Eden by Keary Taylor Page A

have.  I hoped you would like
it.”
    I looked away from him,
fixing my eyes on the trail.  I couldn’t think of anything
that seemed less fit for me as a gift.  I’d never owned any
other piece of jewelry nor had I ever had the desire to own
any.
    “ You shouldn’t have asked
him to,” I said quietly.  “It wasn’t worth it.”
    “ I know,” he answered me
even more quietly. 
    Regret for my words seeped
into me.  Tye’s death had been hardest on Avian and I kept
bringing it up.  Now I was pointing it out that in a way it
had been his fault he was dead.
    Not really even knowing
what I was doing, I reached over and took Avian’s hand in
mine.  He squeezed my fingers, his shoulder brushing
mine.
    “ There are getting to be
fewer of them you know,” Avian said after a few moments.  “The
Hunters.  Right after the infection started and people stopped
being people, there were thousands of them.  It was all too
easy for them to turn others.  We didn’t understand what was
happening at first.  The base where I was stationed in what
used to be Texas was flooded with them.  I don’t know how I
escaped.  But as more and more people became infected, Fallen
who used to be Hunters stopped hunting.  There aren’t that
many more of them left now.”
    “ They just stand there,
you know,” I said as I recalled the haunting scene.  “Like
they’re waiting for something.  Just standing there inside,
watching the world crumble outside.”
    “ I didn’t know that,” he
said, his brow furrowing.  I then realized he wouldn’t have
known.  After rescuing Sarah, Avian had come here and he never
left.  We couldn’t afford for him to leave.  He was too
needed in Eden.
    I was glad it wasn’t
me.  That would have felt too much like being a
prisoner.  I wasn’t the only one that felt like I had the
weight of Eden resting on my shoulders.  We wouldn’t have
survived without Avian, just as they wouldn’t have survived without
me.
    “ I was out of my mind,”
Avian said, his voice tight as he looked down at his feet. 
“When you left.  I didn’t know what happened to you, what was
going to happen to you.  You’re tough, but you’re not
indestructible.  If it hadn’t have been for Sarah I would have
come after you.”
    “ You can’t do that,” I
said as I furrowed my brows, looking back up at him.  “They
need you here.”  And there I was, making him a prisoner of
Eden again. 
    Avian slowed, pulling me
to a stop with him, our hands still clasped together.  “Don’t
do that again, Eve.  Don’t run off on me.”
    I looked up into Avian’s
face, surprised at the intensity that burned in his eyes.  His
face was closer than I had expected it to be.  I took a sharp
breath in as I recalled the feeling of West crushing his lips to
mine.  This was different though.  This was Avian. 
He wouldn’t do it that way.
    “ I’ll do what I have to,”
I finally managed to say.  My heart was pounding in my chest
in a way that was foreign to me.  “I’ll protect them all till
the day I don’t have any more fight in me.”
    He continued to look at me
for a long, intense moment.  He brought his other hand and
softly brushed a thumb across my cheek.  My skin tingled as
his hand went back to his side.  He started walking back down
the path, my hand still in his.
    “ Tell me what it was like,
what it would have been like, if the world hadn’t fallen apart,” I
said, moving on when I wasn’t sure how to handle Avian’s intensity
or the intensity that was building up inside of me.  “What
would my life have been like right now, if I wasn’t a cybernetic
human hybrid?”
    That brought a sad little
smile to his face.  “Let’s see, it’s early May.  You
would have been a senior in high school.  You’d be dying to
get out of school.  The last few months of your senior year
are agony.  All you want is for it to be over.
    “ Prom would probably be
around this time.  You would