Free Souls of Fire by Vanessa Black

Friday and play sick throughout the next week, starting with Tuesday, I mused.
    Though it might be slightly embarrassing, I could easily excuse myself on the grounds of having menstrual cramps. It’s not like he had a good opinion of me anyway … that ship had sailed! And it’s not like anyone would ever check to see that I really had my period.
    That would be the day!
    Of course, playing ill would mean blowing off my other classes as well. Under normal circumstances, this train of thought would have made me feel slightly guilty. At the moment, however, I didn’t have a choice. I just couldn’t face him right now!
    I spent the following days leading up to Tuesday in a state of nervousness hitherto unknown to me. I went to my other classes in a calm and collected state knowing he wouldn’t be there, and resurfaced as a nervous wreck, fearing to run into him at every possible turn.
    In the cafeteria, I wolfed down my food so fast that the taste of it hardly registered on my mind. The little food I was able to eat, having had no real appetite since the night I had fled from Aaron Chambers’ room, had no worth to me other than being a necessity. I couldn’t enjoy it!
    When I had attained the note excusing me from classes and didn’t need to visit the cafeteria, having stashed a large amount of food and water in my fridge, I thought my nervousness would finally let up and that my appetite would return.
    I couldn’t have been more wrong.
    Every night now, I was being plagued by the same forceful dream in which I was lying in his arms making love to him in front of the scorching flames of the crackling fire. I would wake up, bathed in cold sweat, with a longing so fierce it made it hard for me to breathe.
    Every morning I would be haunted by the remnants of that dream. Where, before, I had been able to distinguish details of the room in my very first dream, now I felt only emotions.
    The dreams held nothing more than a flow of all-consuming sensations that rolled over me in sweltering waves.
    Waking from my dreams, I was left with a sense of loss so vast, that it tore a big, aching hole in my heart, leaving me broken and miserable for hours on end, unable to move, eat or drink, and growing weaker as time went by.
    Things were not getting better; they were getting worse!
    I was suffering terribly from not seeing him. With the little sanity I still had left, I realized I could not really be feeling this way about Aaron Chambers.
    Wanting him ― desiring him ― despite his rude behavior toward me, was one thing. Feeling as though the man I loved had ripped out my heart and stepped on it, was quite another.
    I had never suffered a broken heart before, but I was sure that what had happened between us could not warrant such a reaction.
    Contemplating it over and over in my head, I could come to only one conclusion: it was my body, not my heart.
    My feelings about him hadn’t changed. I was extremely attracted to him, though I knew I shouldn’t be. But my body’s reaction to my feelings was completely over the top!
    In what alternate reality could I ever feel this way about such an insensitive jerk, I thought savagely.
    Whatever strange bond was between us ― of which I felt positive he knew nothing and probably couldn’t sense if he tried ― I would bet my right arm that the same bond was affecting my body at the moment.
    This revelation did nothing to soothe me, though, and I collapsed onto my pillow, my body weakened, my mind exhausted.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    A aron had been feeling strange for days.
     
    Something was wrong.
     
    In a remote part of his mind, a voice whispered; an elusive thought was almost taking hold. However, this thought would steal out of his reach every time his conscious mind tried to pin it down.
    It had been ten days since he had so unceremoniously ‘thrown’ the redheaded girl ― he didn’t even remember her name ― from his room.
    He hadn’t seen her since;