Entanglement (YA Dystopian Romance) - By Dan Rix Page 0,49

don’t want to be my half,” he said. “My channel’s about to break. I don’t get to have what everyone else has.” He reached up and wiped her dripping hair off her cheek. “You do.”

“So all this meant nothing to you?” she said, watching him in disbelief. She sighed and pushed away his hand. “Can you go now? I have to get ready for tomorrow—” her gaze fell to the bloody gauze around his arm, and she stopped abruptly.

“I’m fine—”

“Clearly not, Aaron,” She yanked him through a back door into her house, despite his protests. As soon as they were inside, Aaron heard shouts from another room. But not at him. It was Mrs. Lilian, hysterical, screaming herself hoarse at Mr. Lilian.

“Ignore them,” said Amber, blushing as she pulled him up the stairs.

“Right.” Aaron raised his eyebrows at the muddy footprints they left on the carpet. “And when they see me?”

“You run,” she said, seating him on her bed. A piercing crash from downstairs made them both jump. The parents were hurtling china now.

Amber avoided his eyes and busied herself with the gauze around his arm, unwrapping it. Her hair tumbled loose and covered half her face.

Aaron caught pieces of her parents’ argument before they lowered their voices, and they chilled him . . . illness is getting worse, it’s not my fault the potentate can’t make the wedding . . . Oh yeah? Well unless we want to disgrace our bloodline, now our daughter has to spend her honeymoon at the potentate’s palace . . .

Amber’s hands trembled as she peeled the last of the gauze off his arm.

She went to her bathroom and brought back a warm washcloth. “Take off your shirt,” she said.

“Amber, I really don’t think that’s necessary.”

“Fine.” She knelt in front of him and cleaned his arm. Her parents stopped fighting, and an unnerving silence followed. Amber rubbed the wound with Neosporin, and her fingers soothed the fire in his nerves.

And lit all different ones.

“You’re making it worse,” he said.

“This hurts?”

He stared at her. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

She smiled. “Do I ever?”

There was a knock on the door.

“Sweetheart, what are you doing in there?” It was her dad.

“Having sex,” she said.

“I heard a man’s voice.”

“Could you come back later?” she said, her voice biting.

“Amber—”

“I’m naked!”

Aaron tensed, waiting for the door to open, but her dad’s footsteps moved on down the hall.

“Now you really have to go,” she whispered.

“I thought you wanted me to talk to your dad,” said Aaron.

“I changed my mind,” she said, a ghost of a smile crossing her face, and she raised her head to kiss him. “I like you better alive.”

There was a creak outside her bedroom door. And then it burst open. Aaron jumped up.

“God dammit, I knew it,” said her father, stepping into the room. “Trespassing on my daughter and my property.” He carried a semi-automatic rifle in his hands. It was all black, polished metal.

And Aaron was staring straight down the barrel’s throat. “Shit,” he said.

“Dad—NO!” Amber leapt in front of him.

“Baby, if you do not step aside, I will fire at him above your head.” His eye narrowed behind the gun sight. “Son, I will escort you now to your vehicle. I did notice you were parked rather close to my Vette—I hope that’s incidental.”

***

It occurred to Aaron, as he scribbled out an uncashable twelve-hundred dollar check at gunpoint for the scratch on Mr. Lilian’s bumper, that without Amber, life wasn’t even remotely appealing. He wanted her to be his half.

As soon as Aaron made it home, he collapsed fully clothed onto his bed and stared at the four digits on his alarm clock. Two minutes until midnight. Then it would be Saturday, March 30th.

And he would be eighteen years old.

He switched off his bedside lamp . . . darkness, except for the green glow of the clock’s display. He pulled his arm back, and the gash itched painfully. His fingers scarcely resisted tearing into it.

One minute. Exhaustion weighed on his eyelids, but he strained to keep them open. All those nights he and Amber had stayed awake, all that time, and now the last of it had drained away. Gone. He couldn’t fall asleep now.

Ten seconds. He counted the blinks of the colon between the eleven and the fifty-nine. Five seconds—four—three—two—one—

A violent crash from the front door jolted him upright. The sound of shattering glass. Instinctively, he clutched the back of his head.

Aaron stared at his bedroom door, toes tingling. He