Page 2 of Snag (Conduit #2)

“I’m good in the now,” I say agreeably, mostly to myself. “I exist in the now. The Conduit always exists in the now .”

“All right.” Rought gently runs his free hand down my arm, capturing my fingers lightly with his. A gentle, almost meditative energy stirs between us everywhere we touch. “ Then I’ll exist here in the now with you. And when you’re ready for tomorrow, we’ll figure that out as well.”

I blink at him again. It can’t … it can’t be that easy. There are ramifications extending from what has been done to us. Plus, everything is different now that I’m the Conduit. The Conduit doesn’t get to have —

Rought places my hand on his waist. I instantly fist the fabric of his T-shirt, gazing up at him. I settle my left hand flat across his heart again. He pins it in place with his right. Not that I’m going anywhere.

“These threads you want to see … need to see … between us.” His voice is low and intimate. “Tell me how we … spin them.”

He hesitates over the analogy, just a little.

It’s enough to make me smile, just a little.

“Can we start over?” he asks.

I think about that for a moment. Just think about that one thing instead of trying to understand and then solve everything else all at once. How would that work? He has years of memories of me, and I have none.

“The pictures.”

Rought smiles. “Yeah. Seems like you were meant to find them, hey?”

“You think Mack left them here for me to find?”

“Did he know you were coming home?”

I slowly scan the room around Rought’s wide shoulders, once more taking in the photos lining the walls. All black and white, all the same size, all framed in the same black metal with a thick-edged mat.

“There was a letter for me …” I whisper. “From my aunt. And an ice-cream maker.”

Rought nods. “So they knew you were coming.”

“Maybe. I thought it might have been a part of a knowing , from Disa to me, but …” I continue to scan the photographs. “All these dates. There aren’t any photos from before I came to live here.”

“Or after you left.”

Sliding my hand down to capture Rought’s, my left in his right, I drift toward the first photo of him and me. It’s partway down the wall, adjacent to the upper hall of the caretaker’s suite.

Perpetually hovering on the edge of my consciousness, I can still feel the energy, the life force, of everyone else on the property.

Presh, DeVille, Doc Z, and Cayley in the main house, either still asleep or just rising.

Muta in the kitchen, likely still basking on the oven where I last saw him.

Rath is still in the vicinity of the beach house, still completely ignoring that he doesn’t have my permission to be anywhere on the estate.

Annoyingly, two Authority agents have the entrance to the estate staked out.

“Start at the beginning,” I murmur, keeping my attention on the now . Then I look at Rought and point to the photo of him and me.

In the image, according to the date, I’m nine.

Rought and I are perched on a weather-bleached driftwood log, facing the beach and the open ocean beyond with our backs to the camera.

Even captured in black and white, the sun glints off Rought’s unruly hair.

My skin is pale next to his deep tan. Two other blurred figures are in the background, farther out on the beach.

“You think Mack knew about what I’m … missing. That I lost all of this …” I struggle as renewed grief, hot and sharp, slices through me. “And he … wanted to help me find my way back?”

“I think … I never even knew Mack was a photographer.” Rought’s gaze is fixed on the photo, th ough I know he saw all the framed pictures only a day ago. Saw them and tried to show me. “I’ve never seen any of his photos framed and hung anywhere on the estate. Of course, I haven’t been here for …”

“Thirteen years.”

“Right.”

I inhale deeply, holding his hand a little tighter. “Do you remember this day?”

“I remember every day with you, Zaya.” His gaze is now riveted on my face, meaning it, believing it.

He clears his throat and seems to force himself to look away, to look at the photo again.

“You can’t see it from this angle,” he says.

“But my leg is in a cast. You got your arm cast removed that morning.” He taps the greenery edging the back of the driftwood log.

“Muta was never more than a couple of feet away from you in those days.”

I lean closer, but it still takes a moment for me to discern Muta hidden among the mint that grows wild in various places on the property.

Reputed to be a Gage-bloodline ancestor, Muta — an aspect of a death god trapped in the body of a bushmaster snake — was left to me by my mother moments before her death …

and only days before this photo would have been taken …

A flicker of a memory surfaces, even as I’m speaking it out loud. “Ingrid. Disa’s potions mage —”

“The healer.”

That little bit of info neatly slots itself into place in my mind, my memory.

“Yes,” I breathe, trying to hold onto the recollection and not the reality of the preserved body of my aunt’s chosen just downstairs, awaiting transportation to the crematorium.

Ingrid, who I didn’t remember when I found her dead in the beach house.

Ingrid, who died at the same moment the Conduit powers transferred to me, the same moment my aunt died. “She healed me after …”

“After your mother died.”

Old pain, old grief stirs in my belly, but I keep my attention on the now, on the photo. “Ingrid said that mint shouldn’t really grow on the edge of the beach like that. Not so abundantly. Next to the open ocean, at least.”

“It’s you,” Rought says with pure conviction. “Your essence smells … tastes … like that wild mint. The mint grows like that in all your favorite places on the property.”

I knew that. I knew that.

I remember that. But not who first told me.

And … ‘tastes’ not just ‘smells like mint,’ Rought said. He knows what I taste like because … he …

We were lovers, not just friends.

I sway a little on my feet. Rought shifts his hold on my hand so he can crowd up against me, his chest to my back. I don’t lean into him, but he’s there if I need him to hold me up.

He reaches past me to touch the photo. To touch the shoulder of the young girl, the young me, within it. “You want the story.”

“If that’s our beginning, yes.”

“We met that day. In this lifetime, at least. Though I’d seen you a couple of days before from a distance.”

“Tell me, please.”

He brushes his cheek lightly against my temple, inhaling deeply. “I was beaten badly at my … father’s compound. You know he’s the Cataclysm? Founder and president of the motorcycle club of the same name, right?”

I nod.

“I was beaten regularly by his men under the guise of training, but that time — ”

“You’re not even ten here!” I say, instantly incensed.

He chuckles quietly. “Yeah, you were pissed about it back then as well. Even with your own arm in a cast. I’m only two months older than you. So we’re both nine here.”

Jaw clenched, I shake my head, my anger not at all assuaged by his amusement.

“Do you want to hear the story or not?” he teases.

I huff. “Yes.”

“My sperm donor wasn’t around,” he says. “If that makes you feel better. Oddly, the Cataclysm never actually laid hands on us … then.” He takes a fortifying breath.

And I know … I know there is something deep and dark hidden in that breath, that pause and hesitation. “That’s not the beginning,” I say, not certain if I’m protecting him or my own fragile psyche.

“Right.” Rought sets his chin lightly on top of my head.

It is not a remotely dignified position, but I have absolutely no desire to push him away.

“My mother intervened. Her and Reck, though he was still a kid himself and almost as badly hurt as me. Rath had gone for help. I’d mouthed off to some of my father’s enforcers, though I can’t tell you what was said.

The Cataclysm was, is, all about survival of the fittest. His club followed that edict, even with his bastards. ” He trails off thoughtfully.

“Your mother?” I prompt.

“Took a fucking crowbar to the two idiots. And they were scared of fucking too much with the Cataclysm’s current fuck.

My mother held his attention longer than anyone before or after her.

Anyway, she took off with all three of us.

Me, Rath, and Reck. Stole a truck. Dead of night.

Drove us all the way out of the Federation, somehow passing through the heavily fortified Navajo Nation to meet up with the Outcast, our uncle, just over the California border.

Though none of us had met him yet, or even knew about him.

She asked the Outcast for shelter. For us.

Just us. She went back to the Cataclysm. ”

My chest is aching, for him, for his mother. “They’re married now,” I say softly, not certain if I’m trying to comfort him or myself. “Your mother and the Outcast?”

“They are. For about twelve years. DeVille is my half-brother through my mother, but not my uncle’s kid. And my half-sisters, my mother and the Outcast’s twins, are technically also my cousins.” He flashes a grin at me. “But that’s a different story.”

I grin back at him, because I apparently can’t maintain any sort of emotional equilibrium right now. “Right.”