Rush: Wow- must be bad. Sorry Cam. See you tonight. ILY2.
I stumbled to the bathroom, flashes of my nightmare playing in my mind.
I will cut you now, throat to navel.
I rushed to the toilet just in time, vomiting my dinner from the night before. Curling to the bathroom floor, I was racked with sobs.
He found me in the bathroom. My bloody sheets were piled in the mesh hamper, and I cringed with embarrassment. He took one look at me, and the sheets, and then crossed the bathroom in one stride to lift me into his arms. “Goddamnit,” he cursed under his breath, gathering me securely. I let my head fall against his chest weakly.
“I’m so afraid,” I murmured. He laid me in the bed, tucking the blankets around me securely.
“I’m not leaving you.”
“What about school?” I asked, lifting my eyes to his. He knelt by my bed, his hands flat on the bedspread. He smoothed the wrinkles from the cover absently.
“I called in for a sub.”
“What are you doing?” I asked, watching his hands.
“Trying not to touch you,” he admitted.
I met his eyes.
They were filled with pain.
“Just hold me,” I whispered, tears clouding my vision. In one swift movement, he was beside me, on top of the bedspread. He gathered me into his arms, and I turned against him, finally feeling comforted. He ran his fingers through my hair, smoothing the knots from my post-nightmare shower.
“You’re warm,” he said, so quietly that I wondered if he’d even spoken at all.
“Don’t let go,” I rushed, not caring about a single inappropriate thing. I wanted him to stop the memory of the nightmare, and by him just holding me, it was working.
“To find yourself, think for yourself.” He read the framed plaque on the wall next to my dresser. “Socrates. You really do like him,” he commented. I knew that he was trying to distract me.
“His words make sense.”
He nodded against my head, and I closed my eyes, inhaling the perfect scent of him. “You have a lot of swimming trophies and medals,” he said, looking around my bedroom. He touched a medal that hung from the bedside lamp. “You’re fast. I’ve seen your records.”
I only gripped his shirt tighter, nodding against his chest. “I can hold my breath for a really long time.”
He kicked off his shoes. He wore khakis and a white, button-down shirt, and I realized he had every intention of teaching that day, until he called me. “Clever use of your talent,” he teased, admiring the medal.
Pressing my face to his chest, I breathed deeply. He is so strong. I don’t even care about what I shouldn’t be doing. I struggled to resist the perfect cocoon that he created for me with his arms. “It’s not nice to tease, Mr. Perry.”
“West,” he whispered, lowering his lips to my head. He kissed my hair, exactly where Logan had kissed me the day before, in the car.
I froze.
Too intimate. As much as I longed to stay in his arms, I forced myself to stiffen. “I’m feeling a little calmer. I need to go take a shower.” Patting his arm, I signaled for release. “I’ll see you downstairs in a few minutes.”
I could feel his reluctance as he let go. I stood, hurrying to the bathroom and locking the door behind me.
I spent the time in the shower trying desperately not to feel what I was feeling. Every time my mind drifted to West, I held my breath, distracting myself with the tasks at hand. Dressed in black yoga pants and a gray t-shirt, my dark hair fell in wet strands over my shoulders and down my back. I slipped my glasses on, gathering my hamper. The washer and dryer were in the basement, and I cringed at the dark stains on my sheets.
He was waiting in the living room, bent over the coffee table with a stack of books. I dropped the hamper just inside the basement door. “Do you want something to drink?” I asked, hoping my nervousness wasn’t evident in my voice.
“No, I want you to come and rest on the couch, or back in bed,” he said without lifting his eyes from the books.
“What are you reading?” I asked, ignoring his order as he often ignored my questions. He lifted his eyes to me, leaning back on the couch. I grabbed a throw pillow, lowering next to him. His eyes raked over my body, and I shrunk self-consciously. “Sorry, I didn’t think it would matter if I wore sweats.”
His handsome face hardened, and he looked away. “You look about twelve years old in your glasses and pajamas.” He pushed on his temple again. “Roam, I am so sorry. I found you too early. I should have waited.”
Confused, I crossed my legs and gathered my hair to one shoulder. “You couldn’t have waited. He’s already here,” I reminded him, gesturing to my arm, to the numbers.
“You are too young to have to deal with all of this. The dreams are terrifying. They have the potential to drive you insane. Literally,” he clarified. “Your burden is the dream. Mine is failure. Watching you die.”
“You weren’t watching me last night,” I said, my voice thin. “I screamed for you. You weren’t there.”
Guilt clouded his gaze. “I wasn’t there in France. You’re right.” He leaned forward, resting his head in his hands. “I found you and the baby later. They had imprisoned me, letting me free only after it was too late.” When he sat up, his blue eyes were dark and watery. “The baby was nearly full term. Your name was Lysbette.”
Lysbette?
“Troy was there. He called me by my name. Roam.” I gripped the hem of my t-shirt, cringing at the recollection. “I didn’t understand what was happening.”
“Are you ready to tell me about it?” he asked.
I nodded, sliding closer to him. “Will you please hold me… while I do?”
I knew that this violated the no-touching rule, but I had no idea how I would get through the recap of the dream without someone to comfort me.
Without him to comfort me.
West sighed, reluctantly opening his arms. I moved against him, resting my head on his shoulder. I felt him stiffen at first, so I inched a little further away. “Stop if it gets too difficult,” he reminded me.
I nodded. I told him about the woods and Troy. He tightened his hold as I explained that I didn’t know who was holding my arms, and that Troy wouldn’t tell me.
West’s voice was a deep rumble in his chest. “His name was August. The immortal soul alter.”
I considered his words. Someone born again and again like I was, with a single purpose…
Killing me.
I lifted my chin, looking up at him. “Does Troy have to convince the immortal soul alter to… want to destroy me, just as you have to convince me to help you save the world?”
West nodded against my hair. “Yes. If the soul alter resists, he… and usually his family… are threatened with death.”
“God.” I twisted my hands in my lap, and West reached for them, covering them softly. I took a deep breath, going on. “I had on a brown shift, and I was damp like I had been in water. My… my pregnant belly was so big… and I couldn’t see my feet. He walked to me with the knife.”
I gripped his hands, white knuckled. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to go on if I tried.
“Stop there.” He gathered my hair into his hand, taking a moment to run his thumb along my jaw. I shivered, unable to resist the confusion burrowing deep in my soul.
“West…”
“Tell me more about your surroundings. If your hands were behind your back, could you see the numbers?”
I remembered the floating numbers and described them to him in as much detail as I could. “There was a giant mirror in the woods behind Troy. Just… there.”
He seemed undisturbed. “That is normal. There is always a mirror in your dreams, no matter where you are. You’ve told me this for centuries.” He drummed his fingers over my hand. “And the numbers ‘floated’ up in the air?”
“Yeah,” I sighed, shrugging.
“I played with the numbers last night. I tried moving them aro
und, in different orders, but the combinations are infinite.”
I winced. “How do we know where to start?”
“We don’t have time, or means, to travel to every destination and look for some kind of door. We may have to give up on that idea,” he said, staring out the window. “Wait until you’re older and try again to keep you- and the child- alive.”
His voice broke as he said the word child. Visions of him kissing my pregnant belly flooded my veins with heat. “I’m marrying Logan,” I rushed.
I immediately wished my words back.
“Marrying him?”
His cold tone forced me to stiffen.
“Yes, someday, and I…West,” I whispered, sitting up and looking at my arm. “The mirrors. I couldn’t know that there was a significance in the mirrors until they were somewhere out of place, like a forest. The numbers, reflected in a mirror, are upside down and backwards. Wouldn’t that create… an entirely new set of coordinates?”
He almost knocked me off the couch as he reached for his laptop, catching me from falling just in time. I sat back, and he began typing. “I tried the longitude and latitude reversed, but not the actual digits reversed,” he murmured, pulling up Google Maps. “Read me the numbers, right to left.”
I did. He punched the digits into the search engine, adding decimal points. “The White Sea. In Russia,” he murmured, his fingers stilling. “Near Severodvinsk.”
“Didn’t Stalin have that city built to support his naval ship-building program? In the 1930s?”
He turned to me, his expression filled with pride. “You don’t need my class, Roam.”
“Tell that to Yale,” I mumbled, leaning in toward his laptop. I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose. “The coordinates are in the middle of the sea. Do you suggest that we fly to Russia, charter a boat, and sail to the coordinates?”
His brows pulled together. “We don’t even know what we’re looking for, or if we’re right. The coordinates aren’t always spot on. They indicate a general area. I don’t know the logic behind them.”
A flutter of excitement burst in my chest. “I think the answer… the door… is in Russia. And I think we have to go there.”
His eyes moved up and down my body, and I shrunk back against the couch. “You’re underage. We’d have to wait until your birthday in July.”
“That’s almost a year away! What if-”
“Roam. “
“I’ll convince my dad that this is an educational trip.”
“Do you even have a passport?”
“Yes. My dad got us all one to visit Niagara Falls.”
“I’d have to expedite… or fabricate… tourist visas. Let me think,” he ordered.
I sat back, quiet.
Watching him, I reflected on the past few days. I’d only met him on Monday, and in less than four days, I felt like I knew him more intimately than I knew Logan. I trusted him, and my sensible self resisted the notion that I would trust a complete stranger. At my very darkest time, in my dream, I screamed for him, not Logan, not anyone else.
Maybe the dreams are meant to accelerate my feelings for him. His vivid kisses, my overwhelming emotions, the craziness of everything consumed me.
He scratched his stubbly chin, concentrating on the laptop screen. Knowing more about our history… our lives… made him even more attractive.
To me.
If it was not for his resolve to find another way, I might have believed that I was falling for him. I let myself daydream about a life with him for an indulgent minute. I pictured a child with his sandy-blond hair and my green eyes.
Startled by my wandering thoughts, I turned his way. “In any life, was our child born?” I asked.
His eyes snapped to mine, my question obviously surprising him. “No, Roam.”
“Do you think… that I would have a boy or a girl? Is the sex of the child part of the prophecy?”
He sat back against the couch, gazing at me. “I don’t know if you’d have a boy or a girl.”
“Do you have any children?” I asked, the thought occurring to me for the first time.
He spoke softly. “Yes. A daughter. She was four months old when I left, in 1995.”
“What?” I gaped at him. “She’s… she’s my age?”
“Yes.”
“What’s her name?”
“Violet.”
Irrational jealousy took over. “And her mother’s name?”
“Laurel.”
“And Laurel is the reason that you want to save the world? You want to be with her?” I was achieving the same level of shrieky that I had in the car with Logan the day before.
“It used to be a reason,” he said, his mouth set in a stoic line.
“What does that mean?” I demanded, rising to my feet.
He stood up, towering over me. I looked up at him, my hands balled in stubborn fists. “Why are you upset?” he asked.
I stared at him, wide-eyed.
Why was I upset?
“I don’t understand why, I just am,” I confessed. “I’m jealous for some stupid reason that I- I can’t figure out. And I…”
“Roam.” His stern tone forced my attention. “Our destiny, our fates, are designed to form a bond. It is chemical, predetermined. Nothing can stop this.” His body tensed, and his eyes met mine. “Nothing but you and me.”
I stared at him. “And you… want to stop it.” My words fell flat, and I knew my face was a mask of disappointment. Juvenile, immature disappointment.
“Nothing good comes of us, Roam.”
“You’ve seen some horrifying things,” I realized, reaching for him. He took a step back, but I followed him, wrapping my arms around his waist and pressing the side of my cheek to his chest. “It’s been awful for you.”
He reached to tentatively touch my hair before wrapping his arms around me. I was lost in his eyes for a long moment.
“It has been for you, too. You just don’t remember.”
“I wish you had that,” I consoled, pressing my palms against his back. “An eraser for all the bad things.”
He swallowed hard. “I won’t let this fate change what you and Logan have,” he murmured, his hands resting on my back. “What you have is real. What we have is dark,” he said, lowering his lips to my hair and pressing softly.
I lifted my face, meeting his eyes. “So, you feel the same… about me?”
I knew I sounded like a needy, teenage girl, but my ego was balancing on a steep ravine.
“Roam.” He said my name as though each letter weighed a thousand pounds. “I do. I always will. Which is why I’m not touching you, remember?” He gave me a small hug before stepping back and brushing his hand through his hair.
I nodded, feeling a little more confident. “Will you tell me about all of our lives? And your life with Laurel?”
“I will, but not now.” By his tone, I could tell that the subject was closed.
I wasn’t done.
“If we… find this door, and we move through the door to another life, how will we change things? If we failed the first time, what makes us think we’ll succeed a second time? What is the…plan?” I finished lamely, for lack of a better word.
He sighed deeply. “I want to save you. I plan to hide you and our child away.”
“Forever?” Panic edged in my tone. “What will become of… us? In this life?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
“And what if we get on a boat and travel out into the middle of the White Sea, and find absolutely nothing?”
He shrugged. “Then we think of something else.”
I knew that he meant the only other alternative, the one that we had failed at time and time again. I thought about Troy and his frightening laugh. Shivering, I took a deep breath.
“Can you shoot an immortal?”
To my surprise, he nodded once. “You can shoot, stab, burn, decapitate, dismember- I could go on, but I can see that you’re disturbed.” I shivered, a
nd he looked down at the carpet. “But we will not die. We can feel pain, though, if you wound us enough. We’ll take a shorter time than mortals do to restore to full health.”
“That’s frightening,” I managed, considering his horrific words.
He was far away in thought, and I suddenly remembered that he had burned in his own bed. How he must have suffered… I narrowed my eyes, listening to him explain. “You can trap an immortal. They have no special powers. I believe that fulfilling the prophecy will end our immortality.”
“So… Troy? If he succeeds in killing me or my child this one last time, then he is mortal?”
“Yes. But if the world ends, then not for long, I guess,” he added, moving through pages on the internet. I saw that he was looking at airline tickets.
Realization hit me, and I glared at him. “You can’t go without me,” I cried, gesturing to the screen.
“I won’t let you die again, Roam. I’ll go, and if I find this door, I’ll find a way to save you.”
“Was this your plan all along?” I demanded. “Find me, let me be tortured every single night by nightmares just so you can find your door?”
With a slow exhale, he turned to me, leveling his gaze. “You are exhausting.”
I held my indignant stare.
He snapped his laptop closed. “I don’t know anything for certain. I know that we can move through time, and only you have the answer as to how. And as far as planning all along to use you for information… I think you know better than that.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Your life is all that I care about. I have so many more obstacles in this life to overcome than I ever have. For one, you’re only seventeen.”
“I know, I’m young, whatever. I’m more intelligent than half of the adult population.”
He smirked at that. “I think you’re right about the numbers in the mirror. As far as a plan,” he said, lowering his voice as he slid my glasses back up the bridge of my nose. When I let my lips fall open in surprise, he met my eyes. “I’m still working that one out. What I do know is that you need to eat breakfast,” he finished, pointing toward the kitchen.
I clenched my fists at my sides. “I am going with you. If you disappear, I will know, and I’ll hitchhike my way to Russia.”
Roam (Roam Series, Book One) Page 9
