Incarnadine

PROLOGUE

Prologue

Everyone has got their own stories. I’ve never thought much about mine before this—I like to imagine my mind as a room with many doors. Once I went through an event, I’d just leave it behind one of the doors and lock it inside until I feel like visiting them again. Shortly saying, I’ve got too many doors to go over and too…few keys to open them. I guess you can call it a treasure quest—discover a piece of mystery, solve it, and it’ll lead you onto the next one.

It sucks. And my first piece is him.

I met him in a dark alley, the night of the storm that overtook our town in a blast.

It was my shift at Ollie's to take out the garbage. My hands ached from wiping tables and taking orders for hours, but I did it anyway because of some obligatory sense I felt toward Jamie and her family, whom I was bunking with at the upstairs room of the restaurant. I still hadn’t gotten over my gratitude for their taking me in two years ago.

I grunted and sighed in turns at the weight I was dragging in my hands. Ollie’s was a busy place today. If it wasn’t for how nice the Cadwells are, I thought as I relieved myself of the weight and opened the kitchen’s back door, I wouldn’t stick around for the night shift.

I took the trash bags back in my hands—

And almost dropped them when I saw him standing across me, his hair damp and sticking on his forehead. He was standing facing me with his arms hung on his sides, but in the darkness I couldn’t make out his features. Distantly I heard the rustle of the branches blown by the wind, the downpour of raindrops hitting the ground. A flash of lightning lit his figure, revealing me a brief vision of gray—or were they green?—eyes and a set of lightly-stubbled jaws.

The grumble of a thunder made my heart leap skittishly, and I tore my eyes from him with a sharp intake of breath. With another grunt, I dumped the bag on the waste. Once I finished wiping my hands on the cloth tied to my waist, I took two umbrellas from the basket by the kitchen’s back door. I opened one of them, and stepped forward into the rain.

“Catch!” I shouted at him over a roar of thunder, and threw the other umbrella at him.

He caught it, but didn’t open it, and instead gripped it while he stared at me.

And kept on staring.

Another roar of thunder. Rustling leaves. A nearby branch of tree was struck. It fell to the ground, blackened and still on smoke.

“Fuck it,” I cursed. Heart thumping, I ran to him and covered both of us with the umbrella I held. I grabbed his hand and started to pull him with me inside.

He stood there like a rock.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I yelled. “I’m trying to save your life here, if you haven’t already suffered from acute hypothermia! You’re not a lightning junkie or anything like that, are you? C’mon!”

He looked down on the hand I was holding. The rain slicked my skin. Something in his gaze made my fingers go limp. I lost my grasp of his hand.

He looked up at me. I heard the umbrella dropped from his grip.
Gray. They were definitely gray.

I blinked.

“Do you want the both of us to get struck by lightning?” I asked him. “I don’t care if you’re some psycho or alley rapist, but we are not getting struck here. Come with—”

“Eiko.”

My lips parted. I blinked. His gray eyes were on my face as he raised his hands to tip my face up to him and brushed my face. Another thump on the ground—my umbrella. The rain fell on my hair, on my eyelashes, trickling down my skin in gentle strokes.

Somewhere, thunder roared.

“Eiko,” he whispered again. His voice was so soft, it almost didn’t carry across the rain.

Shivers rocked my spine, but a warm flush spread steadily from my thumping chest. “Do I know you?”

And then he kissed me.

It was just the softest touch of lips. His lips were warm, almost hot against my cold lips. A familiar, surreal taste. I tasted the acidic taste of raindrops. I tasted salt water. I tasted sunlight and a smile and a promise. Eyes fluttering shut, I leaned in deeper into the kiss. Every sound—the rain splattering against the ground, the roaring thunders—just faded away. Like a feather swept away by a breeze, I floated and sank into the kiss.

And then the warmth was gone.

I opened my eyes.

He had left.

Thank you for reading.
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