Page 43

I stop thinking and start feeling. The muscles under my hands.

The pulse of his heart. My focus widens and I take in the heat of his body and the softness of his breath.

Before long, I’m feeling him—just him. Energy, thick and warm, melts into my skin and flows to my center.

There it builds and builds before it finally breaks, a thunderstorm of feelings.

Every thick raindrop is a different emotion, and so many of them are opposites, it’s like I’m being torn in two.

I burn, then I shiver. Cower, then fight.

One moment I feel as if I’m drowning, the next I’m soaring high, lighter than air.

My heart aches with a deep longing, but in the next breath struggles against it.

I’m alarmed and alert, racing against time, but I stop and stall, afraid to go on.

I hear Leo call my name, but I can’t feel his presence. He’s too far away. I push forward, trudging through what feels like thick mud, halfway up to my knees. He calls again, closer now, but I still can’t reach him. I claw through the heavy air until I feel a cool hand on my face.

My eyes snap open and he’s right there, sitting on my bed in my room, holding me in his arms.

I blink to clear my vision, startled by the way the gold in his irises sparkles like twinkling faerie lights.

“You okay?” he asks.

“I think so.” My fingers are digging so hard into his chest I’m afraid they’ll leave marks. I relax my hands and gently smooth out the wrinkles in his shirt. “Are you? ”

“I’m fine,” he says softly. “It was a lot easier to bring you back this time.”

“I went to you—when I heard you.” Like he was my guide, calling me home.

His lips tip up in a half-smile. I think he’s pleased. He asks, “How do you feel?”

“Jittery.” I hold out a hand so we can both witness the tremors in my fingers.

“Like when I’ve had too much caffeine.” Right now, only my extremities are tingling and shaky.

My center is still busy dispersing the emotions themselves—all the fear, delight, excitement, and self-loathing. What has this man been going through?

I ask him, “How do you feel?”

“I’m not wiped out yet,” he says. “But we’ll see what happens in a few minutes.”

Then I suppose now’s the time to ask him questions, while he’s still alert. “If I’m clairsentient, how come I haven’t felt all that coming off you before?”

“Maybe you have,” he answers thoughtfully. “But you attributed it to another source.”

Yeah, most likely myself.

Next question: “So, if I’m sucking people’s emotions, why aren’t they dropping like narcoleptics every time I walk by?”

I don’t realize what a funny image it is I painted until he cracks up.

“Because your clairsentience works unconsciously. It’s just you feeling the energy of other people’s emotions.

The only way you can harness is if you’re drawing in energy on purpose, like you just did.

Or like you must’ve been doing during our ritual. ”

“But I didn’t drain Avery when we charged my amethyst.”

“Because that was your first ritual. Most novices mostly use their own energy. It takes some practice to learn how to use other sources.”

Other sources like my friends’ emotions.

The jitters have crawled up my limbs and started seeping into my torso. It feels like someone’s drinking a frozen daiquiri through the arteries in my chest. “I’m gonna start bouncing off the walls here in a second.”

Leo suggests I try to ground. I agree, but I’m reluctant to leave his warmth to get on the floor and do it properly.

The book Avery gave me says you can ground on an airplane if you have to, so a bed two feet off the floor should be just fine.

Without leaving my spot, I cross my legs and close my eyes.

It only takes a minute or two for me to visualize my roots stretching down into the ground and feel the excess energy coursing out through them.

I draw up a healthy dose of stable earth energy and open my eyes.

“Better?” Leo asks.

“I think so.” My fingers are still trembling, but significantly less than they were a few minutes ago. I take a long, deep breath to clear my head.

My eyes fall to his chest again, to the area over his heart where I crumpled his shirt. I trace a crease in the material. “I didn’t expect so many emotions.”

“No?”

“It was like a hurricane.”

He sucks in a sharp breath. “Did I overwhelm you?”

“A little, yes. But I wasn’t scared.” In fact, I’d felt oddly in control.

He exhales in obvious relief. “What did you feel?”

Where to even begin? The conflicting emotions I sensed resist being named or defined.

After a moment’s thought, I sum them up as best as I can.

“A struggle.” When he tilts his head, I explain further, “I’d feel one emotion and then a second later feel its complete opposite.

Over and over again. And the only thing I can figure is that you’re dealing with some sort of internal battle. ”

His jaw ticks as he forces down a hard swallow and nods in confirmation.

In the flood of emotions, one dominated the rest. I ask him, “Are you missing someone? Your family or your sister, maybe?” I bite my lip to keep from adding, or a girlfriend back at home ?

“No,” he answers softly. “No more than usual. What did you feel?”

I shake my head. This is getting too personal. “Are you tired yet?”

“Not yet. What did you feel?”

So much for redirection. “It’s just…it seemed like you’re longing for someone, that’s all.”

He looks away, but not before I notice his eyes darken. I’ve struck a chord. My pulse races as I hastily search for a way to backpedal this conversation. Chocolate. I need to go down to the vending machines and get him some chocolate.

When I try to get up, he snags my hand.

Frozen and stunned, halfway to standing, I watch as he uncurls my fingers and plants a gentle kiss on my palm. So soft. So warm. My skin tingles and electricity races up my arm. Why is there no air in my lungs? I tear my gaze from our hands to his face, to his beautiful eyes peering up into mine.

My brain is ten steps behind my body. I don’t understand what’s happening.

Leo tugs me back down by the waist, encircles my whole body in his arms. “Betts?—”

Is it possible the person he’s been longing for is me?

He grips the back of my head, his mouth hovering less than an inch from mine. Closer, even, than when he helped me off the fallen tree. Closer than when we were squeezed together in the pantry. Closer than we’ve ever been.

My fingers splay across his jaw. Oh god, kiss me. Please, please kiss me.

I’m utterly unprepared for it when it finally happens.

I admit that I’ve pondered—once or twice or a thousand times—what Leo’s kiss would be like.

Slow. Gentle. Patient. Like he usually is with me.

But that’s not the Leo coming out in this kiss.

This is the demanding, persistent Leo. The passionate Leo.

He’s like a hungry animal that’s snapped free from its chain.

With one hand fisted in my hair and the other flattened across my back, he pulls until I’m arching into him.

Until my ribs are crushed to his chest and my legs are entangled with his.

He opens my mouth with a forceful push of his lips, silencing my moan with his tongue. I grasp him behind his neck, catching a handful of his smooth, thick hair. He growls and kisses me harder, deeper, his mouth slanted over mine.

Breathless, he withdraws, his eyes dancing wildly over my features and his fingers following in their wake. His thumb sweeps across my cheekbone, then over my bottom lip. “It’s you I want. I shouldn’t, but I do.”

He shouldn’t? Why not? Zander is a non-issue.

He captures my mouth again, chasing away my confusion. I can admit it to myself now—now that I’m allowed to feel it—that I want Leo, too. I’ve wanted him since the first time I saw him, leaning against the counter in the O-Chi kitchen.

I clutch his shoulders, my pulse racing as his hands course up the back of my thighs and over the curve of my hips. Soon he’s kissing a trail down my throat, pressing soft lips to the dip where my neck meets my shoulder. I shiver at the light touch and my body starts to hum.

But his body is flagging. I can feel it in his relaxing muscles and his loosening grip. Even his breathing is slower. With my hands to his jaw, I raise his chin. Sleepy dark eyes, still shimmering with heat, blink back at me.

“You’re tired.”

“I’m fine.” He kisses me again, refusing to give in to the fatigue. “I need to talk to you—things I need to tell you—” His eyes are heavy-lidded and unfocused, like he’s drunk and stoned at the same time.

I comb his hair back with my fingers. “Let me run down and get you some chocolate.”

Drowsily, he shakes his head. “I’ll get it.”

“No way.” I kiss him softly. “You’ll fall asleep in the hall and some poor girl will come out and find you and scream her head off.”

He chuckles and detains me for one more kiss. “Okay. But be quick.”

I dig my wallet out of my backpack and hurry out into the hall. Someone’s having a party in a room near the stairs, but otherwise, the hallways are deserted. In the basement, I dash past the laundry room to the alcove that houses four different vending machines.

I should’ve asked Leo what he likes best. There’s too much to choose from.

I opt for three classic candy bars with a maximum chocolate-to-filler ratio, and jog back up the stairs.

Before I even reach my door, my gut tells me Leo’s asleep, and sure enough, when I enter the room, I find him sprawled on his back, his long limbs and large frame consuming the small bed.

I drop the candy on my desk and debate what to do.

He’d probably want me to wake him. A little chocolate and he’d have the energy to talk, to tell me those “things” I’m worried I don’t want to hear.

But there’s tomorrow and tomorrow night, the next day, and the day after that.

A whole future of talking. And kissing. And more.

So I leave him there on my bed. He looks so peaceful and beautiful, with his features softened and his hair tossed across his forehead.

Otherworldly, like a prince in a fairy tale.

One of his hands rests on his chest, while the other is smooshed between his hip and the wall.

It’ll ache when he wakes, but I don’t dare move him.

Like I could anyway. He’s at least 180 pounds of dead weight.

Fully clothed, I stretch out on Liv’s bed.

That way, if she comes home before either Leo or I wake, she’ll know there wasn’t any hanky-panky going on.

I’m not ready to share with her what happened between Leo and me tonight.

I haven’t fully wrapped my brain around it myself.

All I know is that we’ve crossed the line.

The man lying on my bed right now is more than a friend.

And it feels like that’s how it was always supposed to be.