The ball moved easily at my feet, though, and in one more move I would be head to head with the keeper alone. I feinted right and then moved left, giving the ball a short touch with the inside of my foot, setting myself up. Then I pulled my right leg back and connected perfectly with the top of my foot. The ball soared up into the air with real force and found the money shot, the far right corner, just on the inside of the bars. The keeper stretched up to block it, but she wasn’t fast enough and the ball flew back until it found the easy resistance of the white net.
Gooooooooooooooooooal!
Oh yes, my pretend Mexican announcers were going crazy in my head.
I turned around just in time to get caught around the waist by Piper and Bree. They were screaming and I was screaming and it was a moment of pure happiness in the middle of my upside down life.
“That was insane!” Pipe shouted in my ear.
The whistle blew and we separated to go back to our positions. The other team set up and kicked off, but thirty seconds later the final whistle sounded and the game was over. We won!
Cleanup after the game was a flurry of motion. First our coach shouted her congratulations to us, then we packed up our things and the fans surrounded us, screaming their impressions of the game and slapping us on the back. Finally, we were left to wander to our cars alone.
The night game took place at a school thirty minutes away, and those of us with cars had driven ourselves instead of riding the smelly bus. I said goodbye to my parents, and they left in my dad’s truck to go straight home. I was taking my mom’s Malibu, so I could meet up with Piper and Tristan to celebrate our win.
I must have been delayed longer than the others because by the time I was throwing my bag in the trunk of my car, I was almost alone in the lot. Tristan had ridden with Rigley and Lincoln; the plan was to meet at an Arby’s between here and home. Piper and Bree had already driven off to meet them.
I slammed my trunk down and then stifled a scream when I saw Seth leaning against my driver’s side door.
“You scared me!” I exclaimed while my insides went completely berserk at the sight of him.
“Come here,” he demanded.
My heart shot up to my throat and I couldn’t breathe. He was different- already. I could tell immediately. He was darker somehow, his Light already diminishing. His eyes didn’t hold that glowing honey color I adored. His face was more angled, less boyish and charming, more haggard man. But he was still the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
He was just more Fallen than Angel now and my soul split in half with that realization.
I remembered the first time I met him and how I was convinced there was something Fallen about him. His beauty had always been dark, but now he was consumed by it. I knew that his fall into soullessness would be a gradual decent. Little by little he would lose everything moral and righteous in him. But I was shocked by how fast he seemed to fall, how marked of a change there was after a week and a half.
I was nervous to go near him, but at the same time I couldn’t wait. I had been missing him forever it seemed. I hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye and now he was standing in front of me.
Something I didn’t think would happen again. At least not this soon.
“Stella, I don’t have a lot of time, come here,” he commanded more firmly.
I felt my feet moving before my brain told them to. He was risking something to be with me tonight. My chest clenched at the realization that he was endangering himself for me. Even now. And I knew he wouldn’t hurt me.
When I was just inches away from him he reached out for me. I was still too afraid to move. Not because I was afraid of him, but because I was terrified this was a dream, or a hallucination and the moment I touched him he would disappear.
The night was pitch black around us, without even one star peeking through the heavy cloud cover. The stadium lights were shut off and every other car disappeared from the lot. It was just Seth and me.
His hand reached up and traced a delicate line along my cheek and jaw line. His hand shook as he touched my skin, as if he were restraining himself, or trying to grapple control. But I trusted him. I didn’t know how far gone he was, but it wouldn’t matter if he was solidly Fallen by now, I would always trust him.
“I’ve missed you,” I whispered as tears pricked my eyes. His eyes were too intense to be affectionate, too depthless to be loving. They were something else entirely- with intensely, concentrated power that was burning a hole all the way through me.
“You shouldn’t miss me.” His voice was growly and harsh with his words. The feel of it grated against my skin because it was so wrong, because it was so definitely not Seth.
But at the same time butterflies ignited in my stomach because there were still these concentrated feelings between us. I could feel the electricity as it sparked in the air around us.
“I shouldn’t?” I asked in a pleading voice.
“No.” His hand dropped from my face and reached out to grip my waist almost painfully. He yanked me against his body so that my legs straddled one of his and our chests pressed up against each other. “I’m not the same man, Stella.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I stayed silent, just absorbing his presence and drinking him in. He felt dangerous now, like the enemy he was. But I still couldn’t pull myself away from him.
“But I can’t stay away from you,” he growled. “Not even after I’ve lost so much of myself.”
And then before I could think or process his words his mouth was on mine, hungry and desperate. This was in no way like any kiss he’d given me before. This was passionate and consuming, he was drinking in my soul to fill the place where his was missing.
And I was letting him.
His mouth was insistent and demanding on mine. One moment we were pressing lips together, and the next his tongue had slipped inside and claimed mine. I gasped at the feel, the hot sensation, the explosion of desire inside of me.
He gripped my hips with his huge hands and slammed my body against his. He slid down an inch on the car so our mouths were perfectly aligned. My hands clutched at his chest, his shoulders, I slid them around his neck and then into his hair. I couldn’t decide where they should land or what part of him I wanted to touch more.
And he was the same way. His hands moved from my soccer shorts to pull at my jersey. He untucked it, only to slide his fingers along the bare skin of my waist and then up higher, just under my sports bra. They lingered there for a few moments, sliding along the seam. My mind swam with the will power to slow down, but he was stoking a need so hot and powerful that all rational thinking had fled leaving me a melting puddle.
Finally, he seemed to grasp some control of his wandering hands, because they slammed back down on my naked waist and he squeezed me until it was almost too much.
Almost, but not quite.
And instead of feeling afraid, all I felt was his strong, urgent need to hold on to me, to possess me in some way, as the rest of his life slipped out of his control.
He spun us around and my back slammed into the metal of my mom’s car. The movement knocked the wind out of me, but he swallowed my gasp as he continued to own my mouth with his. Then as if a switch had been flipped, he slowed our kiss down and began pressing the sweetest kisses everywhere but my mouth. He trailed seductive, wet kisses along my jaw, up to my earlobe and then down the column of my neck. His breathing was ragged and heaving and his huge body pressed intimately against mine so that all I could feel was him- all I knew was him.
He was my only plane of existence and my only reality.
And when he paused and I inhaled him into my lungs, I knew I was the same for him.