Roam (Roam Series, Book One)

by Stedronsky, Kimberly

  “So you took the numbers with you? They didn’t erase as you traveled?”

  “No. And they were the same coordinates I have right now. For Russia.”

  Our food arrived, and we ate in silence. I wanted Logan to go on, but intuition gave me pause. His face in my nightmare, pinning me to the wall, forced me to drop my fork and leave my salad untouched.

  “You need to eat, Cam,” He brushed his fingers over my hair softly. “We don’t know what we’re walking into. Troy may have traveled there already.”

  The mention of Troy’s name did nothing for my appetite. “Logan, I’m not hungry.”

  “Eat, Roam,” West ordered, shifting our luggage out of the way of a passing customer.

  I met his eyes and picked up my fork, spearing a cucumber slice.

  Logan watched us both, and I felt the first hint of suspicion in his gaze. “What did the two of you do while you were gone?” he fired, looking first at West, and then to me.

  I felt the heat creeping up my collar and swallowed hard, holding my breath as West spoke. “I filled her in on the past, and helped her through nightmares about you raping and killing her.”

  Logan almost knocked the table over as he stood, and I threw myself in front of him. Several patrons turned to stare at us. “Stop! Please don’t make a scene Logan, please,” I begged, looking around anxiously. “Please,” I whispered.

  His fists clenched, and West only sat and stared at him coolly. “I’m not going to fight you, Logan. I’m just stating the facts. You’ve had the nightmares, you know what she’s dealing with.”

  “Let’s just get out of here and make a plan,” I looked to West, who nodded. “Are we going to where Logan is staying, or…,”

  “Look at the way you trust him,” Logan growled under his breath, and I turned to him, shocked. “I’ve known you all your life, and now you don’t trust me because of some dreams?” He stormed out of the restaurant. West and I followed after dropping more than enough money on the table to cover the meals.

  Outside, I found Logan in the shades of dusk, walking briskly ahead about a block away. I ran to catch him, leaving West to deal with our bags. “Logan, stop!” He finally did, just inside an alley void of people passing by. I brushed my windblown hair from my eyes, gasping from the short run. My lungs were still not one hundred percent better, and my thin breaths reminded me that I had drowned only days before. “I just- I’m so confused and scared right now, and I… I know that over all of these lifetimes, West has been protecting me.”

  “Not on April 14, 1977,” Logan’s hands gripped my forearms, and I widened my eyes. “Did he tell you what happened in the hotel room, how you died?”

  “I was strangled,” I said, tears threatening. “I know, he told me.”

  “He told you that he strangled you himself? That West, all jacked up on coke or something, beat the shit out of you and strangled you?”

  The sounds of the busy street screamed to a whirring halt. I processed his words as West caught up to us. My heart depressed against my chest, seeming to forget how to beat. I looked at the man I’d fallen in love with and trusted implacably over the past two weeks, the man I’d voluntarily given myself to in every way, as his dark eyes met mine.

  It was true.

  “I watched it happen. I didn’t know it was you until you were… gone. You were blonde, and looked older… He was so angry with you, and punched you…,”

  “Enough!” West raged, looking fiercely at Logan.

  The drone of the passing traffic became a whisper as the darkness crept over my eyes. I welcomed the blackness.

  “What did you do!?”

  I feel the back of my head slam against the wall, the impact sending lightening-pain through my forehead and eyes.

  West is bare-chested, his face unshaven. He is seething with anger, the wrath lowering his voice several octaves.

  “West?” I cry, shaking my head. He tips his head back, taking a long gulp from a flask. He wipes the back of his mouth, drooling disgustingly.

  “You killed it,” he growls, menacing.

  “Killed what?” I sob, confused. What year is this? Where is my mirror?

  “The baby,” he hisses. He pulls his fist back and delivers a powerful blow to my face. My nose feels like it explodes.

  I drop to my knees in pain. He grabs me by the hair, wrenching my face up to look at him.

  “You had it cut out of you and left it to die in some alley,” he grips my throat, squeezing. I gag, feeling his fingers crushing my windpipe.

  I cannot breathe. I am dying.

  “She’s still not breathing- she never stops this long!” Logan shouted, the sound of his voice canned and far away.

  “No- she is- she’s coming around,” West’s voice, urgent.

  I opened my eyes, blinking and focusing on West. Fear, the same cold fear that I discerned in his classroom on the first day of school, rushed through me with burning awareness. I sat up and screamed, pushing his arms away. “No! No…,”

  “Shh,” he murmured, his hands running over my hair. “Roam…,”

  “No! I remember,” I slapped his face with my closed fist, the strength of his jaw sending shooting pains through my fingers. “Oh!”

  “Stop it!” He gripped my hands, pinning them. “Logan, get some ice…,”

  “I can’t believe you lied to me! I trusted you!” I managed to stop talking, focusing on Logan as he rushed to a mini-fridge. My eyes darted to my surroundings- a hotel room, lower class.

  “I blamed myself, I suspected that I’d done it, but I was never sure,” he murmured, forcing me into his arms. “I’m so sorry, Roam,” he whispered against my ear, so only I could make out his words.

  “No,” I sobbed, shaking my head against his neck. My rationalization for being with West instead of Logan was that Logan possessed a capability, within his soul, to kill me. Now, that logic was negated, and guilt, disappointment, and fear tumbled through my mind.

  “Give me your hand,” Logan took my outstretched palm, wrapping ice in a towel around it. “You may have broken it. I can’t say it wasn’t completely worth it, though,” he added, giving West a revolted glare.

  West ignored him, pulling my fingers out flat and then curling them into a fist again. “It’s not broken. Just don’t punch anything anymore- especially me. I’m immortal, remember? Punching is not effective.”

  “You feel pain,” I scorned, backing away from him. “And if I can’t trap you, I may as well punch you until my hand breaks.”

  West’s eyes, haunted, turned toward the window. “I deserve that.”

  “They can be trapped?” Logan interrupted, dropping the remaining ice into the sink. West and I turned his way. “Immortals can be ‘trapped?’ What does that mean?”

  “It means they can be trapped. Just not killed.” West dropped my furled hand to the bedspread.

  “Then why couldn’t we lure Troy through the fountain, and trap him in 1977?”

  “How would we do that?” I asked, flexing my fingers carefully.

  “We destroy the door- we destroy the fountain.”

  “You’re suggesting we- what, blow up the fountain?” West stood up and began to pace. “How?”

  “We get the material- explosives, bombs- from 1977, and we use it now. We carry it through without leaving a trail of evidence. If we bought a bunch of explosives now, and then a famous Russian fountain was blown up days later, we’d be caught for sure. But if we get the materials from the past…,”

  “This may work,” West rushed to his carry-on, removing his laptop.

  I stood up and crossed the hotel room toward the bathroom. Once inside, I closed and locked the door. The mirror reflected a girl that I didn’t recognize, even though it was present day and nothing about me had changed, physically. I touched Logan’s razor, still damp from use that morning, and ran my fingers along his toothbrush handle, remembering our race to lose teeth for the tooth fairy in first grade.

  I sat on the cl
osed commode, burying my face in my hands. I could hold West’s actions against him no more than I could blame Logan for his past lives. Imagining a life without Logan was impossible. I loved both of them for different reasons, but I didn’t know who to trust anymore.

  Troy’s face, his murderous eyes as he held me under the water, flashed through my mind. I struggled to breathe, staring at the shower curtain and pulling in shaky breaths through my nose and out of my mouth. I needed to feel confident that I could fight him, that I could win, before I saw him again. Fainting in fear was not an option.

  I heard them both talking about explosives, the faint clicking of West’s keyboard sounding under the doorway. Blowing up the Peterhof Fountains? I shook my head disgustedly. There was no way we were going to do that.

  A soft knock jolted me out of my stupor. “Just checking on you, Cam,” Logan’s voice called.

  “If the fountain is a wormhole or something through time, blowing up the physical features around it will not make it disappear,” I said through the wall. Silence answered me. I moved to the bathroom door, unlocking it and pulling it open. They both stared at me. I brushed away a wayward strand of hair, standing up straighter. “If it’s the water that has the time travel capabilities, which I think that it is, we have to make sure they drain the fountains.”

  “She’s right.” West closed the laptop, crossing his arms and sitting back on the bed. “Go on.”

  “The water drains to the Gulf of Finland. Between 1941 and 1944, Peterhof was captured by the Germans. At that time, many of the fountains were damaged or destroyed.”

  “You’re thinking that if we can at least use explosives to damage them, they will drain the fountains and begin restoration- like they did in the forties,” West said softly, his eyes searching mine. I longed to be alone with him, to talk to him, to let him convince me that I had nothing to fear.

  “Yes.” I kicked at the bedspread absently with my toe. “This will take money- and knowledge- far beyond what Logan and I have, West. If we do it this way, instead of our original plan, you’ll need to get all the supplies that we need.”

  “The original plan is out of the question,” West snapped, running his hand through his hair.

  Logan’s head turned back and forth between us, turning his palms up to the air, annoyed. “What’s the ‘original’ plan? Care to clue me in?”

  “Use me as bait. Make Troy think he’s killed me- and then hide.”

  “That’s the shittiest plan I ever heard,” Logan grabbed my melting makeshift bag of ice from the bed and tossed it into the sink.

  “It was her plan,” West added, and I glared at him.

  “Seeing as how you had no plan, at least it was a plan!”

  “In what elaborate way would we make him think he’s killed you? Some special poison? Or let him drown you again, hoping I can pump the water out of your lungs one more time? Jesus, Roam.”

  “Oh, yeah, you’re right, let’s blow up the fountain- much better plan!” I shouted sarcastically.

  “Hey, easy Camden. That one was my idea,” Logan raised a dark eyebrow.

  “So, basically, you have no plan, except the same plan you’ve had over and over again- sleep with me, make a child, and let me die!”

  Tears threatened to pour as I shrieked, and West stood up and gathered his laptop, crossing the room to me. Logan stood up when he did, but I held my hand up to him, indicating that he stay where he was.

  He stopped, inches from me, and tilted my chin up so I had no choice but to look into his eyes. My heart pounded at the current between us, and I shivered.

  “My “plan” has been the same as it always has been since I discovered I had a second chance. I would go back to whatever life I could and I would save you- alone.”

  With that, he brushed past me and out the door.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Silence hung in the hotel room. The moment West left, I felt the urgency to go and find him. I wanted to tell him that I loved him, no matter what he had done in a drunken or drugged haze over thirty years ago. His eyes held so much pain, pain that I only had worsened with my harsh and unforgiving words.

  Logan leaned back on the bed, eyes fixed on the ceiling. “He only went to the lobby. He told me he was going there for better reception. Stop looking so hysterical.”

  I checked myself, resisting the impulse to follow West to the lobby. Grateful to know where he was, I sat on the other queen bed. “I’m not hysterical. I’m just used to him being around. He knows all the answers, and we don’t.”

  “The only thing he knows is that he wants to get his hands on you. Again.”

  “What do you mean again?” I demanded, breaking into a cold sweat.

  “I know you’ve slept with him.”

  My face must have conceded. I tried to turn away, but it was too late- Logan burst to his feet, enraged.

  “I can’t believe you did it! What, he just pitched you some bullshit about your ‘destined souls’ and you jumped into bed with him?”

  “No! It wasn’t like that,” I balled my fists until my fingernails cut the palms of my hands. “We talked, and spent time together, and… Logan, I feel different with him, I just…,”

  “You…,” He stopped inches from the door, turning to me slowly. “You didn’t use anything, did you. Valedictorian, Yale and Princeton fighting over you, and you’re potentially a knocked-up, high-school drop-out. Congratulations.”

  “Screw you, Logan!” I shouted, my chest convulsing as my heart broke. Hearing his words, his ever-sarcastic statement of truth, hurt me in the worst way he ever could in this life.

  He sneered, shrugging and crossing his arms over his chest. “Sure, why not. Are you giving it away now?”

  “I hate you for that!” I gasped a sob. He rushed to me so quickly that I barely had time to back up. Pinned between him and the wall, his dark eyes, the same caramel gaze I’d known my entire life, blazed down at me in rage.

  Take her now. Troy’s menacing growl slithered through my memory as Logan’s face, so close to mine, reminded me of the terrible nightmare in the dungeon.

  Gasping, I stomped my right foot down as hard as I could on his shoe. As he instinctively moved backwards, I shoved my palm straight up into his chin, knocking him back another foot or more.

  I ran for the door, almost making it to the handle before Logan’s arm was around my waist. I tried to scream, but his hand clamped down over my lips. In seconds he had me on the bed, holding me beneath him.

  “I’m not going to hurt you! Stop!” He pulled his hand away from my mouth. When I focused on him, he was not the evil, soulless man in my horrible nightmare.

  He was Logan Robert Rush, the boy I built forts with in the woods… the teenager who awkwardly tried to kiss me on New Year’s Eve… the man who promised to always protect me, no matter what.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I cried, tears slipping down my face to the pillow. He bent to kiss my forehead, tentatively at first, and then both cheeks as I sobbed. “I’m sorry I hurt you Logan,” I whispered, so ashamed with myself I could barely form words.

  He said nothing, only pressed his lips to mine. I tried to unfold into his kiss, wrapping my arms around him. Him, his touch, the taste of his lips… every part of him in this intimate way felt unfamiliar to my senses. He was trying too; I could feel his over-compensation as his tongue dove into my mouth.

  Finally, he pulled away.

  “I think we’re… we’re done, Roam.” He sat up, and I struggled for breath as his eyes filled with tears. “I can’t be with you.”

  “Logan,” I shook my head, brushing at my tears with the back of my hand.

  He began packing items into his carry-on bag. I sat on the edge of the bed, watching as my shoulders shook with the enormous weight of my tears. “What about… everything? What about the fountains?” I managed brokenly.

  He zipped his bag, moving it to the carpet. “You two are on your own. Maybe going to boot camp and dreaming ab
out murdering you every night is just what I need to get over you.”

  I couldn’t respond; the thought of him leaving was so devastating that I could only sit and cry. I felt his lips on the top of my head, and his hands smooth my hair, before the heavy snap of the hotel room door.

  I shivered, somehow moving to lie down on the bed. The ache in my heart was tangible; my temples throbbed. Burying my face into the pillow, I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed for sleep.

  Hours later, I woke to West’s voice. He was speaking on the phone. I tried to muster up the strength to care, but instead drifted back to a welcoming, dismal abyss.

  For a few peaceful moments, as I began to wake, I had no idea where I was. The room was dark and cool, and only the glowing red, digital clock offered light. The events of the past weeks came rushing to me in one sickening jolt. I turned my head to see West, asleep next to me, his fingers only inches from my hand on the pillow as if he’d been holding it.

  I’m in Russia… and Logan is gone. My eyes burned from the massive amount of crying I’d done. I turned to my back and stared at the ceiling, trying to organize my rapid fire emotions as they surfaced, one by one. I refuse to cry any more, I decided first, anger burning my thoughts. I am not a victim; I am a participant.

  “West- West, wake up,” I nudged him. He sat up quickly, looking around. “What are we doing first?” I demanded, my voice lower and hoarse. I needed to know what to expect; I feared the unknown more than I feared the past.

  He moved closer, cupping my face in his palm. His shadowed face hovered over mine “First, I need you to forgive me. Please,” he whispered against my lips. I nodded without hesitation, and he lowered his lips to mine, kissing me slowly and languidly. Wrapping my arms around him, I pulled him as close as I could.

  After a few moments, he pulled away. I sat up as he did, searching for the clock on the bedside table. Almost five AM. “I never want to talk about it again,” I murmured, into the darkness. “The past is the past. Every life we’ve shared has had a terrible ending. What you did was awful, but you weren’t yourself, I believe that.”