Surviving Paradise (Full Draft Version)

CHAPTER 14

"Will!  Are you okay?!!  Please stop...Leave us alone!!"

"I got you now honey, your boy is down for the count"

CHAPTER 14

"This is not about  me, it is you and Jane.  And I hate everything about this town as much as you do, but you know what?"  Pausing for the dramatic effect of throwing his own favorite expression back at him she stared him down.  "It is what it is!"

      "No."

     "No what?"

     "I won't do it."

     A red haze of anger simmered in her vision and she looked everywhere but at him.  Because if looks could kill, she knew hers would right now.  It all swam in front of her vision; the previous pacts that she had worked out with Gabrielle to blanket both Will and Jane along with herself.  She had done everything she could to keep him safe, and to keep him from having to pay the tax that she knew he would refuse.  And now she was asking him to stand on his own, to accept the inevitable and he continued to be so immature.

     The gold of the bracelet gleamed even in the shadowy room.  The fact that the metal always seemed bright had intrigued her before.  Flipping her wrist she stared defiantly at the clasp and her eyes met his.  “Fine, you want it this way.  We do it your way.”

     The weight was only a few ounces, but her arm felt feather light as the metal band dropped to the bed.  There was no nausea this time, but she only gave it a seconds thought. They met glances and held and she saw not relief in his, but a reflection of her own worry. 

     “Allisa, if you think it is protecting you from scum like Hector...”  Will reasoned.  “If something happened to you...I just never liked you being responsible for me.”

     A split second passed, in  which she pondered telling him.  Will did not know her affiliation ran any deeper than the bracelet.  After all, no one made an affiliation until they were at least eighteen, and she had just become so a few days ago.  Although she had been forced into it during the brief months he had been gone, it was more major than even the website when it came to stuff that should be shared with ones significant other.  Briefly her eyes went to the healed area of the scars, only seeing them because she knew where on her arm to look.

     Instead, she joked about his aforementioned responsibility.  “Somebody needs to or you would be a leech or would just not be at all by now.”  With that grim fact of Paradise life, she slid from the bed taking the bracelet with her.  “And Jane, she is just as stubborn as you, but I think I have it figured out.”

     The abandoned game controller was still in his hand, and noticing it, he tossed it aside. “Enlighten me?”

     Nervously she threw a glance toward the wall that separated Will and Ashton's rooms, and intently turned the bracelet over in her hands.  The harsh fact was that it was in the vampires best interest to fang her.  And there was only one vampire that she could trust not to betray her.  Putting her knee on the mattress she balanced her arms on Will’s shoulders and leaned in to whisper in what she hoped was below any eavesdropping vampire frequency.  “Ashton.  Ashton is the only one of them I can–WE can–trust.”

     Will’s pupils dilated and he shook his head, their faces so close she could feel his breath.  “No.  Babe you can’t ask him that.”  This was not the Will that refused to be “owned”.  This was Ashton’s best friend Will and he whispered in fierce alliance of his friend.  “He will not want to do this.  It is wrong on so many levels.  But if you ask him he will feel like he has to.”