Gifted Connections [Book 2]

by SM Olivier

  I knew it was Jaxson’s shirt they had placed on me. I had seen him wear the mint green top before. I had laundered it, so it no longer smelled like him, unfortunately; but I refused to give it back to him. I pulled on a pair of white boy shorts to go with them and a pair of Jemmy’s knee high socks.

  I giggled at my reflection. My image reminding me of Tom Cruise in Risky Business. Jemmy was obsessed with 80’s movies, so I had become familiar with that movie along with several others. All the guys groaned and moaned when it was her turn to pick a movie, but I knew some of them secretly liked them.

  Tonight, we were going to let the kids decide what we were watching. We were going to allow the younger children to stay up for one movie, then put them to bed. It was Troy’s turn to pick, so I imagined we were going to be watching a movie with war in it. He had a thing for anything military affiliated. I needed to ask him about that; I wondered why he had never joined.

  I made my way downstairs and saw that I was the last one there. Everyone, including William was seated in the living room. Micah and Patrick were sharing the oversized recliner, talking and whispering over comic books. I made a mental note to get some for Micah. It never occurred to me that, other than clothing, he didn’t really get that many things to call his own on his recent shopping trip. I could see where he could be drawn to comic books. Most of them revolved around people with super powers. It wasn’t too far of a stretch than what we did.

  I was surprised to see three monster sized bean bag chairs now scattered in the living room. Noah and Chip were sitting in one of them, laying identically with their hands linked behind their heads and their feet crossed. Ella, Nadia, and Alex were cuddled up like little puppies around one another. Drake laid in another one reading. Jace was uncharacteristically sprawled on the other side of the couch. I rarely saw him in relaxed repose.

  Troy patted the seat beside him and I sat down between him and Remy. Remy grabbed my feet and was started working his magic on them. I couldn’t help but notice how big his hands were compared to my feet.

  “Do you even have anything under that?” Troy whispered in my ear.

  I turned and winked at him, leaving him to wonder. He visibly gulped before he pushed play on the Blu Ray player. Ella left her seat on the floor and curled up on me, leaning her head on my shoulders. I didn’t think she was going to last long with her constant yawning and burrowing into me.

  Jaxson left his seat and brought a plush throw blanket to drape on us, and I smiled my thanks to him as he plopped down in front of me. He grabbed my hand and placed it on his head. He couldn’t be more obvious. I stifled a giggle and began to run my nails across his scalp and neck. He shuddered and groaned, and I knew he was enjoying it.

  I sighed. This was a nice respite from our normal chaotic nightly routines. I was content. It was so nice to have all the guys together around me. I didn’t like the fact that I had been separated from them, but Horatio’s plan had back fired on him. He wanted to separate us and alienate me, but we were closer than we had ever been, and we now had the opportunity to work on us. We were given a do over.

  It wasn’t long before the younger kids started to fade. Their movie wasn’t even finished yet. Will quickly volunteered to carry one of them up before he headed to bed himself. Noah, Jace, and Drake took the other ones up. The older boys asked us if they could go in the den and continue pouring over Patrick’s comic books, and we didn’t find a problem in it.

  Troy decided to light a fire in the fireplace. I decided to head to the kitchen to grab some snacks for us. Remy followed me into the kitchen to grab some drinks.

  I was putting some popcorn in the microwave, when I felt a warm, large, hard body press into the back of me. I didn’t have to turn to know it was Remy. I felt his hands slide along my ribs, grasp my hips, and stroked his way down my thighs. It took me a second to realize his goal as I felt his warm sure hands.

  “You do have panties on.” His voice was gravelly as he husked in my ear.

  I leaned back into him. “I couldn’t wear no panties with the kids around.”

  He hummed in the back of his throat as he continued to rub his hands along my thighs and began to kiss the side of my neck. I was putty in his hands. I had noticed a change in him the most since my last connection was made. He was physically affectionate before, but never physically forward with me.

  Remy was a hard read. I didn’t know if he was more physical with me because he had ‘lost’ me once, or if the increased power of his gifts affected his libido. All further thoughts flew out of my head as he turned me around to capture my lips with his own. His lips were commanding and domineering as they closed over mine. I opened my mouth in a gasp as he tilted my chin up to deepen our kiss. I linked my hands through his jaw-length blond hair and arched my back into him.

  He let out a satisfied growl as he lifted me against him. I wrapped my legs around his waist, wanting to get even closer to him.

  The sound of the doorbell had us breaking apart from our steamy make out session. Remy lifted his head and growled in frustration. He slowly lowered me to the ground. My breathing was ragged as I gripped the front of his shirt, bracing my forehead on his chest, my legs barely able to hold me up. I could hear murmurings of voices in the hallway, and I felt Remy stiffen.

  I lifted my head in confusion. I looked up at Remy and his face was closed off. I could feel the tension radiating from him. What made him do a complete 180 in a matter of seconds and who the heck would be ringing the doorbell at nearly 9 o’clock at night? I stepped back away from him in bewilderment and felt somewhat hurt when he didn’t try to stop me.

  Jace came into the room looking slightly uncomfortable, followed by a tall, breathtakingly beautiful woman. It was my turn to stiffen as Molly Hunt came into the kitchen. She was once Jace’s on again, off again girlfriend. She was also a lingerie model, and one of the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. She was tall, with natural curves, and had platinum blond hair and light grey, almost silver eyes.

  “Remy!” she gushed with a lilting voice. She could be one of those 900 number operators, with a voice like that.

  She embraced him and turned to look at me. “Hello there. I’m Molly, are you one of Jemmy’s friends?”

  I blushed under her kind appraisal. There was no malice in her tone. It was like I was so inconsequential. That there was no way I could be involved with any of the guys. Admittedly I was sans makeup, so I’m sure I looked younger, but the assumption still stung.

  Remy and Jace exchanged an indecipherable look. “Well, no. This is Blake. She’s our connected,” Remy finally grunted. “What are you doing here?”

  I was struck by two things, the silence in the room and Remy’s behavior. His tone surprised me. When Molly was mentioned in the past, he never seemed to have any reservations about her. Jemmy had also told me there was a possibility that I would be seeing her around, since she still had ties to the family.

  “Oh great! You met your connected,” she gushed as she nudged her elbow into his chest, with a familiarity. “And at your age!”

  Jace cleared his throat. “No, Molly, she’s our connected. All of ours; Remy, Jaxson, Noah, Troy, Drake…and I.”

  She let out a tinkling laugh, looking between Jace and Remy. Jaxson, Troy, Noah, and Drake chose that moment to join Jace in the opening of the kitchen. “Oh,” she gulped, sadness flitted across her features before she pasted on a wide smile. It looked effortless. I imagined if you spend hours in front of a camera, you became an expert on how to hide your true feelings. “Well congratulations.”

  I could tell she was making a conscious effort not to look at Jace.

  “How?” Then her eyes widened before she closed them. “The tattoos,” she said quietly.

  I shifted uncomfortably, feeling like I was intruding on a private conversation. In that moment I felt sorry for her. Jemmy sincerely liked her, and Jemmy was always a great judge of character. I had been jealous of Molly’s relationship with Jace in the pa
st, especially after they showed up on every gossip rag in the country, but there had to be a reason she was still considered family…right?

  “Yeah, the tattoos,” Jace confirmed. He came up behind me and pulled me close to him. “Do you mind if Remy and I take this into the den?”

  I looked at them uncertainly. Was there a reason they didn’t want to have this conversation in front of me? Not that I wanted to be there. I was super uncomfortable right now. I didn’t want to repeat our past mistakes, but at the same time, trust had to be established at some point.

  “No,” I shook my head. It was my turn to see if I was any good at my acting skills. “Go ahead.”

  Chapter 22

  They had been in there for less than 5 minutes, before Remy came slamming out of the room and stormed down to the basement. When I went to stand up and follow him, Jaxson pulled me back into him and shook his head.

  “He needs to work it out on his own,” he said quietly resituating me into the curve of his body.

  When another half hour passed, I looked at the den door in confusion. What could be taking Jace so long?

  Troy sighed and paused his movie. Not that any of us had been watching it. I was too busy watching the den door and looking towards the basement door. They were warily watching me.

  Troy picked up his bean bag chair and placed it in front of me. “When we figured out we had a connection out there, we decided to hide it,” he said slowly as if he was gathering his thoughts. “By then, Molly and Jace had been dating for some time.”

  I felt sick to my stomach as I looked down at my finger nails. I had felt insecure about their relationship before and those feelings still lingered.

  He reached out and squeezed my leg. “He made a valiant effort to separate himself from her. He really did. Everyone, except for Jaxson, thought we were past the point of getting one. Especially Remy.

  “Jace made the final break with her when he chose to leave the state and start teaching. I think she hoped that he would still come back to her. He’s just having a long overdue discussion. He’s probably clearing the air so that she knows he’s committed to you. In the past, he told her they needed space apart, and find themselves.

  “When he got that teaching job, he was surprised when he found you. His student. He wanted to make sure you were the one we had been searching for.” He rubbed his head. “I remember a phone call between us, shortly after he got there, but everything is foggy after that.”

  Drake sat down in front of me. “I wasn’t there to confirm our connection like I had been the first time. Jace was worried about your safety, and he wanted to speed our meeting up. I saw our connection the first time and the second time. I knew she was the one,” Drake said to us all, looking guilty. “I thought I was going crazy again. I would be walking in the halls at school, and I would see a faint wisp of green, like a thread. I followed it once and saw you as you were walking into a class. I let it go, then I saw you in the quad and I knew. I should have told you guys,” he looked apologetically at Troy, Jaxson, and Noah.

  “When Noah introduced us, I recognized your voice, but something was off, “Jaxson said. “We talked together for years, but when I met you in person, it was like I thought maybe it had been a dream. It wasn’t until after you guys connected,” Jaxson pointed at Noah and me. “That I knew you hadn’t been a dream.”

  Troy reached out and patted him on his back. “We’re all learning. We all realize our mistakes. We got our Misty now.”

  I looked at him in shock. He hadn’t called me by that nickname since we had been reunited. Misty was short for Silvermist. Jemmy said I reminded her of Silvermist, Tinkerbell’s friend. She had told me the guys were like my own lost boys.

  I smiled at him and then looked at the door. “Should someone go check on Remy?”

  “No,” Troy shook his head. “Molly’s like family to us, but she is Remy’s cousin. Sometimes when she comes around, he doesn’t want to hear what she has to say.”

  I knew they weren’t telling me something, but I was more concerned by the fact I was just now learning about Remy and Molly’s relationship. “Why wasn’t I told this before?” At their looks of confusion, I sighed. “Before time was taken from us, I was told about Molly. Molly and Jace had been on gossip magazines together, but no one told me she was related to Remy and why or how he came to be here.”

  Jaxson frowned. “We all have our own secrets, some of them shared secrets, maybe we didn’t want to push you away.”

  I felt even more confused by his statement. I felt Jaxson was my open book. He never seemed like anything bothered him. He was always laughing or trying to make other people laugh. I thought he never expressed any negative feelings because he never let anything get to him. His statement made me realize, that sometimes, the happiest people could be the ones hiding the most pain.

  “It was my secrets that pushed her away,” Noah snorted self-deprecatingly.

  I reached over and grabbed his hand. “We got a second chance. We’re better now.” I reassured him.

  “But it was our secrets that drove us apart,” Troy said quietly. “You know mine, but maybe I should have been more upfront with you. I should have communicated better with you. I wish we could tell you why we may have kept it from you, but some of those secrets aren’t ours to tell.”

  I nodded in understanding. I was the queen of secrets. At least I had been. I felt like we needed transparency in our relationship. However, I wasn’t going to force them to tell me everything. My short stint in the mental health facility had thought me that. Some people needed to come around when they were ready, not when other people thought they should be.

  They had tried to force me to talk about my father. They thought if I talked about him often, it would help me cope with my pain better and my ‘voices’ would go away. I hadn’t wanted to talk about him. I hadn’t been ready. Everyone’s grieving process wasn’t on a specific time schedule.

  We had turned the movie back on and watched twenty more minutes of it before Jace came back out with Molly. She looked like she had been crying, but she stopped and waved at us. “Goodnight, all. It was great meeting you, Blake. You take care of these guys, will ya? You’re one lucky girl.” Her voice nearly broke as she hurried out the door.

  I looked over at Jace, and without a word, he came over to me, picked me up, and started walking me up the stairs. “Night guys,” he called down to them as we headed towards his bedroom. I was a bit confused at his cave man tactics, but I had a feeling he was going to fill me in on his conversation with Molly.

  When we reached his bedroom, he closed the door, without saying a word to me. He quietly undressed down to his boxers and then placed me in his bed. He pulled me to his chest and began stroking my arm. “Molly was the first and only girl I had loved.” I felt like he had stabbed me with the admission. “She and Remy didn’t have the greatest upbringing, and she was so introverted and broken, I wanted to fix her.”

  “Do you want to fix me?” I asked in a small voice. Yes, I was broken, but did I want him to fix me? Is that the only reason he wanted me in his life? Was I a poor substitute for the feelings he had for Molly?

  He sat up on his elbows and stroked my face. “It has always been you. When we were kids, I always wanted to protect you. I failed you so many times. Then you were gone. It always haunted me.” He leaned down and kissed my lips gently. I felt myself responding but he pulled back. “When I met Molly, she reminded me a lot of you. I thought God had given me a second chance to help you, inadvertently. She had been painfully introverted, suffered from anxiety, and had a whole list of insecurities. She still suffers from those afflictions to this day. She’s just learned to cope with them. I did all that I could do to help her.

  “When I decided to take the teaching job, and she went off to New York City, I felt like my job was finished. The day I met you, again, I knew it was you. I knew you were our Amanda, but it took me time to suspect that you were our nucleus.

  “I co
uld see you had more shadows in your eyes. You came in one day with a bruise on your shoulder. I accidentally brushed you. I knew two things in that moment. You were in trouble and I was inexplicitly drawn to you. I wanted to protect you and care for you once more but do it right this time around. I also thought it was morally wrong to be attracted to you. I was your teacher. Even if you were only a few years younger than me. I wanted to wait until you were 18 before I told you about me, about us, but I knew time was running out. Your feelings of stress and hopelessness were increasing.

  “I had to call the guys to confirm our connection. I wanted to make sure you weren’t just the girl that Jaxson and I once knew, but you were the girl who belonged to us. I didn’t want to continually fall for you if you weren’t the one. Even if you weren’t, I was going to find a way to get you out of there. Then Drake confirmed our connection and I felt…whole.”

  He had basically told me that he had already started to fall in love with me. I didn’t know if I was ready to label it yet, but I knew I cared for him deeply. I cared for them all deeply. I had spent years building my wall. I didn’t want to get hurt anymore, but I knew with the guys’ help, they could help me dismantle it brick by brick. They had already shown me the many ways they wanted to protect me and make me happy.

  They helped me care for my siblings. They let me set my own pace without pushing me beyond my comfort level. We still had work to do, but we all were taking steps in the right direction. Drake would need time, but this time we would have it. I hoped.

  “Is Molly…okay?” I finally asked. I couldn’t help but feel some sympathy for her. I could only imagine myself in her shoes. She met Jace as a teenager. I could see how easy it had been to fall in love with him. I could only imagine how she had ingratiated herself into the family (beyond her obvious relationship with Remy). She probably hung out here and was made to feel welcome. She probably saw this as home, as I had.