Crave (Harlequin Teen)

enjoying the training. Do you really hate magic that much? Do you hate the Clann? Do you hate what I stand for as the Clann leader?”
    My anger deflated a little. “No, Dad. Training with you has been fun. I love the time that we spend together working on spells and charms and stuff. But it’s not what I want to do with my life. Magic is cool, but it’s like a hobby.”
    “I thought football was your hobby,” Dad muttered. “Something you would eventually grow out of. Just a passing phase.”
    “Yeah, well, it’s not.” I dropped my head and stared at the chaos of the mottled black-and-tan granite. “Look, I get it. I know I screwed up, and maybe I deserved to be taken off the football team for a while. I was stupid and I lost control. But my life can’t be just about school and magic for the rest of the year. I need something else to do, or I’m gonna go crazy here.”
    Silence filled the kitchen for a long moment.
    Finally Dad sighed and said, “All right, son. Let your mother and I talk this over tonight, and we’ll all discuss it over breakfast. In the meantime, why don’t you go do a little grounding and then get some rest.”
    They wanted me out of the house so they could talk. Fine, whatever. I nodded and headed out the patio door, sitting on the grass for a couple minutes. But for a change, I was already drained. I’d never spoken to my parents like that. All I wanted to do now was sleep. So I went back inside, up the stairs and down the hall toward my room.
    At my doorway, I heard my parents’ voices coming through their closed bedroom door. I hesitated, then eased closer until I could make out their words.
    “Now, Nancy, you can’t keep pushing him so hard,” Dad said. “He’s going to rebel, just like I did. Then he’ll end up taking off, and we won’t see him for years.”
    “Oh, please. Like he’d really run away from home. He wouldn’t last a day on the streets.”
    Dad chuckled, the sound muffled through the wood. “Oh, you’d be surprised. I made it for two years before I met you and you talked me into coming back home. Plus, I didn’t have that big ole trust fund to rely on like Tristan will when he turns eighteen.”
    Mom sighed. “I’m just so sick of all this football nonsense. How are we ever going to convince the Clann to make him the next leader if he won’t buckle down and focus on his training?”
    “He’ll come around. If you stop pushing him. Let him be on this whole helping-the-Charmers thing. It won’t hurt anything, and besides, he probably just wants to be around all those dancers. If I was his age, I’d want to be a Charmers escort, too.”
    “Are you sure it’s not the Colbert girl he wants to be around?”
    “Nah. That was over years ago. If he wanted to rebel, he would’ve done it back when we first separated them.”
    “I don’t know, Samuel. I still think it’s a bad idea.”
    “You think too much. Come to bed.”
    Time to leave. I eased along the hall, paused at my doorway, then continued on down the stairs and outside, flopping onto the grass on my back so I could stare up at the stars.
    So Dad hadn’t wanted to be the Clann leader, either, at first. Huh.
     
    I spread my hands palms down on the grass, not to ground, but just to connect. To sense once again where I fit in this world. If I cleared my mind, I could actually feel it, that subtle pulsing of nature’s energy beneath me. I was lying on one big battery, every blade of grass an outlet I could plug in to and take from or give back to as I wished.
    I didn’t reach for that energy, though. It was enough tonight to simply feel it, to know that I could tap into that power if I needed to.
    I wasn’t powerless against my parents, after all.
    Until tonight, all my life I’d been drifting, unsure of who I was or what I wanted other than to play for the NFL. I’d let my parents make every decision for me, and I’d never complained much.
    Now I still didn’t know who I was. But I knew with absolute certainty what I wanted. Who I wanted. What I would give and do for her.
    I’d finally found something worth fighting for. And somehow, I’d found my own freedom while I was at it.
     
    I had a new kind of dream that night.
    In the dream, I seemed to be connected with Savannah. No barrier separated us. I was able to sit down right beside her in the moonlit grass.
    But she wouldn’t speak to me or even look at me. And for the first time in any dream I’d ever had of her, she wore