Read Online Never Letting Go (Delphian Book 1) by Christina Channelle - Free Book Online

against palm, squeezing tightly.
    My heart skipped a beat at the sensation.
    “Sparks,” he mumbled, brows furrowed in deep contemplation.
    I looked from our joined hands up into his face. All I saw was my own reflection mirrored in his lenses.  “You can let go of me now.”
    “Do I really have to?” he asked softly, but did as I requested. “Does that make you allergic to me?”
    I glanced up at him, feeling breathless all of a sudden. “You … you might be the exception.”
    My mind finally returned to where I was and I realized my stop had arrived.
    “I have to go,” I confessed, reluctantly moving toward the exit.
    Dad would kill me if I missed the interview. He’d blame it on my wandering mind.
    “Wait!”
    Pausing by the doors I turned my head slightly, looking at his face one last time. I really didn’t want to leave him and it was hard not to throw caution to the wind and leap into his arms. I knew he’d catch me.
    Instead, I stepped out of the train and spoke wistfully before the train doors slammed shut with a resounding bang.
    “I’ll see ya around.”

CHAPTER NINE
     
     
    I DIDN’T ACTUALLY see Ethan again until about a year later. By then I had almost forgotten our first encounter. The second time I saw him I was sixteen, perhaps a year or so after the train incident. I was completely different from the girl at the train station and if I had to guess, so was he.
    It was probably after seven … just as the sun was about to set. I’d been staring at this lump of a guy lying against a tree that was growing sideways. A tree that had definitely seen better days. The trunk weathered over the years, its dark red leaves battered, and barely hanging from branches that looked like they’d snap at any minute. It was a tree that looked as damaged as I felt inside.
    Well, having your only living parent die, leaving you orphaned and alone, does something to the insides. If I had to describe it, it was as if I had been burned, like someone had lit a torch to the contents of my body, and the fire had consumed me, slowly turning me to rubble and coal.
    Dead.
    So the fact that I noticed my heart pounding against my chest for the first time in a very long time as I stared at this stranger left me in a daze.  It wasn’t until later that I even realized he was the stranger on the train that I used to daydream about. I closed my eyes and slowly inhaled, tried holding on to that feeling that I thought I had lost forever.
    I felt alive.
    I opened my eyes again, not wanting to look away from him, not wanting that feeling of hope and life suddenly surging throughout my body to disappear. Why was being in his presence making me feel this way? I didn’t know, and at that moment I didn’t care. All I knew was that this stranger, this boy, looked up at the sky as if it held the key to all his questions and I wanted to know if they had been answered.
    Because I also had questions for the universe.
    Hands tucked behind his head, there was a longing in his gaze, and I followed it, staring at the multicolored sky before it soon darkened. I wondered briefly at what thoughts passed through his mind for him to stare with so much need at the sky above him. I glanced back at him, envious that he felt something.
    While I was back to feeling nothing.
    He finally noticed me watching him a few feet away and it happened again.
    Thump .
    My heart beat so strongly it left me breathless. I faltered, touched a hand to my chest, and finally connected my eyes with his. This flutter of a thousand wings erupted in my stomach all at once.
    Those eyes , was my first thought. Beautiful, was the next.
    For a split second, as I stared deeply into his stormy gray eyes I thought I knew what it felt like to drown, and I had wished I had seen those eyes the first time I had met him because maybe he could have saved me then. Head going under water, that feeling of fullness burst inside my chest as I chased air I thought I’d never breathe again.