Keeping Promises

A Maximum Ride Fan Fiction

The soft breeze blew on my face, through my hair, racing through the mountains like invisible currents. It played with the brown primary feathers of my wings, which I kept folded behind my back.

It's been a long time since I've been here, to Lake Mead. Twenty years to be exact. The hawks were still here, a new generation of course. Not the ones I've met before. The water was still the same beautiful blue. Twenty years and I still remember every minute.

The wind started up again and in it flew my ex. Fang.

So he hasn't forgotten this promise.

He lands lightly behind me; I can hear the powerful strokes of those familiar black wings. I don't turn, not yet.

"Max?" his voice sounds different but familiar, too. It held a nervous edge. What was he scared of? Me? I face him. He's aged well. He's cut his dark hair shorter than I remember, but his dark eyes were still brooding and mysterious. He's still lean but he grew even more if that's possible. He easily towered a good head over me. I read hesitation and wariness in his stance, but a promise is a promise.

Twenty years stood between us and yet, my heart still leapt up seeing him. Twenty years and we've never spoken, not once. I've never checked up on his blog, it hurt too much.

I speak first, "How's your gang?" I didn't mean to say that. It sounded so business-like. I wanted to hug him, kiss him and tell him that I still loved him and we would never be apart. Ugh, what was wrong with me?

"Good," he says, trying to keep emotion out of his voice but a little bit of longing bubbled up to the surface, "How's yours?"

"Healthy, working. Even Ella made herself useful." I smirk. Iggy and Ella got married a few years back, even though they were an odd couple. She's now both my sister and my sister-in-law. That is as weird as it sounds. It also sounds illegal. It would be, too, if Iggy was my brother by blood.

"My gang's growing," he says, "the Gen 77 kids are lost now without the One Light. They need a leader. They need a home. They're just like us, you know. Deep down, they just need to fit in."

God, I missed him. He's changed.

There's silence. He wavers a little, unsure what to do when suddenly; he closes the space between us and pulls me towards him. My arms wound up around his neck like we practiced this a million times. My face is buried in his shirt. I surprise myself by crying.

"I missed you," he says, his voice cracking with emotion.

"Me too," I say between sobs, "You made me a promise once that you'd never leave."

He holds me at a little distance so he can see into my eyes, "I never should have broken that promise." My heart stops. He looks down at my hands and at the antique promise ring he gave me, still on the middle finger of my left hand. "You're wearing it," he whispers.

I look into his eyes and its black depths, seeing nothing but me in his eyes. "How could I not?"

He crushes his lips on mine, raw hunger and power and I can't think of anything else except his lips, desperate yet soft on mine. My heart's pounding even faster than normal, which is saying a lot, and my cheeks are wet with tears.

I'm thirty-five, practically an old woman. It's been so long since I've seen him. "Fang. Fang," is all I can seem to say.

They were wrong. Dylan might have been made for me, my "perfect match", but Fang was my soul mate. The Voice told me Fang was my soul mate. Whoever said love was perfect? It isn't.

But Fang was perfect enough for me.