“We’re just across the way, at the Islander.” Mars pointed toward a large tan and blue hotel across the street.
“How about we meet you there?” I suggested.
Lexa turned back to me. “We’re on the top floor, suite twenty-four. Just buzz room—”
“No need.” Jason interrupted. “I’ll know when you’re near.”
It felt like a sucker punch.
Jason turned and stalked away. Mia was close at his heels. Lexa threw another hug at me and told me she was happy to see me before she went off with Mars.
I was elated but my chest was tight and it was hard to draw in a full breath. My head was spinning and my limbs felt heavy. My sister was alive. My friends were alive. Jason was alive.
It felt so strange to be reunited with them and see them walk away without me. Part of me was drawn toward them, like I should be leaving with them. A bigger part of me knew the Nomads were my family now. I was home with them, and I could never go back to the way I'd been Jason and the others. So, I watched them walk off. I took Cash's hand and the rest of us made our way back to the Beast.
Chapter Fifteen
Jason and the others were staying in the penthouse suite at the upscale Islander Hotel. I didn't know how they were paying for it, and a part of me didn't want to know.
Charlie and Dozer ushered the kids into one of the rooms to have pizza and keep them occupied. The rest of us gathered in the living area where Jason passed around drinks.
Sitting with them felt surreal, like one of my dreams. This was the moment I'd been pining for, and now we all just sat in awkward silence, afraid to talk.
I sat on the couch between Cash and Glitch.
Jason hadn’t taken his eyes off of me yet, but it wasn’t happiness or nostalgia he was feeling. My stomach churned bile, mimicking his each time he saw Cash lean close to me. When Cash’s hand brushed mine, I felt the acid all the way at the back of my throat in a hot rush of anger.
Mia, on the other hand, wouldn’t look at me at all. She was trying to play it cool and indifferent, but she couldn't fool me. Her anxiety was a nervous, fluttering thing. Though, her reaction to my interactions with Cash were warm and almost hopeful. She must have thought that meant I was less of a competitor for Jason's affection. She wouldn’t move too far from him. There was a quiet desperation about her. She kept leaning toward him, but he shifted away from her. His hands stayed stuck tight around his beer bottle. It left a sour taste in my mouth.
A smile tipped on Jason’s lips, so subtle that it was barely detectable. A sliver of approval curled through him. He seemed to be taking a small measure of satisfaction in the fact that I hated Mia being so close to him, physically and emotionally.
I tore my eyes away.
"What do you two do?" Lexa asked the twins. I could tell Jason and Lexa were curious about them, and the twins inspired a sense of caution in the group. We had that in common.
Nyx's eyes flashed to her brother and a sly smirk pulled at her lips. Lux grinned back and straightened in his chair, anticipation mounting inside of him.
"No need for a demonstration," Cash interjected. I'm sure he wanted to avoid the scene that they caused when they first displayed their power to me.
Despite the fact that Cash had been doing him a favor, I felt Jason's anger sear into me. The more present Cash was, the hotter Jason's anger burned. Lux was practically pouting.
"We create glamours and hallucinations," Nyx said as lackluster as she could, having been denied the chance to show off.
“So, spill,” Glitch asked, effectively drawing the attention to where it needed to be. “How did you all make it out of the lighthouse?”
Lexa answered first. “Well, Mars and I were prepping for an extraction when the power cut off in the training room. Stone sent us to the panic room and headed to her office to hit the alarm. When she didn’t come back, and we didn’t hear the alarm, we figured something was wrong. When we tried to leave, we were ambushed by a dozen ACT soldiers. We couldn't take them all at once and they were pretty heavily armed this time. I'm not talking cattle prods. I mean, big ass machine guns."
"They knocked us out and we woke up in an ACT facility,” Mars added.
“And Jason?” I asked.
“I just figured they fished me out and revived me with the echo we’d collected from Bebe.”
At the mention of extractions, I stiffened. Thinking about that needle in Bebe's brain made me want to throw up and break something at the same time. I couldn't say anything because her echo had obviously saved Jason, but the whole thing was deplorable no matter the outcome. Sensing my discomfort, Cash moved a little closer to me and put his hand on my knee, his touch conveying the support he couldn’t voice.
Fury flared in the corner of the room, and I knew without looking up that Jason had seen Cash’s move. Glass suddenly shattered and I whipped my head around to see him abruptly standing. The neck of his bottle was still in his hands, and the rest of it was in broken pieces on the floor. Beer dripped from his hands and had splattered on his pants. I felt the sting of his cut slice into my palm.
Everyone looked at him in silence, afraid to move.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Jason said, and then turned and stalked into the kitchen. I could hear him throw the rest of the bottle in the sink with some force. Mia stood and followed immediately after him.
“So how did you get out of the ACT facility?” I asked Lexa.
“Vivienne fried the system before things started to fall completely apart. Jason broke down the doors and we were able to escape during all the commotion.” Lexa took a pull from her drink.
From the kitchen, Mia’s voice was low and urging. I felt the gash in my palm split wider and flinched before I heard Jason snap. “Damn it, Mia, just leave it alone! It’s fine!” Jason's hand hit the counter with a thundering crack, and I felt both his frustration and Mia's heartache.
When Jason came back into the room, he had a dish towel wrapped around his hand.
"Do you want me to grab Bebe?" I asked timidly.
Jason's eyes cut to mine and he shook his head silently waving me off.
Cash eyed Jason’s hand warily but kept the ball rolling. “Who’s Vivienne?”
Jason stiffened at the question, and I could tell it wasn't just because Cash was the one to ask it. “She’s one of us,” Jason said, but wouldn’t elaborate further.
“So, what happened here? Why do that to the beach?” Charlie asked.
Glitch grinned. “Did Blaze have a hissy fit?”
At that moment, Mia came back, looking deflated and flustered. She’d heard Glitch, however, and flipped him a fiery middle finger. Glitch's eyes widened in awe, and he grinned even wider.
A furtive silence stretched between the Hawthorn Anomalies. Lexa picked at an invisible hair on her shirt while Mars studied his beer. Mia kept peeking over at Jason as he picked up the shards of glass left on the carpet. They'd all had an emotional reaction to the question, but none of them acknowledged it. The secrecy brewing between them was making me anxious.
Jason still hadn’t sat down. He was almost pacing in the doorway. “Liv, can we talk outside?” He asked roughly before pushing past the curtains and slipping out onto the balcony.
I glanced at Cash, who took my hand in his and squeezed.
“Go,” he said. I could have kissed him for being so understanding, but I held back. I was all too aware that everyone’s eyes were on us. I squeezed his hand back, and went for the balcony.
A warm breeze rolled off the North Pacific, bringing with it the tang of salt. Bringing up memories of long nights in the Perch where the five of us would unwind and enjoy one another's company. Those nights were a far cry from our current state, and it made my heart ache.
I slowly slid the door closed. Jason had his back to me and his hands on the railing of the sprawling balcony. His head hung down between his hunched shoulders. His emotions were at war within him. He was fighting not to look at me, unsure
of what to do or what to say.
“Jason,” I said quietly. When he turned to me, I saw the pain in his eyes and felt the longing in his emotions. I went to him, and wrapped my arms around his waist. With a shuddering sigh, he pulled me tight against him. His nose pressed into the crook of my neck.
Closing my eyes, I remembered all the times he’d held me like that, and how the world couldn’t touch me when he was around. I remembered how losing him destroyed me. We stayed that way for a long while, just clinging to one another. The wash of his emotions mirrored mine. I felt his arms tighten around me, and his body shifted. He lifted his head from the crook of my neck, and his lips brushed over my cheek as he brought them to meet mine.
I pulled away, breaking his embrace. He instantly registered my hesitance, my resistance. My concerns filtered through him, and he sorted through them, assessing the damage. Suddenly, the shared gift that I had always cherished felt like a curse.
“Liv, please don’t be that way. It’s me. It’s still me.” His hand touched mine. I let him take it, but I didn’t grasp him back.
“We're both different now, Jason. We haven't been us since they took us from Hawthorn the first time," I said carefully, daring to look into his eyes. "I know you feel it too."
In the blink of an eye, his temper flared white-hot beneath his skin. The suddenness of it caught me off guard. When I tried to back away, his fingers tightened over mine, holding me there. He ached for me, and yet, part of him didn’t want me near him.
I snapped my gaze up to him and his face was strained, paler. A light sheen of sweat popped up over his brow. When I tried to pry deeper, he gave me a solid mental push, blocking me from his grid.
“Let go of me, Jason." I tried to pry my hands from his.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” His voice was low, with a hard edge to it. The light in his eyes had gone flat and dark. His fists balled tightly, and in response, my own hands tensed as though they wanted to strangle someone.
“He has nothing to do with this.” My own anger surged to the surface and I was finally able to pull my fingers from his. I flexed them and felt the blood rushing back into my hands.
“Bullshit,” he spat out. Frustrated, he ran his hands roughly through his hair. He began pacing.
“What he does isn’t real, Liv!” His energy was frenzied, unstable. “What he does isn’t real. But this—” He grabbed my hand, placing it flat over his heart. It thundered against my palm, slamming in his chest erratically. The contact only strengthened the link between us, and his need for me overwhelmed my senses. It almost felt like physical agony. I was alarmed to find that his skin was hot beneath my palm, like his blood was literally boiling in his veins. “This is real,” he urged. “I’m real.”
Unable to stand the heat any longer, I quickly pulled away. His shattered look made my throat tighten and my eyes well with tears. I didn’t want to hurt him. I’d been so happy to find out he was alive, but the man who stood before me wasn’t my Jason. He was a stranger, and I just didn’t trust him.
“What happened to you?” I whispered. “The way you're acting. The way you're feeling...” A deep sadness rooted in him. I lifted my eyes to his again, hoping to ground him before I said the next thing. "It scares me."
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this, Liv,” he said, his voice cracking. “It was supposed to be me and you, you know? A white picket fence and a couple of kids. Not this.” He hung his head, his hands at his temples, and my stomach roiled along with his. A wave of heat and nausea rose in him, but as he blocked me again, it disappeared.
“What about Mia?” I found myself asking, even though I already knew. “Where does she fit in with all of this?”
He looked up pleadingly. “It’s not how it looks.”
I scoffed, turning away from him. He stayed right on my heels.
“It’s not! It’s not what she wants it to be, I mean. I’ve tried not to hurt her. I’ve tried to tell her but… Liv, please, look at me. I love you.” He spun me around to face him. When I looked at him, all I could feel was the distance between us.
“That’s not enough anymore, Jason.”
He stared at me in amazement, and it was then that he really let our disconnect sink in. There was no avoiding it. There was a permanent gap between us, as wide as the Grand Canyon, and he was standing at the other side of it. There was no way back.
“You don’t mean that,” he said in a small voice. I didn’t respond. He didn’t need me to. “Liv, I thought you were dead!” As though that explained everything. My sister, the sudden mental shift in him, the terrifying physical changes.
“I know,” I said quietly. "I thought you were dead too."
"But I’m not. I survived. You survived. So we can deal with this, we can work this out. You and me…”
I took his hands from my shoulders, holding them. “When I thought you were dead, it destroyed me.” Tears slipped down my cheeks. My voice was shaking. The words were harder to say than I thought they would be. “But… after everything… I needed to let you go. And I did. And now I think you need to let me go, too.”
I’d been holding onto what we had so long ago, but it just wasn’t there anymore. Each time he looked at me, panic overwhelmed him, but it wasn’t because he loved me. He’d been clinging to the hope that we could revive our relationship because he was afraid to be without me. What he held onto was the idea of me and the comfort that it represented.
Something in me pulled tight, a sudden pinching in my chest so sharp that I inhaled rapidly. Then I felt it. Our connection broke. The invisible tether that tied Jason and I together snapped cleanly and it was like ripping a power cord out of a wall socket.
Jason’s eyes widened, the shock stealing his breath away. I could still feel him, just like I could anybody, but it was different now. His emotions pulled away from me, recoiling when I reached for them.
He grabbed my shoulders, as though touching me would reconnect us. It didn’t. He trembled as he searched my eyes. When I looked away from him, he tried to kiss me again, but there was no affection in the gesture. He was a man clawing at the edge of a cliff, desperate not to fall.
I tried to push him away physically, but he only held me tighter, his mouth roughly claiming mine. The places on my skin where his fingers dug in were hot like a sunburn and getting hotter. His muscles spasmed and tightened as he struggled to hold me to him. At my denial of his kiss, his brow dropped low.
“Stop,” I gasped, but he showed no sign of letting up.
I lashed out with my mind, ripping his hands off me and shoving him back. He hit the railing of the balcony and almost fell over, his body bending precariously. I felt his anger boiling over and his skin looked red like it were about to burst into flames. I tried to hold him down with my power, but it kept cutting out like a skipping record. The stress and confusion made it too hard to stay focused.
He stared at me for a long minute before the snarl curled on his lips.
“You're pathetic,” he growled, coming to his feet. He loomed over me, aggression leaking from every pore. His handsome face was contorted into a furious mask. He looked like he was going to attack, and I prepared myself for it, bracing for the fight to come.
"You're a shadow of what you once were, of what you could have been if you'd just stop fighting everything. None of this would have happened if you'd have stayed at Hawthorn. Your power wouldn't be so pitiful and weak."
His anger finally boiled over, spilling out onto the balcony. He knocked over the patio table, shattering the glass. I shielded my eyes from the shards that rained down on us. I could hear him going for the wooden chairs, smashing them against the floor. I felt the balcony shuddering.
I’d taken several steps away, my back pressed against the railing. Even with my powers, I was terrified of him and of what he’d become. He didn’t even look like himself anymore. His veins stood out like ropes beneath his skin. He’d gone sallow and his eyes were bloodshot. He was breathing through clenched
teeth.
The world around me pulsed with his wrath, pressing down on me from all angles. He didn’t rush at me like I expected him to. Instead, he pointed at me. “I was better off without you anyway!” he yelled, the tendons in his neck snapping tight, the arteries at his temples popping. I saw dozens of lights flicking on and off in the rooms around us as people either came out to see what was happening, or tucked themselves away so they wouldn’t be noticed.
“Jason, stop—” I tried to plead with him but there was nothing I could say.
“No! Shut the fuck up, Liv! You ruined everything!” He took step forward. “The lighthouse is gone because of you! Stone is dead because of you! I’ve lost everything because of you!”
He was in my face, screaming. I was shaking, feeling all of his emotions and my own reaction to his assault. The things he’d said stabbed me, incapacitating me.
I didn’t hear the door open, and I’m not sure when I realized we weren’t alone. Cash was standing behind Jason. On the outside he looked calm, completely composed and reserved, but rage burned inside of him.
“Jason,” Cash called to him.
With an audible snarl, Jason whipped around. “What?!”
Cash hauled back and punched Jason square in the jaw, sending him sprawling. A split second later he was sweeping his arm out to tuck me behind him, forming a physical barrier between Jason and me.
Jason was stunned and his rage seemed momentarily stalled, but he recovered quickly. I extended my powers and pinned him to the ground. When our eyes met, a second passed, and just as suddenly as it had come, the anger bled out of him. All the tension left him, and he practically deflated. His color returned and his eyes seemed less bloodshot, but I didn’t let up.
Jason and Cash stood their ground, eyes locked on one another as if they were daring the other to make the first move.
I suddenly heard Charlie’s voice, indistinct but clearly distressed. A commotion abruptly broke out, voices rising sharply. Jason, Cash and I looked at each other, and without another word, Cash and I rushed back into the room. I held Jason back for a moment, making sure he had cooled off enough to not be a threat.
Collide (Anomaly Book 3) Page 10
