chapter 1

The cool breeze made the grass dance joyfully in the sunlit meadow. Liza tipped her head back relishing the warmth of the sun on her face. The breeze tousled her light brown hair; as she leaned back stretching her back. She opened her light brown eyes taking in the meadow.

Small, in a ring of pine trees, it was a calm and quiet place. Other than the sound of water running over rocks and birds playing in the trees it was peaceful. Small flowers danced gaily in the spring sun. Though devoid of any animal life at the moment, it was obviously a favorite sunning spot for all kinds of animals.

Lisa came here to clear her head after classes or one of the many fights with her pushy, boundary challenged family. They were constantly butting into her life, telling her how wrong her decisions were, how they knew better than she what she needed to be happy. Taking a deep breath to center herself, Liza pushed the thoughts of her family out of her mind. She was here to calm herself and thinking of them only made her more stressed.

Today she needed to be calm. She had some important decisions to make, that she couldn't let anyone else intrude upon. This was her future, and like it or not these decisions would affect the rest of her life.

Liza was not good at making decisions. In fact she hated it. She could hardly decide what to eat, much less anything this important. Just the thought of it sent her pulse racing, stomach in knots, and her hands trembling.
Liza shook her head, frustrated that she had again lost her calm space. Thousands of dollars in therapy had taught her to find that calm space, but no matter how hard she tried she couldn't maintain it when faced with a real dilemma. Closing her eyes she once again fought for the calm space.

Deep breath in, hold, thoughts like air pushing to escape, exhale both thoughts and breath. Repeat....

A sound that didn’t belong brought Liza out of her trance. Being as still as she was she had become so accustomed to the all the sounds around her that the snap startled her. Her eyes snapped open and her head shot to the left where the sound originated. Her eyes widened slightly in confusion that she had unconsciously pinpointed exactly where the sound came from, almost if drawn to the spot from an outside source.

Standing just inside the tree line, was a man. He was tall, maybe over six feet, with chiseled features, blonde hair and a well-muscled body encased in a tight black t-shirt. Blue eyes that seemed to pierce her soul, and pale skin, unusually pale, almost translucent.

He stood completely still, almost as if he were a living statue. She couldn’t even detect the slightly rise and fall of his chest that marked his breathing. It didn’t even seem that the breeze ruffled his hair. His eyes were locked, not on her body or even her face, it was her eyes. He burned right through to her soul. It was like he could read her every emotion, her every thought just by looking at her.

She was struck by the fact that she felt as though he were an open book to her, like she had known him every day of her twenty years, and she was paralyzed. Not just physically but mentally as well. She could not even remember what she had been thinking about before she locked with his eyes. It was as though nothing else existed in this moment, that everything else had disappeared and she was left as nude to him as he was to her.

A bird sounded in the distance, shattering the moment. The world burst back into existence, the breeze, the birds, a rabbit that had wandered into the meadow. She gasped, only then realizing that she had forgotten how to breathe. She closed her eyes momentarily to get her breathing back under control and when she opened them again, he was gone.