Ignite (Midnight Fire #1)

Chapter Three

During the car ride home from the hospital, Kira tried to drone out the lecture her parents were offering from the front seat. Surfing is dangerous, blah blah blah. She put her hand to her scalp and felt the five stitches that had been sewn there to hold her skin together. Truthfully, she was just relieved it had been the back of her head—losing a little hair was nothing compared to having a scar on her face.

Beside her, Kira's little sister was starting to nod off. She pulled Chloe's head over so it rested on her lap and ran her hand through her sister’s silky brown hair, looking outside at the moss-covered trees passing by.

Mildly distracted, she did her best to respond to her mother at the necessary moments, so she would think Kira was listening. But as the lecture droned on, Kira reached her hand up to the back of her head a second time and finally realized how close she had come to drowning—a fact she would never tell her parents. She didn’t even remember getting out from under the water. All she could remember were the waves pounding her every time she tried to surface and the searing pain of her board hitting her on the head. Kira couldn’t blame surfing. She could only blame her own stupidity. She’d known the waves were too big, but she was too stubborn to stop when she had a point to prove. Hopefully Tristan had been trying to prove a point too—maybe he didn't hate her like she knew his friends did.

When she got home, Kira ran to her room and called Emma. She needed to discuss things with a girl. For most of her life, Kira had been one of those girls that was one of the guys. Now, she needed a girl who was her opposite to help her dissect the situation. After half an hour, headlights pierced through the window and Kira went downstairs to get the door.

"Oh my god," was the first thing Emma said. "We have so much to discuss. Let’s grab some comfort food. Do you have potato chips? I can’t resist."

Kira grabbed some cookies and chips from the kitchen, and led Emma outside to the back porch. She sat on the hammock while Emma curled up on the wicker chair.

"You know, Kira, it’s a little spooky out here. You live kind of far into the woods." Emma hugged her legs a little tighter and searched the surrounding woods for anything terrifying.

"Trust me, I know, but you get used to it." Kira let Emma get the search out of her system, and lay down, peering past the edge of the porch roof to search for stars.

"So who first? Luke or Tristan? Don’t tell me you called me over here just to gaze mysteriously at the sky."

Kira sighed. "I know." She chewed her lip for a moment, thinking. "You choose. I’m just as confused by both of them."

"Well then, I’ve been dying to tell you what a freaking god Tristan looked like when he carried you out of the water. You, of course, were dangling there like a dead fish, but let me tell you." Emma shook her head as if there were no words and fanned herself.

"Wait, he carried me out?" Kira grabbed a chocolate chip cookie. Reliving a near death experience required chocolate, especially when someone just said you looked like a dead fish in the arms of a god. Great description.

"Yes, dummy, how else do you think you ended up on the sand?"

"I don’t know…"

"Well, anyway, let me paint you the picture, because it was like a scene from a movie, or more likely from Baywatch, but still unreal. The guys and I are sitting on the towels, chatting and eating, when suddenly Luke looks up and is like ‘Where’s Kira’ and the guys start to freak out because they don’t see you anywhere. Then, I look out all the way down toward the pier and tell them you moved over there to surf. Dave and Luke just shake their heads at each other, like they know you can’t handle it, and the four of us watch you try to catch that wave. For a second Dave is like ‘she’s gonna do it’ in that awed voice that is so cute. Anyway, instead, we see you wipe out huge, and we all start laughing cause you just looked ridiculous, but then you don’t surface. We are all staring, and after two minutes, we don’t see you, and Luke goes running down the beach.