Invincible (24 page)

ship igniting. The heat from the flames and suffocating smoke started to bother me, and I tried to move, but my body wouldn’t let me. I black out again, but this time, it wouldn’t be the last. I was determined to fight this. I wasn’t going to sit here and let this fire consume me.

With the remaining strength I had, I opened my eyes again. I tried to think of ways to escape the fire, but suddenly I didn’t even know where I was anymore, or how I’d gotten myself into this predicament to begin with. I began to look around for signs, but unfortunately the thick flames had blocked any chance of my doing that.

Suddenly, over the sounds of flickering flames, I heard footsteps. I couldn’t see anyone, but after a few seconds, I began to realize that the footsteps were coming my way. Before I could even blink, a person jumps through the fire. I black out once more, but before I do, I start to recognize the person’s face. It was a man, but to my surprise, it was not just any old random person. It was a person I was all too familiar with.

Brad.

“It was you,” I say to him, coming back to the present. “It was you all along.”

Brad stares at me with a sympa
thetic face and begins to sigh.

“I was on my way home,” he says. “I was in a depressed mood, so I went to the gravesite to see Sara and Zoë. While driving back that night, I saw a huge fire. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal until I saw you in there. That was when I stopped the car and ran into the field to get you.”

I didn’t say anything else to Brad, as there weren’t any questions left to ask him. It was another thing I overlooked—the way the dreams kept coming

back to me, and the questions that Brad had asked me involving fires. I also began to realize why Brad didn’t freak out when I told him my secret. He knew something was off about me, but like me, he never really wanted to confront it. All that he was concerned about was me, and only me.

“So what happened to you?” I ask Alex. “How did you find me?”

“Well, I ended up in Columbus, Ohio,” she says. “I started to look around for you, but it was hopeless. It wasn’t until I noticed your face on the news that I decided to come here and find you.”

“But how did you know we were at the school?”

“Have you forgotten?” Alex says. “I can sense other people’s abilities.”

Of course! She had power-sensing abilities. I’d almost forgotten all about them. She practically used it all the time back on Iarnam, letting me know which abilities a certain Iarnamian was capable of, and how powerful they were.

I nod my head. “Okay, so how did the Catchers find me?”

“That one I’m not sure of,” Alex says. “When I sensed you both at the same place, I knew where to find you. But other than that…”

“I have a good theory.”

We all turn our heads to see Jack standing outside the room. He must’ve overheard us. Just exactly how much he’d heard I didn’t want to know.

“I just got off the phone with my dad again,” he says. “Davidson’s escaped from prison.”

Jack and I didn’t speak during the ride to his house. I didn’t mind. All I could worry about was Davidson’s escape, and the thought of him assisting the Catchers in their attempt to find me and Alex.

After dropping Jack off at home, I decide to pay a little visit to Taylor, seeing as I was already outside, and promised to talk to her later.

As I fly to her house, I try to plan out what I was going to say, but there was nothing I could think of. I couldn’t lie anymore, not to her. After everything I’d put her through, she at least deserved an explanation.

When I got back to the house, all the lights were on. As I use my super-hearing, I sense Owen’s steady heartbeat in the living room, watching the news for updates on the school, while Mr. and Mrs. Morrison talk in the kitchen.

“We can’t
make
her talk about it,” Mrs. Morrison says. “We don’t know how bad this is affecting her.”

“But this is serious!” Mr. Morrison snaps, slamming his fist onto the counter. “She ca
n’t keep it all inside forever.”

As Mr. and Mrs. Morrison continue to argue, I fly up to the top of the house and approach Taylor’s window.

I look through it and see her sitting on the edge of her bed, looking down at the floor. I wonder if she’s been like this since I left, but I knew that couldn’t be true. She wouldn’t just sit in her room the whole time, thinking about what happened at school, could she?

I knock on the window and she lifts up her head, turning to me. With a confused look, she slowly walks to the window, and lifts it open.

“Can we talk?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer, and I see the reason why as she looks at me and then looks down, trying to see what was holding me up in the air.

I reach my hand out to her. “Please.”

After considering my request for a few seconds, she takes my hand, climbs though the window, and leaps into my arms, putting both arms around my neck to protect her. My heart starts to pound as she struggles to stay attached to me. Finally, I hold onto her back and pull her closer to me.

“It’s okay,” I say, comforting her. “I’ve got you.”

She starts to relax, and so does my heart as I fly us up to the roof of the house.

As soon as we get there, I gently put her down, and I land soon after.

She sits down and stares at me, which sends me into a panic. I start to pace, trying to find the right words to say to her, but as before,
nothing seems to come through.

“Wha
t’s happening, Troy?” she says.

My heart starts to race again, but not out of excitement like before. This time it was fear. Fear of her becoming afraid of me. Fear of her not wanting to be with me.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.

“You know what I’m talking about,” Taylor insists. “What you were able to do is not possible. Please, just tell me the truth.”

I stopped in my footsteps. The sound of her voice and the way she said those words reminded of me of the time we were arguing in History, when she was desperate to know my secret, and I accused her of

lying. And then how we agreed that no matter what would happen between us, we would al
ways be honest with each other.

It was at that moment I decided to tell her.
Not because of the promise we’d made, but because I had lied to her so much, and protecting my secret was the only thing that was keeping us from being together.

“Okay,” I say, sitting next to her. “First thing you should know is that I'm different. I know that sounds crazy, but you have to believe me, it’s the truth.”

She nods her head and I sigh, trying to calm myself as I begin to explain.

“I am an alien. I was sent here to carry on my planet’s legacy, and protect Earth after it was destroyed, but I didn’t know that until a few hours ago. And I have powers, which I guess you can already tell, that allow me to do things that no other human can do. I use them to my advantage, and every night, I go out and fight crime as Lion-Man. There are also other aliens, the ones that attacked the school. They are here to hunt me and the rest of my kind. If they find me, I’m dead.”

She looks at me with a strange look, not saying a word. I then start to worry. Is she planning on screaming for help? Is she going to laugh at me? Or is she just going to sit there?

After a
while, she begins to talk again.

“Why couldn’t you have told me before?” she says.

Her words begin to confuse me.

“I don’t get it,” I say. “Yo
u mean, you’re okay with this?”

She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter to me, Troy.”

My mind began to freeze, unsure if Taylor and I were still on the same page.

“It doesn’t?” I say.

“No,” she says back to me, her voice confident and tender. “Who you are doesn’t matter to me at all.”

As she said those words, I began to feel a sense of relief. Relieved at the fact that she didn’t seem to care. She knew my secret, and it didn’t matter to her at all.

“I just don’t see why you couldn’t tell me?” she says.

It took me a moment to build up the courage to say what I was going to say. My eyes began to pierce into hers.

“When I first saw you,” I say, “it was like being sent to heaven, and you were my angel. I’d never seen anything so beautiful in my entire life.”

She looks at me with a staggered expression, but she doesn’t say anything as I had hoped she would.

“After that first day, I was so happy,” I continue. “I thought about you all night after I left school, trying to find ways to talk to you again. But then that was when Rick got in the way.”

I notice Taylor’s expression change as I mention his name, but I decide not comment on it.

“It hurt me to know what Rick had done to you, how much he'd hurt you. But I was just starting to know you, and I didn’t want to ruin my chance.” I hesitate. “But by that time, I already had.”

It doesn’t take a while for Taylor to understand what I was talking about, remembering my fight with Rick.

“I had to think of something, anything to make you believe that what I did wasn’t possible. But you were so reluctant, so determined to prove me wrong,

that you left me with other choice but to deny everyt
hing you rightly accused me of.

“When I came back to school, I was so devastated, so worried about your feelings toward me, that I don’t know what I would’ve done if you didn’t talk to me. But to my surprise, you turned around, and went against everything you believed in just to talk to me.”

“And you just went along with it anyway,” she says matter-of-factly. I nod my head in agreement. “But why?”

I didn’t know what to say to Taylor. I couldn’t explain to her why I had put us both in this position, why I had went through almost everything to be with her. So I looked into her eyes, like I always did, but this time, I saw something. It was me, in her reflection. The warm, tingly sensation begin
s to rush through my body. Just seeing that made me realize that this was the place I wanted to be.

It was also at that moment that I realized something. Something I was so afraid to admit to myself. Something that I thought I would get over. But now I knew it was permanent. It would never go away. It was something that would stay with me forever.

“Because,” I say carefully, “I love you, Taylor.”

“I lov
e you, too,” she says, smiling.

We look at each other for a few moments, not saying a word. Then a gust of wind blows Taylor’s hair in front of her. I pull it away from her face and without even realizing it, place my hand upon h
er cheek. Then I pull her close, and our lips begin to touch.