Other Side Of Forever (Other Side Of Forever Series Book 1)

by Shannon Eckrich

  “She’s worried about me.” I sighed. “I have no idea what to tell her.” I wrapped my arms around his waist and leaned my head against his chest.

  “Why don’t you try telling her the truth?”

  I lifted my face and looked at him. “Yeah, right. What am I supposed to say? ‘Oh, Erica, I’m just fine. You see, my mother left me, and Ethan, who by the way is an immortal from this different dimension called Asteria, happened to be passing through our world when some unknown force drew him to me. And now I’m living with him.’ Do you have any idea how ridiculously insane that would sound?”

  “Well, you could leave out the immortal and the different dimension part,” he said, then chuckled.

  “It’s not funny,” I pouted.

  He leaned down and placed his lips to my forehead. “Relax. It’ll be okay. I promise.”

  We walked back into the house, his arm still tightly wrapped around my waist, then we made our way into the kitchen.

  I leaned up against the marble countertop while Ethan grabbed a couple of plastic baggies filled with lunchmeat out of the drawer and placed them on the counter, then slipped a knife out of the wooden block against the wall and started assembling ham and cheese sandwiches. He stopped to point the knife toward the living room. “I guess your emotions got the best of you last night.”

  “Sorry, what?” I asked, puzzled.

  “You’re the one who shattered all that glass in there.”

  Oh, no. My emotions. He’d figured out my emotions were what sent stuff haywire. “How do you know what I can do?”

  “Who do you think has been balancing out your energy?” He shrugged, a smile forming across his face. “You know, when your emotions become unstable. You haven’t been able to control your powers. So I decided to step in.”

  My jaw nearly dropped onto the ceramic tiles of his floor as he grabbed the sandwiches and walked casually into the living room.

  “Wait,” I yelled, lifting my weight from the counter and rushing to catch up with him.

  He was already sitting on the sofa, feet propped up on the coffee table, when I stepped through the doorway.

  “You can do what I can do?”

  “Yes,” he said, taking a bite out of his sandwich.

  I didn’t know what to say—didn’t know what to ask. I just stood there staring, as motionless as one of those little garden gnomes people place in their front yard, while he continued to eat.

  “Allie, please stop looking at me like that. You had to have known it was me centering your energy.”

  “Well…yes, but no. If that makes any sense.” I flopped down beside him and he handed me a sandwich. “I mean, I thought it was weird at the ghost shop. You know, the night Becca and Cassie walked into the store. I felt sick, and my head felt like it was going to explode. But then everything stopped the instant you walked in,” I explained, then took a bite of my sandwich.

  I took a few minutes to eat, then continued, saying, “But it wasn’t until I saw what you did to Aaron at the theater, that’s when I really started to get suspicious. I knew what I saw. Somehow, you made the boy fly through the air. He didn’t trip. But when I asked you, you denied it.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to see that side of me. I was furious he was so close to you, touching you in that manner.” He shook his head. “I lost it.”

  “Then I noticed you ignored the lights flickering in your car on the way home. Everybody else always notices, but you didn’t. The flickering just stopped. I didn’t want to say anything else to you because I thought you would think I was crazy.”

  “Lost, scared, and angry, yes. Crazy, no.” He grinned.

  “You could have told me,” I said, placing the remainder of the sandwich in my mouth.

  “I’m sorry.” He leaned forward and stretched his arm out to place his empty plate on the table. Then he brought it back and wrapped it around me, pulling me into his chest while I thought of more questions to ask.

  I chewed, swallowed, then asked, “Why do Asterians hate people like me so much?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked softly.

  “Well, I remember your conversation with Kiera. And on the way home from school yesterday, you said we weren’t supposed to be together. So, why does it matter to the people of your world whether we’re together or not?”

  He sighed deeply. “They don’t hate you. It’s just too dangerous for any of us to be around mortals now.”

  “Why?” I pressed, knowing I needed to find out the answer to why he left me.

  “A very long time ago, even before the Egyptians built their pyramids, the mortals and the immortals would travel freely back and forth through the dimensions. They used portals, which were set up in different locations throughout both worlds. This was when your realm was pure, free from evil, hate, and destruction.”

  I shook my head attempting to take all this in. Hieroglyphics, all the different theories that aliens came down to help the Egyptians and other civilizations around the world, could all of this be because of Asterians? Of course, if the immortals didn’t hide their powers back then, they would’ve surely been thought of as gods.

  “I’m not sure when it first happened,” he continued. “Azzera never really disclosed a time frame, but somewhere in time an evil entity—or what we call the Darkness—entered your world. This Darkness had the potential to jump in and out of a mortal’s mind, leaving behind thoughts of destruction and hate. But it can’t attach itself to an immortal. We’re too powerful. When the people of Asteria discovered what was happening in the mortal world—war, pollution, and people slaughtering other people—they knew they had to seal the portals so the Darkness couldn’t enter Asteria, attached to a mortal.”

  “Why seal the portals and leave the Darkness here, in this dimension?” I asked. “If the Asterians are so powerful, why didn’t they try to fight it?”

  “Because they had no idea what it was capable of. And the Asterians’ main concern is survival.”

  “Well, that’s just dumb.” I rolled my eyes, thinking they sounded more like cowards than gods.

  He laughed, then said, “Azzera told me closing the portals angered the Darkness. And that ever since they’ve been closed, it has been trying to find a way in. But the only way in is to attach itself to someone. And since it can’t attach itself to immortals, it scours your world for any trace of someone who could bring it through the portal. Someone special. Someone able to get through the portal when no other mortal can.”

  “But it wouldn’t be able to do anything with a mortal body. It doesn’t really have any other power except persuasion, right?”

  “No, the Darkness only has the power of persuasion once it enters a mortal’s mind. If it happens to possess someone, to fully enter a mortal’s body, it can manipulate their energy into doing things they wouldn’t normally do.”

  Wow. This all sounded scarily familiar. I sat up. “Ethan.” I found his eyes. “If I tell you something that happened to me, you won’t think I’m crazy, right?” I swallowed hard; the fear of what I may have encountered had me totally freaked out.

  He smiled warmly and reached over to brush a stray piece of hair away from my face. “I told you before I would never think that anything you say is crazy.”

  “I think your Darkness tried to push its way into my body. Into my mind.” I said the words slowly, hesitantly, searching the depths of his dark eyes for any signs of disbelief.

  There was no disbelief, only fear. A fear so terrifying it caused my heart to pick up its pace.

  He sat up abruptly, his eyes wider than they were when he saw me trapped between the back of the concession stand and Aaron’s body. “Why did you say that?”

  “Because that day when I hurt my ankle, I felt intense pressure in my chest and the world went black. That’s why I tripped—I’d been blinded. Then when I was down in the tunnels at the Fort, I wasn’t feeling well at all. I could feel an energy pressing down on me, like something was suffocat
ing me. It wasn’t like anything I’ve ever encountered before. I told Erica and Ben I had to rest. So, while I was alone—”

  “They left you alone?”

  “Yes, but only because I told them I was fine.”

  Ethan closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger. “What happened?”

  “It knew my name,” I whispered.

  He dropped his hand and opened his eyes. “What?”

  I closed my eyes so I could concentrate on telling him exactly what happened without being distracted by his reaction. “It told me it needed me, and then I felt like I was being consumed by some negative force. But I fought it. I closed my eyes and tried to push it away with my energy. I screamed out for someone to help me. Luckily, Ben and Erica were coming back down the tunnel and heard me. It threw me to the ground just as they reached me,” I explained, too scared to open my eyes.

  Ethan wrapped his arms around me and squeezed me to his chest. “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault,” he said, resting his chin on the crown of my head. He started to say something else, but I cut him off.

  “It’s okay. I’m fine,” I reassured him. “It didn’t get in.”

  “Allie.” He pushed me away from his chest and cradled my chin in his hands, forcing me to look up. “This isn’t about me or my world. This is about you. Don’t you see,” he said, his eyes pleading with mine, “you are the most important thing to me. More important than my world. More important than me. I would give my own life to keep you safe.”

  This would have been the perfect time to tell him I was falling in love with him, but I couldn’t get my lips to move to say the words. My mind wasn’t in synch with my heart. It was still in protection mode. Ethan would end up leaving, just like everyone else. I knew he would. It was only a matter of time. But I had to say something to him. He was waiting. Even if it wasn’t the three words my heart wanted to shout to him, it was better than nothing.

  “You’re important to me, too. And if it makes you feel better, feel more secure, then I’ll make sure someone else is around me from now on. Even if I have to glue myself to Erica’s back in school.” I tried to laugh, but it ended up getting stuck in my throat.

  “You don’t have to worry about attaching yourself to Erica.” He rubbed his finger across my cheek as he lured me in with his eyes. “I’ll personally make sure you’ll never be alone again.” Ethan pulled my face to his and softly, as light as a feather, brushed his lips against mine. “I promise.”

  “Hey, shouldn’t we get this mess cleaned up?” I turned away from him, my eyes roaming toward the glass on the floor. I knew it was lame, but I wasn’t used to hearing someone say they would actually give up their life for me. That kind of thing only happened in movies and in books, not in real life.

  “Yeah, probably.” He smiled, even though I had a feeling he was aware I was pushing him away again.

  Ethan and I vacuumed up the mess in the living room. After all the glass shards had been removed, we got in his car so he could run me over to the school to retrieve my car.

  “So, what exactly can you do?” I asked curiously from the passenger’s seat.

  “Well, you’ve witnessed most of the things I’m capable of.” He glanced over at me, smiling. “I can use energy to heal, or if I’m angry, which doesn’t happen very often, I can use it to harm someone.” His voice was calm, almost like this was a normal everyday conversation. Maybe normal for him, but definitely not for me.

  “What did you do to Becca?” I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to know the answer to that question.

  He focused his attention to the road in front of him. “Let’s just say she won’t be bothering you anymore.”

  “You didn’t kill her, did you?” My memory flashed back to Ethan throwing Aaron across the theater parking lot. If he was that strong, there was no telling what he could do to Becca if he thought she’d murdered me.

  “Allie,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I don’t kill people.”

  “What did you do to her?” I pressed, hoping whatever he did wouldn’t scar the girl for life, though she deserved it.

  He sighed. “I slammed her into the fence to get her off you. Then…I showed her something,” he said, refusing to look at me.

  “Showed her what?” I didn’t understand why it was so hard for him to talk to me now.

  Ethan removed his right hand from the wheel and squeezed it into a fist. He looked at me, his dark eyes holding onto mine as he opened his hand. “This,” he whispered.

  A ball of light, an orb of sizzling, sparkling energy, cracked and popped in the palm of his hand. I’d never seen anything like it.

  “That is freaking awesome. Can…can I touch it?” I asked, reaching my hand toward the light.

  “No!” His eyes widened and he snapped his hand shut as the tips of my fingers reached it. I retracted my hand, stunned by his reaction, and placed my hand in my lap.

  “Why not?” I questioned him, upset by his sudden outburst.

  He glared out the window. “Do you remember last night when our energy combined? When we kissed?”

  “Oh, that. The light bulb shattering thing?” Warmth rushed to my cheeks.

  “Yes, that’s part of it. Anything else?” He finally smiled.

  What did he want me to tell him? He was there. He knew what happened.

  He waited.

  “What?” I threw my hands up in the air, clueless about what he wanted me to say. My cheeks were already burning, they couldn’t get any hotter.

  “The intense energy, the warmth, you couldn’t feel it flowing through you?”

  “Yes, I felt it.” That was a stupid question.

  He turned his eyes back to the road. “That energy was just ours, combined. And when we were together, as close as we were, it was so intense even I had a hard time controlling it. That’s why all the bulbs burst from the lamps in the living room. I’m surprised I was able to save the TV.” He chuckled.

  “It’s not funny,” I snapped.

  “No, it’s not. But the energy I held in my hand was my energy plus the energy around me. Not just mine. And with what happened last night, I couldn’t imagine what would happen if you added yours too.”

  “How powerful do you think we could be?” I asked, envisioning the entire world going up in a puff of smoke.

  “I’m not sure. But I don’t think now is the time to test it out. I’ve never encountered a mortal as gifted as you.”

  I laughed. “Gifted. Yeah, right. It’s more like a curse.”

  “Why would you think that?” he asked, squinting his eyes.

  “Because it didn’t start until when my dad left. The night I found out he had walked out on us, I was so mad I locked myself in my room. And then I trashed it.” My eyes strayed down to my hands, wishing I didn’t have such a vivid memory of this particular point in my past.

  “When there was nothing else for me to do—nothing else for me to take my anger out on—I screamed. Then the screen on my TV just shattered into a million little pieces. I was scared, had no idea what to do. Mom thought I did it intentionally. That I’d thrown something at the screen or something.” I bit my lip, trying to contain my emotions. “I couldn’t tell her the truth. There was no way she would’ve believed me. She didn’t even believe me the time I told her Dad lit up the Christmas tree without plugging it in.”

  “He did what?” Ethan’s eyes widened.

  “He looked at the tree and it lit up. I’m not joking,” I said, shaking my head. “Mom said it was my imagination. Of course, I never saw him do it again. And after the strange things started happening to me, I figured I had inherited some genetic disorder from my dad. He’d hinted his dad could do something like that. I thought maybe something from his Native American heritage had been passed down from generation to generation. But it’s not like he had any family I could go to and ask. Mom said his parents had died before he met her. So I was alone.”

  Ethan stared out the window
, his eyes focused on the road like he was concentrating on something.

  I decided to go on. Share my painful past. “So, as I got older, it happened more and more. Any time I would get angry or sad. Do you have any idea how it feels to have to live with some freakish power that destroys things?”

  “Allie,” he said, reaching his hand over and placing it on mine, “you’re not meant to destroy things. You just haven’t learned to control it.” He looked at me, then quickly focused back toward the road as we pulled into the parking lot. “And that’s something we have to work on.”

  I looked forward, then snapped out, “Oh, crap!” Ethan’s words suddenly didn’t seem as important as what I was about to face in the parking lot.

  “What’s wrong?” He was startled. He scanned the area for any trace of danger.

  “Erica. She’s next to my car—waiting for me.”

  Chapter 12

  Before Ethan even had a chance to put the car in park, Erica rushed at us like a fully-loaded semi with smoke billowing from the stacks that I could practically imagine on each side of her head. “I told you I would find you. What’s going on?”

  “My mom left,” I told her as I stepped out of the car.

  “What?” Her eyes grew wide as she stared at me, like the words I’d said had transformed me into a mutant and I had a third arm growing out the side of my head. “What do you mean she left? When did she leave? Why?” She bombarded me with questions. I’d known this would happen.

  “She left…a while ago,” I answered as Ethan appeared beside me. “I’m not sure why. She used to leave me for a few days at a time, but now she’s gone for good.”

  “I’m sorry.” Erica stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She squeezed me.

  “Because your life is so perfect and I didn’t want to bother you with my problems.”

  “You wouldn’t have bothered me. Allie, you’re my best friend. I’d do anything for you.” She released me from her hold and looked at me. “You can stay with me. My parents won’t mind.”

  “No. I’m sort of staying with someone else,” I whispered, afraid of what her reaction might be.