Amber Frost Read Online Free Page B

terrifying clarity, all I wanted was to crow with joyous laughter and howl in torturous pain; my whole body trembled with the force of the conflicting desires. And then just as suddenly, the urge disappeared. I was left confused, fighting against the steadily building fear as I wondered what was happening. Sebastian watched me all the while, his dark eyes lit with an undefinable emotion akin to my own. He appeared to be just as confused and disoriented. He recovered first though, taking a quick step back from me with wary eyes.
    “You forgot your change,” he said softly. He bent down to smoothly scoop up the coins into one hand. He held them out to me in the hand that his tattoo started on, revealing that the intricate black pattern twisted from the center of his palm around the base of his thumb and then wrapped around his wrist. I imagined it must have been very painful to get. For a split second I could almost feel the blistering, nauseating pain flaring from my own hand, up my arm and down my whole side. I automatically flinched away from him and the imagined pain, afraid once more by the confusing emotions and sensations he was stirring within me.
    “Keep it. I don’t want change,” I told him, struggling to keep my voice even as I forced myself to turn away.
    “For some, needs and wants don’t always surmount to the same thing,” he quickly replied, laughing softly as he spoke. I kept walking away, refusing to acknowledge him again. For some reason I felt like I was running the wrong way. “And sometimes, we lie to ourselves,” I heard him quietly add in his low, lilting voice.
    I hurried back to my table, refusing to look anywhere but at Clarke once I sat down, afraid I might meet Sebastian’s eye across the room. The encounter had left me unnerved and more than a little afraid. It wasn’t just the inexplicable and bizarre reaction I’d had to his touch that had unsettled me. There was also something about the way he looked at me that made me feel uncomfortable. Like he knew all my secrets; like he recognized something in me that I’d yet to find in myself, something I refused to see.
    I firmly and determinedly pushed the strange thoughts aside, refocusing my attention on what I knew should be much more important matters. There was my boyfriend that I needed to keep happy, friends that needed to be impressed and appearances that needed to be kept up. I was being silly, ridiculous even, entertaining random thoughts and strange notions. I refocused my attention where it should be, purposely not allowing myself to think about Sebastian, his tattoo, or the whole bizarre encounter for the rest of the day.
    Because Clarke had rugby practice after school, he wasn’t able to drive me home that day. I didn’t mind. I enjoyed taking the school’s bus; a fancy coach with dark tinted windows and comfy leather bench seats. The bus slowly wound through Victoria, dropping off students on the way along the neat and narrow streets. I gazed out the window, trying not to let my mind wander in the wrong direction as I watched the cold, autumn wind strip the many-colored leaves from the hundred-year old trees that lined the streets. The tree branches bent under the force of the wind as their leaves were ripped away in a swirl of colors. Change was everywhere; it was a part of nature, part of life. It was inescapable and we had no choice but to submit. Choice and change; these two concepts seemed incompatible in my life, I mused.
    Quite a few students were still on the bus as we neared the waterfront. Many students at Craigflower lived along Beach Drive and in the surrounding neighborhood. I sat alone in silence as I gazed out towards the ocean longingly, envying the freedom of the seagulls that soared and circled in the icy wind, white spots against the darkening sky. The bus turned onto Beach Drive, angling inland and away from the ocean. The huge homes we drove past seemed to tower in oppressively all around me. Even the