by Dean Murray
Chapter 22
The rest of the night was basically a bust. Kat came out a few minutes later and we filled her in with regards to Bethany and the fact that I had apparently been working something very expensive and powerful while she'd been asleep that last night before I'd died. I'd been holding out hope that Kat would be able to explain everything, that the new information from Bethany would snap into place with what she already knew and she would be able to solve our mystery.
Unfortunately, she seemed to be just as stumped as we were. We kicked around one hypothesis after another, but I didn't know enough about the world of the Awakened to even guess and the other two started repeating themselves after the first fifteen minutes.
After an hour Jace finally stopped us and said it was time for us to get back to training. Kat begged off, saying that she needed to get some sleep, which meant that it was just the two of us.
Saying that I was nervous would have been a severe understatement. We weren't alone, not with Bethany hovering just a few feet away from me, but after Jace's first few attempts at getting me to tap into my ability didn't work, she started to pay a lot more attention to her wings than to what we were doing.
I'd been afraid that things would be awkward between us, but I couldn't decide whether I was afraid Jace would try to kiss me again or if I was more worried that he wouldn't. It had all of the classic ingredients for me getting lost inside of my own head, but Jace somehow just short-circuited all of that.
He was all business during our training session, but he wasn't cold or standoffish. He was warm and funny and perfect. Honestly it was still blowing my mind that Jace had been married to me of all people. Not only that, he'd been married to a version of me that hadn't looked drastically different than I did now. I'd seen her—I mean my—old clothes and we were the same size.
I knew I didn't have all of the knowledge and confidence of the old me, but it wasn't like guys noticed confidence and smarts right off the bat. Jace had said that he fell in love with me from the moment he saw me. That seemed to indicate that I still had a chance with him, that he liked the outside package and all I needed to do was make sure that I spruced up the inside package to the point where I could keep him interested.
Of course, being able to use my ability for something worthwhile was a key component to that. We tried for three more hours to get me to the point where I could create my first effect, but in the end we didn't get anywhere.
Jace didn't seem impatient or disappointed, which was nice. He acted like we had all of the time in the world, but I knew that wasn't the case. Kat wouldn't be so worried if the threat of another pantheon finding us wasn't very real.
By the end of the third hour even my Awakened constitution was starting to fail me. I was yawning every thirty seconds, and getting worse by the minute. After my tenth yawn, Jace chuckled and pointed at the RV.
"Go get some sleep. We'll have tons of time tomorrow to work on this stuff."
"How do you know that?"
"Because it's obvious that Ari loves going fast almost as much as Kat does. I suspect that's the one thing that is guaranteed to pull her away from my side."
"I guess that's true. I can see the two of them spending a lot of time on the lake tomorrow."
"Like I said, plenty of time. Go ahead and go to sleep."
"What about you?"
It could have been viewed as some kind of invitation. In fact, I was pretty sure a lot of guys would have tried to turn it into the two of us spending the night together, but Jace just gave me another easy, slow smile.
"I set up a tent thirty yards that way. That's actually where I was when Bethany was dive-bombing you."
"Okay, I guess I'll see you tomorrow morning, Jace."
He looked like he was debating what to say next and then suddenly he was there in front of me. He took me in his arms and gave me a single, long kiss that made tingles shoot out to my extremities.
My defenses, the walls that I'd tried to put up after finding out that we'd been married, crumbled instantly. If he'd wanted to he probably could have had his way with me right there next to the RV. I wanted him to kiss my neck like he'd done the last time, wanted him to make my head spin and my body melt away, but he didn't do any of that.
When he pulled back a minute later his grin was faintly apologetic. "I told myself that I wasn't going to do that again, not so soon, not after nearly losing control the first time, but you were just so beautiful standing there in the moonlight that I couldn't stop myself. Good night, Selene. Sleep well."
