I snuggled closer and shut my eyes, drifting off to sleep.
“Okay, Zoe,” I said as I marched into the upstairs conference room where we always worked. “No more messing around. We need to get serious about figuring out this fire thing.” I lifted up my shirt to show the fading but still visible blisters. “This came from Friday night.”
“Good heavens.” Zoe peered at my stomach. “What on earth were you doing?”
“I...I was with Michael.” I tried not to sound flustered, but I knew my face was red. “You know. Kissing.”
“Kissing?” Zoe arched her eyebrows.
“Yes, kissing! It was Friday night, I was spending some time with my boyfriend. My long-term, committed boyfriend,” I added, just to remind Zoe that I wasn’t a floozy.
“Hmmm.” Zoe cocked her head, looking at me speculatively. “Must have been quite a kiss.”
I sighed my impatience. “Zoe...really.”
“All right, all right.” Still staring at me, she pursed her lips and tapped a finger to her chin. “Sit down.”
I sank into a chair across the table while Zoe continued to stare and tap. I had grown used to her odd habits, and I knew in this mood, she could not be rushed.
“So what we know is that your fire power is linked to your more...” She waved her hand, making a circular gesture. “...amorous emotions. Am I right?”
“Yes.” This was mortifying. “They always were. I found it was easier to cast fire if I had, umm, you know. Kissed someone.”
“And you never had a problem then? When you were first learning to cast fire, and kissing Michael to make it easier?”
I squirmed. “Actually, it wasn’t Michael. We had broken up for a while, and it was--” Why on earth was I explaining this again? “No, it was someone else.”
“Ah.” Zoe nodded. “I see now. And how do you feel about those early experiences? Any guilt? Shame?”
“What are you now, my shrink?” I jumped up out of my chair, and across the room, a coffee mug flew threw the air, crashing into the opposite wall.
“Not your shrink, no, but I do need to understand. Do you see how you’re losing control here? After months of keeping your powers in check?” Around the table, the chairs slid in and out. The portraits on the wall began to tremble.
I closed my eyes and focused on using every trick Zoe had taught me, channeling the energy and pulling it in. I practiced my careful breathing. Going deep within, my mind opened; I sensed Zoe’s emotions and picked up a sense of others nearby. All the people who worked at Carruthers were educated to guard their thoughts, but I could usually still discern feelings and moods. Everyone had his or her own stamp, almost a personal scent. Fee was in the house, I realized. I sensed the secretaries, the house staff and...I frowned. Someone else. Not anyone I knew, which wasn’t surprising; I hadn’t met all the operatives yet. But there was something about this presence that was almost familiar and yet made me uneasy. I drew back my mind and opened my eyes.
“Better now?” Zoe hadn’t moved, but she was watching me closely.
“Yes.” I sat down again. “And...yes. I feel guilty about what happened with Rafe. Because of what I did to Rafe and because I was unfaithful to Michael.”
“That explains quite a bit.” Zoe clapped her hands once, and all of the tension in the room vanished. Whether it was some spell she cast or simply my relief at sharing some of my feelings, I relaxed back into my seat.
“I believe your residual guilt is feeding the fire, as it were. It was all right when you could cast the fire outward, but now that you are re-channeling that energy, it just festers...or perhaps more accurately, smolders. I don’t think we can solve this problem until you’ve come to terms with those feelings.”
“But I have!” I protested. “I talked to Aline—she’s my therapist—about the whole thing. And I told you.”
“What about Michael?” Zoe’s face was full of compassion, but I knew she wasn’t going to let me duck this question.
“Of course he knows. I told him.”
“You told him, but have you resolved it? Are you both at peace?”
I bit my lip. “I guess maybe not. Michael just wanted us to forget all that, but I know it still bothers him.” I thought of his dream and shook my head. “No. We’re not at peace about it.”
“That’s it then.” Zoe stood. “Go make this right, and then we’ll see what we can do. But I imagine that once you ease the guilt, you’ll find the heat is no longer a problem.” She winked at me and smiled. “At least the heat that blisters, that is!”
I blushed again. “All right, I’ll do that. Thanks, Zoe, and I’m--”
“Tasmyn!” I turned, startled at the tone of Cathryn’s voice. “What are you doing here?”
I shrugged. “I guess ‘I work here’ isn’t the answer you’re looking for?”
“You weren’t scheduled to be at the house today.”
Bewildered, I shook my head. “I know. I needed to see Zoe.”
Cathryn turned to the other woman. “I wish you had told me Tasmyn was coming up.”
“Cathryn, what’s wrong? Why are you freaking out?”
She set her mouth in firm line. “I’m hardly freaking out. I’m just surprised to see you, and you know I don’t like surprises. And we have some guests in the house who—it’s a sensitive situation. We don’t want people wandering around and running into them.”
“Fine. I won’t wander. I’ll stay right up here with Zoe.”
“We need Zoe right now. I’m afraid you’ll have to finish your session later. And Tasmyn?” Cathryn fastened her eyes on my face. “Please make sure you go down the back stairs and out the side door. And--”
“Yes, I know. Don’t wander. I promise, I’ll go directly to my car and won’t even pass go. Thanks, Cathryn. Your welcome is always so warm.”
“Don’t make more of this than it is, Tasmyn. We’ll see you later in the week.”
“Are you sure you want me to come up then?”
Zoe stepped between us. “Tasmyn, why don’t you work on what we discussed? We’ll talk again on Wednesday. If you need me before then, you have my number.”
I slipped past Cathryn in the doorway and made my way to the stairs. As I stomped down, fuming at being sent home like a naughty child, I picked up that same oddly-familiar, oddly ominous sense. I paused at the foot of the steps, and for a moment, the wild thought that Marica could be here crossed my mind. But no. It didn’t feel like her. It felt like...I shook my head. Couldn’t be. It must have been talking about him that made me feel he might be close.
Shrugging, I left the house and began the drive back to campus, forgetting about the odd sensation and instead dreading my talk with Michael.
I was afraid that if I waited to talk with Michael, I might chicken out. Swallowing my nerves, I called him on the way back to campus and told him I would meet him in his room, crossing my fingers that Charlie wouldn’t be there.
Michael was sitting on the sofa, feet propped on the scarred coffee table and a textbook propped on his lap, when I opened the door. He smiled at me and dropped the book, stretching his arms.
“Hey, gorgeous. How did it go with Zoe? Did you figure out why I give you fever?”
I rolled my eyes and shook my head. “I take it Charlie is out?”
“Yeah, away game somewhere.” He dropped his feet to the floor and patted the cushion next to him. “Come sit down. Tell me all about your day.”
I leaned in to kiss him and fell onto the couch. “I did get to talk to Zoe, though not as long as I would’ve liked. Cathryn chased me out of the house.”
Michael frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, someone was visiting, and she freaked that I was there when she didn’t expect me.” I frowned. “I didn’t get to ask her about Mr. Cummings.”
“You can do it next time. So what did Zoe say?”
My heartbeat sped up, and my stomach clenched. “She thinks I have residual guilt, and that’
s what keeps me from channeling the energy the right way.”
I felt Michael’s tension. It was a nearly tangible tightening around my throat. He was quiet for a moment, though I could hear him thinking.
Residual guilt? Over what?
“There’s nothing I haven’t told you,” I assured him. I reached for his hand and held it between both of my own. “Nothing as bad as what you imagined.”
“I thought we were over that. Beyond it.”
I twisted closer to him. “We are...moving beyond it. But Zoe thinks there is part of me that hasn’t resolved what happened, and that until I do, I can’t control the heat.”
“Zoe thinks that. And what do you think?”
I blew out a sigh. “I think you’ve been incredibly forgiving. But maybe my guilt is more about me not deserving your forgiveness. Or maybe it’s that you haven’t been hard enough on me. You never even hesitated, Michael. You just took me back like nothing had happened.”
His forehead furrowed, and random thoughts filtered into my head before he began to speak. “That’s not exactly true.”
I didn’t answer, because I was beginning to get the gist of what he meant before he went on. “Last spring, after I got your email, I wanted to just jump in the car and drive to you right away. That was my knee-jerk reaction. I called my mom and told her what I planned to do, and she asked me to stop and think.”
“Marly? She didn’t want you to come back to me?” I was shocked, and not a little hurt. Marly had never shown me even the least difference in her feelings since our reconciliation.
Michael laid his hand on my arm. “Listen to me. It wasn’t like that. She told me that I needed to be sure I could truly, completely forgive you before I rushed back. She didn’t want either of us to be hurt again if it turned out I couldn’t handle—the past. What had happened.”
“Oh.” I took a minute to digest that.
“Yeah. So I did. I talked to her and my dad, and I...I even called Anne and asked her to tell me everything she had heard about you and Rafe. She didn’t want to do it. But I had to hear it all or I wouldn’t know if this—if you and I—could work again.”
I swallowed over a lump in my throat. “Okay.”
“I had a rough night, I won’t lie to you. Not that I could, of course.” He treated me to his smile, the one that was only ever for me. “What Anne told me was so out of character for you. All I could think was that Ms. Lacusta or Rafe had done something to alter your mind. When I said that to my parents, they said it might be a possibility, but that I had to be certain I could forgive you and go on even if they hadn’t done anything. Because we might never know for sure.”
This was what I had feared all along, that Michael was giving me a pass on something that had been totally my fault. More than anything else, it was what had fed my guilt over the past months.
“Why didn’t I know this? I hear every thought that goes through your mind when we’re together.”
Michael took my face in his hands, his fingers in my hair. “Because I don’t think about it. I went over everything those two days. I really tried to picture the two possible outcomes. One, I could ignore your email, or even just shoot you back something saying I couldn’t handle being with you again. I imagined what the rest of my life would look like. And that didn’t work. The idea of never seeing you again, of not being with you—that was really what I couldn’t handle. And then I thought about being with you again, this time for the rest of our lives. That worked. That felt right.
“So when I told my mom what I had decided, she cried. She was so relieved, she said, and--” He swallowed hard and ducked his head. “And proud of me, for being able to make this choice. But she told me that I had to be sure I could leave it all behind. I could never bring it up to you in anger or use it to hurt you. Everything that went on this past spring had to be as though it had never happened. If I could do that, then we had a good chance of making it.”
I buried my face in the crook between Michael’s shoulder and neck, surprised to find my face was wet with tears. “I don’t deserve you. Or Marly. But I am so glad you came back to me anyway.”
He wrapped me in his arms. “I think we don’t deserve each other, but something wonderful in the world brought us together despite ourselves.”
I kissed his jaw. “This helps, Michael. It really does. But I think I still need to tell you a few things for us to move beyond this whole thing. You may have forgiven me, but I’m not sure I’m ready to let myself off the hook that easily. Would you just listen, let me talk for a minute?”
Michael hesitated for a split second before he nodded. “Okay. Go ahead.”
I drew in a deep breath. “I never sought out Rafe. I told you that he figured out that something was going on with Marica and me, and he kept me his eye on me, made me be accountable to him. From the first time we met, I knew he was...attracted to me. He never really tried to hide his feelings, even after he knew I could hear his thoughts. So when I thought that you and I—that we were done, that we would never be together again—part of me felt, well, at least I could talk to someone who knew all my secrets and didn’t condemn me for them. And it made him so happy, to be with me, to be—well, dating me, I guess—that I thought I was doing the right thing for him. Someone was in a good place, at any rate, even if it wasn’t me.”
I watched Michael’s face carefully, sank deep into his mind, waiting for the slightest indication that he was pulling away. There was nothing. He touched my face with just the tips of his fingers.
“Go ahead. I’m listening.”
I closed my eyes, feeling a huge chunk of that mountain of guilt and grief I’d been carrying break away and disappear. But there was more. “I did let him...I kissed him, Michael. We had some pretty intense—but it never went beyond that. Rafe thought that you and I had been—well, closer physically than we really had been, so it frustrated him that I wouldn’t let him—but I didn’t. It was very...” I searched for the right word. “Tumultuous. And never easy. We were always fighting, it seemed.”
“Do you miss that?” Michael kept his voice low and didn’t stop touching me. “The tumult? The excitement of it?”
I was shaking my head before he finished speaking. “Not a bit. It was wearing and tiring and painful. I was always hurting Rafe, and that’s another big part of what I’m guilty about now. I didn’t mean to, but I think I broke his heart. And there’s nothing I can do about that.”
“I’m sorry.” He pulled me close, and the dam burst open. I cried, big, heaving sobs, leaving everything that had happened last spring in a sopping mess on the front of his shirt.
“Shhhh. It’s over. I’m here, and you’re here. And we go together from this place. You’re right. I should have told you about those few days from the beginning...but I thought it was better not to talk about it. I wasn’t thinking about it, not consciously. But let me be clear from now on. I forgive you, Tas, for anything at all that happened, for anything you think might need my forgiveness. I’m not making excuses for you. I love you, as you are. Always. I know we won’t always have it easy, but I’ve tried life without you, and it’s not an option. From here on, I’m all in.”
I raised my face to kiss his cheek. “I love you, too. No matter what, being without you doesn’t work for me, either. So you’re stuck with me.”
Michael scooted me closer to him. “So do you think you’ve released that guilt?”
I smiled as I heard the direction of his thoughts. “I think so. But of course there’s only one way to really test it.”
Michael rolled his eyes. “The things I’m forced to do in the interest of science...” He paused, framing my face once again with his hands before he lowered his lips over mine.
It was so sweet, so tender, that tears filled my eyes again. I opened to him, so laid bare that I held nothing back. He dropped his hands to my shoulders, then around my back to pull me tighter. The kiss intensified, not losing any of the sweetness but instead taking on a new dime
nsion of need. My heart pounded as I slipped my arms around him.
Michael shifted, moving so that I lay on top of him, never breaking the kiss. He groaned as I moved my legs over his, pressing into him, trying to be as close as possible. I freed my arms just enough to plunge my hands beneath his shirt, needing to touch skin. Michael echoed my movement, sliding his palms along my sides and up over my back.
I felt the familiar surge of energy and automatically pulled it back. I captured it and blew out the heat, smiling against Michael’s lips as I realized I had the power under control. As Michael’s hands covered me, moving against my back beneath my shirt, he pulled his mouth away.
“What? What’s with the smile?”
I kissed his chin, his jaw and down his neck. “How do I feel?”
“Incredible. Wonderful. Oh...” Realization dawned on his face, and he rubbed his hands against my back again, testing. “Normal temp. No heat, no blisters. And really, really good.”
I laughed, squirming against him until he groaned again. “I guess Zoe was right.”
Michael nibbled my ear lobe, making me shiver in delight. “Remind me to send her flowers. A huge thank you bouquet.”
“Hey, no flowers to other girls, buddy,” I growled, tickling his ribs.
With a smooth movement, Michael flipped me over so that I lay beneath him. Humor fled as I saw the intensity on his face, felt the love and need and something else indescribable. “Only you, Tasmyn. It’s only ever been you and me. Nothing else. No one else.” He slid his hand over my stomach, and I gasped.
“Only you,” I agreed. “Ever. And for always.”
“Judging by that smile on your face, I’m assuming my advice worked.” Zoe raised one dark eyebrow at me as I danced into the conference room on Wednesday afternoon.
Dropping my bag onto a chair, I grabbed Zoe into a hug. “Yes! It worked. It was wonderful. Oh, Zoe, I haven’t been this happy in...” I rolled back my eyes, thinking. “I don’t know how long!”
“It all worked out then. And Michael?”
“Michael is amazing. The best boyfriend any girl could have. And everything is perfect between us. Thank you, Zoe! You were right. And look.” I lifted my t-shirt just enough so that she could see my stomach. “No more blisters.”
King Series Box Set Page 87
