by Shelly Crane
"I just…" He shook his head and gulped, covering my hand with his on his cheek, like he wanted to keep it there forever. "I don't want to hurt you. I don't want… Gah, I'm so sorry, Ava."
"For what?" I said, but I saw in his mind for the first time. He was thinking about that house from my last vision. I realized that I remembered it from our histories. Our family taught about that…house…
The coffee cups fell from my hand. It was then the world came back to me and I saw several of the people in the coffee shop staring at us. Even Paul had stopped making coffee and was looking at us, like maybe he wanted to intervene.
I pushed Seth's chest a tiny bit, my hands aching and scolding me for doing so. He went without a fight. "Ava," he reasoned, pleaded.
"I've got to go." I turned to go, my heart banging in my chest.
He grabbed my hand gently, and his calm, the very thing I'd always wanted, shot through me and I couldn't stop the sigh, yet I still yanked my hand away. "Ava, please. Let's just talk for a minute."
I burst through the door and ran to my Volvo parked in front. Seth followed me, but didn't try to stop me. I got in and shut the door, pressing the push-start button, roaring the car to life. He stood outside my window, gripping his hair in his hands as he watched me back out. I heard him in my head as I peeled from the lot.
I'll wait for you however long you need. It's okay. I understand. I'd hate me, too.
I loved his voice. It ran over me like a silk nightgown…and I hated and loved that.
I went straight to the center, blowing through the doors, tears running down my face. Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared, but I looked for Daddy. When I didn't see him with any of the kids, I went right to his office. He was on the phone, but hung up on whoever was on the phone as soon as he saw me.
"Ava—"
"Daddy," I sobbed.
He stood quickly. "What happened?"
"I…imprinted…"
"You did?" He grinned and hugged me to him. "That's amazing, Ava. Where? Who? Why are you crying? Was it—”
"No, Daddy, no." I leaned back.
"What's the matter, baby girl?" he soothed and smoothed my hair like he had done for my entire life. Always comforting, always willing to bust heads if need be to make me happy. But Dad couldn't fix this.
"Daddy, I imprinted…with a Watson."
He squeezed me tighter and then leaned back. I saw his eyes cut to the left. They did that when he was speaking to Mom in his mind.
“Dad, I imprinted with this Seth guy and just ran away. I—” He watched, his eyes filling with sympathy and something else I couldn’t put my finger on. When he didn’t blow up and start throwing things in rage like I expected, I frowned. “Where’s Momma?”
He took my arms in his hands gently. “She’s not here yet. She’s on the way. We have a lot to talk about.”
“Why are you being so calm? It’s almost as if you…know something I don’t.” I tried to pull my arms back, but he held tighter.
“Sit, Ava,” he commanded, as my father and my Champion. I sat in his desk chair. He leaned on his desk and crossed his legs and arms. His sigh was enough to push me into a state of annoyance.
“Daddy, oh, my gosh. What is going on?” I hissed.
“Do you remember Ashlyn? From when you were a little girl?”
“Ashlyn?” I whispered. I hadn’t heard that name in so long. She was the ghost of a Visionary that used to come to me as a child. But I hadn’t seen her in years and no one had brought her up since. “Barely.”
“Do you remember her telling you about a boy,” he said carefully. I looked up at my father, still so young looking, but a faint crown of greys had started to show making him look a lot like the photos of Grandpa Peter when he was Champion.
“I don’t…”
“Maybe we should wait for your mother.”
“Dad,” I protested.
“I’m here,” Mom called from the doorway and rushed to me. She pulled me up and wrapped her arms around me. “Oh, my Ava,” she whispered and all at once I was a little girl again. With her rocking me, I could hear them whispering, feel Daddy’s hand on my arm and know that my life was about to change. I had waited for this day my entire life, all Virtuoso do, and now my perfect day was being ruined, taken from me. Why?
She sighed and pulled away slightly. “Ava.”
The way she said my name made me know right then that they both knew something and had known it for some time.
“Take me home,” I said with more force than I believed I had. “And tell me everything.”
I expected a fight. This was the Champion, the leader of my clan, and the Visionary, the leader of my race. I got no fight however.
“Come on,” she said, taking my hand, and towing me along. I left my car there along with Mom’s and rode silently in the back seat of Dad’s truck. I watched their clasped hands the entire drive home as if their connection held the answer to everything—the way Daddy’s thumb rubbed over her knuckles in their own silent conversation.
I knew their story. I knew how hard they’d had to fight for each other. I knew how the Watsons had tried so hard to destroy them. I knew how Marcus had kidnapped her and how she’d been tortured. How their leaders Sikes and Donald had manipulated the entire clan and used alchemy, experiments, and other means to hurt humans, and even our own kind, to do awful things.
But before Gran had passed away, she made sure to tell us all the good things that had happened, too. How Daddy had gone and searched the woods for Momma when she’d been kidnapped, but ultimately it was Cousin Rodney who had found her. How Daddy would sneak in her window at night so she would be safe and not wake up in withdrawals, how he had taken her away to California to the beach house to keep her away from the echoling who terrorized her when she closed her eyes, how she had saved his life at a stoplight and that’s how they met.
I knew it all.
I also knew that I had my own story now. Right now, Seth was out there freaking out just like I was. I had gotten no ill will from him, nothing but comfort and the need to make sure I was okay in that moment. How could someone who was supposed to be evil be so concerned for me if that were true?
And how was it even possible? Grandpa Haddock was a Watson, making Mamma part Watson, so how could I have imprinted with one? I needed so many answers and I needed them now. I knew that that my body would start rebelling against me soon. It would be begging me to go after Seth, to seek him out, to find him, to touch his skin and find the comfort that only he could give me.
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what I was going to do.
A couple hours later, my heart beat painfully in my chest as I tried to take it all in, tried to keep calm, for I knew that my body was calling the one person to me that I wasn’t sure I even wanted here. I had listened to them tell me about Seth, about how he had been an innocent little boy taken from his mother—a woman the Watsons had been doing experiments on. When my parents freed everyone from the compound when I was a child, Seth was the only one that they couldn’t find. They ran with him, took him as their own, and though Mom looked for him for a long time, they never found him. Ashlyn told them it was meant to be this way, that Seth was meant to grow up with them, but it didn’t stop my parents from looking, from feeling guilty for not making it in time to save him. They showed me the drawings they found at the compound the day they would have rescued him. Mom showed me the vision of Ashlyn as she told us all about Seth and us and the new council. It’s why Uncle Bish and Kyle, and Aunt Jen and Lynne were council members now. It’s why all of this was happening.
Mom got that look in her eye, the one that said something important and epic was about to happen, but she looked so…pissed. So un-Mom-like in that moment. I looked at Dad and he didn’t look much better. They both looked so worried and older in that moment.
She knelt down in front of me. “Ava, I want you to know that we didn’t know that Seth was going to be your significant. We kn
ew he’d come back one day and be important, but…not like this.”
And so it began. My life was changed with words spoken that could never be taken back as they laid everything out for me, all the things that had happened when I was a child and too little to understand, much less control.
And now, I was no longer a child but an adult who had to face things head on. Whether I knew what those demons looked like or not. Whether the demons looked like my significant or not…
_ _ _
“I don’t know if I can even sleep tonight,” I muttered and rubbed at my arms. They were restless. “I can already feel myself twitching.”
“Tomorrow…” Dad began, but stopped. He sighed forcefully and tightened his fists. “I’ll go find him and make him come here if he doesn’t come on his own.”
“Dad, you didn’t see him. He was…” I bit into my lip hard. Just talking about him was making me ache all over. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe.
I heard Mom say, “Baby, I think we need to stop talking about this. It’s just making things worse for her.”
“I know, but…maybe I should go over there. Maybe I should try to find him and—you know what? No.” I looked up to find him looking down at me. “I’m not going to do that. It has to be his choice until it’s not. I’ll give him until tomorrow to be the good guy. If he doesn’t, then I’ll go get him and make him. I can tell by looking at you that you want to have faith in him.”
“You didn’t see him, Dad,” I reiterated. “He wanted this. He was worried about me. He’ll come. He’ll find me.” I hoped. “If what you said is true, then he didn’t choose any of what happened. He’s not a Watson.”
“But he’s lived with them his whole life,” Mom reasoned. “We have no idea the things they’ve done to him, the things they’ve made him do. We have to be cautious. You have to cautious.” She went into the kitchen and I heard a pill bottle shake before she came back. “Here. Take these. They’ll help you sleep tonight. They were Grans,” she said softly.
I ached as the pills went down. I heard Rodney coming in the back door loudly. Dad went right to him and put his hand on his chest to stop him. They whispered back and forth and Rodney looked at me over Dad’s shoulder. Dad wasn’t going to be able to stop him. He didn’t know that, but I did.
“Come on, Dad,” Rodney said gruffly and looked at him right in his face. “Move.”
He pushed his Champion gently in the shoulder and I watched Dad’s stunned face as he watched Rodney come and sweep me up in his big brotherly arms on the couch. He said low in my ear, but I knew that they still could hear, “Tell me who I have to hurt. Who is this guy and why isn’t he here with you right now?”
I looked at Dad and he looked so amused and bemused all at once. He waved me on and leaned his hip against the counter, pulling Mom into the ‘v’ of his legs so he could wrap his arms around her from behind, inching his hand under her shirt to make sure his palm was on her skin. I heard her so sigh loud and hated that I was causing them so much distress.
“Seth,” I explained. “Seth Watson,” I said with as much gumption as I could muster.
His eyes rounded. I told him everything and he tightened his arms on me as he listened.
“Okay,” he said and kicked his shoes off the end of the couch. Mom was two seconds from scolding him when he asked, “So where is he? He should be here.”
Like fate usually worked, there was a knock on the front door. An insistent knock. Dad shot me a look before taking a loaded breath. I started to shake and stood from the couch quickly. It was him; I knew it like I knew my own name.
“Ava, wait,” he told me.
“Dad.”
“You, sit,” he said in his Champion voice. “I’ll answer and let him in. What if the Watsons were planning something and knew you’d run to the door to answer it thinking it was him? We know nothing about him yet. Until we do, we go at this with caution.” I sighed. I hated that I had to look at my significant with anything but reverence, but Daddy was right. I mean, I was the one that had run right out of the coffee shop this afternoon. “I mean it, baby girl,” he said softly.
Rodney turned me to look at him and held my upper arms in his hands. “If he hurts you, I can’t be held accountable for what I do.”
“I love you, you know that?” I replied and reached up on my toes to hug him. I tried to smile, but think I failed epically when he put one arm around my shoulders and tugged me keep me there, as if to shield me from whatever or whoever was coming.
Dad had to know I was anxious—he didn’t make me wait. He went to the door quickly. I could hear them in the other room with deep, urgent tones. My significant.
And then there he was.
Three
Ava, I heard in my mind before his mouth said the word out loud. “Ava.”
“Well,” Dad drawled out—practically growled—and raised an eyebrow at me, letting me know he’d throw him out on his keister if I just gave him the word. It was one of those obviously awkward situations. We all stood in that circle and stared at each other, letting the awkwardness stew and simmer, but all I could do was stare at those blue eyes and wait for him to speak again. “I guess we’ll…let you talk for a minute.” Dad stepped in front of me to block Seth’s view and said in a lower voice, “But we won’t be far. At all.”
He, Mom, and Rodney stepped to the side of the room to stand at the breakfast bar. I stayed where I was standing in front of the couch and Seth made no move to come closer. He kept his eyes on me and never looked over to my parents. I wondered about that, but not enough to really care.
He stuck his hands in his pockets and licked his lips once before asking, “So you’re in college?” I felt a scoffing, silly laugh bubbling up before I could stop it. He smiled just a little. “What?”
“That’s what you chose to open with? Of all the opening lines you could have used?” I bit into my lip to stop my smile.
His grin widened and he shrugged. “You’re right. That was kind of toolish. How about a do over?” I watched his throat work through a gulp. “I’ve done nothing but worry about you all afternoon, ever since I watched you leave and I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again. I know that this whole…” he swung his hand out between us, “Romeo and Juliet thing we’ve got working for us is pretty ridiculous, but I’m not going to let that stand in my way. I’m really hoping you aren’t going to let it stand in yours. Say that you won’t, Ava. Before we go any further, say you’re at least going to—”
“Try?” I tried to keep my breathing to a minimum after that speech. My parents were present, after all. What could I say after that turn around? “I’m going to try,” I assured and swallowed thickly. “And yes, I’m in college. Architecture,” I breathed.
“Architecture,” he repeated and smiled. He looked almost—proud. But how could that be when he didn’t even know me? “Wow, that’s amazing. You have to be smart to handle all the work of that major.” I nodded. He took a small step forward. “And dedicated and—I’m sure you know all that. I think that’s awesome.” I felt my cheeks heat a little. “And you work, too? It’s really impressive that you’re juggling it all.” I felt my brow bunch before I remembered telling him I was late for work at the coffee shop and that’s why I had to leave.
“And my grade point average is way up there, too.” He smiled, seeing where I was going with it.
“Okay, enough grilling you about school.” He took another step forward, his hands still in his pockets, but his smile was wide open.
“What about you?” I asked, though I remembered his shirt and the firefighter emblem on it.
“I got my associates degree in business because that’s what my family wanted, but I knew I’d never use it. I knew I was going to be a firefighter from the time I turned eight years old.”
“Scary job, isn’t it?”
He shrugged, bringing one of his hands out of his pocket. His hand caught on the fabric of his shirt in doing so and his shirt rode up his s
tomach a bit before falling back into place. His thumb rubbed against his lip as he prepared to speak. It was so distracting that I just stared at him doing that while he talked. “It can be. But as long as you know what you’re doing and don’t get cocky, you’ll be fine.”
Somehow, I didn’t believe him, but believing that he wasn’t cocky to some degree was also unbelievable in its own right.
His slight chuckle brought me out of my reverie. I stopped looking at his mouth to find his eyes laughing and bright. He smiled, letting his chin fall a bit. I knew he was laughing at me—in that caught you looking kinda way. I finally stopped looking at that mouth and looked at my feet. I felt my own lips lift in a grin.
I managed to say, “I don’t believe you.”
“What?” he said, completely confused.
“I said, I don’t believe you.”
“I heard you,” he replied with mirth and took a step closer. “I just don’t know in what context you mean.”
“You said being a fireman was safe like someone would say a trip to the grocery store was fun,” he puffed a laugh, “and I know it’s not quite as simple as that.”
His eyes moved over my face, looking for something, or maybe just learning me as I was trying to learn him—one of us starting on the inside while the other, the outside. We’d trade places soon enough, I was sure of it. They moved to my neck and then back up. I was shocked that he hadn’t done a complete once-over. I knew he wanted to. Was it because my parents were still here or because he knew I was watching him do his inspection?
His lip quirked and, oh, it was maddening in the most delicious way.
He said softly, “You don’t have to worry about me, if that’s what these questions are for.” He smiled a little wider. “I have a great team of guys I work with that don’t play around…when it comes to the job.”
I saw a flash of a big white sheet, him—no shirt, no shoes, laying on the bed, being tossed into the air by big men while in a dead sleep. I jolted a little at seeing something in my mind that didn’t belong there. It was a prank…
