He cracked the first barely-there smile and half-snorted.
I moved my fingers to glide across the bottom of his lip. “Why won’t you smile? Did something happen today?”
“I’m afraid if I do, then the illusion will fade. That you’ll realize this is a dream and it’ll all be yanked back into place where it belongs.”
“I don’t belong here?” I whispered, starting to feel the edges of my skin grow cold.
“You do, little bird,” he assured and let his palm coast down my arm and back up to soothe and warm me. “You always belong with me and you’re always safe with me. But, Ava, there are things beyond my control, and I hope to God you can remember this tomorrow, because me? I’m just like embers that get caught in the wind. I don’t know whether to fall soundlessly and burn out or bide my time, waiting, letting everything think I’ve died out only to start another fire. I don’t know what my true path should be right now. I don’t know who to trust.” He sighed roughly. “Ava, have you ever had something told to you, every day, like a psalm, like a prayer, like a mantra, and without it you don’t know what to do with yourself?”
I shook my head, but then recanted. “Well, yes. I was told every day that I would find you.” He sighed and let his hand push higher on my arm to my cheek. “And I was told every day that I would ascend and get my power and,” I let my eyes fall so to his neck as I said the next part, “live happily ever after.”
He sighed again, harder, meaningfully. “And I was told the Jacobsons would be the people I would avenge someday.”
My breath turned shallow, but my heartbeat remained steady. It was as if this dream world was the perfect place…for him to confess such a thing.
“But why?”
“Because of what your mother did. I didn’t know. I never actually planned to go through with it. I honestly thought it was just something to keep them busy. In their minds your mother ruined them—no, not in their minds, Ava. Your mother did ruin them. She took their power, their very reason for being,” he said softly, almost like a scold.
“You don’t know the whole story.”
“I’m sure more now than ever that I don’t. And I’m sure that you’re going to tell me.” His thumb made a pass over my cheekbone. “And your parents. I don’t know if they’ll be letting us spend too much time alone now because they don’t trust me. This place, well, it will be just for the two of us, little bird.”
I felt my scowl, but couldn’t stop it. “Seth,” I breathed and he closed his eyes.
“I’ll never get tired of that. No one warned me what this would feel like.”
“Do they…really love their significants?”
His eyes opened slowly, as if clinging to the feeling, rebelling against reality. “I thought so, but after watching your parents together and feeling…this, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s the same as others of our kind.”
He moved that thumb again and I realized that though I was loving his touch—like, it was amazing—I wasn’t getting his calm.
“Seth,” I began again, “this isn’t real, is it?”
It all started to settle over me. I was okay with it. I was inspired to get to know him more, though I didn’t really understand why.
His lips gave me a barely-there smile and he answered, “Yes and no. But I’m proud at how long you lasted.” He leaned forward and kissed my forehead. I gasped a little at the closeness and the sweet gesture. I couldn’t help but imagine a more intimate gesture on the horizon soon. I looked at him from under my lashes. He smirked at me. It was the first one of the night and I had missed it. He seemed so forlorn tonight and I hated that his heart was so heavy. I knew it was my fault even as I knew there was nothing I could do to change it. I didn’t know how I knew. I just knew it was so. His smirk morphed into a smile. “You’re a smart girl. Don’t worry about me. Just being here with you tonight was enough to ease the ache for me. I’ll figure this out for us, Ava. Somehow, I have to figure this out for us.”
“Don’t go just yet.” I wrapped one of my arms around his neck and tugged him closer. His palm slammed into the concrete next to my head to keep from falling as he pressed into me.
“Ava,” he begged into my hair as he leaned down on his elbows. “Ava, you feel like this now because I brought you here. Please remember this,” he mumbled under his breath. “Please.” He lifted up and looked down at me, hovering just out of reach but still close enough for me to feel his breath on my neck. “Don’t give up on me, Ava.”
I jolted, feeling a strange sense of déjà vu. He took his thumb and dragged it across the corner of my mouth—rough and calloused—I tried to image him as he dragged hoses and put out fires with those hands. I tried to picture him as he slammed through doors and buildings and carried someone to safety. He would be brave, I knew it.
He shook his head and I could feel and hear his thoughts so clearly as he thought that I was adorably trusting, but he didn’t know why. “How can you believe in me so clearly in one area and be completely the opposite in the other?”
I shivered from the way his thumb caressed my skin and felt the skin of my neck burn a hot pink. He smiled, forgetting his question. “You’re blushing,” he said obviously. “It’s so pretty on you. I can’t remember ever making a girl blush before.”
“Now I know that’s a lie,” I called him on it and licked my lip with a smile.
“I’ve waited for you my entire life,” he replied, the conviction stealing my very breath, as if that one statement explained everything I’d ever questioned. In a way, I guess it did. “Plus, I spend a lot of time at the fire station with a bunch of guys anyway so.” He smiled and I noticed for the first time a little scar on the underside of his chin.
“Well, you certainly know how to make a girl feel significantly exceptional, don’t you?”
He chuckled huskily. “You can wax poetic like nobody I know.”
I giggled, but before I could say anything in return, a shimmering to my right jolted both of our attentions toward it. “It’s because she’s an old soul,” a soft, feminine, familiar voice rang through the light haze before fading away to reveal…
“Ashlyn?” I asked, though I knew the answer.
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten me already?” she asked, but she was shimmering. No, that wasn’t really the right word. More like coming in and out of focus like on a bad frequency. Seth lifted off me and helped me stand. He seemed to be more about his wits than I was, and I was glad, because I was so stunned to be looking at my childhood friend in the flesh that all I could do was stand there and gawk at her. “Ava, it’s all right,” she soothed.
“But…it’s been so long.”
“You grew up.” Her gaze settled on Seth. “And so did you. Into a right fine gentleman, I might add. You may not be able to see me, children, but I’ve been keeping watch over you. You’ve both made me so proud.”
She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye and I was shocked at her emotion for us.
Seth’s hand squeezed mine and I realized that he had never let it go. I heard breath leave his lips and realized that he was waiting for something. I looked over at him. And then it hit me. She said she had watched us both… Was he waiting for her to say something about his past that he didn’t want me to know?
“How can that be true?” he breathed. “I’ve…”
He let his sentence die and his sigh die with it. She smiled in her cryptic way and said, “Everything is as it should be. You all need to start believing in the way our lives are laid out. Do you really think that Ava was put in your path by accident?”
“No,” he growled, and my heart sang at the protectiveness in it even though I barely knew him. “She belongs with me.”
She moved around us. “Then trust it. Trust that beating in your chest that belongs to her and know that everything happens for a reason. You are where you’re supposed to be. Anything worth having is worth fighting for.”
He scoffed angrily and shook his head as we
stood. He tugged me protectively behind me, keeping my hand in his, and I wondered why he felt the need to protect me even from Ashlyn. “I’ve done nothing but fight my entire life it seems. This one thing,” he looked back at me, “this one time in my life, I wanted it to just come like it should.”
“Oh, boo hoo,” Ashlyn sneered angrily and shimmered in and out even more, fighting to stay visible. Her face contorted into an angry frown as her eyes bounced from his face to mine. “You have it easy! You have no idea what it’s like to not be able to touch your significant, and then go mad from it. To be in pain every day from the loss of it. So don’t talk to me about having it hard.”
“I didn’t know—” Seth immediately tried to fix his blunder because he didn’t know, but Ashlyn was having none of it.
“You just hold your significant’s hand and be thankful during this time that, though it may not be ideal, you have each other.” She shimmered so bright I squinted. Seth covered his eyes a little and then I gasped as she was suddenly right in our faces. “You never forget that. Especially you,” she said hard to me. “Don’t forget that you have each other and nothing is worth losing that. Nothing. What happened in the past is just that. The past. Our families have great influence over us and so does things that we don’t know, things that alter our perception. Don’t let others make your decisions for you. War is coming and you need to be strong. Don’t let them destroy you.”
Seth’s air puffed through his lips from his throat like he was affected greatly by her words. “Do you know something, Ashlyn?”
“All I know is what I’ve seen, but all that can change. You have to do the work. You have to be willing to accept that life isn’t a burning ember waiting to snuff out. You have to control your life and direct it where it’s going.”
Seth pulled me to him, surprising me as he brought me to his chest, cupping my face with his big take-charge hands. I stared up at him and looked at my future, at everything I’d ever wanted staring right back at me. “I won’t let them snuff us out, Ava. I know you won’t remember this tomorrow, but I promise you that I’ll fix this for us.”
I felt this overwhelming need for him to kiss me. For him to show me in some physical way how much he needed me in that moment. He leaned forward and I pulled in a quick, unstable breath in anticipation. He maneuvered his lips just before he reached mine to brush my cheek. He stayed there, pressing them softly to my skin, for a long time. Though it felt heavenly it wasn’t the same.
Disappointment washed over me. I didn’t understand why my significant wouldn’t want to kiss me. That didn’t make any sense to me. His mind was a fog that I couldn’t sift through.
“Ava,” he said softly, that little growl tacked on for good measure as he leaned back, holding my cheek in his palm, “you won’t remember this tomorrow. And when I kiss you, I definitely want you to remember.”
“I won’t remember…because this isn’t real,” I stated. “It’s a dream?”
“It’s real,” he assured. “It’s real to me.” He pressed his head to mine. “Come find me when you wake up. Please, Ava. Please,” he begged and his voice begging through my very soul was as beautiful as it was agonizing.
“I will. I’ll try,” I amended and gripped his shirtfront. “Thank you for bringing me here—to my favorite place.”
“I’ll see you here again,” he promised and kissed my forehead. “Tomorrow night?” he said, as if asking permission, and that made me fall for him a tiny bit because he would do such a thing—ask for something, care for my feelings so much, when it was obvious to us both that I wouldn’t remember his asking after this moment.
I bit into my lip to contain my smile. “Yes. I’ll give you the tour.”
He looked down as if he didn’t understand why I’d be so happy about seeing him. “Okay, little bird. It’s a date.” He leaned forward and whispered into my ear, “Wake up, Ava.”
_ _ _
We all slept in the living room together that night. I wrapped a blanket around Mom and Dad and put a pillow behind Mom’s head. She was as docile as I’d ever seen her—the Visionary, the leader of our people, the wife of our Champion, our mom, mother to Rodney who was always getting into trouble for something, the woman who was so frustrated that she could hear everyone else’s thoughts but ours because something about her blood blocks it. So Rodney and I were off limits. It was a blessing in disguise in my eyes, but in hers, she saw it as some sort of motherly punishment. I would said, “Mom, it would be like you reading my diary every day, without my permission.”
She would say, “No it wouldn’t. I would just peek every once in a while to make sure you were happy and being safe and not getting into—”
“Here’s a thought, Mom,” Rodney would butt in. “You could ask us.” Then he’d bite into whatever he was eating because Rodney was always eating.
“But you wouldn’t tell me the truth,” she’d say saucily and swat him with a towel. “You’d cunningly run around the truth through your handsome Jacobson teeth and think you’re getting away with something.”
Rodney would grin and say, “Because I usually am.”
I would roll my eyes and the convo would start again. The only other people Mom couldn’t hear was the Watsons. I didn’t like being lumped with them, but if it got me my privacy then I’d take it.
Now, as I looked at Mom and Dad still sleeping on the couch, I realized that there was no way that she had been able to hear Seth’s thoughts yesterday either. The Watsons must have given him Mom’s blood at some point for that very reason, whether he knew it or not. I hoped not, but would I ever really know? Probably not, truly.
I was achy. Seth had left late last night, almost midnight, but my body didn’t care if that was only seven short hours ago. It wanted him and I had no idea when I was going to see him again. Or even if I was ever going to see him again. And then I remembered what he told me and what he reiterated with his text on my phone.
Don’t give up on me, Ava.
I tried to turn the situation around. I tried to see it from his point of view. He was a boy when he was taken and had been told only what they wanted him to know from that point on. He seemed to be fine, mentally and physically, so I didn’t think they had abused him. On the contrary, it seemed as if they raised him as one of their own. Loved him. So he in turn would love them as well, as a family, just as I loved my family. He believed that my mother destroyed his family when in actuality that’s exactly what happened. He just didn’t have all the facts.
Yes, he said that he wished he had been rescued with the rest of the people all those years ago from the compound, so it apparently hasn’t been all sunshine in the land of Watson, but family is family. And that fact should give me some comfort that he thinks so highly of family that he’d go to such great lengths to protect it.
Even if it is the Watsons.
I swallowed against the tightness in my throat and tried to think about what I would have done if I had been in his place. Could I have been so strong? Would I have stood up to my parents and still tried to reassure my significant, to calm the situation until I figured out what was truly going on? Would I?
I shook my head. I shuddered to think about it. And I shuddered to think about the consequences of last night.
Rodney stirred beside me and I went to make some coffee, lumbering through my aches and pains. Eventually I gave up and went to my room to get dressed for the day. I was supposed to work at Dad’s office today, but couldn’t imagine it with what my body was going through. Every step lumbered, every breath pulled, every move ached.
I always heard it felt like the flu. They weren’t kidding. But I wasn’t going to sit around here and sulk all day. I refused. I knew Mom would baby me and Dad was going to go all Champion and wanna bust someone’s head. I didn’t really want to sit and listen to the play-by-play of last night all day long so I made myself get dressed and then snuck out the back door when no one was looking.
When I woke this morning, it was
obvious Dad was going to be fine. His color was back to normal and from the way he was clutching Mom in his sleep, I was sure if they had been in their room instead, frisky business would have been had.
I drove carefully and pretended not to notice the way my fingers shook as they gripped the steering wheel. I took deep breaths. My phone dinged, but I ignored it. I knew it was probably Rodney or Mom mad that I left. I didn’t even know where I was going. I just needed to get away.
So I kept driving until eventually I couldn’t drive anymore. I pulled over somewhere and laid my head against the steering wheel. My head pounded. My phone rang this time and I reached to grab it, but it fell between the seat and the middle console with my fumbling fingers.
“Fudge,” I muttered and moved to wiggle my hand in between the small slit to grab it. After a few minutes of careful maneuvering and moving the seat back and forth, up and down, I finally freed the phone, almost giving up entirely in the process.
When I returned upright, I screamed at the face suddenly in my window. Seth swiftly moved to open my door and leaned down on his haunches next to me. He didn’t take my touch like I thought he would, he waited, though I could tell he was in as much pain as I was. My hand still gripped my shirt at my chest from where he scared me, my breaths rushed from me, but I just watched him as he watched me.
“Sorry. I went to your house, but Rodney said you weren’t there. It wasn’t hard to find you with your heartbeat.” His brow lowered, the skin around his blue eyes crinkled a little as he thought about something. It was so totally adorable that it pissed me off because I wanted to be angry with him.
“What?” I asked.
“What are you doing here?” He rubbed his chin, looking uncomfortable. I realized then that he was trying to hide a smile.
Why…
I looked up to see that I had pulled over across the street from the fire station. There was a large gold embossed ‘22’ on the front of the old bricks and I remembered that from the shirt he was wearing in the coffee shop that day. I would never be able to forget that.