Above The Surface

by Akeroyd, Serena

  Tipping the guy after he set up the little trolley just inside the door, I closed it, then poured us both some coffee which I doctored how she liked it. She took the cup and saucer, had a sip, and smiled at me. “You remembered.”

  I shrugged, drank some of my own, then I flung myself onto the armchair opposite her. Eying her over the rim, I questioned, “What’s wrong, Anna? Why are you here?” And after going to some lengths to find me.

  She shrugged. “I wanted to catch up. It’s been such a long time since we chatted. There’s so much you don’t know!”

  “Like what?” I inquired warily.

  “Cain’s finally settled into a new job.”

  She always brushed over the fact that he’d hurt me and that he’d served time for that crime. And that Maria had been a party to that crime was always brushed over. I didn’t expect her to sound apologetic, so I’d stopped being offended. Instead, I cocked a brow and asked, “Doing what?”

  She waved a hand. “He’s working in a restaurant.”

  “Doing what?” I repeated, unsure why she was even telling me this, but knowing better than to put up verbal roadblocks.

  “Something in the kitchen, I assume. I think he’s a sous chef. He told me he’s certain he’ll be the head chef’s right-hand man soon enough.”

  I arched a brow. “Good for him.” Undoubtedly, he’d be the next Bobby Flay in a short while—at least, that’s what she’d be telling people.

  “It’s been difficult for him,” she said with a soft pout, her attention on her coffee. “Such a shame the way he’s been treated just because he has a little blip on his record.”

  Though I wanted to roll my eyes, I didn’t. Instead, I just replied, “I’m glad he’s getting his life on track.”

  Abstractly, I’d known he was being released. Robert had even mentioned it once. But, in the grand scheme of things, I hadn’t been that interested, and my training took most of my attention.

  Knowing he was roaming around again hadn’t set me at ease, and I’d been grateful to be across the country, away from the sick piece of shit.

  I wasn’t surprised that she’d raised the topic of him because she was insensitive enough to do that, but what surprised me was that she mentioned his position. She was, after all, a snob. I had to assume that Robert had refused to bankroll Cain, because otherwise, I doubted he’d be ‘slumming’ it in a restaurant.

  “Things are going well for Maria and Adam too. It’s so exciting,” she exclaimed next, and out of nowhere, her aura bloomed bright red—the color of blood. The sight astonished me, enough for me to gape at her a little, before she distracted me with, “Maria thinks she might be pregnant again! Isn’t that thrilling?”

  It would be if the kid she was carrying was her grandchild, but knowing what I did of her relationship with Adam, I highly doubted it. Even more, I doubted Maria would be pregnant for long.

  She had an unfortunate habit of losing babies. Not miscarrying them. The bitch got pregnant and just had an abortion. On one of the few occasions he’d been in a sharing mood, Adam had told me that, one time, she’d taken drugs to get rid of a baby, had almost overdosed to stop being pregnant. I could easily believe it. Evidently, she didn’t believe in condoms—stupid bitch.

  But that wasn’t why Anna had told me.

  There was a glint in her eye. A glint I understood.

  She wanted to measure my level of hurt.

  My pain.

  I’d never noticed that before. Never seen how she monitored a room in such a way, and that I’d seen her aura for the first time ever, told me enough. She’d truly had intended to cause me distress.

  Uncertainly, I plucked at my bottom lip and murmured, “I hope she stays healthy.”

  Anna frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I’d hate for her to miscarry again.”

  Anna sighed. “Yes, unfortunate. I’d love another grandchild.”

  As far as I could tell, Anna only liked Freddie because he was Cain’s kid. I couldn’t see her being interested in Adam’s. Yeah, that sounded rotten, but it was true. Cain was Anna’s favorite, even if he was a wicked prick.

  “They’re doing so well though. They’re so happy together!”

  I hummed, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with that, but apparently my tone had her sharpening her claws.

  “What’s the matter? Aren’t you happy for them?”

  I arched a brow at her. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “You didn’t sound it.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “You always did have a little crush on Adam, didn’t you?”

  “He had a crush on me too,” I said simply. “You wouldn’t even be sitting here today if that weren’t so, would you?”

  Her cheeks flushed. “Yes, well, that’s certainly true. Things would have been a lot different if Adam had never met you.”

  “I doubt things would have turned out better for Cain,” I murmured softly because I couldn’t help myself, not when she’d come here to rub salt in my wounds.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” she snarled, sitting up so abruptly that she spilled coffee on her lap.

  “I mean he was a bully. You must have known that, Anna. He bullied Adam something fierce, and I know half the school was terrified of him.”

  Her mouth dropped open, and her lips pulsated like she was a goldfish. “I don’t know where—”

  “Where what? Hell, Anna, if you couldn’t see it when it was under your nose, then there’s no hope for you, is there?” I finished sweetly.

  “How dare you?”

  Her snap had me smiling at her. I shouldn’t take pleasure in her irritation with me, but I did.

  I had no idea why she wanted me to know Cain was doing great with his life and that Maria and Adam were so fucking happy in their miserable marriage, all I knew was that I didn’t want to hear her bullshit.

  “You should probably soak that shirt before the stain sets in deep,” I pointed out, eying the white shirt which was splotched with coffee, and the navy pants which wouldn’t stain but which were damp.

  She peered down at her stomach with irritation. “Never mind—”

  “I need to be getting ready to go meet my friends, Anna. It’s been…” I settled on the word, “Interesting catching up. I’ll see you for brunch with Robert tomorrow, won’t I?”

  Before she could answer, I got to my feet and moved over to the door. Sure, it was rude, but I opened it and just waited for her to join me, which she did with a huff. She snatched up her bag, dumped the cup and saucer on the trolley, and swept out of the room. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I called out as she sailed out, and when she pinged for the elevator, I locked up and pressed my back to the door.

  “Well, that was weird,” I muttered to myself before I took another sip of coffee.

  As I swept a glance over my room, I saw she’d dropped something on her armchair. I didn’t have to reach out to hold it to see what it was.

  A picture from a sonogram.

  If she was pregnant enough to need a sonogram, then it was too late for Maria to have some accident.

  As I studied the image, I wondered who the father was. Because, whoever he was, I knew without a shadow of a doubt it wasn’t Adam.

  THEA

  The bio lab looked out onto a corridor. A long one. The school colors of scarlet and yellow lined the walls, which a bank of windows overlooked. The view beyond always grabbed my attention because I loathed biology with a passion. So much so that even though I didn’t like the people in my school that much better, I preferred to watch the clusters trudge down the hall on their way to wherever.

  As usual, I was sitting alone. When it came time to collab, the bio and chem teachers had started having to assign partners because everyone refused, point blank, to work with me.

  So it was something else to hate me for. Now, no one could work with their chosen friend, they were split up and reassigned to make sure the black sheep had someone as a partner.

  It was a bi
tch, wasn’t it, when I was the one who’d been vilified when Cain had actually been sent to jail for what he’d done.

  I still couldn’t make sense of that logic, but who was I to question the elite might of Rosemore Academy’s student body?

  The thought had me clenching my teeth a little as Dr. Leviston droned on about protons and neutrons and some other crap that bored me senseless. I needed to concentrate, but I couldn’t. Today, I just wasn’t in the mood.

  Not only did I want to be in the water, but there was something in the air.

  Something that put me on edge.

  As I randomly doodled on my notepad, little bubbles of water that gathered in a swirl at the center of the page and then burst as they drifted to the surface, a noise pricked my attention.

  Even after what we’d done together, it still irked me how hypersensitive I was to Adam. Maybe, if I was being honest, I was even more so than before.

  Just his laughter had the ability to rake my nerve endings.

  Knowing it was him, I looked up and caught his eye as he began to stroll down the corridor outside the lab. Not unsurprisingly, there was a cluster of douchebags around him.

  With Cain out of the picture, and taking on some notoriety as a result—well, I called it that because in the real world it was—he’d taken his brother’s place and ruled senior year.

  I knew, just fucking knew, that come prom time, he’d be prom king. If Maria let him attend, of course. She hadn’t let him attend spring homecoming. At least, that was what I’d heard in the locker room from her gossiping friends.

  I couldn’t imagine Adam letting Maria control him to that extent, but she had leverage, didn’t she? She had the power to extend Cain’s jail term, to make his ‘stay’ even more miserable than it already was.

  Power, in the hands of someone like Maria, was never a good thing.

  I didn’t even know her, not really, but I never liked the way she looked at the world. She was beautiful, with long, coffee brown hair that offset her creamy tanned skin. Her eyes were an almond-shape, rich espresso that could have contained a smile, but instead she constantly scowled. She looked like someone had rubbed shit under her nose. For someone who’d been granted so much in her life, who’d been gifted a world of riches since birth, I wasn’t sure why she was such a miserable bitch, but she was. Without a shadow of a doubt.

  Adam’s laugh faltered as our gazes connected, and with such abruptness, that Liam and Derek, a couple of the guys on the swim team with us, and his other friends, Jake and Brad, shot him a look. It didn’t take a second for them to figure out who Adam was staring at.

  Even as he pinned me with that look, I let my gaze drift because I couldn’t deal with connecting on that visceral level—not before lunch, at any rate.

  It was easier to look at the dicks he called friends than it was to linger on him, even if they did pull faces and sneer at me. I was relieved when he passed out of my line of sight, the dicks with him, even if he’d definitely slowed down once he saw me.

  I got the feeling he’d been hoping what had happened in Fort Worth would be something that would be repeated. But I didn’t have time for that, not only because I literally had zero time outside of training, but also because my heart couldn’t stand it.

  My body belied that, however, and it was why I took the pill Janice insisted on procuring for me, just in case I fell into temptation, but danger lay on whatever path Adam and I collided on. There was only so much heartbreak I could withstand, even if I craved him more than I ever had.

  But, because he wanted me, he’d stopped avoiding me. Before, it had felt like he had some kind of GPS on me, so that whatever part of the academy I was in, he could go in the opposite direction. Now? He was there.

  Drifting into my line of sight, enticing me by breathing.

  And though I wanted to, I knew I had to be strong.

  Even if that felt like a huge task most days.

  When the bell rang, I gathered my shit together and trudged out long after everyone had left the lab. As I started down the corridor, the faint sounds of sobbing drew my attention, and I twisted around, aware that someone was nearby and that they were using the break between classes to hide away.

  The sounds, though, reminded me of what it had been like in the early days of Adam’s marriage. I’d cried like that. Like my heart was breaking. Like my soul was being torn in two.

  The sobs made me cringe, even as I knew I couldn’t just walk off and leave someone so upset though they wanted to be alone—I had to check in on them.

  The corridor was lined with a counter that topped cupboards the science teachers used to store equipment in, and I followed the corridor to the end, frowning because the noise sounded like it was coming from inside a cabinet.

  Because I knew they were stacked full, confusion had me further following the sound and that was where I saw her.

  I’d seen her around school. She was a new girl, three years below me, but she’d come as a surprise because, while I didn’t see that many auras anymore, hers was bright. She shone like the sun, and it was impossible to avoid the joyful gleam around her.

  It always made me think she’d be a sunny person. A cheerful one. So to see her sobbing her heart out? It just felt wrong.

  Her jaunty yellow aura was streaked somehow. Dark reds and browns merging with the yellow, creating a murky khaki around her stomach that had me guessing she was in pain, and not emotionally, but physically.

  Having never seen that color before, not even on Vinnie or Louisa, two people who were dying, I had to admit to being concerned. I didn’t know the girl, and didn’t particularly want to know her, but her aura had me thinking bad stuff.

  Because I didn’t see them all the time, I had to figure that when I did, there was a reason behind it. A reason for that person coming to my attention. I’d noticed this girl from the start, and I figured it had to be fate… even if fate had done nothing but bite me in the ass every time I’d come face-to-face with it.

  A sharp gasp escaped her as she curled up tighter, and the flash of pain on her face had me wincing. Slowly, I drew my hands together and began to rub them briskly like they were cold. The noise must have come to her attention, because she blinked at me then blanched, but even as she started to scrabble to her feet, her intent to run off, embarrassment lining her features, the khaki aura around her pulsed to a beat of its own that followed a wave of pain that had her gasping and sinking back to the floor.

  Instantly, and without thought for my own safety, I dropped to my knees and grabbed her hand. “Hey, it’s okay,” I tried to reassure her, even as she let out a long, deep moan as our fingers collided. It surprised me when I didn’t feel the same agony as I had with Louisa—nothing worse than a stitch I’d get in my side after I worked out too long and hard.

  Her eyes flared wide. “Oh God, it hurts!” she keened as her lashes began to flutter.

  Because I didn’t want her to associate me with the pain relief I hoped she’d be feeling soon, I whispered, “Can I take you to the nurse?”

  She whipped her head to the side. “She can’t do anything. I have PCOS. When I get my period, it hurts.”

  “You shouldn’t be in school,” I muttered, her aura made that clearer than a doctor’s note. Of course, I doubted the faculty would accept my justification.

  Her teeth clenched down. “God, your hands are hot,” she muttered, and I realized they were.

  I could feel it.

  It was like I was holding a hot water bottle filled with freshly boiled water. Heat seeped out of my pores like I was connected to the grid.

  A gasp escaped her, and she rocked her head back against the narrow section of wall where she’d holed up. When her aura started to change, the khaki dispersing, I didn’t need to ask her if she was better.

  Instead, I repeated, “Can I take you to the nurse?”

  She licked her lips, and when her head rolled forward so she could see me more easily, there was a dazedness to her eyes th
at made me see she was being released from the haze of pain that had obscured everything else.

  Even her awareness of who I was.

  The second she recognized me, she blanched. When she scrabbled to her feet, I noticed with some delight that her aura was a little brighter than it had been, the yellow definitely overtaking the strange brown and red streaks.

  “Um, thank you, no,” she mumbled, even as she began to back off like I had the plague or something.

  I was used to that.

  In these walls, I was a pariah, and it was a death sentence to be near me.

  It was a good thing I didn’t like people and preferred my own company.

  It was also a good thing that the blast of cold didn’t hit me until she’d left the corridor. It slammed into me with a sharp hammer blow that had me reeling. Not as bad as with Louisa, and I figured that was because I hadn’t had to do much healing, but still as potent a blow for its length of absence.

  Shuddering, I let my hands fall to the countertop and my back rounded, curving as I processed the bone deep shivers that racked me from head to toe.

  I’d known I’d get no thanks for helping the girl, but this was definitely worse than her treating me like I was contagious.

  I dealt with it as long as I could before I allowed my eyes to water, before I let the tears fall, and it was like a dream when someone appeared at my back. So warm. So vital.

  In these walls, I wasn’t safe. Not really. Maybe I wasn’t in danger like I’d been on day one, but I knew to keep away from people, because they were always looking for ways to pull shit on me.

  I knew, in this instance however, there was no need to worry.

  “What have you done?” he muttered, and when he slipped his arms around my waist, covering me as he tucked his chin on my shoulder, I had no choice but to sink into him.

  “S-She was in pain.”

  “You healed someone?” he queried, his voice low, quiet.

  I nodded, then winced as another shudder racked my spine. He tutted under his breath, then muttered, “Turn around.”