Zenon's Game Chapter 241

I do love him.

I've never done this before. It's all new to me and damn is it scary. Now that he knows where my heart is... I had to trust that he wouldn't break it.

Don't think like that, I told myself, ignoring the memory of my dad walking out the door or my mom blowing out the candles on my birthday cake with a wish that she never had me.

I hadn't expected anyone to love me.

Zenon smiled at me in a way I had never seen before. His eyes lit up and that smile was so genuine, so unbridled with happiness. His emotions weren't hiding behind a smirk.

"I love you too," he whispered, kissing me.

He started to walk through the mud with me in his arms. He took us to shore and, with each careful step, I flinched wondering what was in the gross, dense liquid we were wading in.

"How we end up in places like this," Zenon muttered, "I don't even know."

Our matching green outfits were spattered with mud and I felt my dirty hair stick to the back of my neck. A beautiful moment.

We started out as the most reluctant friendship I've ever been a part of and now we've blossomed into... Love. Love and a laptop.

Love and two broken laptops, to be accurate.

Zenon had no idea that I'd already found the title for the Hallmark movie version of our romance. He reached the edge of the ditch and inhaled sharply as he stepped up, holding me above the dirt. Isn't he tired by now?

I'm exhausted.

I heard a squilch from his shoes, caked entirely in mud. He lowered me on the dry grass and we both looked down at his lower body, covered in a thick layer of brown. I smiled at him, wondering how he can look so perfect in the middle of such a mess.

"Will you kiss me like this?" he asked, knowing he was the dirtiest I've ever seen him.

I brushed mud from his cheek and held his handsome face in the palms of my dirty hands, "Always."

We kissed softly and sweetly, with the type of emotion that words couldn't convey. The touch of his lips lingered on mine after he pulled away.

He laughed unexpectedly and breathed out, "You took your damn time responding, Candy."

"I needed time to process! I had just gone flying over a ditch!" I exclaimed, blushing in embarrassment while feeling a sense of relief that we were still us.

"My heart was racing," he told me.

My own heart skipped a beat. "You're laughing, but I am bruised!"

I pulled up the end of my shirt to show my red stomach. The rope he'd tied around me had caused friction burn when I went spinning off the platform.

Zenon tried to keep a serious face as he lowered his fingers to my stomach and gently touched the burn. I don't know why it didn't hurt. Even his hands had healing properties. Show me a flaw, Zenon Albert.

"I wish I could've recorded that moment," Zenon continued, still entertained. "The way you flew off that platform, spinning so fast I thought you'd fly off the wire. Then you hung there like a pinata."

Oh, there they are. All the flaws.

"I was thinking," I said, justifying my pinata behavior before adding, "But you should've seen your face. You looked so nervous."

"I was terrified," he answered.

~20 minutes earlier, in the forest~

Cynthia's POV

I've never struggled so hard to make a move.

Axel was such a charming and energetic guy. He's also a paradox: friendly but hard to approach.

I think of it like sunlight. You want to bathe in the heat, but you know you can never approach the source. Axel was always surrounded by people and, at the same time, unattainable. I've been crushing on him since freshman year.

Along with almost half the school.

Axel looked up at the giant tree looming over us. He held the map in his hands that marked this location as the spot of our next activity. I tried not to stare at how the light filtered through the leaves and scattered across his face. Today had started off cloudy and now the sun was out.

"We need to climb up the tree and take whatever is in one of those buckets?" I clarified.

Buckets were hanging by their handles on various branches. The map said this was our task but didn't provide more guidance on what to do.

"Yeah," Axel nodded, crouching down and picking up a stone from the path we had just walked, "Or we can knock it over."

That would be easier.

I watched him draw his arm back and throw it with impressive aim. There was a loud clang as the rock made contact with the bucket. I watched the bucket rock back and forth before Axel's hand reached out for mine.

"Watch out," he said, pulling me back before the rock fell back to earth with a thud near our feet.

I tried not to overthink these small moments. We'd touched.

I know I idolized Zenon and Axel since the day I stepped foot in high school. It's fun to have a crush. I didn't even know them, but I imagined that I did.

Now I know that Axel and I get on much easier than Zenon and I do. Zenon seems a little colder, a little harder to understand. But I guess Candace cracked his surface.

So, I struck up a conversation with Axel that would hopefully steer towards the subject of us. "It must be nice seeing your best friend really care for someone," I said.

What I really wanted to say was: Don't you want to feel the same?

"Yeah," Axel nodded, selecting a few heavier stones, "Candace's always been different."