Free Gravity by M. Leighton Page B

wouldn’t survive the hour.  Well, my body would, but my soul wouldn’t.  At least while awake, I had a fighting chance.
    But how to fight?  Where to begin? 
    Just then, just as the frantic fingers of panic and desperation and hopelessness rose up to choke my heart and lungs, fingers of a different sort, a soothing sort, wrapped gently around my throat.
    It was Trace.
    Instantly, everyone in the room faded away.  And so did their power.  It was only Trace and me.  He was all that I needed to overcome.  To prevail.  To survive.
    The moment his skin made contact with mine, it was as though he’d hit a cosmic mute button that stilled every other voice, every other presence, every other power in the room.  My entire being was focused solely on him, as if I was tied to him and he was tied to reality.  My reality.  The reality I’d always known and had no fear of.  The reality I knew how to operate within.  He was like gravity, pulling me back down to earth before the black hole of oblivion sucked me into its depths.
    “Tell me where your brother is and I might let you live,” Trace whispered in my ear.  He did it just as he’d done the “night before,” only then what I’d felt hadn’t been nearly so intense, nearly so…needful.  It was as though he’d saved me—from myself, from the others, from the seduction of it all, from something inside me that I couldn’t control. 
    Suddenly, I could breathe.  Suddenly, I could think.  Suddenly, I was me again.  And I was head over heels in love with Trace.
    My heartbeat slowed inside the confines of my chest.  Gone was the thrill and the excitement and the lure of power.  Exhilaration and pleasure of another kind flooded me.  My heart swelled with it, thumped furiously with it.  My blood pulsed with it, flowed vigorously with it.  It crashed over my body like a musical crescendo washing away all traces of anything but him. 
    As I’d done once before, I turned inside the grip of Trace’s long fingers.  I looked up into his golden eyes and became lost for a few seconds, also as I’d done once before. 
    But then I saw him, really saw him.  Though he was carefully concealed, I got a glimpse of the Trace that had been so open with me the night before.  I saw past his devotion to my brother, past my own insecurities, past all that seemed impossible and improbable, and I peered into the depths of the real Trace—the one he kept hidden from his friends, from his classmates, the one he kept hidden from casual inspection.  For a moment, I got to see what he’d been playing so close to the vest.  For a moment, I got to see what he really thought, what he really felt.  For a moment, I got to see that he loved me.
    And then it was gone.
    “He’s in the hall in front of his bedroom,” I answered, not even having to look to see where Brady was.  I knew.  I remembered from the night before.
    With his next words, words I was expecting because I’d heard them only hours before, Trace was back to his familiar, light-hearted, teasing, guarded form.  But he didn’t fool me.  I’d seen his secret. I’d seen what he was hiding.  And I’d never forget it.
    “What’s he doing back there, getting his bat so he can fight off your suitors?”
    Falling right back into our playful dialogue, I rolled my eyes and snorted embarrassingly.  Again.
    “Yep.  That’s exactly what he’s doing.  Didn’t you see the line out the door?  They’re out en force tonight.  And this bunch is particularly unruly.”
    After the rest of our short conversation and Trace’s subsequent exit from it, I spun toward Lacey.  She had just raised her hand to wipe at my lip, as I’d done to her earlier, and my quick adjustment startled her.
    “Holy crap!” she exclaimed, grabbing her chest.  “You’re such a spazz today!”
    I couldn’t help but grin. It was a thousand wonders that spazzing was all I was doing.  I’d earned much, much more than that, maybe