I sat on Aiden’s sofa and stared at my phone, which was sitting on the coffee table. I couldn’t believe she had called me only moments before the time that I thought she was taken. And if that was true, then maybe if I hadn’t been so caught up getting my rocks off with Aiden, I would have been able to save her, instead of just having that stupid vision where I couldn’t do a bloody thing to help her.
“Aww, honey, don’t think like that,” Anna said, walking down the stairs with Dave in tow. Even though I had been led to believe that Dave was Aiden's brother-in-law, looking at him now, it was a wonder I hadn’t seen the similarities between them sooner. They both had the same bone structure and the same dark brown hair, but Dave’s blue eyes threw me. He didn’t share the same hypnotic green eyes that both Anna and Aiden had.
“She’s right. You can’t live your life with ‘what ifs,’” Dave said, before disappearing from sight. “Otherwise, you’ll have a bloody long and depressing life,” he said, ruffling my hair from behind the sofa. I wondered if my eyes would ever be able to follow the speed at which Aiden and his family moved.
“Well, that depends on how we move. You see, if I move really fast, then yes, your eyes will eventually be able to track our movement. But if I teleport, you won’t,” Dave explained as he teleported (I think) so that he was sitting on the opposite side of the sofa.
“Yes, he just teleported.” Anna sat down beside Dave. “But we can talk about that later. Right now, I think there is something a little more important,” she said, looking at my phone.
My stomach started churning at the thought of having to listen to Chelsea’s message again.
“I would tell you to go wait outside while we listen to it, but I know you’ll want to torture yourself some more,” Aiden half-joked as he put his arm around me.
He was right. There was no way that I was going to sit out of this one. Even if it did mean that I was probably going to puke.
With all eyes on me, waiting for me to play the message, I leant forward, dialled through to my voicemail account, and pressed speaker. The voicemail lady said that I had one saved message from today at five thirty a.m.
Moments later, Chelsea’s voice filled the room. “Hey, Jade, I’m guessing you’re a little tied up with that hunk of yours wrapped around you... Oops.” She laughed. “I probably shouldn’t be talking like that anymore, you know, seeing as I have my own man now and all. Or can I still do that? Do you think Ben would get all jealous if he heard me talking like that?” She stopped, probably to ponder the answer to her question.
“Well, seeing as though you’re not answering your phone, I’m gonna come over to yours, ’cause I’ve got some gossip for you…,” she sung before trailing off, probably daydreaming over Ben—I still had no clue how that happened. “Anyway, I’ll see ya soon. Oh, and you two better have your clothes on by the time I get there.” She snickered and disconnected. I was too sick with worry to care about Chelsea’s comments about Aiden and me in the sack.
Nobody spoke straight away, but that didn’t mean much with Aiden, Anna, and Dave. For all I knew, the three of them were having a telepathic conversation with each other, trying to work out what to say to me.
“You’re so paranoid.” Aiden squeezed my arm before leaning down and kissing the top of my head. “They’re just trying to work out what to do next. It’s much quicker if they don’t have to speak their thoughts out loud.”
“He’s right, sweetie,” Anna said. “Do you mind if the two of us have a look at the vision you had this morning?”
“Go for it,” I said. I pulled my legs up and wrapped my arms around them. I knew it didn’t hurt when they went looking through my thoughts, but it still made me nervous. I mean, as natural as it was for everyone else in this room, it was still in the freakish science fiction category for me.
Within seconds, I felt them enter my mind. It was a little more intrusive than the first time, probably because I had two people inside my head. By the time I came to that conclusion, they were finished and out of my head.
I looked from Anna to Dave, waiting, hoping that they would say it was just a coincidence, and I had only dreamed Chelsea had come over to my house that morning. “Well?” I finally asked.
“It’s not that easy.” For the first time since I had met Anna, she sounded unsure of herself. She looked to Dave for help.
“You see, what you saw this morning wasn’t like a normal vision. Normally, a vision is more like what you saw when you were with Chelsea at Baxter’s yesterday. You were just observing what was going on. But this last one…” He paused, shaking his head as if he was still trying to work something out.
“In a way, you seemed to be partially there,” Anna said, picking up where Dave left off.
“And that’s not how it’s supposed to be.” Dave slumped back against the sofa.
I was dumbfounded. If they couldn’t work out what was going on, then how the hell was I supposed to?
“Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out,” Aiden said.
I looked up into his eyes. They were filled with such optimism. I wished I had even half as much belief that we would find Chelsea before anything bad happened to her.
Dave cleared his throat. “Anna and I are going to see if any of the others know anything that might help us figure this out.”
“Others?” I asked.
“Aiden can fill you in after we leave. We will be in touch as soon as we know anything more,” Dave said, placing his hand on Anna’s knee.
“And if you need to speak to us for anything at all, call at any time,” Anna added before they both disappeared into thin air.
As soon as they left, I turned to Aiden, waiting for him to explain.
Aiden sighed. “Okay. Do you want the short version or the long version?”
“The short one will be fine.”
“They have gone home to talk with a couple of their friends, who are also like us. And Anna and Dave are hoping they might have heard of someone being able to do whatever it is you did when you saw Chelsea get taken in front of your house.”
“Hang on. Did you just say ‘gone home’?” I must have heard wrong. They had just left their home. They had all lived here for the last couple of years.
Aiden looked at me without saying a word. I wished that I was able to read his mind, because whatever it was that he was trying to decide on telling me must be big.
He turned in his seat so that he was facing me. “Right now, I wish I had the ability to see into the future, so I would know whether I should be telling you this or not. But I don’t, so here it goes,” he said, picking up my hands.
“We don’t really live here,” he confessed.
My eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. “What?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper. My throat felt like it was closing up on me.
Aiden continued, “Well, that’s not entirely true. I pretty much live here now, but Anna and Dave still live over in England.”
“You live in England!” I had found my voice once again, and I was ready to use it in its full glory. “What the hell is all this?” I stood up, waving my hands at the house. “And what am I? Am I just someone you hook up with when you’re in Australia?”
Aiden burst out laughing, which only made me more upset. “See, you don’t even take me seriously. Here I am finding out that my boyfriend isn’t real. For all I know, you have your real girlfriend tucked away back in England.”
“Calm down, will you?” Aiden got to his feet.
“Don’t you tell me to calm down! And don’t you do any of that calming shit on me either.” He reached for my hands, but I quickly pulled them away.
Aiden flopped back on the sofa without saying anything more.
I looked at him, waiting for him to say something, anything to explain this, but he didn’t say a word.
“You’re not even going to try to fix this? Do I really mean that little to you?” My throat started to close up on me again. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I felt like m
y whole world was falling apart.
Reaching up, Aiden pulled me down so that I was sitting on his lap. “There is no one else,” he said as he wrapped his arms around me. “If you would have just waited until I had finished explaining, instead of chucking a hissy fit, you wouldn’t be feeling like this.”
I opened my mouth to say something in my defence, but Aiden closed my lips with his fingers. “Just listen, okay?”
I nodded, and Aiden removed his fingers from my lips.
“Before we came here, we lived in England. Dave had some business on the Gold Coast that he needed to take care of, which was going to take a couple of months to finalise. So Anna and I came with him to get away from the cold weather. Anyway, we were about to head back home, to England that is, and then I met you.” A mischievous smile spread across his face, making me think that there was an inside joke I was missing.
I thought back to the time we first met. A group of us from school were playing a game of beach footy when I spotted a drop-dead gorgeous guy coming out of the surf. There was water dripping down his body that was clinging in all the right places, leaving me unable to tear my eyes away from him. I was floored by how hot he was—jaw-dropping hot.
Aiden, of course, noticed me looking at him all googly-eyed and flashed his mind-blowing smile, bringing me to a halt. That was worse than it sounded, because I was the one with the ball, and we were playing a game of tackle. And wouldn’t you know it, I was slammed down into the sand. When I got up, there he was, right in front of me. I’d had to swallow the sand in my mouth because I hadn’t wanted him to see me looking like a slag as I spat out the sand – yeah that would have been a real turn on – not.
“How’s a guy supposed to leave a girl who’s prepared to eat sand for him?” Aiden said, laughing.
My cheeks flushed in embarrassment. I hadn’t realised he knew I swallowed sand that day.
“It’s just part of the reason why I fell in love with you.”
Every time I heard him say those three little words, my heart erupted with elation. And this time was no different. I swung myself around so that I was facing him. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was. He was everything I could dream of, and more. And best of all, he was mine.
Chapter 8