Found

HAZEL

In mid-November, I woke up to the first snow of the season. A blanket of white covered the town, making everything eerily quiet.

My boots creaked against the snow as I walked to work.

I walked past children on their way to school, all excited about the snow.

A gangly boy who looked to be maybe ten or eleven ambushed another boy, who was like a slightly older version of himself, with a snowball to the back of the head.

I smiled to myself. There was something magical about the world during the first snow.

I’d walked for about five minutes when someone called my name from behind. I turned instinctively toward the sound.

I knew who it was before I saw him, and my skin prickled with the anticipation of seeing him again.

“Will you let me walk you to work?” he asked—as if this was an everyday occurrence—once he had reached my side.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, brows furrowed in confusion.

“Like I just said, I would like to walk you to work.”

“I got that part. That’s not really what I meant,” I explained.

“Ah.” There was a look on his face I couldn’t understand.

“I realize I’m being a little weird,” he allowed after a while.

“Just a little,” I mumbled.

“I can’t help myself,” he said, as if that cleared everything up.

“Fine, you can walk me to work,” I said after some consideration.

He smiled as he matched his strides to mine so as not to walk ahead of me, as he surely would have if he walked at his normal pace, with those long legs of his.

“I know things have been kind of strange since the night we first met. I have behaved in ways I shouldn’t, and I apologize for that,” he said after a while, breaking the silence.

“You have done and said some pretty confusing things,” I agreed.

“Meeting you has triggered something in me, and I don’t know how to explain it to you in a way that wouldn’t make you run for the hills.” His voice was soft, vulnerable.

“See, this is what I’m talking about. This makes no sense to me,” I said exasperatedly.

“I know.” He smiled that crooked smile again and my heart fluttered in a way that was slowly becoming a little too familiar.

We were walking in silence again, and soon we would arrive at the bookstore.

Part of me was relieved because there was something about Seth that seemed to pull me in and it frightened me, just a little.

Another part of me wanted to stay with him, keep walking, and maybe I would somehow unravel his mystery.

We barely knew each other and yet I felt so calm, so comfortable around him despite everything. And I wanted to spend time with him.

“Do you like the snow?” Seth asked suddenly, the change of tone almost comical.

“Um, yes,” I replied, suppressing a giggle, not sure it would be an appropriate reaction.

“I think it’ll stick around for a while,” he mused.

“So you’re a weather expert?”

“No,” he chuckled.

“But I am pretty good at guessing these things,” he smiled as if he found it funny.

I raised my brows questioningly.

“Let’s say it’s a sixth sense of sorts,” he chuckled.

“You’re doing it again,” I complained.

“Doing what?”

“Confusing me,” I explained.

“Oh. Sorry.” He grinned. He wasn’t sorry at all, and he had no intention of explaining further either.

We were at the door to the bookstore now, more quickly than I would have liked. It had begun to snow lightly again.

Seth faced me, and his green eyes bore into mine. They were always alarmingly intense and still unnaturally bright.

“I find it quite impossible to stay away from you,” he murmured as he lifted his hand to tuck a stray hair behind my ear.

His hand lingered at my neck, and my skin tingled beneath his fingers.

I didn’t know how to respond, and before I knew it he was walking away.

“I’ll see you later,” he called over his shoulder.

I shook my head in disbelief over this strange man that was slowly becoming a fixture in my life, then I walked into the store.

The normalcy of it felt almost strange after my time with Seth. Whenever I was with him we seemed to be in our own little bubble.

Crystal eyed me suspiciously as I entered, but she didn’t say anything.

I wondered if he would be waiting for me again after work. I had no way of knowing, no way of contacting him. He just showed up out of the blue whenever it suited him.

I had to do something about that. If he was going to be part of my life—something that had begun to feel like an inevitability at this point—I needed him to be less elusive.

That day I walked home alone. I was embarrassed by the disappointment I felt.

I had to find out just who this Seth King was and why he was adamant about being around me and what all of this meant. And I had to figure out my own feelings about it all.

Figure out how close I was willing to get to him.

His words were so strange, but they were significant and they made me feel things I didn’t want to admit to. It was far too soon to be feeling anything even close to it, but I couldn’t help it.

I wondered how I wasn’t terrified of him. He was frightening, all the way from his looks to his intensity. I couldn’t make myself feel it though. I felt too safe around him to be scared.

No matter how irrational it was, I was drawn to him and I found myself longing for the next time I would see him.

***

I didn’t have to wait long, because he was there again the next morning. The ground was still covered in snow, like he’d assured me it would be.

He was leaning casually against a lamppost outside my apartment building. His coat was open despite the cold, but I was beginning to think that he didn’t run at the same temperature as a normal person.

He always seemed to be dressed for weather that was much warmer than it was, and his skin had been warm against mine despite being in the cold for an extended period of time.

“Good morning,” he greeted me cheerfully.

“You’re in a good mood today,” I noted.

Seth just shrugged and joined me as I began walking.

“Do you always walk to work?” he asked curiously.

“Well I don’t own a car, so yes. Besides, I enjoy walking.”

“Hmm.”

“What?”

“Nothing, I just like learning new things about you.” He smiled.

“Okay then.” I couldn’t help but smile too. His bright mood was infectious.

I glanced up at him only to notice him doing the same. When our eyes met, we both smiled shyly. We settled into a comfortable silence as we walked in the quiet, snow-filled morning.

I kept sneaking glances at him, as if I had to make sure he was actually there.

I wasn’t exactly sure why, but something about him was so otherworldly, and I feared he would disappear from my life just as suddenly as he’d come into it.

There was someone looking at us from across the street when we were halfway to the bookstore, a man who looked to be slightly older than Seth.

As we kept walking I noticed two more people—women, in their late forties maybe. They were talking to each other, all the while keeping their eyes trained on us.

I glanced at Seth again to see if he’d noticed too. None of the previous cheerfulness was evident now. In its place was obvious tension and irritation.

His fists were clenched at his sides. The two women snickered and a low, animalistic sound rumbled deep in Seth’s chest.

It startled me, and the two women seemed to have heard it too—even though they were too far away for that to have been possible—because they looked uncomfortably in our direction, then bowed their heads slightly before they scurried off.

I had stopped in my tracks and just stared at Seth, who kept walking, oblivious to the fact that I was no longer walking next to him.

When he did notice a few seconds later, he turned to me, his eyebrows raised in question.

“What the hell just happened?” I asked.

Seth closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, visibly trying to calm himself. When he opened them he walked the few steps back to me.

“I was hoping you didn’t notice,” he said with a sigh.

“Those women were staring at us, and a man too, before that, and you growled, like literally growled. It wasn’t loud, but somehow they heard you, they reacted to the sound, because they ran off.”

He didn’t seem to have any intention of answering me.

“Just what exactly are you, Seth King?” I asked him, because it had suddenly dawned on me that he might not even be human.

He growled like an animal, he didn’t seem to get cold, and he’d shown up out of nowhere, saving me from two full-grown, giant men by intimidation alone. That was not normal.

“I wish you wouldn’t ask me that,” he said, his voice tight.

“Why not?” I folded my arms over my chest and looked at him with a slight frown.

“It’s complicated, and you wouldn’t believe me anyway.”

“You can’t know that,” I countered.

He examined my face for a moment, then he stroked my cheek with his thumb and his expression softened.

“Come on, you’re going to be late for work.” It was clear that he, again, had no intention of explaining anything at all to me.

I sighed in frustration, but I kept walking. I really didn’t want to be late.

I felt paranoid all day, as people coming into the store kept sneaking curious glances at me.

It made me feel anxious, and when I left for the day I almost jumped out of my skin when Seth pushed himself away from the wall he had been leaning against. My heart thumped furiously in my chest.

“Are you all right?” Seth asked, concern clear in his voice.

“Yes, you just caught me off guard. I’m feeling a little anxious. Ever since this morning I haven’t been able to shake the feeling that people have been watching me. I know it sounds stupid…”

I trailed off as I noticed how angry he looked.

“What’s wrong?” I asked hesitantly.

“People need to mind their own damn business,” he replied with an angry tremor in his voice.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Damn it all to hell,” Seth snapped as he raked his hand through his hair, making pieces stick out in odd places.

“I had hoped to do this differently, to give you more time, but they’ve given me no choice. If they’re following you around now, then I don’t see how I can keep putting this off.”

I waited for him to explain further.

“We have something we need to discuss. Would you mind very much if I brought you to my place?”

Eager to finally learn what Seth was keeping from me, I quickly agreed.

“My car is just around the corner, come on,” he said, grabbing hold of my elbow. He was walking so fast I almost had to jog to keep up.

When we rounded the corner a shiny black Jeep with dark, tinted windows and giant wheels was standing there waiting for us.

Seth pulled the keys out of his pocket and pressed a button to unlock the doors before he opened the one on the passenger side for me.

I quickly got in, and before I knew it we were speeding through town on our way to Seth’s house.