Colony Z: The Complete Collection (Vols. 1-4) (22 page)

“Owen, if you don’t slow down and wait for me, I’m going to…”

Hannah had been huffing and puffing through the woods, trying to keep up with her entirely too frustrating boyfriend. He knew how much she hated running, and she’d never been more tired in her life. She really was about to give up and find her own way home if he wouldn’t help her. Normally he wasn’t such a jerk, but if he was going to act like this he wasn’t exactly worth sneaking out for in the first place. Especially since he’d promised her he would stay by her side and make sure nothing happened to her, since her parents couldn’t make him promise
them
that.

But she was interrupted in her rant by a hand reaching out from behind a tree and clasping over her mouth, and another arm wrapping around her waist, pulling her close to her captor. At first she tried to scream, completely certain that some horrible thing had come out into the woods to find her and kill her where she stood. She prayed she wouldn’t feel a wetness near her crotch and, thankfully, she didn’t. She tried to kick the person behind her. Hannah put up quite the fight that night, even though she didn’t need to.

Then she heard the light laughing of the person holding her, and she immediately knew it was Owen, thinking that this was supposed to be funny. She went limp, a signal to him that he could let her go, and then rounded on him.

“Owen, damn it, you know better than to scare me like that. I don’t know why I even bother with you, with immature, football throwing…”

Owen didn’t really feeling like listening to her rant at him. Besides, she’d almost kicked him in the nuts how many times in the last thirty seconds? That was enough punishment for him, especially since one of the frantic kicks had landed on his shin.

He wrapped his arms around her again and kissed her full on the lips, shutting her up. He’d been in a good mood all night, and he knew there wouldn’t be a better time than this to carry out his plan. Now all he had to do was get Hannah in the right mood. He didn’t want to do this when she was being…well…nitpicky.

“Hannah,” He whispered as he pulled her away. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“What?” She said, her voice much more quiet than it was before. “Now? Owen, it’s two in the morning. I should be asleep at home.”

“I know, I know…” He said, laughing his light, little laugh again. “But this is important. Please?”

“…alright, Owen.” Hannah giggled and accepted the hand that Owen offered to her like a true gentleman. They left the small  clearing in between the trees that he had caught her in and began to walk through the dark forest between the fair grounds and the outskirts of town, Owen holding Hannah as close as possible to him all the while. He would never admit it to her, but he didn’t much like these woods in the first place. They were only in here for effect. He wanted Hannah to remember this night.

Things were silent for several minutes, and Hannah determined that Owen was just trying to spend more time with her, not really get something off his chest, like she’d originally thought. No, Owen was just making up excuses so they could go frolicking through the dark forest at two in the morning. He got like this when he was in a good mood, and Hannah realized she would enjoy these moments so much more if they didn’t have to be such a big secret from her friends and parents.

She wished her parents would love him the way that she did. Too old for her in maturity or not, she loved him. And, if she was honest with herself, she knew she’d never feel this way about anybody else again. This was it, her and Owen. And she hated that her one real relationship had to be hidden from her tight-knit family. They’d always been close. And now…now they didn’t have that option. Now she had to hide her happiness about the most important thing in her life. She was almost seventeen years old…why couldn’t they respect her decisions?

“What are you thinking about?” Owen asked through the quiet.

“What?”

“What are you thinking about?”

“…just…” Hannah sighed, trying to decide whether or not to lie to him and ending up doing what was probably the right thing. “I wish my parents knew where I was, you know? I wish I didn’t have to hide the most amazing part of my life from them…and pretty much from anyone else.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk about, babe.” Owen said, putting his arm around his girlfriend’s shoulders. “I don’t think we should keep this all secretive anymore.”

“Owen, I’m sixteen not eighteen. We can’t just make that decision for ourselves. They won’t let me see you anymore if we tell them.”

“I don’t think that’s entirely true, babe. I think if we come forward and tell them how it is, they’ll have to accept us. What are they going to do? Make you stay in your room half-dead all the time because you can’t see someone you love? Eventually, they’ll have to look past it and let us be together. And, if not…we only have a year and a half left before it won’t matter anyway…so I think we should tell them the truth.”

“What, and tell them that I sneak out at night to see you?”

“…I don’t like that you do that, period.” Owen said, looking at the ground in a small moment of frustration. “I would rather we hang out after school or something. I don’t particularly like the idea of them catching you and it being my fault.”

Owen was telling the truth. Rather than just letting her make her own choices and get into trouble if she wanted, he cared enough to try to keep her from doing things that might get her hurt. It could be annoying sometimes, like right now, but it was a sweet gesture, all the same.

“Well then, you’re more of a gentleman than most boys, and we’ll leave it at that.”

“I don’t want to lie to your parents either, Hannah. I
want
to tell them the truth.”

“And what’s the truth, Owen? To them this is just some high school fling, and if they crush it down for long enough, I’ll move on and get over it. Remember?”

“…are you worried that that’s what you’ll do?”

Hannah stared at the ground for several minutes, her head telling her that he was right. She was worried about that. She was worried that, if things got more complicated than they already were, she would drop Owen and move on with her life because, well, that was easier than anything else. And, at heart, she could still be a shallow idiot. And, in the future, that might cost her the love of her life.

She couldn’t answer him.

“The truth is that I love you, Hannah. The truth is that I want to spend the rest of my life keeping you, and them, happy. The truth is that I can take care of you, and the truth is that I didn’t come out here tonight to take you to the fair because you wanted to go. I agreed to come out here tonight for something much bigger than that. Something much more important.”

“…what?” Hannah said, almost breathless. Owen didn’t talk that much very often. Not unless he was nervous or really worked up about something. Owen talked more in the ten minutes before a football game than all the rest of the week combined. And now he seemed even more nervous than he did then. She had a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach about what he was about to do. And the pit got even deeper when she realized that she didn’t have an answer.

“Hannah,” Owen pulled a small, dark box out of his jacket pocket and got down on one knee, just as she’d been terrified he would. Despite herself, Hannah blushed and her hands flew up to her mouth in surprise. The moment was so perfect and moonlit and beautiful that she didn’t know if she was going to be able to take it seriously.

There were a thousand things running through her mind in the moments before Owen uttered those fateful words. Did she
want
to marry him? Of course she did. Did you she want it to happen like this, though? Hidden from her family and friends and to have to hold in this secret engagement that her parents would likely send her to a private school for? No…she didn’t want it to be like this. And Owen should have known that. But, if he did, Owen didn’t let on.

“Will you marry me?”

Hannah smiled, much as she didn’t want to, at the romanticism of her boyfriend. When he opened the box to reveal the beautiful gold band, she wanted to cry out in frustration and confusion. A battle was raging inside of her. She loved Owen. She loved him so much that it hurt. But she loved her family too, and going home to them tonight only to tell them in the morning that she was engaged to someone they didn’t even approve of her dating was almost too much to bear. Why couldn’t anything ever just be simple?

“Owen, I…I…” Was all she managed to stammer out in the end. Owen’s excited face fell as he realized this wouldn’t be the night he had hoped.

“You’re thinking about them, aren’t you?”

“Owen…I don’t…please…” Hannah wanted to go into a rant about her family. She wanted to explain to Owen why this was a bad idea. But she felt like a terrible girlfriend doing it. Here he had planned out this beautiful night, and here she was talking through it like she always did. Why he dated her, cared about her, or loved her, she didn’t know. It was so much at once that Hannah couldn’t even tell him that she didn’t
want
to explain why. She just burst into tears.

“…Hannah?” Owen watched, unsure of what to do. This wasn’t at all what he’d expected. But, then, he realized, it was incredibly stupid of him to expect anything more than what he got.

Hannah was in a ridiculously complicated situation, trapped between him and her family. And he had just made it so much worse for her. And the girl thought it was her fault.

“Hannah…babe…please don’t cry.” Owen let out his cute little laugh again, and Hannah was immediately comforted as he wrapped her back into his arms. “Hannah, do you love me?”

“Yes.” She said, still crying against his jacket.

“Do you
want
to marry me?”

“Yes.”

“…babe, we’ll make your family okay with this. With us. I swear we will. I’ll make it happen.” Owen whispered, lifting her chin up with his hand so he could look into her eyes. “You understand me?”

Hannah nodded before looking back at the ground. Owen pulled the ring out of the small case and took her left hand. She didn’t stop him as he slipped the band onto her engagement finger with ease. He felt a small sense of achievement in knowing that he’d sized it correctly.

“I love you, Hannah.” He said.

“I love you too, Owen.”

Hannah laid her head back on Owen’s shoulder and they stood there like that for what Hannah wished was an eternity. She missed him already, and she didn’t want this night to end. Owen was comforted in the thought that they’d crossed a barrier tonight. They’d jumped a hurdle together, and everything was going to be alright.

Neither of the two teens had noticed the darkening skies ahead of them, or the disappearance of the moon and the darkening of the forest. They were too busy in their own little world to pay any attention. So, when the first droplets hit Owen’s arm, he decided to look up.

He didn’t like what he saw. The sky was setting itself to unleash a fury upon them, and now wasn’t the time to be standing in the middle of that wrath. The wind picked up and blew through Hannah’s dark hair. There was a heavy storm coming, and the trees weren’t going to be enough to shield them from it.

“We need to get under something.” Owen said, sounding worried but trying not to scare Hannah after the moment they’d just had. “It’s not safe being out here by ourselves in a storm.”

Owen led the way and Hannah followed, attempting not to trip over tree roots and branches. He ended up carrying her after a while, so desperate was he to keep her out of the storm and safe from harm. She fought it, but decided in the end that it was just easier to let him do what he was going to do. As soon as they hit the edge of the forest and a small building in the distance was within view, Owen set Hannah down and they ran to it as fast as they could, the rain beginning to pour in sheets.