Maybe I shouldn’t accept it, but just like with his phone, it never really occurred to me to turn it down. The phone kept me in constant contact with him, and the bike gave me wheels to reach him.
My days were geared toward spending as much time with him as possible, and I knew he felt the same way.
We were building toward something, edging closer, I just didn’t know what.
He mimicked my position, cupping the back of my neck, before muttering, “I have to go.”
“I know. Me too.”
We broke away from each other, but our hands tangled as we separated ourselves. He squeezed. “See you tonight?”
I nodded—ever since Emma and Jon had lost Louisa, they were more absent, and didn’t mind so much if we broke the house rules. But I didn’t like to take advantage of their grief, so though we met up, it wasn’t often.
But today? On my birthday? God, yeah.
His lips curved with pleasure. “I get to buy my girl a birthday meal.”
My cheeks turned pink. “Oh, Adam, you’ve done enough!”
“I told you, nothing’s too much for you.” His eyes twinkled, and his genuine pleasure at the prospect of us eating a meal together tonight set my heart pounding. “I’ll send you a text when I think of somewhere cool.” Then, he grinned. “Ride safely.”
He didn’t do as he usually did—unfasten his bike then jump onto it. It was only then I realized he hadn’t brought his bike at all. In the surprise from his gift, I’d failed to notice until now, when he strolled across the parking lot to a posh town car that screamed megabucks.
When I cast a glance at the driver, our eyes connected. I blinked in surprise at the intensity of his look, then shrugged it off when the car shook slightly as Adam opened then closed the door.
Within seconds, the car was starting and they were pulling away. Through the back window, Adam turned around twice, as was his way, and as was mine, I was watching.
Raising a hand, I waved at him, aware that as he drove off in a car that was proof of exactly how different our worlds were, he took my heart with him.
And I was more than okay with that.
ADAM
She’d dressed up.
I got it—this meeting was a big deal. A huge deal in fact. The money that Dad was talking was enough to make even a rich man feel a little faint, and for Thea, who’d been raised with nothing…well, hell, it was like finding treasure.
I was happy for her.
Truly, I was, but she’d dressed up when she never dressed up, and it did something to me.
It twisted my gut until I felt like someone had made a knot with my intestines.
I gnawed on my bottom lip as I tried to ignore the way her chignon highlighted her neck, the delicate arch, the smooth, graceful lines. She wore a simple dress, but it was like a long man’s vest with lapels. Tailored to a degree I wasn’t used to seeing her in. A pencil skirt that spotlighted how slender she was. Revealing toned arms and long legs that I’d felt around my hips too few times to be happy about.
Her coloring, true Roma, shone through against the navy lines. Her skin was light brown, tanned, her hair a rich chestnut, her eyes gleaming like dark amber.
Everything about her enticed me. From the way she moved to the way she talked. She was a snake charmer and I the snake—and how apt that analogy was. Sickening, really.
I stayed in the background, only listening because Dad had asked me to take notes. He dealt with this stuff on Thea’s behalf because, despite everything, I actually thought he loved her. Mom was incapable of love, unless it was Cain, but Dad seemed to really care about Thea, and I was glad about that. She deserved some affection, and her success gave my dad a boner. Not in a creepy way. Just because he saw the potential and wanted to capitalize on it—he was a negotiator to his core.
Everything about Thea, on the other hand, wasn’t.
Thea wasn’t made for business. She could dress up like she was, but she just wasn’t. She wasn’t born to be in boardrooms or to sit in front of cameras and lights for money. I knew she’d do it because she felt she had no choice, but it wasn’t her.
She was made for the water. Born to be free.
I’d long since researched her people. A collective that had intrigued me ever since I’d first come to know of her and the little ways she had about her. I’d delved deeper, probably knowing more than she did about her culture—the level of persecution, of misunderstanding and prejudice. It all seemed to roll off Thea because she wasn’t involved in the community and had no desire to be a part of it. But, even so, it was in her blood.
The material gains had a purpose, that was why she wanted them. Not to buy snazzy clothes—even though her dress today screamed designer—but because she wanted the money to fight an injustice.
That was Thea, and I found comfort in that.
Even if she wasn’t mine, I knew her, and I owned that part of her.
Like she could feel my attention on her, she shot me a look. Instantly, she froze, then she released a breath that let me know she was rattled. That had success flushing through me, even as I pointedly turned away and focused on the meeting.
There were four guys here, all talking BS. Selling the contract they wanted Thea to take. Whether my dad would or not was down to him, but it interested me only because I knew this single contract would solve all Thea’s problems. Which opened up a doorway for me.
I tried not to get excited about that.
She was still only one race into the games. She still had a lot to prove. Mostly to herself, but also to the world.
“I think you should reconsider, Robert.”
The words drew my attention, as did the way the main negotiator was pretty much fidgeting like he had an itch he couldn’t scratch. The guy was called Charles Linden—Thea had tensed at the mention of his surname, and I knew why. Our chauffer had been called Linden. They’d been close before he died. This Linden wore a too small suit that made him look like he was bursting out of the seams, and his cheeks were a ruddy red. Thea was also looking at him, and her eyes were narrowed in a way that had me wondering what she saw.
She said she saw auras. Not as many now as when she was a kid, thanks to a healing that had gone wrong. Anyone else, I’d call it bullshit, but Thea? She had no reason to lie to me, and we both knew it.
It didn’t take her skillset to recognize that Linden was unhealthy, but the way she kept watching him from the corner of her eye interested me. She started gnawing on her bottom lip as Linden spoke, trying to convince my father he was asking for too much, when suddenly, her eyes flared wide and she stiffened.
I tensed too, because I knew something was wrong.
And like that, the house of cards started to tumble.
Linden tugged at his shirt collar and plucked at it, pulling it from his throat like it was choking him, and a sharp gasp escaped him as he stopped plucking and started clutching at his chest. Even as he jerked forward with the force of whatever was happening to him, Thea was rushing over.
I understood her intent.
Dad grabbed his phone, but I had a feeling, from Thea’s urgency, that no EMTs would get here in time. I stood too, darting over to her side as Linden’s colleagues jerked upright and away from him like they could distance themselves from what was making him sick.
“I know first aid!” she cried, before she rubbed her hands together a few times, managing to make it look like she was just nervous, but I knew otherwise.
The second she touched him, something happened.
I couldn’t see it, couldn’t feel it, but Thea did. So could Linden.
They both jolted like they’d been tazered, but even though she tensed up and stayed silent, Linden let out a low groan that sounded both confused and pained.
Within seconds, she was pulling back, and Linden was blinking at her like he’d never seen her before.
“What is it?” she questioned, her tone still urgent. And I got the need for playacting. People would think she w
as nuts if she admitted what she could do. “Are you okay?”
Linden frowned at her. “T-The pain. It’s gone.”
“It has?” She frowned, then quickly smiled. “That’s brilliant. You looked like you were hurting.”
Hurting was an understatement. He’d looked like he’d had a heart attack.
Linden knew it too.
He blinked at her a few times, rubbed his chest, then like he knew something had happened with his hands when they’d touched hers, he stopped touching his chest and eyed his fingers like they held the answer.
They didn’t.
Thea’s did.
I plucked at my bottom lip, wondering if he was going to say something… but he didn’t. Instead, he muttered, “I-I think we need to postpone this meeting for another time. I think I need to see a doctor.”
As lead negotiator, Linden’s presence was required, but I could see from the other guys’ faces they were disappointed not to be walking away with a deal.
Linden was a little wooden as he got to his feet, and when the others shook our hands and Thea’s, he was hesitant to take hers, but he did. For a second. Before swiftly pulling back.
Dad, shooting me a quizzical glance, hustled them out, and the moment he did, I turned to her side and hauled her into my arms.
Feelings and hurt and rejection be damned.
I knew she’d need me.
She always needed me after she healed.
In my grasp, she started shivering and her knees wobbled, buckling out from under her slight weight. I managed to hold her to me, but looked over my shoulder and saw Dad was still talking, then hustled her over to the bathroom.
“W-W-W-Where are we going?” she stuttered, her arms slipping around my waist, but her palms slid under the hem of my shirt so her fingers could touch bare skin.
The connection was both a blessing and a curse.
Fuck.
It felt good. Like exquisite torture. But she was freezing. I’d never known anything like this before—the way her temperature could drop within a matter of minutes like she’d been sitting in a fucking freezer for hours on end. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t believe in any supernatural bullshit, but as it stood, I was seriously just waiting on the day vampires were outed.
Grunting at the thought, and wanting to get her temperature leveled off, I muttered, “Bathroom. If you don’t want Dad to suspect anything—”
“I don’t!” was her immediate response, and she pushed her face into my throat.
God, the move annihilated me.
It reminded me of simpler times. Moments in our past where things hadn’t been as monstrous and complex as they were now.
Fuck, what I wouldn’t give for the chance to start over. For the past to be the beginning of our present once more.
ADAM
“Please, Coach. Come and see her. Give her a chance.”
If my tone was urgent, that’s because that was exactly how I was feeling, but Coach Ryder shook his head. “I don’t have time to—”
“Sir, I’m telling you—she’s the best swimmer I’ve seen. And her speeds?” I whistled. “They’re phenomenal. She’s on the team at her school, but it’s crappy. There are no gains to her being a part of it.”
“She’ll get spotted eventually if she’s that good.”
My mouth tightened. “She’s more than good, but she never competes. Why would she? She’s not in the NCSA. The only competitions she’s done are for the school, and it’s not like they’re going anywhere groundbreaking with one decent person on board.”
Ryder squinted at me as he sank back against his seat. His chair rocked under his not insubstantial weight—I always found it ironic that the old bastard was constantly telling me to diet when he needed to drop at least fifty pounds. Kicking his legs up onto the desk, he rested his hands on his belly as he pondered me.
At his back, there were a collection of certificates and pictures from his own time swimming competitively for the nation, but more than that, there were the countless kids he’d helped kickstart onto a national sphere.
A sphere that would be worse off without Thea on it.
I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees as I urged, “She’s fantastic, sir. Absolutely incredible. I timed her the other day. Her front crawl? She whooped the shit out of Maria’s last race.”
Ryder cocked a brow. “How many meters?”
“Fifty. But that was after she’d been training for an hour, Coach,” I stated. “She timed me, and I timed her.”
“What was your time?”
“Thirty-two seconds.”
Ryder shook his head. “You need to drop ten pounds. How many times do I have to tell you?”
“I’d been training for an hour!”
“You just used that as an excuse for how fast this Theodora swims!”
“Theodosia,” I corrected gruffly. “And this was different. I’m not pleading for my place on the team.”
He plucked at his chin, scratching along the wisps he had growing there. He had the face and the belly of a pit bull, and his bark? Just as mean. “How do you even know this kid anyway?”
“She’s not a kid. She’s my age. I met her at a fundraiser.”
“A fundraiser?” He snorted. “If she’s a friend of your family then she doesn’t need your charity, does she?”
“We met at the Hawkvale Community Center, sir. She isn’t rich. She’s a foster kid. But she’s so much more than that.”
“I can see you’ve got stars in your eyes.”
I shrugged. “Maybe I do, but her stats don’t lie.”
“You and I both know that I don’t let any hanky-panky go down between kids on my team if this is some BS excuse so you can spend more time together. Or, sweet Jesus, so you can both go to camp next month—”
And this was exactly why I’d been keeping things cool between Thea and me. Even if it fucking killed me. It was easier to stop when you hadn’t started something, and while we would eventually, I could wait. She deserved so much more than a quick tumble. I wanted to wait until we were eighteen, free from ties, and I could make love to her somewhere special.
Somewhere that meant something to us.
Without any artifice, I told him, “If it makes a difference, I’ll break things off with her.”
“You think I was born yesterday?”
Hitching my shoulders again, I muttered, “No, Coach. I don’t.” But it was bullshit that he was getting high-handed with me when Maria and Cain were boning each other like they were the only people who could repopulate the Earth—and my tone called him on that BS.
He rolled his eyes. “Always an insult with you, kid.”
“Please. Just come and watch her. You won’t believe how fast she is. Sir, her potential is unreal, and it’s such a waste. She’s not doing anything with her time other than training. She puts more into it than Cain and me combined, and all for nothing. She doesn’t compete outside of school events, she just trains and trains.”
“Why?”
“She likes the water.”
He grunted. “How fast was she again?”
“Twenty-nine seconds. The other day, Maria hit thirty-one. And that was after warm up, when she wasn’t fatigued.”
Pursing his lips, Ryder sighed. “What’s the center called again?”
I told him, hope filling me as he studied me, evidently considering what I was saying.
“She swims like that every day?”
I shoved my phone at him, a phone he’d been ignoring since I’d barged into his office before practice. I pressed play before he could say another word, and his focus zoomed in on the video.
His jaw worked for a second, his brow puckered next, then he cast me a look.
“Bring her in.”
I grinned at him. “Knew you’d like the look of her.”
He scraped his hand across his chin. “Yeah, well, I’m a sucker for sob stories.”
That had my grin abating. “She isn’t a sob
story. She didn’t ask me to come to you. She doesn’t even know I took the video.” I jerked up into a standing position and slammed my hand against the desk. “That’s out of order, Coach. She’s good. Too good to waste.”
“I agree. And that’s why I’ll meet with her, but I won’t take any smarts from you, Adam. Watch the attitude.” He scowled at me for a second, then asked, “Is this why you’ve been performing better recently?”
“Because of training with her?” I shrugged. “I don’t know. My times are the same.”
“Aside from your inability to drop the weight, your form has improved.”
“I can’t see why. I haven’t asked her for help.”
“Been swimming more?”
“Seven days a week.”
“That’s up from five,” he pointed out, then his eyes drifted over me. “I didn’t notice an increase in muscle mass, but that must be where you’re storing that extra weight.” He scrubbed his hands together. “That I can deal with.”
I controlled everything I fucking ate, and all I got for my pains was criticism from this fat bastard.
With a grunt, I muttered, “I try. Can I bring her around tomorrow?”
“Don’t see why not.” He squinted. “She good enough for the next NCSA meet?”
“When is that? Three weeks away?” At his nod, my brows rose. “She’s ready, God, she’s constantly ready, but you’d be willing to put her into the team?”
“If she can beat Maria’s time? Hell yeah. We have a reputation to uphold, and those bastards over at the Virginia Marlins need their asses kicked.”
Excitement rushed through me. “We’ll be here. Tomorrow. Seven AM. Thanks, Coach.”
He dipped his chin, and I felt his eyes on me as I left the office. They were like lasers pinpointed on the back of my neck, and I knew why—he was curious. Not just about Thea and her skills, but why I was getting involved. I pretty much kept to myself because I had no choice, thanks to Cain’s psychotic ass, and though I kept my head down and worked hard, I knew I had a rep for being a lone wolf.
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