Elemental Awakened by Helen Scott
9
Tessa
My body hurt, my arms felt like one giant bruise, not to mention the fact that my face hurt. My nose especially, but what concerned me was the fact that the last thing I remembered was headlights followed by the sensation of flying through the air as I was running from another black cloud thing. The problem was, I definitely wasn’t outside anymore. I tried to catalog my body while keeping up the pretense of being asleep, even though I desperately wanted to touch my nose and see if it was swollen.
As far as I could tell, I was still fully clothed, and there was even a blanket over me. I moved ever so slightly, and pain washed through me, though the movement let me know that my panties were in place, which was a relief if I was honest. I didn’t think anyone had done anything other than bring me inside. When I opened my eyes, I saw Finn snoozing in the armchair next to me, while Dres was working at a weird-looking computer.
Hesitantly, I reached up and felt my nose. Everything seemed normal, which surprised me, given what I thought I remembered happening. It was sore, but nothing felt swollen just yet. My forehead seemed bruised, but nothing was scratched, and though my arms and chest ached, it wasn’t anything unmanageable. I carefully pushed myself up into a sitting position and immediately regretted it as a headache started pounding between my temples. I screwed my eyes shut and began rubbing my head, as though I could massage the pain away.
“Take it easy, Tessa.” Finn’s voice came from my left.
“How’d I get here?” I asked, my voice raspy.
“You fell when you were running,” Dres said as he quickly packed away his computer or whatever it was.
That wasn’t what I remembered, but I let him lie to me. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe I just didn’t want one more thing to deal with, one more thing that didn’t make any sense.
“Here’s something for your head,” Finn said, handing me a glass of water and two familiar brown pills.
I thanked him and downed the pills and most of the water, only realizing how thirsty I was after I’d started drinking. I took a brief pause but finished off the rest of the glass while Finn watched me. I could sense that there was something he wanted to get off his chest, but there was something holding him back. Meanwhile, Dres had moved to sit in the other armchair. His dark, almost black eyes ran over me from head to toe, over and over again, as though he was looking for something specific.
When Griff appeared, I wasn’t sure why, but I wasn’t shocked. Somehow, he seemed to fit in quite well with Finn and Dres. His blond hair was wet, and a few droplets of water dripped from the ends like he’d just come from taking a shower. I couldn’t help but rake my eyes over his athletic form and imagine how good it must look wet. If I got that man alone in a shower, there wasn’t much cleaning that would be getting done.
Dres cleared his throat, startling me from my X-rated interlude and causing me to blush furiously. I tried to hide it by looking down at my hands as though the hair that fell forward could shield me from prying eyes. I sighed and tried to stand, only to fall backwards as my balance was still off.
“Easy there, tiger. You bumped your head pretty hard, but I don’t think you have a concussion. That doesn’t mean you should be up and running about though,” Dres said, a frown decorating his face.
All I wanted was to crawl into my own bed, wrap myself in a cocoon of blankets, and drift off, because whatever I had been doing before I woke up was most definitely not a restful sleep. “Can you give me a ride home?” I asked Finn.
Before he could answer, Griff, who had been walking toward Dres while I gained my bearings, said, “Can you look at something first?”
He picked up something that I thought looked like a rock from the two seconds I saw it before his hand engulfed it.
“Can’t it wait?” I asked as both Dres and Finn told him to put it down and leave me alone respectively.
“No, not if I’m right.”
I sighed and turned to face him, only to have him chuck the thing at my head. Not overly hard, but still, it wasn’t exactly something I’d been expecting. My hands came up to shield my head out of instinct while I tried to duck out of the way. The thing grazed the knuckles of my hand that was clamped over the top of my head.
“Are you trying to kill me?” I asked in outrage as I heard the rock thunk into the wall behind me.
“No, I just thought you’d have better reactions.”
“I just woke up! Now that you’ve thrown your rock at me, I’m going home.” I spun on my heel and walked out. Stumbled out might’ve been a better way of putting it, since I was still sore and woozy.
There was only so much I was willing to take, and someone throwing hard, possibly deadly objects at my head was definitely crossing that line. I half expected someone to come running after me, but I could hear them all yelling at each other, even as I closed the front door behind myself.
The last thing I wanted was to start a fight between roommates or best friends or whatever they were. As much as I said I wanted to go home and be in my own bed, I also didn’t want to be alone, not that I’d realized it until I got out onto the porch. The early morning light was almost blinding and sent a stab of pain through my head.
I took one step down and paused for a moment before plopping my butt down onto the top step, happy to just sit for a while. Time seemed to slip away as I evaluated everything that had happened. Movement out of the corner of my eye drew my attention. I turned, and just like that, it was gone. I wanted to kick myself.
They almost never came back to the same place, but I stayed sitting in my spot and leaned my head against the pillar of the porch, still not ready to leave. When the creature appeared again a few moments later, I almost turned toward it, but just like in the computer lab, I kept my eyes facing front while I watched using my peripheral vision.
The dragon was close, padding along the wide railing on the other side of the porch, and for the first time, it was looking at me. I wasn’t sure if it could tell whether I was looking back or not, but it seemed to be evaluating me. Careful to keep my breathing even and my gaze averted, I bit my lower lip as the thing crept closer to me.
Its blue and green scales shimmered in the brightening morning light, as though it were daring me to look at it. I wouldn’t though, not directly, because this was the closest I’d ever been to one and I was mesmerized.
The purple tendrils that I so often saw around them began extending toward me. This was a new development, and I wanted to kick myself for not bringing a notepad and pen with me. I hadn’t even realized I’d started to hold my breath until the front door of the house banged open and angry footsteps came stomping out onto the porch, stopping abruptly just behind me. The dragon was gone once more, and this time, something told me it wouldn’t be back.
I turned to see who was throwing the hissy fit and stomping about, surprised to find Dres there, his eyes glued to me.
“I thought you were going home?” he growled out.
“I was, but I got sidetracked.”
“By what?”
“Oh, nothing important,” I said. I wasn’t exactly about to tell him that I’d seen a dragon.
Dres moved a few feet closer and sat down next to me. “Want to tell me what’s really going on?”
“What did Griff tell you?” I hedged.
“Answering a question with a question definitely means you’re hiding something.”
I shrugged. The guy seemed trustworthy enough, but how much did I really know about him? Not enough to tell him something like that. I could only imagine his reaction to my theory that men with weird, glowing eyes were stalking and attacking me.
He body stiffened next to mine.
“You okay?” I asked, wondering what could have caused such a reaction, especially when I had been too lost in my own thoughts to pay much attention to him.
“Yeah, fine. Just stiff from my workout,” he said as he pulled first one arm across his body and stretched, then the other.
It felt like a lie, but why would he lie about something like that? Especially when he’d been nothing but helpful until that point, even if I remembered something different happening to what he’d told me. Before I could question it any further, he asked, “Do you want me to walk you home?”
I hesitated, unsure after that blatant lie.
“If you’re nervous about me seeing where you live, I can just walk you to the block your place is on,” Dres said, his tone careful, like he was trying not to spook me.
“That would be nice, thanks.”
I slipped my heels back on and prayed that I could make it all the way home without having to pull them off again. Dres offered me a hand and helped me up, his grip strong and steady around mine. Normally, I was the one with the stronger grip, something about art, maybe the hours upon hours of holding brushes or molding clay to my whim, or maybe even the glass blowing I’d done. It all seemed to give me what my foster mother had jokingly called man hands. She hadn’t meant anything by it, but the comment had stuck in my mind. My fingers were long and elegant, but the prominent veins and callouses I had from various activities made them look much less feminine.
The strength in my grip must have surprised him because he seemed to forget what he was doing as he looked down at our joined hands, or maybe it was the glove that was throwing him off. Either way, he pulled a little too hard, so I stumbled and fell against him. It was a weird moment where time seemed to slow until I pushed back off him, though I was uncomfortably aware of the feel of his chest under my hand, the heat coming from his body, and the thump of his heart against my palm. I was slightly breathless as I righted myself once more and felt a breeze caress my skin.
“Sorry,” Dres said as he looked me up and down, as though he was making sure I wasn’t going to fall again.
“No worries,” I replied with a smile as I finally released his hand. I hadn’t realized I was still holding on to it until that point.
He cleared his throat and stepped to the side, gesturing for me to lead the way. At first, I was going to object because I wasn’t sure where their house was, but as soon as we reached the street, I recognized it so I began walking in the direction of my apartment.
For a couple minutes, Dres and I just walked in companionable silence. It wasn’t oppressive or awkward. It just was. I led the way as he followed by my side. Part of me was bursting with questions about him, like how did he know Griff? Were there more guys in their little group, or was it just the three of them? What was his major?
Before I could ask him any of those things, we were at the corner of Woodlawn and Jamison. “This is where I leave you,” I said, trying not to sound like I was sad to part ways. I reminded myself that he’d lied and that I knew next to nothing about him to ward off the feeling.
Dres turned to look at me. His deep, almost black eyes heated and fierce as he said, “Can I take you out to dinner?”
It was the last thing I’d been expecting. If Finn had asked, sure, the guy was flirty as all hell, but Dres was quiet, and I hadn’t even been sure that he liked me as a person until that moment. “You may,” I said, my voice turning annoyingly breathy under the intensity of his gaze.
A smile broke across his face and made him look like a much younger version of himself, one that was a carefree surfer or something similar. The movement seemed strange for a split second, and I realized that I hadn’t seen him smile before. Not that we’d spent a lot of time together, but still, it seemed like a rare thing. It was endearing and made my heart beat painfully in my chest. “I’ll pick you up at eight tonight? Here?” He gestured to the street signs.
“Sounds good,” I swallowed. Tonight was both good and bad. It meant I couldn’t obsess over it for days, but it also meant I needed to figure out what the hell I wanted to wear, pronto.
As I turned to walk away, I couldn’t help the smile that spread over my face. I paused and glanced back, hoping to catch one last glimpse of Dres, but the man had vanished. Once my eyes were facing forward again, I realized how silly it was for me to be nervous for him to see where I lived. The man had been inside my apartment, for crying out loud. He’d seen Brok burn up, so it wasn’t like we’d met under normal circumstances.
I sighed, touched that Dres had thought about my paranoia when he’d offered to pick me up. He knew where I lived but didn’t feel like he had to forcefully remind me of that fact and was happy to respect the boundaries I established. My heart thudded as nerves took up residence in my stomach. It had been way too long since I’d been on a date.
