Shatter (Book 2 of Collide Series)

e i g h t

The horizon lifts and falls in a sporadic pattern, the subtle dawn of morning peeking over the concrete jungle of buildings stacked thick and tall in the distance. The ground is washed in an artificial lighting, intermingled with scattered foliage, promising life that I must get close to experience. A secret and unventured place that I hardly recognise, but overwhelms me with familiarity.

There is a long stretch of space I must cross yet before I reach this metropolis. It seems as though we have been walking for miles across this blank plain, yet the destination remains out of reach, just as much as it did when we began to walk. We still press on, however, eager - positively desperate - to finally arrive. I feel an overwhelming and consuming happiness, knowing that no matter how long it might take to until I'm among this distant world, it is where we are going, and it is where I want to go. Where I want to stay.

With him. My fingers rest between the waiting spaces of those that belong to another hand. A male hand, large and familiar, callused but his touch still soft. Warmth, and that is all I feel when I lift my gaze and grin unabashedly at him. It is Kade, distorted slightly, missing the single dimple that comes with the grin on his face, but I swoon all the same. Hair that seems equally unruly, yet not quite as curly, and perhaps slightly shorter as it curls at the nape of his neck. His build is leaner, shorter, but the eyes remain the same. The way in which they look at me.

He moves to say something, but the words die on the tip of his tongue, his expression contorting into so clearly recognised agony as he crumbles to the floor.

Blood.

So much blood.

And all I see is red.

A sea of red that surrounds him, swallows him, buries him.

Cries - my cries - screams of unparalleled pain and fright and grief and that is all I can hear as the faceless people take him - take me from him too - and he lets go of my hand.

"Allora!" They were my cries, the same that I think wake me, but I relish in the realisation that Kade calls my name too, rather frantically as peers down over me. He is here – safe and uninjured – and that only makes me cry more. Scrambling to sit upright, I clutch at the blankets which are damp with my sweat and tears. "Hey! Hey, you're alright," he grabs my face with a gentle firmness, forcing me to meet his worried gaze, despite the haze of tears that distorts my vision. He doesn't wait for my consent before he climbs himself on to the bed before me, his eyes never once leaving my face.

I still sob, even after knowing that it was nothing but a nightmare, because the agony that has found home in my chest in brutal, clenching at my heart in the most violent of manners, coiling around my lungs so that I cannot breathe. Kade does not let go, only hushes me gently, an attempt to sooth me as he allows the pads of his thumbs to collect my tears as they fall, brushing them away intermittently. A touch that for a moment I truly thought I had lost forever.