Break Away (Away, Book 1) (19 page)

“Open-minded?”

He nodded. “It's what allows me to see the
truth behind walls.”

With his stare on me and my heart on a
sprint, I knew I should've stopped the route this conversation was
taking. But stubborn, out of orbit Dafne wanted to know if her
presumptions were on the right track, or if they were simply a
product of her imagination. So I asked in a pretty clueless way,
“By walls you mean the ones made with concrete and bricks? Like the
ones surrounding that window-tinted Goth bar in Irving Street? God
knows I would love to see what happens behind those walls.”

He half-smiled. “No. By walls I mean the ones
that people put up around them,” he said while looking at me, his
green eyes puncturing holes in my chest with the meaning of his
words.

He'd said to me once, before bursting Buffy's
door open and finding her in bed, that he could see through me.
That he could see how I protected myself from getting hurt by
hiding within a cold façade. Because I cared for people a lot. And
I'd been blindingly mad at that time, believing to the root of my
soul that Ian had been playing with me for his benefit.

Somehow, I didn't think that way this time.
Somehow, I believed the warm, open honesty shining in his eyes in
that moment. And to my disgrace, I discovered that I kind of liked
his see-through abilities, that for once someone besides Gran and
Linda could see the real me behind those icy walls.

Would I regret it tomorrow? Hell yes. I hated
Ian. I
had
to. Right? I didn't know why my opinion of him
was changing so much, or why these doubts were suddenly attacking
me, but I had my puny state to blame for my weakness—I could see
why emotionally unbalanced girls were easy to take advantage of.
But it didn't matter at that instant. For now, I could only think
of those emerald-green eyes staring at me, responsive as a wide
field of grass was to the nourishing light of the sun.

I saw his other hand lift and reach my lap. I
felt the warmth of his skin enveloping mine as he cupped my hand,
hesitantly but wistful at the same time, his deep eyes never
leaving mine. With each second that flowed by, thin cracks broke
along the surface of the walls surrounding me. I could feel them as
the beats of my heart within my chest, spreading like veins over
skin, weakening my fortress of strength.

The fact that it was Ian who was doing this
damage was what slapped me out of the hazy cloud under my feet. I
pulled out my hand from the cocoon of his touch and jerked my body
away, settling a cold distance between us.

What was the matter with me? That was Ian.
Asshole Ian. Buffy's boyfriend.
It didn't matter if I wasn't
riding my usual ice-cold, bitchy wave, I should've known better
than that.

I looked away and pretended to be falling
asleep, faking a big, open yawn.

Ian took the hint. “We should sleep,” he said
and stood up to leave, but not before I caught, out from the corner
of my eye, his frustrated face. One of the cracks in my walls
lengthened.

“Ian?” I said, almost in a whispery tone.
Maybe I was expecting he wouldn't hear me, maybe I didn't want him
to hear me, but in the cavernous, dry silence of the room, he
did.

He stopped in his tracks and turned to look
at me.

I swallowed, giving strength to the brewing
words in my throat. “Thank you, for everything.”
Even for what
you did downstairs with your friend
, I thought but didn't say
out loud.

He must've seen it in my eyes because he
nodded. “Good night, Dafne,” he said and retook his path to the
couch.

I cursed inwardly for those weak words,
realizing the damage to my walls had cost me dearly and that it was
somewhat…irreversible.

Shoot. I was in hot water.

I
woke up by the
smell of a soft, buttery scent. It laced the air with warmth and
promises of pleasure and fulfillment. Hunger exploded in my stomach
like a punch. I made my way out of bed and stopped next to the
large couch, where Ian's sleepy form rested. A faint distorted
vibration that sounded more like snoring whispered through his
nose.

I pushed back the need to watch his unguarded
face in the dimness of the room, telling myself it was there
because of my
other
need to squeeze toothpaste onto his
mouth so when he would wake up his lips would stick together.
That's what I would've done normally. But it seemed I hadn't come
back to my old self yet, because pulling that prank on him was the
last thing on my mind. He didn't deserve that.

I rolled my eyes.
Jesus, I really am
mad.

I carried on, moving quickly on my tip toes
and glided out of the room, leaving the door slightly ajar so I
wouldn't jerk him up from Dreamland, or wherever his mind wandered
off while sleeping—the Playboy mansion maybe—with a snap of the
door.

Silently, I admitted to myself I wasn't ready
to see him, too, and didn't delve into the reasons behind that.

I rushed down the stairs, driven by the
expectant groans in the pit of my stomach and ended up in a place
that guaranteed one hundred percent ambrosial satisfaction: Lola's
kitchen. God, I swear I could even feel my taste buds crying tears
of joy.

She was bending over the oven, checking her
scrumptiously smelling biscuits, when she looked to the side and
jumped. “
Santo Dios
!” She brought her hand over her heart,
startled. “
Mija,
you move like a ghost. I didn't hear you
coming.”

“Sorry Lola, but the smell of those”—I
pointed my eyes to the yellowish cakes—”awoke me from my slumber,”
I said dramatically.

She smiled, as if I've given her the best
compliment in the world. “Yes, yes.” She bent over the oven once
again and gripped the baking sheet with her gloved hand. “Mr.
Townsend likes his biscuits soft and fluffy. He calls mine mounds
of joy,” she said while pulling them out. “Ian calls them flakies,
because he loves them tall and flaky so he can split them apart in
halves.” She placed the hot sheet over the glass-ceramic stove.
“Since Mr. Townsend isn't here, I've made flakies. I hope you like
them.”

I liked my biscuits soft and fluffy, like Mr.
Townsend, who I guessed was Ian's dad, but the scent of these
flakies was overflowing my senses. My taste buds were bawling.

As if noticing this, she scraped out two
biscuits and put them on a plate. She turned around and asked,
“Butter and honey?”

“Butter and pepper,” I answered with a shrug
of my shoulder.

She narrowed her eyes like she was appraising
me from a different perspective and liked what she saw. “For that,
mija
, you get a third one. You'll have to break your diet
today.”

“Oh, I don't diet.”

She handed me the butter and pepper and
paused. “And for that, I would give you a fourth.” She smiled.
“Young ladies nowadays don't eat with their heart anymore. They eat
with their mind.” She smacked her baking glove onto the counter, as
if to emphasize her words. “A pity, I say. A pity.”

“Well,” I said, picking up one half of a
biscuit that was topped with butter and pepper, “I always eat with
my heart.” I sank my teeth into the flaky wonder and moaned. “And
thank God for that,” I added with my mouth full.

“Good girl,” she said with a nod, pride
coloring her voice. She pressed a red button on a remote control
and turned on the small flat screen TV mounted on one of the walls.
That Spanish channel, Univision I think it was called, came into
view.

Apparently Lola had a soap opera to watch,
something about a poor girl falling in love with a rich guy—so
cliché if you would've asked me—and some revenge going on. Lola, as
if remembering I didn't speak a word of Spanish, stopped once in a
while to explain what the deal was with the characters.
Good-looking characters at that, which made me wonder if all the
guys in Mexico looked like that, because if they did, I was living
in the wrong place.

At the end of the episode, I'd already
figured out what the plot was and knew Maria would get her happily
ever after with Reymundo. Lola didn't seem to think so, the way she
pined for them a clear example of her unawareness. Was every soap
opera watcher like this, so oblivious to the obvious?

She excused herself and left to her room. A
Skype call with her son in Mexico was waiting for her, she'd said.
The information surprised me. For some reason, I'd never imagined
her having a family, which was completely stupid and ignorant of
me. Of course a woman so warm and skilled like her had a family.
Perhaps she was a woman that'd had to leave her family behind to
assure them a better future. I asked her if that'd been the case,
and she answered with a tender smile, “A mother always does what
she can to take care of her
hijos
, no matter what harsh
things life throws at her.”

From that moment on, I respected Lola more
than I'd ever respected anyone. Women like her, who wore strength
like their everyday shirt, deserved statues built in their honor.
It was often the people who acted under a veil of silence that were
the true heroes.

I grabbed the remote control from the counter
and switched the channel…to a least pleasant one. My eyes dropped,
like a moth to a flame, to the red band in the bottom of the
screen.

I immediately regretted watching those words.
My fears had been confirmed.

The United States
government has declared a public health emergency. Cases of sudden
coma have mounted across the country. The CDC anticipates more
cases and more hospitalizations in the upcoming days and weeks. The
CDC believes a virus may be behind the cases, causes of illness
remain a mystery.

One after the other, news on Buffy's
“illness” glided in a hurry, squeezing my heart in dread with each
passing second. How had all of this come to a national emergency?
How could the causes of “sudden coma” still remain a mystery after
so many cases?

Truth was, I'd known since the beginning this
wasn't a normal thing or a simple illness. Deep down inside of me,
a tiny light had been blinking red, silent and watchful. Now, it'd
turned into one of those big rotating warning lights that police
cars used on their tops, its strident alarm shrieking at me to do
something, because if virologists and doctors were looking for a
virus, they weren't going to find anything. I knew it to my core
and to the marrow of my bones that this was something…unusual,
something beyond the limits of human science.

Did I know what we were dealing with? I had
absolutely no clue, but somehow, someway, I had to take action. I
had to bring Buffy back. All these CDC people were looking in the
wrong places and I had to find out where the
right
places
were. Fast.

An oppressive cloud of anxiety engulfed me,
stirring up a clashing storm of distress and helplessness inside of
me.
But where to begin?
Where?
I wanted to
scream.

I turned off the TV and left the kitchen,
wanting to shed some of the emotional assault my body was
experiencing. I paced the floor agitatedly, going back and forth
between the living room and what looked like a bar area, restless,
my mind not processing my surroundings, until the surface
underneath my feet shifted to polished concrete. I looked up and,
as if ice-cold water had been splashed to my face, I stopped,
thunderstruck.

The space sprawling before me was an art
sanctuary, something you could've found in a museum if it wasn't
for the long paint-daubed table that sat from wall to wall on one
side of the room. Pointed tools and unfinished sculptures lay on
top—wood, stone, metal and bronze the materials of choice—with a
thin coat of white dust encircling the base of a marble sculpture.
The white brick wall behind the table had test patches of color
ranging from peacock to teal to blue-green, and if made on purpose
or not, it was an effortless look that could've been found in any
SoHo apartment. The light source in the room had to be my favorite
part, though. Wide glass panels served as a roof, shedding a
natural glow on the pieces of creativity, permeating everything
with a warm, soulful beauty.

As I walked, breathtaking sculptures rose
around me—a silver triangle that folded itself into a rectangle, a
large cube with imploded glass spheres, a woman's body shaped like
a sensuous flame, the face of a man breaking into smaller faces,
bronze hands twisting around each other, a metal guitar that seemed
to undulate in the air, a disc made with an intricate weave of
steel rods, and the one that hypnotized my eyes and didn't let them
go, a distorted heart that seemed to have been pulled by a vacuum
from one side. It looked as if the heart had chosen that side
though, that no matter how distorted or conflicted it was, the pull
to that other side was too strong to ignore. It was almost as if
the sculpture symbolized a choice.

I raised a hand to touch its wooden surface,
slid my fingers on its contours and—

“That's one of the most difficult sculptures
I've ever done,” Ian's voice said suddenly.

I jerked back my hand and spun around. He was
wearing a black and white plaid flannel bottom and a white t-shirt,
which, to the touch of sunlight, showcased every outline of his
lean muscles.

He looked warm and cozy and, well…hot. Even
if I didn't like Ian, I wasn't blind.

He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned
against the wall. “How did you get in here?” he asked in a soft,
condemning tone, as if this room was off limits to everyone but
himself.

“The door was open,” I said in a rush. “I was
just walking around the house and stumbled upon this place.”