“You’re stressed out about how sick our grandmother is, that Rasure is up to something. You just need more rest, less caffeine. Some time alone.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I said through gritted teeth, knowing there was more to that dream. There was a game-changing danger ahead, and I knew it.
I could read that stare she was giving me without even meeting her eyes. If she was on the outs with Gavin, that meant she wanted me to keep my distance, obey some kind of girl code and take her side in a fight that I didn’t care to know about. I didn’t care because it wasn’t any of my business, and no matter what, I would still love them both.
I’d known Gavin since I was fifteen. We tried to be a couple more than a few times, mainly because we were always together, so it seemed to be the next logical step. I loved his mind, his imagination. He was a gifted writer, researcher. I would gaze into his steel blue eyes that were enhanced by his whitewashed hair and try and force myself to show him who I was deep down, but I never found the courage. Something always told me he knew the real me, though, that he knew that I was dealing with who I was the best I could and that forcing me out of my shell would be far too dramatic. Calm. Patience. That was Gavin.
Mason is my wild boy. His wavy brown hair matches his chocolate brown eyes. He has a grin that would make any girl melt.
I met him when I was sixteen. He was wild, free, had no boundaries. He was a daredevil, adrenaline junky, and talented musician. We spent our summers hiking, fishing, canoeing; anything that involved the wild outdoors, where walls didn’t exist. Mason had a way of bringing life to anything or anyone he was around. A breath of fresh air. A hint of freedom where it might not otherwise exist.
At some point, he and Gavin became best friends. I thought it was to torture me at first, but they balance each other. Mason inspires Gavin, and Gavin grounds Mason.
Wilder, he’s an entirely different story. A year and a half ago he surfaced in town. He was only passing through; he claimed he was visiting family, though I never met that family. I don’t know why, but a natural mental shield always seemed to surface when he was around. I was intrigued by him, enticed by him, but I was never real around him. Though he tried, to this day I doubt he has any clue what the real me is all about. Wilder made me forget the grief I was drowning in. The emotion would vanish when he was around. He was nothing more than a good friend and a vice for me. I hated to think that, and I doubt I would ever speak it, at least not to his face. His presence was powerful, seductive, downright alluring. I wanted to swim in those sensations, but…I didn’t want them to come from him. That doesn’t make sense; I realize that. I guess I just knew he wasn’t mine. Simple as that.
Wilder’s an artist. He can see anything once and paint it from memory. The entire left wall of my room is a mural he made for me, a scene that was the backdrop of our first kiss. The thought of that day still makes my stomach flip, and not in a good way. I’d dodged his advances for weeks and just happened to look up right when his lips were inches away. It felt wrong. So wrong. I gently pushed him away and tried to end us then, but he had a way of talking to me, a way to make me face my darkest emotion: grief. He had me convinced I felt guilty about being happy because I knew my family would never feel that way again. Slowly, he pushed us forward. Fearing that he was right about me, I let him draw me in. I’m sure he thought more than once that he was breaking through to me, but the truth was that I imagined someone else’s lips on mine. Someone that brought fire to my soul.
One time he even pulled away from me, pulling his fingers to his lips, as if he felt the burn there. The look he gave me was near anger. “You’re not here right now, are you?” he’d said.
We had the biggest fight ever on that day. He wanted me to tell him who I was seeing behind his back, wanted me to tell him why I was holding back, why I would not let him in. By the time it was over, I told him we were friends and nothing else. I stopped our relationship cold after only three kisses. They were not ordinary embraces. It was abundantly clear that Wilder had far more experience than me. Every movement of his lips was pure seduction—but once again, I wanted to feel that, just not from him.
He left town the next day. A week went by, and he texted me out of nowhere. We talked like nothing had ever happened between us and began the friendship we have now, one that is at a safe distance, so safe that I hadn’t even heard his voice in six months, only texts.
I was a coward. I knew that. But I wasn’t ready to deal with him, or anyone else in that capacity right now. I had far too much family drama to deal with.
Which meant I needed to find someone to distract Wilder for me.
“I think Sophia and Mason would make a good couple. I think he and Jewls are having issues again. Do you know anybody at school that would make sense with Wilder?” I said, sitting down next to Cadence.
“Seriously?” she said, cocking her eyebrow comically.
“What’s with that look?” I asked absentmindedly.
“You just baffle me sometimes. Wilder is not pushing himself on you. He sent one text telling you he was in town. What if he’s got a girl already?”
“Right. I bet he does,” I breathed, remembering his essence. I moved my head from side to side as my stomach flipped in the bad way again. I decided long ago that I was in love with the idea of Wilder, not Wilder himself, and that flippity-floppity feeling always proved my point.
“Why do you feel the need to match up your exes?” Cadence asked as her pale green eyes cascaded over me. She was playing the part of the psychologist again.
“I want them to be happy,” I said with a faint smile.
“To use your own words, you don’t have to be with someone to be happy. Those boys will go off and marry some girl, have a lot of kids—but Indie, they won’t forget you. You let them be themselves, helped them figure out who they are. They know you are special. They also know you are untamable.” She rolled her eyes. “No doubt, you are all going to be best friends for life.”
There was that hint again. If she and Gavin did actually split, I knew she would start dropping hints left and right that it was too hard on her to have him around. I needed to shut that idea down right now.
“I agree. I could never send Gavin out of my life, or Mason for that matter.”
“You had no issues sending Wilder away,” she rebutted.
“Nope.”
She playfully glared at me. She wanted all the juicy details about what went down between me and Wilder, but I never told her anything. And I wasn’t about to start now.
Cadence pointed to my wrist, to the scarf. “That scarf got in your way again, didn’t it? Or was it the North Wing?”
That right there was exactly why I would never tell her anything about me and any guy.
I confided in her years ago about images that I could see and whispers I could hear in my mind. Even though I was blushing with a warm excitement at the time, she managed to jerk me down into the cold reality by saying I had a crush on a ghost, someone that had been long gone and was clearly in love with another girl. She didn’t get it. And later when the images I would see in the North Wing became clearer, I kept that to myself.
I stood up. “Nope. There is no sense in making love work. It either does or it doesn’t. Two beats, or not two beats. It’s one of the few things in life that are black and white.”
“Two beats. That is your thing, not theirs,” she said so quietly that I could swear her tone was laced with jealousy. “You dodged the one guy that could have pulled you out of this grief you are fighting, for fear of what? You can’t possibly enjoy living life looking back. Like I said, you might need time alone. You dreamed of the death of everyone you hold close; that is the end of something, which means the birth of something better is coming.”
Coded conversation. She was pushing me to put distance between myself and Gavin, and I didn’t even care to know why; I was ending this banter.
Truth be told, she had commitment issues, too, but her exes didn’t
set up camp in her life. Most of the time, they never spoke to her again. Not sure whose fault that was—I never pried into her life, and for the most part she did the same for me.
I briskly walked past her.
“Where are you going?”
“Darkroom.”
“It’s late.”
“I’m wide awake.”
Our room might as well have been an apartment. It was almost two thousand square feet, and it was supposed to be a study or some such thing, but we transformed it into something of our own. After we lost our family, neither of us could find the courage to sleep in separate rooms in this massive manor that was well over forty thousand square feet. Parts of the manor were over two hundred years old; others were newer. One wing was basically brand new, built ten years back by Mrs. Rasure—on my dime, I’m sure.
My darkroom was behind a bookcase in our room, down a winding stone stairway.
Photography has always held my interest, at least since that lady Megan gave me my birth mom’s camera. My only problem was that photography, if done correctly, captures emotions, and I can’t feel emotions because if I do—I freeze everything. I ruin the images.
Though I’d found several cameras that could withstand my touch, I hated the barrier I had, I hated that I needed help to bring the images to life the old fashioned way. I just wanted to feel something, someone, and not fear destroying it. I think that’s why theater was my second strongest interest. On the stage, you could be anyone for a moment, completely check out and become someone else. And when you became that person, you understood them and inevitably saw life differently from that point on. According to the guys, I was always on stage. The consummate actress.
They’d quickly figured out that the real Indie was deep inside, that when I was around them I became the girl they dreamed about—and when they acted on that, I couldn’t bear the lie anymore; I walked away in silence. They always followed, vowing to be my friend instead. At one time, I feared they were just waiting on the second act, waiting to see if the heroine would finally tell the hero who she was.
I had a few tables in here that held everything I needed to develop film, the old-fashioned way. Strings were crisscrossed throughout the room, holding the images I was working on.
On my desk was the camera that lady Megan had given me on that fateful day. I had never tried developing the film that was in it; I couldn’t bring myself to. I was sure it held images of my birth mother, but I didn’t want her image to cloud the memories of the woman who saved my life, who gave me a home.
What was even more terrifying was that I saw nothing when I touched that camera. That didn’t make sense to me because that was truly the only possession I had that connected me to my bloodline. So, it should be the only item in my life that birthed vivid images.
I knew in my dream that it was the camera I was going back for, that I was willing to die for.
I clenched my back teeth as I thought of the ice I had to swim past in that dream, how I couldn’t get Mason to the surface. I wondered why the one time I would need to create ice, I couldn’t. Why I couldn’t just dream like a normal person.
I reached for the camera, and with my touch it froze over; the entire table did. One lonely, angry tear came to the edge of my eye. I was losing control, right when I needed it.
I heard a familiar whisk of wind and turned to see Skylynn. She looked just as frazzled and confused as I did. I was starting to think she really was a figment of my imagination, a front I hid behind, and that front was crumbling like I was.
“Why are you here?” she asked in a tone that was full of bewilderment.
“This is my darkroom.”
“That is not what I mean. Why are you here? What happened?” she asked breathlessly.
I glanced back at the table. The ice was gone now, but that wasn’t odd. Usually, as soon as my touch left, the ice did, too. My gaze found hers. “I had a night terror—words with Rasure—a lot on my mind.”
“Night terror,” she said, angling her head down but letting her eyes hold my gaze. “Explain,” Skylynn said shortly, which was odd. She was usually so calm with me. I knew she had a fierce, protective temper laced with impatience, but it had never been directed at me.
“There is nothing to explain. I was in a car, a train came, and we dodged out of the way into the icy lake. I had to save my friends. I woke up in the rafters of my room after Cadence turned on a light.”
If Skylynn could have turned paler, she just did. “Listen,” she said, stepping closer. “I’m going to help you deal with this. I promise. But right now I have something else that I have to do.”
“Then why are you here?” I said as I turned away from her. She was in front of me before one beat had passed.
“I need that scarf.”
“Now? You need it now? Are you crazy? I almost froze the entire room in front of Rasure. I basically breathed out fog. She is looking for one thing to hold against me. I can’t give it to you.”
In that beat, the scarf was in her hands. I didn’t even feel her touch my skin or see her move. I did feel something, though: emptiness. I felt hollow, lost.
“I told you I needed that!” I bellowed.
“And I told you that I did, that it was not mine to give. Listen to me. I will be back. I will protect you.”
“Knock knock,” I heard Mason say from the stairwell, beats before he appeared.
When he landed on the bottom step, I was astonished to see his chocolate eyes meet Skylynn’s, then move to me. “Am…I interrupting something?” he asked with a boyish smirk as he looked over Skylynn once more.
Skylynn sighed. “Some dream you had there, Indie,” she breathed. She glanced back at me. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” And with that, she vanished.
“Skylynn!” I yelled after her, still feeling the emptiness that surfaced when she took that scarf away. I circled in place, calling her name, demanding that she appear again.
Mason was at my side instantly, pulling me to his chest.
“So that was the elusive Skylynn,” he said as he caressed my short blonde hair.
“You really did see her,” I whispered tearfully, pulling his lean body closer to me, gripping him for dear life.
Chapter Three
Mason didn’t shiver as my touch all but froze him. Instead, he pulled me closer, finally urging me to the oversized floral couch that was along the side wall, the place where I would lie and think for hours.
Besides Cadence, he was the only one I’d let down here, the only one who understood how private this room was to me.
“I don’t understand why you saw her now and never before,” I said to him, catching his gaze as his hand moved across my back.
“Maybe she didn’t want me to see her before. I caught her off guard,” he said, smoothly leaning back and inviting me into his embrace. “I never doubted she was real…” he promised with a murmur.
I reached for the blanket on the arm of the couch and pushed it between us in a vain attempt to shield him from my freezing touch.
His eyes smiled painfully at me. “I like the cold…always have.”
I let my exhausted stare fall to the floor as I leaned away from him. “I thought you and Jewls were on again?” He wasn’t coming on to me. He hadn’t dared to do that since we were sixteen. Nevertheless, I wanted to move the conversation on to him and his life instead of mine. I didn’t want to think about the reasons he never minded the cold.
He pulled me back against him. “On, off…I can’t tell the difference. I wasn’t hitting on you, Indie. I really do like the cold. It reminds me of…well, you know what it reminds me of.”
I felt a blush spread across my pale skin.
“On again, off again Jewls knows you’re here?” I asked, trying to change the subject once again.
“Maybe. She knows Gavin and I were out tonight. Your house is usually what ‘out’ means for Gavin.”
“Apparently, not lately. And don’t play coy with me. Cad
ence called the two of you and told you about the night terror. You’re supposed to come down here and act like you are giving them room to talk and in the meantime dig inside my head and make sure I’m okay—and if Jewls isn’t working out, Sophia told me she had a thing for you today.”
I heard him breathe a grin, and felt his arm tighten around my waist. I wanted to tell him to hold me tighter, to do something, anything, to fill the void I was feeling now that Skylynn had stripped me of the one thing that had kept me sane all these years.
“Okay, so maybe he called her, and maybe she told him you had a run-in with the queen of evil right after climbing the ceiling like a mad woman. And maybe we were only a mile away and decided to swing by for a nightcap. They still need to talk, and I still like hiding in this darkroom.”
When I didn’t respond, he leaned me back so he could look into my eyes. “Is it Wilder? Is he pushing you?”
“No, he learned the hard way about that last fall.”
“Which led to him vacating town,” he said, raising his brow to emphasize his point. “I was really rooting for the guy.” His grin spread across his deceivingly innocent face, meaning he wasn’t at all rooting for him. He always said Wilder didn’t sit well with him, but he could never tell me why. Mason kept Wilder close anyway, surely trying to figure out what it was about him that he didn’t trust.
“Yeah. He told me you gave him tips—starting with the Halloween mask,” I muttered as I thought of the day that happened.
When I’d broken it off with both Mason and Gavin, stopped it before it became too serious, they both asked me why, and I told them it was because I couldn’t feel the beats, that I wanted to feel two rapid beats in one. I wanted to feel that burn of life on the inside of me, the one I felt when Skylynn gave me my scarf, the one I felt in the North Wing. I told them that I wanted them to feel that for someone.