Stargaze: Half Light Read online

  Stargaze

  Half Light

  Alyssa Rose Ivy

  Contents

  I. Noah

  1. Noah

  2. Noah

  3. Noah

  II. Caspian

  4. Caspian

  Chapter 5

  Three weeks earlier

  III. Rachel

  6. Rachel

  7. Rachel

  8. Rachel

  IV. Angie

  9. Angie

  10. Angie

  11. Angie

  V. Noah

  12. Noah

  13. Noah

  14. Noah

  15. Noah

  VI. Caspian

  16. Caspian

  17. Caspian

  VII. Angie

  18. Angie

  19. Angie

  VIII. Rachel

  20. Rachel

  21. Rachel

  Thank You

  Afterward

  Flight

  Preface

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Copyright © 2018 by Alyssa Rose Ivy

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  * * *

  Cover Design: Cover Couture Photos (c) Depositphotos

  Editing: Running Ink Edits

  Created with Vellum

  Part 1

  Noah

  1 Noah

  I was on a spaceship. A real live actual spaceship. But that wasn’t even the most exciting part of my current situation. The most exciting part was the gorgeous brunette currently asleep by my side. We were in a small, but surprisingly spacious, sitting area waiting for Telton to tell us his new plan. I’d been in a bit of a haze since we were beamed up from the loft onto the ship. A part of me was convinced this was all one big, and really amazing, dream.

  “I wonder if that guy is really going to try to kill you.” Dale stretched out between two chairs. He had already made himself at home. His words also put a chink in my whole ‘dream’ theory.

  “Why do you sound happy about that possibility?” I carefully shifted in my seat so I wouldn’t wake Rachel up. She looked so peaceful; I didn’t want to ruin her sleep.

  “I’m not happy. I just find it amusing. It’s the kind of thing I’d expect to happen to me, not you.”

  “Oh yeah?” Angie set aside the book she was looking at. “You thought you’d be the one to get the girl, Dale?”

  “No, I was talking about the someone wanting to beat me up part. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “Really?” Angie mocked surprise. “I’m shocked.”

  I laughed. “Okay. At least some things never change.”

  “If you mean the two of us never getting along, don’t worry. That will stay completely stable.” Angie pulled her knees up to her side, careful to avoid putting her shoes on the couch.

  Rachel stirred beside me.

  “She’s been sleeping for hours.” Angie peered over to look at her. “I couldn’t sleep if you paid me right now.”

  “I don’t think she’s slept at all since leaving Andrelexa.” I wasn’t entirely sure how long that had been, but it had been at least a few days. I was surprised she’d made it that long. I was also surprised with how much easier it was getting to talk about people leaving other planets. I suppose it gets easier once you’ve left your own.

  “Evidently she’s comfortable now.” Dale gestured to where Rachel lay. Her head was on my shoulder, and her arm was splayed across my chest. She was holding onto my shirt. “I don’t know if it’s because of you or because she’s not on Earth.”

  “It’s because of me.” I inhaled Rachel’s scent. I was officially becoming one of those guys. But I guess I had become that guy when I agreed to get on a spaceship with her. I probably would have agreed to anything after our first kiss. I was hopelessly gone, and I was okay with that. “I hope.”

  “It’s normal to have that reaction after getting out of a stressful situation.” Angie was back to over-analyzing situations, which meant maybe she wasn’t quite so angry at me. If we made it back to Earth alive, she might even one day forgive me. “Exhaustion is a frequent response our body has after being stressed.”

  “Thank you Dr. Obvious.” Dale rolled his eyes. He argued with my sister more than I did. It was weird, but I think Angie kind of liked it. Joseph was the brother that liked to fight with her, and maybe in some way she missed it. Or maybe she just liked having an excuse to argue and it had nothing to do with Joseph. Now I was doing the over-analyzing.

  “Is anyone else curious where Carl is?” I’d been pretty focused on Rachel, so his disappearance hadn’t been high on my radar initially, but I was pretty sure he had been gone close to an hour.

  “He went somewhere with Telton.” Dale shrugged. “I’m sure he’s fine.”

  “I’m not worried about him, just curious where they went.” It was also strange that Telton would choose to talk to him first. But then again maybe it hadn’t been Telton’s decision. Carl had been pretty adamant about seeing where the action happened so to speak.

  “You could go look for him if you want.” Dale stretched his arms out behind him. “I wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on her for you.”

  “Yeah, no thanks.” I ran my hand down Rachel’s back. I wasn’t giving up my seat.

  “So getting back to this guy who wants to kick your ass…” Dale grinned.

  “I’d rather not.” I was much happier enjoying my fantasy world in which only the good parts of this new situation existed. No scary alien creatures, no threat to the safety of Earth, and definitely no giant space warriors in love with Rachel.

  “Then we can talk about the other guy, Caspian was it?” Dale continued to push my buttons.

  He’d hit a nerve with that one. “Are you trying to piss me off?”

  “Okay. Shut up. This is annoying.” Angie picked the book up again.

  “What are you reading?” I didn’t want to wake Rachel up but was trying to get a better look.

  “I don’t know.” Angie set the book on her lap. The cover appeared to be made from black leather. It looked like a diary or a planner or something. “It’s all in a strange language.”

  “Wait. You’re reading a book in a language you don’t understand?” Dale chortled.

  “I’m not a linguistic expert, but I thought I might be able to figure things out. We know absolutely nothing about what we’ve just stepped into. We barely even know Rachel, let alone Telton, who, let’s not forget, is the guy who kidnapped her years ago. For all we know we’re being kidnapped now.” Angie made valid points, but the points did nothing to help our current situation.

  “You didn’t have to come.” Dale pushed the chair away and straightened in his seat. “We would have been perfectly fine without you.”

  Angie glared at him. “I came for Noah. Not you.” Her words weren’t lost on me. I still couldn’t quite believe she’d come. Except I could. Not only was Angie protective of me, but she also had an adventurous streak. If she’d really wanted to stop me she could have come up with another way, which meant she’d wanted to come. Given enough time, I’d figure out exactly why.

  Dale wove his hand in a shooing motion. “Noah’s a big boy. He can take care of himself.”

  Angie jumped to her feet.

  Dale seemed to realize he’d taken things too far. He held his hands up in front of his face. “I’m sorry. Shouldn’t have gone there.”

  Angie, like me, had some serious guilt when it came to the death of our brother. Dale kne
w it and really needed to learn to shut his mouth.

  “I’m sorry.” Rachel once again stirred beside me, breaking through the mounting tension in the room. “I’m sorry for all of this.” She lifted her head.

  I shook my head. “Hey, you don’t have to be sorry.”

  “I do.”

  “Are you sorry because we are being kidnapped?” Dale leaned forward. “If so you should probably tell us now.”

  “No. I’m sorry for getting any of you involved.” Rachel yawned. “Sorry. I don’t know why I’m so tired.”

  “Actually Rachel, you may have saved us.” Carl strolled into the room dressed in an all black jump-suit, nearly identical to the one Telton was wearing. “From what Telton has showed me, Earth’s in quite a bit of trouble right now.”

  “A bit of trouble?” Rachel sat stock straight up. “Where is Telton anyway?” Her eyes were wide. I heard the same words she did, yet I was struggling to process them. If this wasn’t a dream, was it really possible Earth could be in real danger? That included my parents. Guilt seared me. Angie and I had left them behind.

  Carl tied his shoulder-length hair up into a bun. “He’s in the command pod. He wants to talk to you.”

  “Okay. We’ll go find him.” She rose to her feet then turned to me expectedly.

  “Oh wait. I get to come?” I’d been prepared for her to ask me to wait patiently. Hadn’t I done the same thing to her over and over when she first showed up at my house?

  Rachel nodded. “I said we.” Then she turned to Angie. “If you’d like to come too, that’s fine.”

  “Oh. I want to come.” Angie jumped to her feet. “I hope that invitation didn’t include Dale.”

  “It included everyone. You are all part of this now. So you all deserve to hear what he has to say.” There was a resoluteness to her voice.

  “I think he wanted to speak to you specifically,” Carl took a seat in the spot Angie had been in. “But I suppose you can try.”

  “Where did you get the new clothes?” Dale pointed at him.

  “Telton gave the suit to me. I’m going to be helping him.” Carl spoke in a monotone voice. I knew he had to be excited about this, but by his face and voice you’d never know it.

  “Hopefully I can get one too.” Dale smiled. “This is seriously the coolest thing I’ve ever done.”

  “Likely because you’ve never done much,” Angie mumbled.

  “I need to talk to Noah alone first.” Rachel took my hand and led me into the hallway without giving anyone a chance to comment.

  I glanced around at the narrow hall. There were lockers built in on one side, and levers on the other. I decided not to ask about the levers quite yet. “Hey.” I really needed to come up with better ways to talk to her. I’d been acting like a little kid since we’d kissed, which wasn’t going to help me move toward ever getting another.

  She averted her eyes. “You probably think I’m an idiot.”

  “Why would I think that?” I searched her face looking for what I was missing.

  “Maybe I am using the wrong word. Does idiot mean ‘not of intelligent mind’?”

  “Yes. And that definitely doesn’t describe you.” One might say I was an idiot for blindly following her onto a spaceship, but I was choosing to view it as dedicated and brave.

  “But I readily agreed to follow my captor again. That must make me seem the opposite of intelligent.”

  “Well then, I’m just as stupid to have followed you, but I don’t think so. I think you made the right decision given the information you had.” Information like the crazy monster creature things, and the fact that Earth was in danger of being destroyed without her. I’d been convinced.

  “That image he showed of Alda… she… she was the person I was closest to on Andrelexa—well, aside from Caspian. She helped me get off-planet to begin with. I can’t imagine she was lying. Yes, I know everyone from Andrelexa lied to me, but she helped me. She risked so much—why would she turn around and lie now? And yes I realize some forms of holograms can be faked, but not with that kind of stamp.”

  I considered interrupting to let her know I had no idea what kind of stamp she was talking about, or how you would fake a hologram, but I thought it wiser to let her talk this out herself first.

  “Besides. That Fleshgard. He found me so quickly. It is my fault though. I left without making adequate plans. Once again. Not intelligent. But I had no time. I had to make a decision quickly. And I have a plan B if this all goes south. I promise. I thought this one out.”

  I put my hands on her forearms. “It’s okay. You made the best decision you could make. And like I said, I followed you.”

  “Do you hate me for that?” There was such vulnerability in her eyes. I hated it. I hated how scared she had to be all because she’d been taken advantage of so many times. I’d never do it to her.

  “Why would I hate you because of a decision I made?”

  “Because I put you on the spot.”

  I smiled. “I’ve been put on the spot plenty of the times and still managed to say no. I didn’t want to say no. You’re the best thing that’s happened to me. I’m not losing you.”

  “So you’re okay with this?” She raked her teeth over her bottom lip reminding me instantly of our kiss and how desperately I wanted a repeat.

  “I’m okay with everything, aside from the Earth being in trouble stuff. My parents are there.” I didn’t say more. I couldn’t come up with the adequate words.

  “I’m not going to let anything happen to Earth. That’s why we needed to come with Telton. I spent thirteen years believing Earth was gone. I’m not going to sit back and let it be destroyed just when I’ve found it again.”

  I should have been focused on her words. On how determined she was. Instead, I was wondering if her words held something more. Was she talking about me?

  “We will protect your parents. Let me talk to Telton and we can come up with a plan. We have to protect my brother too.”

  “Are you guys done yakking?” Dale called from the other room.

  “One moment,” Rachel yelled. “We should go. I just wanted you to know that, and I wanted to thank you.”

  “Thank me for what exactly?”

  “For coming. For believing me… even before you really saw it for yourself.”

  “No problem.” I pushed away my thoughts about her lips. I needed to stop letting myself fall into a daze around her. I wasn’t thirteen. I needed to man up. “I guess it’s time to talk to Telton.”

  2 Noah

  It had been easy to pretend we were on Earth before. There were no windows in the sitting room, and the beam up process, or whatever it was actually called, had been all a whirl and completely painless aside from a small amount of ear pressure. The Lexas were years ahead of us in terms of space travel. Not that I was surprised. As far as I knew, humans weren’t exploring far-off galaxies for day trips.

  The semblance of normalcy started to slip away when we stepped inside the command pod. All the walls of the room were covered with large monitors that showed a myriad of data. My eyes jumped from screen to screen to take in the various images and numbers. It looked like a set up I could imagine on Earth except everything was bigger and brighter. It looked real, like if you reached out and touched a picture of the planet you’d really be touching the planet and not the screen.

  Dale must have been thinking along the same lines. He reached out for an image of the Earth. There was a small ‘ping’ sound and the image jumped from the screen to float in thin air in front of him. He touched the image again, and the Earth spun. His eyes lit up. “Unreal.”

  “I forget how far behind Earth technology is,” Telton mused. “It is not for a lack of intelligence as much it is a lack of interest.”

  “Oh, there is interest.” Dale started to spin the Earth image faster. “Lots of interest, just not by the ones making decisions.”

  “And that’s enough.” Angie touched the spinning image and slid it back to t
he screen. “You don’t need to break things on the first day.”

  “I wasn’t going to break it.” Dale frowned. “It’s an image. It can’t break.”

  Telton turned his back to their bickering. “Rachel, how was your rest?”

  “It was fine, but that’s not what we should be wasting our time discussing.” Her words were forced, and I could nearly feel the tension between them.

  “Your health and well-being will always be important to me.” Telton angled himself as to partially block me from her view. My guess is he wanted to make sure he kept her attention.

  “I want to believe that.” Rachel rolled back her shoulders. “But how can I?”

  He flinched. “I thought you understood.”

  “I understood what exactly? Why you kidnapped me? Why you lied to me all these years?”

  “Yes… but I see I have more work to do to convince you.”

  “Right now I need you to make me a promise. Not that your promises mean much, but still. I need it.”

  I wasn’t on the receiving line of her biting words, but I felt them enough to know I never wanted to be.

  Telton held out his hands palm up to her. “Anything. I will promise you anything you need.”

  “That you will do nothing to harm these people.” She spread out her arms. “None of them. They are all innocent.”

  “You are innocent too.” I hadn’t really meant to interrupt, but I was quite certain nothing that had happened in Rachel’s life had been her choice at all.