The Space Between (The Book of Phoenix)

by Kristie Cook

  Realization dawned on Jeric’s face.

  “That’s what had you so upset at Denny’s,” Jeric said.

  I grimaced, then nodded. “You could tell?”

  “I felt it,” he said, his eyes soft. “You think you hide your feelings well, but not from me.” His brow lifted. “You give this front of being so laid-back and carefree, but I don’t think that’s the real you.”

  Maybe he didn’t intend for his words to be an accusation, but my body stiffened and my hands signed sharply. “What do you know?”

  He shrugged. “Not a lot, but I know what I saw in your hotel room, when I wouldn’t leave. And I’ve seen other glimpses.”

  “Maybe because you bring the worst out of me,” I snapped.

  “Maybe because I bring out the real you. Because I think that’s the real you. The one who feels and cares and sometimes wants to scream her head off. All those fake smiles you give—you make them look genuinely sweet, but I know they’re not. I think behind all those smiles is a lot of hurt and anger.”

  I inhaled a controlled breath, trying not to reveal how close to home he’d hit. “Who are you and where is Jeric Winters? You’re a guy. You’re you. What makes you think you know anything?”

  “Because I used to know a girl who did the exact same thing. The only other girl I’ve ever loved.” He cringed and dropped his hands for a moment. There were lots of things in that statement I didn’t want to think about and apparently neither did he because he took a step closer to me and continued. “You should be angry right now, Leni. You should be fucking pissed off. You should be throwing things. Punching things. Flipping off the world.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Just because that’s how you deal with life doesn’t mean we all do.”

  His brows raised. “I feel the anger simmering underneath your surface. I feel the real you wanting to break free. As crazy as it sounds, I feel your feelings, Leni. Why don’t you let it out?”

  “What good would it do?” I’d learned at a young age that throwing a tantrum didn’t get you anywhere except in trouble. “Yeah, I do smile through everything whether I feel it or not. Like my mama always said, nobody cares what you really feel. Why bog them down with your troubles? Why bog you down with mine?”

  “Why not?” he countered. “Shit, we’re in this together. And one of these days you’re going to blow up like Mount fucking Saint Helens anyway if you don’t let yourself be you. Try it some time. Try to let all that anger out. I bet you’d like it.”

  I couldn’t help but chuckle. Uncle Theo used to tell me the same thing. He’d hoped I’d find the real me in Italy, and maybe I had, but Mama’s teachings were too ingrained in me. She’d had a way of making sure of that.

  I blew out a sigh and put on the smile that came automatically, then scowled because it did come so automatically. This made Jeric’s lips pull into a crooked grin.

  “That’s improvement,” he signed. “So why didn’t you tell me sooner about all of this? About your parents?”

  “How could I? It’s so messed up.”

  He pointed to his chest covered in little beads of sweat. “Disowned, remember?”

  Right. But, although I’d been worried at first Uncle Theo had told my parents about the club incident and they were disappointed—again—this wasn’t quite the same.

  “They haven’t disowned me. They didn’t say, ‘We don’t like you. Go away.’ They don’t believe I ever even existed. Don’t you see? Everyone who has ever known us has either disappeared or believes we don’t exist. If this goes on, we’ll be like Uncle Theo—every government record wiped out, everything we own lost—”

  Jeric stopped me. “Do you have money in the bank?”

  “Yeah. It’s college money, though. Why?”

  “If we don’t get our cash out now, we might not ever.”

  I closed my eyes, wanting to scream and being very tempted to accept Jeric’s challenge to let it all out, because that one statement made it all so real. Old habits die hard, though, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Another dance session would have been better anyway, but I didn’t have time. We had business to take care of. So I counted to ten, stood up and grabbed my gun to put it away and get dressed so we could go to town. Jeric stopped me once again.

  “For the record,” he signed, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything sexier than you in a bikini holding a gun.”

  I shook my head. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Feeling like our lives were slipping between our fingers like sand, we each hurriedly showered and dressed, then rushed to town. I used a check to withdraw all of my money, but Jeric’s bank didn’t have a branch in town, so we drove around to every cash machine we could find, withdrawing the maximum amount until his bank put a stop to it. It was the best we could do, but not bad. I had plenty to live off of for a while, thanks to my side-job at the club—the one that had led Uncle Theo to send me off to Italy when he found out about it.

  While in town, we grabbed some more groceries and Jeric bought more booze, then we headed “home”—the only home either of us had anymore—and sat down to read again.

  At this point, Jacey and Micah seemed to be our only hope for answers.

  Chapter 15

  The phone call, the voice, the birds—they’d all freaked me out. Sammy and I sat in the overgrown grass in front of my building while Micah nailed down the last boards of the deck at the top of the new stairs. My mind chewed on my phone call with Bex and the voice I’d heard afterward as fervently as Sammy gnawed on his rawhide bone. How could my best friend possibly forget who I was? We’d talked to each other only five days ago when she’d offered to come down here with me. And now she denied knowing me? The voice in the bushes was wrong—Bex must have been on something. She had no problem experimenting with drugs. I needed to get her out of that lifestyle.

  Unfortunately, I had my own troubles to straighten out here, and not only this Twin Flames predicament.

  “Stairs are done,” Micah announced as he bounded down them and over to me.

  “Bravo,” I said with only a hint of sarcasm that he met with his irresistible smile. I hadn’t seen those dimples since yesterday, and they got to me again.

  He dropped to his butt next to me, and we both studied his handiwork.

  “So do I have a job?” he asked.

  My smile morphed into a grimace as I let out a sigh. “I don’t know what to do. We have this . . . whatever it is with you and me . . . to figure out, but I really need to get back north. I think something’s wrong with Bex.”

  “The phone call?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mmm.” He nodded, then he cocked his head as he looked at me. “Can I show you something before you make up your mind?”

  His dark eyes glinted with mischief, making me a little nervous. “I guess . . .”

  He lifted his chin toward the front of the building. “I was peeking in the windows to get an idea of what all needs to be done. I wanted to be sure I could handle the job.”

  “Buck wouldn’t have called if you couldn’t,” I scoffed.

  He tugged at his ear before saying, “Buck didn’t call me.”

  “But . . . then how did you know?”

  “It’s a small town. I heard the owner might want to fix the place up. Not normally my type of job, but for some reason, I felt the need to check it out.”

  “Hmph. ‘Some reason’?” Some reason seemed to be ruling my life, and intuition told me our matching tattoos and Twin Flames triggered all these inexplicable motives.

  “Yeah, well . . .” Micah cleared his throat. “Anyway, did you wonder why the bottom units are long and narrow and the top units are wider?”

  “Not really,” I admitted. “I thought they just looked bigger upstairs because of the arrangement.”
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br />   “Usually, all the wet areas—your kitchens and bathrooms—line up to keep the plumbing close together. You know how units in hotel or apartment buildings are mirror images of each other? It’s so there’s less pipe to run. The same walls are used all the way up the structure.”

  “Except in mine.”

  “Right. Even if there were a firewall between each side, it would only make sense for all the plumbing to be in the rear, like with the top two units. But the lower two have the plumbing on the interior wall.”

  “Okay. So there’s no firewall between the sides?” I still wasn’t sure where he headed with all of this construction mumbo-jumbo.

  “Jacey, the downstairs units don’t share an interior wall at all. They’re too narrow.”

  “What?” Why hadn’t I noticed? I stared hard at the building, as if it had done something to offend me. “So there’s a space between them?”

  “Exactly. And not a small one. At least six feet wide, and the entire length of the building.”

  I rose to my feet, walked over to the left window and peered inside, then looked through the right window. Then I eyed the front of the building. No way did those two walls butt against each other, and there was definitely quite a bit of area between the two.

  “Well, why would they do such a thing? Why make the units smaller than necessary?”

  “Good question,” Micah said from right next to me. “And why is there plumbing on those interior walls?”

  “Does it matter? I mean, does it affect the building? Is this another thing I have to fix?”

  “Probably not. But you might be able to add a laundry room, which will increase the value of this place. You don’t even need to put the machines in. We just need to put a door in the back, and put in the plumbing and electrical, which shouldn’t be difficult. Looks like there could be room for storage, too, like for bikes or beach chairs. Also more value to the place.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know.” I pushed my hands through my hair. “Sounds like a lot of work, and this whole building needs so much already. I have no clue if it’s worth it.” Which reminded me—I’d been here nearly two days and still hadn’t contacted another real estate agent for a second opinion.

  “Oh, it’s definitely worth it.”

  I snickered. “Of course you’d say that since you want me to hire you.”

  His shoulder lifted and dropped. “Whether you use me or someone else, you’ll triple the value of the place.”

  I pulled back at this. “No way! You really think it’s worth that much? If it were your decision, what would you do?”

  He stroked his chin as he studied the front of the building. “Yeah. Even if I had to pay someone else, it’d be more than worth it. From what I’ve heard from the locals around here, a place like this, all fixed up and ready to rent, you’d make out whether you sold it or kept it. You could easily make a few grand a month renting out the units.”

  “A few grand a month? Who would pay that for a measly room?”

  “Tourists. $300 a week per unit, no problem.”

  “Wow,” I breathed, looking at Pops’ gift with a whole new appreciation. “Buck never mentioned this.”

  “Why would he? He doesn’t make commission if you don’t sell it.”

  So Buck’s so-called promise to Pops was really just about the potential to make a higher commission. And to shovel more work to his brother. I knew I couldn’t trust him, the conniving scumbag.

  A jolt rushed through my hand and arm, jerking me out of my anger at the skeevy salesman. I pulled my hand up to find it enclosed in Micah’s, and a thrill swirled in my belly. His face flashed with something unreadable, but then he began tugging me toward the rear of the building.

  “Let’s at least see if we can figure out the mystery,” he said.

  “Which one?” I muttered, looking down at our clasped hands, and then I stopped, pulling Micah to a halt, too. I lifted our arms, pressed my forearm against his and gasped. “Dude! Check it out.”

  With our wrists smashed together, the bases of the flames nearly touched, and they resembled fiery wings of a bird.

  Micah’s fingers sprang open as he tried to release my hand. I squeezed his harder.

  “You promised you wouldn’t bail,” I said, looking into his eyes.

  They flickered between anxiety and ease before he narrowed them. “You were the one just talking about leaving.”

  I had, but when he said it like this, my insides compressed into a tight little ball, and once again, I plunged into the depths of his mocha eyes. My stomach dropped and my heart sped at a gallop as the part of me that was not my physical self wrapped around him, blended into him, clung to his every fiber. Our eyes still locked, I felt him—some part of him—reach into me, too, fortifying the diaphanous cloth our souls had woven together.

  “I . . . I don’t think I can leave you either,” I finally said in a hoarse whisper. I licked my lips, and my bottom lip caught between my teeth.

  “Dammit, Jacey,” Micah grumbled as his free hand wrapped around the back of my head, and he pushed me against the building wall with his body.

  He didn’t hesitate this time. He didn’t ask. He dove down and delivered a soft kiss that rapidly became urgent. His tongue slid over his lips, and I parted mine, welcoming him in, pulling him in, wanting every bit of him inside me. He extracted his hand from mine only to clamp it onto my waist while deepening the kiss even more. Our lips and tongues danced together as he kissed me in a way I’d never been kissed before. An exciting thrill vibrated through my body, making my breasts tight and hard and my thighs clench.

  His hand slid over my jeans to my ass, and he lifted me, putting me at eye level so he wouldn’t have to crouch. I wrapped my legs around his waist, and he pressed harder against me. We moaned into each other when his erection throbbed between my legs. My heart pounded, and my belly quivered as butterflies danced inside.

  I swear my soul was dancing, too. I’d never felt such joy, such elation, such emotional bliss. Every part of my being, physical and otherwise, wanted this. Wanted us completely and totally together in every sense of the word. Wanted him. Micah. My other half.

  My mind pricked at this. Okay, maybe my brain didn’t want it. At least, not yet.

  “Micah,” I panted against his lips. “Too . . . fast.”

  He didn’t stop kissing me.

  “Please . . . Micah.” I placed my hand on his hard chest. I didn’t push, but I did press. “Slow. Please.”

  He did slow the kiss down and eventually pulled away enough to look at me. His brown eyes smoldered with heated desire, sending another thrill through me. My throat worked to swallow.

  “Um . . .” I gave him a weak smile. “We’re moving a little fast.”

  He returned my smile, dimples and all. When he spoke, his voice came out husky. “I can’t help it. You . . . if you had any idea what you do to me . . .”

  He kissed each corner of my mouth.

  “I know,” I said, closing my eyes as a new wave of desire rushed through me. I forced my eyes open and squirmed against him. “You do it to me, too. But, this is all . . . just . . .”

  He grazed his teeth over my bottom lip then pressed his forehead against mine. “Too much. I know.”

  His hands grasped my hips, and he took a step back. Reluctantly, I unglued my legs from around his waist so he could set me on my feet. My knees nearly gave out, and I stumbled. Micah caught me with a chuckle, making me blush.

  “Wow, a little light-headed,” I mumbled.

  “Mm-hmm.” His lips danced with a teasing smile.

  I blushed harder. “I haven’t eaten anything today.”

  He nodded. “I’m sure that’s what it is.” He winked at me, then took my hand. “I’ll take you to lunch, and the library, but first, what we were
doing before . . . before you did that thing you did to me.”

  I smiled as I followed him around the corner. “And what did I do to you exactly?”

  “We’ll just say you found my soft spot.”

  “It felt pretty hard to me.”

  He laughed, then shook his head. “See? That. That’s what you do to me.”

  “Ah, smart-ass, ex-punk girl makes tough Marine a little soft?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Oh, so any girl does?” My elation dropped a few levels.

  He stopped and turned his full burning gaze on me. “No, only smart-ass, ex-punk girls named Jacey, who has managed to make me nearly lose control as I’ve never done before.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Please don’t try to convince me you’re a virgin. I’ll never buy it.”

  “Of course not.” He pulled me closer to him, our bodies nearly touching again. “But I’ve always been in control of the situation. I’ve always known what I was doing. With you . . . it’s one surprise after another. Half the time, I have no clue what I’m doing. And even though I sometimes think I’m losing my mind, I can’t say I don’t like it. Which is the biggest shock of all.”

  His eyes flashed, his hand dropped mine, and he walked off, as if afraid of what he’d admitted.

  “So you’re a control freak,” I said as we stepped up to the center of the building’s rear wall.

  “A self-control freak,” he corrected as he squatted down to inspect where the building’s siding met the concrete foundation.

  The way he’d ordered me around earlier and became so overprotective, I wanted to argue the point, but didn’t.

  “So is being a self-control freak why you went into the Marines, or are you like that because you’re a Marine?”

  “I grew up in foster homes, bouncing around from one shithole to another, most people only taking me for the state aid money.” His fingers grasped onto an edge of the siding, and he yanked. The aluminum protested loudly before pulling away from the building. “The few I actually liked either had kids of their own and decided they couldn’t foster anymore, or had other issues, and I was pulled out and placed into hell. My childhood was chaos.” He pulled on another piece of siding and dragged it back. “I couldn’t wait for the day I could take control of my own life. My last foster mother was pretty cool. I still talk to her now and then. But I enlisted on my eighteenth birthday. And yeah, the Marines helped me learn the control I wanted so badly.”