Falling Read Online Free Page A

there too. I remember being in the library with him one time after everyone at school had gone home. Just him and me, with the librarian away somewhere shelving books. We’re trying to study for a test, but we can’t stop ourselves from talking, and laughing, and kissing.
    Now we’re on the running track. There are so many memories there, but I know this one well. It’s just after I’ve come back from an injury, and I’ve been worried about whether I’ll be able to run as fast again. Grayson runs alongside me, encouraging me the whole way, and I’m almost a second inside my personal best. Afterwards, we have dinner at my house to celebrate, with my whole family around, just enjoying the moment.
    The memories start to mingle now, so that Jack and Grayson follow one another in rapid succession. There’s a memory of Jack in the penthouse apartment I had as Celeste Channing, followed by one of Grayson walking with me to school. There’s one of Jack firing back as the Others invaded the Underground safe house I first went to, followed by one of Grayson pulling a gun on his own father for my sake. Jack is showing me the memories of the only other person like me beside his mother, then Grayson is running with me to the helicopter. Jack is…
    It’s going too fast. The memories are swirling now so that I can’t keep up with them. Jack and Grayson’s features begin to blur into one another, until I realize that I’m thinking about a club Jack accompanied me to, but I’m thinking about Grayson dancing with me. Their features stretch, and distort, and finally start to spin, in a way that reminds me of something. Something about where I am and what I’m doing…
    “Celes. Celes, wake up, we’re almost there.”
    My eyes flutter open, and I see rotor blades spinning above me. Grayson is beside me, looking at me with a mixture of concern and more general nervousness. It’s as I remember what he did that the second emotion makes sense.
    “You drugged me,” I say.
    Grayson doesn’t look even remotely happy. “I had to. You were going to kill us all if you crashed the helicopter.”
    The helicopter. I look around, and although we’re definitely in a helicopter, it doesn’t look like the same one as before. That one was stripped down, military in tone, and clearly built for speed. The one we’re in at the moment is very different. It’s clearly more about luxury.
    “What happened?” I ask. “Are we still near the base? What about Jack?”
    I don’t care if this helicopter is a different one to the one we were in before, we can still turn it around to save Jack just as easily.
    Grayson shakes his head. “It’s too late to think about him, Celes. You’ve been unconscious for hours.”
    “Hours?” That one word feels like a hammer blow. If it has been hours, then it is too late. Far too late. Jack is… no, I won’t believe that he’s dead. I won’t. Not even when the certainty of it is pressing down on me like a lead weight. He’ll have found a way to survive. He has to.
    Though I can’t think how he could have.
    “Where are we?” I demand. “How could you just drag me away like that, Grayson?”
    “I did it to keep you safe.”
    I don’t want to have that argument again. Instead, I look out of the window of the helicopter, trying to get some sense of our location. The desert is gone. Instead, we seem to be travelling over countryside, interspersed with small villages and networks of twisting roads. It seems very… different, somehow.
    “Where are we?” I ask again. I have to know.
    “You know how you’ve always wanted to go on vacation to England?” Grayson says, and I look at him.
    “You’re not serious.”
    He nods. “We took a plane out here, then transferred to another helicopter for the last leg of the journey.”
    “And you got an unconscious girl through customs?” I ask.
    The pilot answers that one. “We have access to private airfields, ma’am. Please prepare yourself for