Page 40 of A Fearless Heart
“Well…no.”
“Then how would you know? Come, Cady. Impress me.”
She took a breath. Part of her very much wanted to impress Gabe. He wasn’t scared of anything, and she so wanted to be like that. And it would feel so good to have him look at her and tell her she handled herself well, that she wasn’t a disappointment…
“Ten steps,” she said. “That’s how far I’ll go.”
“Regular-sized steps,” he countered, thwarting any attempt to bend the rules.
“And you won’t try to scare me. No pretending to see a ghost or a rat or anything like that.”
“Christ, Cady, I’m not doing this as a prank.”
She bit her lip. “Fine. Let’s get this over with.” Thank goodness she’d taken the one percent solution. Otherwise, she might be in a worse state now.
He led her to the door, then told her to keep going, one step at a time.
“You have to do this yourself, Cady. Otherwise it won’t mean anything.”
Heart hammering as she looked from shadow to shadow, she moved along the narrow slice of light made by the open door. Then all of a sudden, the door slammed shut, plunging everything into…nothing.
Cady let out a low moan, too scared to even set one foot in front of the other. With the light gone, it was all too easy to imagine anything and everything she feared rushing up to meet her. Rats. Spiders. Ghosts. Her father. Hateful neighbors.
Then Gabe was there. He somehow found her in pitch black and put his arms around her. “Cady, it’s fine. You’re fine.”
“Oh, my God, did you do that on purpose?”
“No! I would never do that to you.”
She clung to the sound of his voice as much as she clung to him, her fingers clutching at anything in her near panic. Luckily, his chest seemed as hard as the stone walls around them. She couldn’t hurt him.
Gabe kept talking to her, telling her there was nothing to worry about, it was the same emptiness as before, just without light. Cady was appalled to realize that she was crying. But although her breathing was too fast, at least she wasn’t gasping for breath.
“You’re fine, you’re fine,” Gabe said, holding her close.
“I am not,” she moaned. “I hate this. I hate being like this.”
In the darkness, Gabe’s fingers brushed away the tears dampening her cheek. Then his thumb dragged along her mouth, and she tasted salt. The touch surprised her, making her gasp.
“I wondered what your lips felt like,” he said, a new note in his voice. “They always look so soft.”
Cady inhaled, the fear streaming away as something else entirely rushed in. “You can’t see my lips now,” she said, her heart rate picking up.
“I don’t need to. Let me kiss you.”
“Is this part of the bravery lessons?”
“No. It’s because we’re alone in the dark, and I’ve been wanting to do this since the day I got here.”
“I can’t allow that. Besides, I’ve never kissed a man. Like you, I mean.”
“A man like me?”
“Yes. A man who’s…the sort women want to kiss.”
“You think I’m that sort?” His voice was teasing now, maddeningly so.
“I know it.”
