Free Sacrifice by M.G. Morgan Page A

Maybe he felt responsible somehow?
    “Or maybe he likes you. Maybe he just wanted to make sure you were alright?” Rachel’s looked at me with such earnestness reflected in her eyes. It made me want to believe her. I didn’t know how she did it. How she could always look at people and only see the best of intentions.
    “So what almost happened?”
    “I think we almost kissed…”
    “You think?” She sat back in her seat and poured a cup of black coffee for herself. She pushed the french press towards me but I shook my head. The last thing I needed right now was more caffeine in my system.
    “How can you only think you nearly kissed? It’s pretty obvious when a guy is about to kiss you?”
    “Maybe for you? But with Sam, I don’t know. We shared something. Something happened and we were so close and I closed my eyes… What I saw in his eyes…” I shivered as I remembered the look of unbridled desire that had lit up his entire face.
    “He wanted to possess me.”
    “Possess you?” Rachel scoffed into her cup. “That’s not a real thing. No one actually wants to possess someone else.”
    Frustrated I picked at the ring pull on the top of the can. “Well I don’t know how else to describe what I saw in his face.
    “He wanted to screw you?” Rachel added, a helpful note in her voice.
    “No…” I thought about it for a second before continuing. “Well yes, but it was more than that. That’s why I said possess…”
    She quirked her perfectly arched eyebrows at me, cradling the cup in her hands. “I think you’re reading too much into all of this. Guys want to screw us… Sometimes we get lucky and they want to date us at the same time… But let’s be honest here. At our age, do you know of any guys who are capable of looking at us as though they want to possess us? It’s a look you see in movies.”
    I shook my head and chewed on my lip thoughtfully. On one hand she was right. It was a look that seemed to exist in the movies. And she was right when she said there was no guys our age who could pull off a look like that… I’d have fully agreed with her if I hadn’t seen that exact look in Sam’s eyes in the coffee shop. Surely, somewhere along the line there had to be an exception to the rule?
    “You’re wrong about Sam. That was how he looked at me. I can’t explain it but I know I saw it and what I felt…” I sucked in a deep breath. “What he made me feel… It was like nothing I’ve ever experienced on this earth before.”
    Rachel watched me for a few moments before slowly taking a long drink of the coffee in her cup. “Well if that’s true, then why are you here with me, and not with him?”
    It was a good question and it was one I didn’t have a proper answer for. How could I turn around and tell her after all of that I was scared. I was scared of what Sam made me feel. Scared of the possibility that seemed to lie between us. Nope I had well and truly blown it. He probably thought I was complete nut job now. A nut job that went out and allowed random guys from bands to drug her… I was hopeless…
    “I ran away… I wasn’t sure how I should handle the almost kiss…”
    Rachel’s eyes widened in surprise before she finally started to laugh. “You didn’t?”
    I nodded and began to laugh myself. At this point there wasn’t much else I could do. Laughing seemed like the only sensible thing left to me.
    “Nat, you know you have to go back don’t you?”
    I shook my head and defiantly drank the last of the cola before dropping the can into the bin tucked in the corner. 
    “Nope, I don’t ever have to go back. If we don’t see each other again then we can pretend that all this never happened…”
    Rachel shook her head and continued to nurse her cup. “It’s not that simple and you know that. Especially if you shared a moment like you said… That doesn’t just get forgotten.”
    I shrugged. As far as I was concerned it was something that would have to be forgotten.