even sure I could handle him not being human. And Rydan...my god...Rydan....

  “Nariella. You’re a Healer. Do you have any idea what this means?” Mycah caught up to me with little effort. I tried to walk faster but it was no use...No pace I reached could be fast enough to out run Mycah. He was too powerful. His special abilities were insanely high off the crazy chart.

  I immediately dropped to my knees, sinking into the rough sand below. How? How was this even possible?

  “How?” I echoed my thoughts in a whisper.

  “Yo! Nari! Earth to Nari!” Zaylie’s high-pitched Australian accent combined with a knock on my head snapped me out of my daydreaming. Whether I was awake or asleep, I was assaulted by memories of the moments my world got flipped upside down like a burning pancake.

  “Oh, what? Sorry, I was...distracted.” I lightly shook my head and looked around. Empty. The classroom meant for our Literature class had already been cleared out.

  “Class ended five minutes ago. We’re going to be late for our next one. You okay?”

  “No. I’m not okay, Zaylie. I’m not okay.” I roughly grabbed my things and headed for the door. She followed.

  “What’s wrong? You’ve been acting so strange all week,” she grabbed me by the arm making me spin around to face her. “You can tell me. What’s going on, Nari?”

  I stared into her soft, golden-brown eyes and hesitated. It was tempting.

  Very tempting.

  I wanted to break down and spill every detail I kept bottled up inside of me since the day Mycah crashed into my life. But could I? Would I be breaking some kind of elf law or something? As much as I loved Zaylie, I didn’t exactly want to be carted off by the elf police and thrown into elf prison. Or hung by elf executioners.

  Okay, I really had no idea how any of it worked...and my brain could not get over the word ‘elf.’

  “Well?” she said. Sincerity, trust, and love were all injected into that one little word as she squeezed my arm. I looked around the hallway for nobody’s benefit but my own, because we were alone. Everyone else was already sitting in class waiting for the final bell that was about to ring any second.

  “Okay. Wanna ditch?” I whispered. I had no idea why I was whispering, but I’d never cut class before and felt a bit of sneakiness was in order. Yes, I was an eighteen year old who acted more like an eight year old. What could I say?

  “What?! Are you serious?” she matched my whisper.

  “As a heart attack,” I answered firmly.

  “Let’s do it,” she whispered with a grin. I grinned in return, which felt foreign and weird, like I hadn’t truly smiled in years, as we linked arms and started tip-toeing down the hallway toward the exit. “Why are we whispering?”