Let the Sky Fall (Sky Fall #1)(7)

Plus, it leaves me something from my “other life.”

My past is this giant void that makes me want to bang my head against the wall until I knock the memories loose. I don’t care how many doctors tell me it’s normal for trauma to repress painful experiences—I don’t buy it. How can it be normal to completely forget your entire childhood?

And what kind of selfish jerk erases his family just because it hurts to think about them?

I feel my smile start to fade, so I head down the hall before my mom can notice. Once I close my bedroom door, I switch on the old tube TV I inherited when my parents finally invested in a flat-screen and log online, cringing when one of Isaac’s war games starts up.

Isaac doesn’t understand why I hate playing the first person shooters. I don’t really get it either. The blood turns my stomach for some reason—not that I’ve told him that. Like I need to give him another thing to bug me about.

But I’m not playing anyway. I join the first match I find, crouch my guy in a corner and crank the volume up so my mom can hear the explosions in the family room. Hopefully that’ll keep her from checking on me.

Gunfire blasts, and I sink to the pile of blankets I kicked off my bed last night—is my mom insane? Blankets? In the summer?—and close my eyes. Cool air from my ceiling fan brushes across my face and my shoulders relax. The breeze always makes my head clear. Which is good, ’cause I have some serious crap to figure out.

Sure, I’ve caught quick glimpses of the girl before—but I was never sure I’d really seen her, and not some dark-haired girl who looked like her. Those times were nothing like this—with full eye contact and everything.

And I’ve heard whispers on the wind outside my dreams. But they’ve never been words I could understand or a voice I could recognize—and they’ve never used my name.

Not to mention I’ve never had the wind attack me before. Sudden breezes flaring up at odd times—sure. Winds that seem drawn to me—occasionally. But those never freaked me out. I know it sounds weird, but the wind doesn’t scare me. Even after what happened to my parents. Even after what happened tonight. The wind calms me somehow. I’ve never understood why.

So the crazy, cold wind isn’t the reason my hands are shaking.

It’s because I know the girl called that wind to me. Controlled it somehow. Attacked me with it. The strange hiss I heard before the wind overpowered us was her voice.

Which means what?

She’s magical? Some sort of wind god? An angel?

I laugh at myself, even though the last word makes my stomach squirm.

She was there the day I survived the tornado. A tiny part of me has always wondered if she somehow saved me. How else could I have lived?

Is she my . . . guardian angel?

Nah. I don’t believe in that crap. Plus, she wasn’t trying to protect me from anything tonight. I was on a freaking first date—where’s the danger in that?

So, what?

Is she jealous?

A jealous guardian angel—that’d be just my luck.

And I’m officially creeping myself out. Not because I think any of this is true, but because my brain even went there. I’m definitely losing it.

I need to put this insanity behind me. My instinct with Hannah was right. I can’t keep chasing dream girls or thinking about magical wind powers or angels—not unless I want to end up the star patient in the local loony bin.

Time to sleep it off and wake up tomorrow like nothing happened.

Except, she’ll be waiting for me. Sneaking into my dreams. Refusing to be forgotten.

Life would be so much simpler if I could just sink into a drugged, dreamless sleep. But the doctors gave me sleeping pills after I survived the tornado and my body broke out in sweat and hives until I threw them up and passed out. Same thing happens with any meds I take. Good thing I never get sick.

Still, the medicine cabinet tempts me as I brush my teeth before bed. Maybe half of one pill could knock me out without triggering an allergic reaction.

It’s not worth the risk. I’ll have to learn to ignore her until she leaves me alone—whatever she is.

Or maybe I just won’t sleep tonight. . . .

No.

Let her come. Then I can finally tell her to leave me alone.

I crawl into bed and flick off the light, pulling the sheet tight around me and squeezing my pillow as hard as I can.

Bring it on, dream girl. I’m ready this time.





CHAPTER 6


AUDRA


I thought he’d never fall asleep.

Crouching in the shadows below Vane’s window, waiting for the sound of his breathing to slow, always makes my legs cramp, no matter how many nights I’ve done it. And tonight I have the added pleasure of sharp thorns from the pyracantha bushes pricking through the thin fabric of the barely there dress I had to change into.

The pain is nothing compared to what I’m about to endure. But the wind has to break through Vane’s mind tonight and make a connection. This is the only way I can make sure that happens.

I’ve tried to awaken his mind every night for the last nine years, whispering on the gentle breeze I send to his room while he sleeps. It’s the most natural way to learn the language of the wind, like a child learning to speak by listening to his parents talk. But I’ve never fully gotten through to him, and any progress I make always vanishes when he wakes, like the strands of a dream slipping away with the morning light.