Roam (Roam Series, Book One)

by Stedronsky, Kimberly

  Visions of him kissing me- my pregnant belly, in my life now, flooded my veins with heat. “But I’m marrying Logan,” I said, and then immediately wished my words back.

  “Marrying him, huh?” He sounded almost amused.

  “Yes, and I…West,” I sat up, looking at my arm. “The mirrors. I couldn’t know there was a significance in the mirrors until they were somewhere out of place, like a forest. The numbers, reflected in a mirror, are upside down and backwards. Wouldn’t that create an entirely new set of coordinates?”

  He almost knocked me off the couch, reaching for his laptop. “I tried the longitude and latitude reversed, but not the actual digits reversed,” he murmured, going to Google Maps. “Read me the numbers, right to left.”

  I did. He punched it in, adding decimal points. “The White Sea. In Russia,” he murmured, typing furiously. “Near Severodvinsk.”

  “Didn’t Stalin have that city built to support his naval ship-building program? In the 1930s?”

  He turned to me, shocked- and proud. “You don’t need my class, Roam.”

  “Tell that to Yale,” I mumbled, leaning in toward his Dell. I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose. “The coordinates are in the middle of the sea. Do you suggest we fly to Russia, charter a boat, and sail to the coordinates?”

  He was deep in thought. “We don’t even know what we’re looking for, or if we’re right. The coordinates aren’t always spot-on; they just indicate a general area. I don’t know the logic behind them.”

  “I think the answer- the door- is in Russia. And I think we have to go there.”

  He considered my suggestion. “You’re underage. We’d have to wait until July.”

  “That’s almost a year away! What if…,”

  “Roam. “

  “I’ll convince my dad that this is an educational trip.”

  “Do you even have a passport?”

  “Yes- my dad got us all one to visit Niagara Falls.”

  “I’d have to expedite… or fabricate… tourist visas. Let me think,” he ordered. I sat back, quiet.

  Watching him think, I reflected on the past few days. I’d only known him since Monday, and in less than four days, I felt like I knew him more intimately than I knew Logan. I trusted him, and my sensible self resisted the notion that I would trust a complete stranger. At my very darkest time last night, in my dream, I screamed for him, not Logan, not anyone else.

  Maybe the dreams are meant to accelerate my feelings for him. The vivid kisses, the clear emotions… I watched him as he scratched his chin, concentrating on the laptop screen. Knowing more about our history- our lives- made him even more attractive to me.

  If it was not for his resolve to find another way, I may have already fallen for him. I let myself daydream about a potential life with him- only for an indulgent minute. I pictured a child, with his sandy-blonde hair and my green eyes.

  “In any life, was our child born?” I asked.

  He turned to me. I could tell this was another unexpected question. “No.”

  “Do you think I would have a boy or a girl? Is the sex of the child part of the prophecy?”

  He sat back against the couch, gazing at me. “I don’t know if you’d have a boy or a girl. That isn’t part of the prophecy.”

  “Do you have any children?” I asked, the thought occurring to me for the first time.

  He spoke softly. “Yes. A daughter. She was four months old when I left, in 1995.”

  “What?” I gaped at him. “She’s- she’s my age?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Violet.”

  Irrational jealousy washed over me. “And her mother’s name?”

  “Laurel.”

  “And Laurel is the reason you want to save the world? You want to be with her? Even though she’s seventeen years older?” I was achieving the same level of ‘shrieky’ that I had in the car with Logan yesterday.

  “It used to be,” he said, his mouth set in a stoic line.

  “What does that mean?” I demanded, rising to my feet.

  He stood up, towering over me. I looked up at him, my hands balled in stubborn fists. “Why are you upset?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper.

  I stared at him, wide-eyed. “I don’t understand why, I just am,” I confessed. “And I’m jealous for some stupid reason that I- I can’t figure out. And I…,”

  “Our destiny- our fates- are designed to form a bond. It is chemical, pre-determined. Nothing can stop it. Nothing but you and I.”

  I stared at him. “And you want to stop it.”

  “Nothing good comes of us, Roam.”

  “You’ve seen some horrifying things,” I realized, reaching for him. He took a step backward, but I followed, wrapping my arms around his waist and pressing the side of my cheek to his chest. “It’s been awful for you.”

  He tentatively touched my hair, and then wrapped his arms around me. “It has for you, too. You just don’t remember.”

  “I wish you had that,” I consoled, pressing my palms against his back. “An eraser for all the bad things.”

  “I won’t let this fate change what you and Logan have,” he murmured, his hands resting, still on my back. “What you have is real. What we have- is dark,” he lowered his lips to my hair, pressing them softly.

  I lifted my face, looking through my glasses into his eyes. “So, you feel the same about me?” I knew I sounded like a needy, teen-aged girl, but my ego was balancing on a steep ravine.

  “I do, which is why I am not touching you- remember?” He gave me a jovial squeeze before stepping back, brushing his hand through his hair.

  I nodded, feeling a little better about myself. “Will you tell me about all of our lives? And your life with Laurel?”

  “I will, but not now.” By his tone, I relayed that the subject was closed. I realized another question that I hadn’t asked.

  “If we… find this door, and we move through the door to another life, how will we change things? If we failed the first time, what makes us think we’ll succeed the second? What is the- plan?” I finished lamely, for lack of a better word.

  He sighed. “It depends on the time. I want to save you. I plan to hide you and our child away.”

  “Forever?” I shook my head. “What will become of… us? In this life?”

  “I don’t know.” He admitted.

  “And what if we get in a boat and travel out into the middle of the White Sea, and find absolutely nothing?”

  He shrugged. “Then, we think of something else.”

  I knew he meant the only other alternative, the one we had failed at time and time again. I thought about Troy, and his frightening laugh. Shivering, I took a deep breath.

  “Can you shoot an immortal?”

  To my surprise, he nodded. “You can shoot, stab, burn, decapitate, dismember- I could go on, but I can see you’re disturbed.” He looked down at the carpet. “But- we will not die. We can feel pain, though, if you wound us- enough. We’ll take a shorter time than mortals do to restore to full health.” He looked far away in thought, and I remembered that he burned in his own bed. I can’t imagine the pain of burning. “You can trap an immortal- they have no special powers. But the only way to make them mortal is to fulfill the prophecy that they have been given.”

  “And Troy? If he succeeds in killing me- or our child- this one last time, then he is mortal?”

  “Yes. But if the world ends, then not for long, I guess,” he skipped through pages on the internet, and I saw that he was looking at airline tickets.

  Realization hit me suddenly. “You can’t go without me!” I cried, gesturing to the screen.

  “I won’t let you experience death, Roam. I’ll go, and if I find this door, I’ll find a way to save you.”

  “Was this your plan all along?” I demanded. “To find me, let me be tortured every single night by nightmares so you can find your door?”

  “You are exhausting.” He
snapped the laptop closed, shrugging. “I don’t know anything for certain. I know that we can move through time, and only you have the answer as to how. And as far as planning all along to use you for information- I think you know better than that.” He narrowed his eyes. “Your life is all that I care about. I have so many more obstacles in this life to overcome than I ever have. For one, you’re only seventeen.” He gestured toward me.

  “I know, I’m young, whatever. But I’m a thousand times more intelligent than half of the adult population, and I think you know that.”

  He smirked. “I think you’re right about the numbers in the mirror. As far as a “plan…,” he slid my glasses back up the bridge of my nose, meeting my eyes. “I’m still working that one out.” He lifted his eyes expectantly. “What I do know is that you need to eat breakfast.” He finished, pointing to the kitchen.

  I clenched my fists at my sides. “I am going with you. If you disappear, I will know, and I’ll hitchhike my way to Russia.”

  He smirked, walking past me to the refrigerator. “Cereal or pancakes?”

  “Ugh!” I groaned, exasperated. “Toast.”

  “Of course,” he murmured, still grinning.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Are you feeling up to learning some self defense? We’ll just start with something simple,” West said.

  “I’m okay. I’ll put my contacts in first, though. Let’s go down in the basement- more space and I need to throw these sheets in the washing machine.”

  I went upstairs and put my contacts in my eyes, leaving my glasses on the bathroom sink. He had headed down the stairs with the hamper. When I met him in the basement, he was looking around approvingly.

  The basement floor was concrete, but covered from wall to wall with a gray padded mat. A weight bench, elliptical, punching bag, and treadmill lined the walls. Small, rectangular windows at grass-level let plenty of sunshine in to brighten the basement.

  “Roam, you have an entire gym down here. And you don’t ever use it? You’re in good shape,” He assessed me with a head-to-toe glance. I tugged on my shirt, insecure with his evaluation.

  “I study- a lot. And I prefer the pool. Swimming uses so many muscles. Morgan uses the stuff down here, and my dad used to. But we’re all so busy now…,”

  “This is exactly what we need,” West dropped the hamper by the washing machine, taking a punch at the bag suspended from the ceiling. “Okay, get the washing machine going, and then come here.”

  I nodded, turning on the water and spraying stain treatment on the sheets. “West?”

  “Hmn?” He adjusted the punching bag an inch lower.

  “I’m not… due… and the bleeding stopped. Did I bleed because of the dream?”

  My voice was barely audible over the loud washing machine. He turned to me, compassion in his eyes. “You will have physical reactions to the dreams.”

  I flushed, embarrassed. “Great.”

  “The Soul Alter will have them too. Dreams,” he clarified. I lifted my eyes from the sheets.

  “Really?”

  “They are just as vivid and convincing.” He rolled up his sleeves. “You once said they were more like hallucinations. Yours are to give you insight into our relationship, and the past… his are to convince him to want to kill you.”

  I gripped the washing machine for support. “I feel like Alice in Wonderland. Alice in Really Crappy Wonderland,” I slammed the lid of the washer, brushing the water off my hands on the back of my yoga pants.

  When I turned to him, he was staring at me. “Come here, Alice.”

  I rolled my eyes but couldn’t help a giggle from escaping. “What am I going to learn first?”

  “Let’s start with the other day, at the football field. I grabbed you from behind.” West walked behind me, wrapping his arms around my chest firmly. I squirmed, trying to buck backwards. “Now, stop doing what you’re doing. He expects that, and if you think about it, you’re only helping him get a better, closer grip on you.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Grab my left wrist,” he took my left hand in his right, “with your left hand, and then jab your right elbow into my ribs.”

  “Left to left, right elbow,” I repeated.

  “Try it.” I did, gently. He nodded.

  “What if you’re in front of me?” I asked.

  “We’re getting there. Now, say I’m trying to grab you or touch you. You do not want that- from anyone, remember?”

  I cocked my head to the side, crossing my arms over my chest. “Are you going to tease me? Are you even qualified to be teaching me this?”

  “You’ve never seen me fight,” he said, his expression grave.

  I straightened. “I don’t want you to touch me,” I repeated, putting my hands up as if to block my body.

  He advanced, and I naturally backed up. He followed me until I was flattened against the stone wall. In one movement, he had both of my hands pinned above my head. I struggled, but his entire body pressed to mine. “Now, you have zero room to counter-attack.” His breath tasted like spearmint against my mouth. I swallowed hard, shaking my head.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I admitted, sounding every bit as helpless as I felt. His eyes were dark, and his breathing was accelerated. I was alarmed by his glare; something about him seemed out of control. I shook my head again frantically, the only part of my body I could move. “West!”

  He dropped me abruptly; I almost fell to the floor. “You don’t want to give your attacker the chance to pin you.” His voice was curt; I hurried to the center of the mat to meet him.

  “Did I make you mad?” I asked, rubbing my wrists where he held them tightly.

  “No.” He held his arms out. “I’m going to come at you again. This time, I want you to stamp on my foot- hard- and then shove my chin back with the palm of your hand, like this.” He pointed at my foot and I stepped on his lightly, and then he grabbed my hand, pulling my arm to meet his chin. “Hard, though. Like you mean it.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “You can’t hurt me. You are a stubborn kid and an easy target for anyone- especially the Alters. Not learning to defend yourself all this time tells me you’re not as smart as you pretend to be. Now hurt me.”

  His words infuriated me. I stomped on his sock as hard as I could, and then thrust my palm upward, sending his neck snapping backwards.

  When he looked back down at me, he was laughing. “That’s more like it. So, the only way to make Roam fight is to insult her intelligence,” he reached for me, but I backed away angrily. “Oh, don’t sulk. Come on.”

  I turned around to head toward the stairs. He came up to me from behind, gripping my chest. I instantly grabbed his wrist- my left to his left- and delivered a powerful elbow to his ribs.

  When I turned around, he was on the floor, holding his side. I sauntered over to him, bending over, face to face with him. My now-dry hair fell over my shoulders in waves. “Do you feel like laughing now?”

  In one move, he had me in his arms, turned over and pinned on my back to the mat. His hands were brutal, gripping my wrists painfully. “What did I tell you about witty banter with the enemy?” he warned. I whined, flexing my fingers.

  “You’re hurting me!”

  “Hurt me back,” he ordered. “Get me off of you.”

  I was pinned. I tried to knee him in the groin, but he only grinned, knocking my knee back down to the mat.

  Finally, I moved my face as close to his as possible, and screamed.

  I screamed until my throat tasted like copper. He was disturbed- I could see beads of sweat break out on his forehead. Finally, he moved his hand to cover my mouth. As soon as he did, I stopped screaming.

  He moved his hand away from my mouth. “This is the part where I would poke you in the eyes. But, I won’t do that.”

  “The screaming is bad enough.” His eyes darted to my lips.

  “I know, torture, screaming.” I gave him a contrived look of pi
ty. “I think you have some PTS.”

  He moved closer, his mouth circling mine. I held my breath, searching his dark eyes. Waves of wanting coursed through me, and I gasped as he moved even closer, his lips barely touching mine.

  Closing my eyes, I reached for his kiss.

  My senses exploded. He groaned, his tongue diving into my mouth again and again. A gentle humming settled in my ears. I writhed beneath him, my eyes filling with tears. They slid down the sides of my face, dripping to the mat. He released my wrists and I wrapped my arms around him, pushing my fingers into his hair. The texture was the same in reality as it was in my dream. I cried out softly, my fingers tensing on his scalp.

  He moved his mouth to my neck, nuzzling, kissing, his tongue touching my skin- just barely. I gasped, shaking my head. This was more than Logan and I had ever done. I tried to convince myself that it was wrong, but his fingertips tracing my inner arm dissolved me into a pool of euphoria.

  “Take me with you,” I begged, gripping his shoulders. “Please don’t go without me.”

  “I will,” he promised, his mouth on mine again. I can’t think- or breathe.

  “I’m so afraid… I don’t want to be away from you,” I whimpered as he kissed my earlobe.

  “Never,” he whispered, his hand sliding down my side, touching the hem of my tee-shirt. I gasped, shaking my head furiously. He ignored me, his hand flattening under my shirt, over my bare stomach.

  Images of the cottage by the beach flooded my mind. Good-morning, baby.

  “So soft,” he murmured, moving his lips to my stomach. I struggled for breath, washed in a drugging mix of sensations.

  The washing machine suddenly stopped agitating, sending the basement into utter quiet. I heard a car door shut and jumped. He must have heard it too; he was off of me in seconds, helping me to my feet.

  “Is it Logan?” I asked, borderline-shrieky.

  He looked out the window toward the driveway. “No, the neighbor.”

  I covered my mouth with both palms, relieved tears blurring my vision. “I can’t believe this! I am a terrible person,” I sank to the floor, burying my face in my hands.