Echoes of Time (Echoes of Time Travel Series: Book One)
Page 25
“Huh.” Shawn said nothing else for a long moment, considering her words. They baffled him, and he needed to understand. He took a couple of steps toward her, stopping a short distance away. “I don’t know. Maybe. If it had happened while I was here, I’d have killed him. But I wasn’t here. I hated that I worried you and only hoped you could find comfort, have a reprieve from it all. If it was Alec…” Shawn shrugged. He tilted his head to the side and met her eyes, her expression incredulous. “I take it from your reaction that this isn’t what friends do?”
“Oh, no, no, no. It isn’t. Let’s get something straight right now. I’m not sharing you with anyone else, no matter the circumstances. And I would expect you to feel the same way. Even though it’s way too early in our relationship to be discussing this.” She threw her hands up in the air as a little burble of laughter escaped her. “Being with you is going to be quite the adventure, isn’t it?”
He nodded, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Definitely. So, if you didn’t sleep together…?”
“You’re impossible! We kissed. Once, just once. For, like, two seconds. When we realized what we were doing, we stopped. And then...well, I threw up. I was pretty drunk at the time.” Her face had reddened enough to resemble a tomato.
Shawn burst into laughter. “You threw up? That must have done wonders for his ego.”
She covered her face with her hands and Shawn bridged the distance between them. He took her into his arms and held her close.
“Show me your bedroom, Ray,” he said in a rough whisper.
He let Rayna lead him to her bedroom.
Once inside, she knelt in front of a brown milk crate filled with albums and started flipping through them. “Music would be nice, wouldn’t it? My parents loved The Beatles. Well, my dad mostly. Let me just find this one album.”
Shawn took in the room, which screamed Rayna in a way that made him smile. A fluffy pink comforter covered the queen-size bed. A stack of movie and music magazines were piled haphazardly on the floor in a corner. A rainbow-colored assortment of scrunchies littered the top of the dresser, and a record player on a tower of three milk crates took up one wall. Red, blue, and yellow scarves were draped over the headboard, over the closet door, and any other spot where they could conceivably be hung.
He liked the hippie bohemian style. Liked it a lot.
Leaning up against the dresser, he said, “I think it’s in your best interest to not have me thinking about your father right now.”
Her fingers slowed to a halt as she flicked through the albums, a blush creeping over her skin. “Oh, I didn’t...I mean…”
He pointed out the glossy eight-by-ten pictures of rock stars and movie stars taped to the walls, to change the subject and rescue her. “Are these from magazines?”
“Yeah, I don’t make enough at the nursing home to decorate the way I really want to. I hate bare walls.” She vacillated between standing and resuming her search for the perfect album to play. “So, uh...no music?”
“Music is good. Just...hurry.” He pushed away from the dresser and stumbled. Taking a couple of steps, he staggered on unsteady feet..
“Oh, my god, Shawn. Are you okay?” Rayna jumped to her feet and grabbed his arm.
“I…” He blinked at her as the room spun in a rapid whirling circle like drunken bed spins but, of course, he wasn’t drunk. “Wait…”
He broke into a cold sweat, his heart hammering in his chest as vertigo gripped him. He tried to breathe, but couldn’t draw in oxygen, and he feared his lungs might explode. Then the sensation ended. Just like that, with a little pop in his head that he felt rather than heard.
“Shawn?” Rayna’s worried face swam before his eyes.
He attempted a smile. “I’m alright now. That was…” He shook his head, taking in what had happened. “That was an echo, Ray. I have to go. I’m sorry.”
“A what? Wait, what’s going on?”
“An echo, as in something just broke in the timeline.”
He took a glance around. A spartan sanitary bedroom faced him. Everything had changed. Bare walls, no personal effects, no record player. The pink comforter had become white.
What the hell had happened to change Rayna’s tastes so drastically in this new timeline?
A desperate urgency consumed him, and he started moving toward the door.
“Wait, where are you going?” Rayna darted forward to stop him.
“To get my shoes. I gotta go to the source of the break and fix this.” He pushed past her, but she ran down the hall after him.
“Where? How? What?” Rayna shot the words at him, her panic rising.
“There’s no way to know until I get there. No one knows why the timeline breaks. But the echo tells me enough to get me to where I need to be.”
“But you can’t go now!” Her voice rose in fear. “The patrols are already out. It’s too late to leave now.”
Patrols? What the hell had happened to the timeline?
He turned to her at the front door. “What patrols?”
“Don’t joke about this. It’s already past lights out.” She reached out to take his hand. “It has to wait until tomorrow. Please.”
Shawn stared at her. Even as he bent to pull his shoes on, his gaze never wavered, unsettled by the wrongness of it all. She should remember, shouldn’t she? She was with him when the change happened. She should remember.
“Who are The Beatles, Ray?”
She crinkled up her nose. “The what? Oh, god. Did you see a bug?”
“No, Ray, concentrate.” He stood and gripped her arms, held her in place. “The Beatles. David Bowie. Duran Duran. The Beatles. You said your father loves them.” A tiny flicker of recognition glimmered in her eyes, and he pressed on. “‘Yellow Submarine.’ ‘Eleanor Rigby.’ ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.’”
“Oh wait. Ob-la-di...that means life goes on.” Terror exploded in her eyes. “Shawn, what does this mean? What’s going on?”
“Don’t be afraid. Everything is alright, I promise. You remember The Beatles now, don’t you? They were a rock band.”
She squinted up at him. “Is David Bowie a friend of yours? The name...it’s familiar.”
He offered a soft smile to her earnest expression. “No, he’s another rock singer. ‘China Girl.’ ‘Let’s Dance.’”
“Oh! Serious Moonlight! That’s another, right?”
“Almost. Those are song lyrics. But you’re remembering.”
She struggled out of his grip, and he let go as her hands flew to her temples. “I have a headache…” Her eyes went wide and she gasped. “Oh, god. Everything is wrong.” She ran back to her bedroom, and Shawn followed. “My room! Where are all my things? Oh, no, the patrols!”
“It’s alright.” Shawn spoke in a soothing tone although he was a bit unnerved at how she knew both timelines concurrently. “The patrols are part of the wrong timeline. I have to go to whenever the timeline got screwed and fix whatever happened. It’d be a damned dreary place here without music, otherwise.”
She turned to him, recognition fully blossoming on her face. “Oh, wait. This is an echolocation. Kyle told me about that. I didn’t know you called it an echo.”
“Close enough. I use echolocation. What I just experienced we call an echo.”
“Okay, I’m going with you.”
“You can’t. I’m sorry.”
“I know you can take me. I’m not going to be left out in the cold this time. You promised.”
“I promised we’d work something out. If you come with me, you could cause a change that ends the world. The world I chose to live on.”
“You’re exaggerating. And, even if you’re not, annihilation is better than what the world is right now. Those patrols. They’re like Nazis, Shawn. And, the prisons no one ever returns from. There’s no freedom. It’s not a democracy anymore. No music, no art. We can’t even think about pretty things! I’m going with you!”
“Please don’t be angry, Ray.” He wanted
to take her. Leaving her here sounded almost more dangerous than taking her, but he couldn’t. The risk was too great. She’d be alright. He looked at her determined face and sighed. “I’ll be as quick as possible.”
Shutting his eyes, he concentrated on the source of the echo. He reached out with his senses and bounced his echolocation off the boundaries of time until he pinpointed the time location where the rift in time had originated. Wherever that was. He only knew he had to travel to where his echolocation told him the echo came from.
He opened his eyes as the room wavered, faded. Cold rushed across his face and chilled his bones.
Rayna tackled him, wrapping her arms around his waist.
Together, they traveled through time.
The Echoes of Time Travel Series Continues with…
Echoes of Change
When the music stops the world ends. Shawn and Rayna must travel back to 1963 just as Beatlemania sweeps across the United States…or does it? They need to ensure that it does otherwise the world will become a bleak, authoritarian landscape of prison camps and military police. Will Shawn and Rayna be able to correct the broken timeline or will freedom die? Click HERE to preorder your copy now!
Click HERE to get your copy of Echoes of Change!
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How did it all start for Shawn Paros?
I hope you enjoyed Echoes of Time. I have a very special and exclusive FREE Book offer for you! Echoes of Genesis is a bonus prequel to the Echoes of Time Travel Series that explores the ruthless assassin side of Shawn before he met Rayna. He had all good intentions when he joined the time traveler program and was sent to Earth. All he wanted was a better life for himself off his home planet and a chance at happiness. So what happened? Find out by Clicking HERE to get your FREE copy now!
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Also by Rylee Swann
Echoes of Time Travel Series
Echoes of Time (Echoes of Time Travel Series: Book One)
Echoes of Change (Echoes of Time Travel Series: Book Two)
Echoes of Hell - Coming Soon!
Echoes of Night - Coming Soon!
Echoes of Solace - Coming Soon!
Echoes of Fate - Coming Soon!
Lover Wanted (Billionaire Boss Romance)
Don’t Make Me Wait
Come Together (Second Chance, Secret Baby)
Rock ’n’ Roll Rebel (Friends to Lovers)
Long Distance Lover (Second Chance Romance)
Interview with the Dom
Interview with the Bad Boy
Interview with the Rock Star
The Icarus Trilogy
Icarus Rising
Icarus Ascendant
Rock ’n’ Roll Rebel
About Rylee Swann
USA Today bestselling author Rylee Swann is often found in her writing cave, located in a small purple office in a large old Victorian house in Upstate New York. Here she battles with mammoth spiders, works at her hectic marketing manager job, and enjoys the company of the strong, confident, sexy characters she writes about in her romance books.
Amid all that, she also makes time to snuggle with her two cats, who couldn't care less about the spiders. Much to her chagrin.
Discover more about Rylee Swann on her website.
ryleeswann.com
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