by Nichole Van
If Olivia stayed around, she would learn all this soon enough.
“You used your ability to see the future to aid military efforts in Afghanistan?” she asked.
I nodded, swallowing quickly, allowing the rush of memories to wash over and through me.
Blasting heat. Searing pain. Agonizing screams.
Zach’s gargled accusations: “Why did you tell me? Why couldn’t you keep your damn mouth shut?”
I blew out a breath, releasing the horror. Only years of therapy prevented me from sinking into the quagmire that were my memories of Afghanistan.
Progress.
Olivia clearly gathered that I was having a moment. She waited patiently.
I swallowed again and then continued. “In addition to foretelling the future, I am also an empath. I feel others’ future emotions. Usually it’s just a minute or two before they do, but with stronger emotions, I sometimes get an earlier read. Distance is also a factor. If no one is within a mile or so of me, then I feel nothing. That’s why I live here—” I waved a hand indicating the house. “—buried in the countryside miles from anywhere. It’s also why I had to leave Volterra. With so many people around, it’s difficult to even think straight.”
“Oh.” She let out a puff of air and then blushed, brilliantly scarlet, splotchiness spreading over every last inch of her visible skin.
I stared, fascinated.
Blushing meant she was embarrassed, right? What had she felt that warranted such embarrassment? Though having spent a lifetime feeling others’ emotions, such embarrassment was usually reserved for something salacious and racy.
I grinned.
What had my Olivia been thinking about me? And how could I get her to tell me all about it? In excruciating detail?
She noted my knowing, unashamedly man-smug grin and blushed further, pressing her palms to her face. “I don’t even want to know what you’re feeling from me right now.”
“That’s the thing, Olivia.” I stretched out my right leg. “I don’t feel you.”
Her head snapped upright. “What?”
“I don’t feel your emotions.”
“You don’t feel my emotions?” she parroted. “At all?”
“Nothing.” I shook my head.
“Well . . . that’s a relief.” She sat back, deflating. “I was sitting here reliving everything I’ve felt over the past hour and alternating between mortification at my emotional ADHD and admiration of your acting skills in revealing none of it.”
I continued to grin.
She continued to blush.
“Is that typical?” she asked. “To not feel some people’s emotions?”
“No. It definitely makes you incredibly unique.”
“Huh. Any idea why you don’t feel my emotions?”
“Not yet, though it is the main reason I wanted to chat with you.” That wasn’t quite accurate. I was becoming more and more desperate to know every tiny thing about her.
Sensing another’s emotions drumming against your mind on a regular basis was exhausting. For example, I loved Chiara to distraction. But I could only handle my sister in small bursts. She felt so much, so thoroughly, so frequently . . . it was the equivalent of emotional fireworks every time I was around her.
But with Olivia, I didn’t have to feel responsible for the emotions I elicited in her. Nor did I have to fight my way through the morass of her feeling to understand my own.
This was what a relationship should be, I realized.
“Okay, so talk to me.” I leaned forward. “You know I’m an oracle, that I can see the future from time to time. Are you hoping I can see how to cure you?”
That got her attention. “Could you? See the future like that?”
Could I? “Possibly. The oracle gig is tricky sometimes. It’s not always precise and clear cut, but it would definitely be worth a try.”
Without even consciously thinking about it, I reached out to my GUT. If I activated a vision—if I sought a prophecy as oracles of old did—then the fracturing stayed at bay.
Olivia abruptly whipped her head around, half-rotating in her seat and flinching, before staring at the wall.
I startled with her. “What?”
I leaned forward, looking around her, trying to follow her gaze. I couldn’t see anything amiss with the pastoral fresco on the wall.
“You’re a prophet, so do you see them, too?” she asked, pointing randomly around the room—corner, wall, sconce, sideboard.
“Pardon?”
“The weird, squiggly lines in reality? Do you see them?” She asked the question easily, as if it wasn’t the verbal equivalent of a bomb. “They seem to like you.”
I literally stopped breathing, all the air whooshing from my lungs. Chills chased my spine.
What the hell?! Did she mean—
“The squiggly lines? Do they hang in the air, like cuts or scars?”
“Yeah.” She nodded, eyes wide. “That’s a good description of them.”
“You can see them?” My voice a whisper.
“Wait—can’t you see them?” She sat up, expression even more alert.
Holy hell.
She could see the scars.
“No. I can’t. But I know they’re here. Supposedly, there’s a scar there.” I pointed toward the large flatscreen in the corner where Jack had said the largest scar was. The place she had been repeatedly staring. “Are there others?”
“Well, yeah. That one is the largest. But there are at least—” She rotated her head around, counting. “—seven others in this room alone. The house is riddled with them. I’ve never seen so many in one place before.”
I shook my head, expression surely gobsmacked.
The implications of all this were . . . staggering.
“I’m surprised you can’t see them, to be honest,” she continued. “As I said, they like you. They kind of undulate as you walk by.”
Wow.
My woman could see the scars, and I didn’t feel her emotions.
Try as I might, Hope squirmed its way into my thoughts, taking hold with tenacious little hooks.
I had found someone who could see the scars. Being able to see the scars was the first step to eradicating them. We now had a fighting chance, a way to test theories and experiment.
And if there had been any lingering thought that I would willingly walk away from Olivia before this, that idea just sped out of harbor on a speedboat.
“What are the scars doing? How do they look?” I asked, throwing my questions at her.
“They’re . . . hovering, more or less. Though that one there—” She pointed to the place on the wall that had drawn her attention. “—just glowed and flickered.”
I nodded. “That makes sense. I vaguely thought about using my . . . powers.”
“Wait, you call them . . . scars?” she asked. “I suppose that’s a better name for them than mine.”
“What do you call them?”
She sighed and blushed. “You have to know that I’ve seen these my entire life, so I can’t be held responsible for my preschool self’s naming prowess.”
I chuckled. “Well, now you have to tell me.”
Her blush intensified. She pressed on her cheeks again. “Do you think I’ll be able to go five minutes without blushing in your presence?”
I certainly hoped not, as her blush was adorable, but I knew better than to say so.
“Just tell me.”
A hefty sigh. “Wriggles.” She rolled her eyes at herself. “I call them Wriggles.”
Silence.
“Wriggles?”
“Cause they sometimes . . . wriggle.” She squirmed in her seat, wiggling her body. “They wriggle a lot for you, actually.” She wiggled one more time.
I desperately swallowed a guffawing laugh.
This woman. My woman.
Giddy infatuation flooded me, a glitter bomb of sunshine.
“Wriggle . . . it’s cute.”
Her glare said she
didn’t miss how my lips were twitching, trying not to laugh. “Scar sounds less . . . dumb.”
“Meh, the label is irrelevant.” Which was true, but as my lips kicked upward, the gravitas kinda evaporated.
Olivia pursed her mouth.
I lost my battle and grinned. “Wriggle, scar, whatever. More importantly, you can see them when no one else can. You said you’ve always been able to see them, then? So you haven’t spent any time in the shadow world?”
“Since my earliest memories—” She froze, frowning. “Wait. What is this shadow world?”
“You see the scars and I can’t feel your emotions. How can you not know about the shadow world?”
Her look turned deadpan. “When I was assigned reality-scar duty, they forgot to give me the ‘shadow world’ pamphlet, I suppose.”
Snarky.
I liked it.
“Right. The shadow world . . . it’s a space in-between Heaven and Hell, between this life and the next. Like limbo.”
“Okay. That’s a new idea for me.” She twisted her mouth, clearly thinking. “So why do you think I’ve spent time there?”
“Because the only other person like you—able to see the scars and no emotional read—was trapped there for two hundred years.”
She perked up at that. “Interesting. Who is it?”
“Jack Knight-Snow—”
“I’ve heard of him. Isn’t he the archaeologist who raised the Sassari Horde? The one who has the same name as his ancestor who found the horde?”
“Exactly. Except he’s actually the same Lord Knight who excavated the horde in the early eighteenth century.”
She blinked and shook her head. “What? And people think I say weird things. Now you have to start at the beginning. I want to hear this story.”
Smiling, I recounted how Jack had become trapped in the shadow world in 1818. Branwell had pulled him out of the shadow world just over a year ago. But once he was back in our reality, Jack had remained ghost-like as his body was trapped halfway between this reality and the shadow world. When in that state, Jack could see the scars he himself had created.
“Wait.” Olivia held up a hand. “Jack created the scars? How are the scars made?”
I scrubbed a hand through my hair. “To be honest, we’re not entirely sure of the process. We know that we D’Angelos sometimes make scars when we use our GUTs. Jack would make a scar when he was a ghost and tried to make his body corporeal. But Jack could only ever see the scars that he himself made. You seem to see a lot more scars than that, but you don’t ever create them, right?”
Olivia shook my head. “Not that I know of. And scars have never just appeared around me. I always find them in a location.”
“Chiara has postulated that there are a lot more scars that Jack didn’t see, as the scars have been around longer than Jack was a ghost.”
“But Jack is no longer a ghost, right?”
“Exactly.” I recounted the series of events that had tethered his body permanently to our reality. “But there are a few facts that still confuse me about all this,” I continued.
“Confuse you?”
“Yeah. Once Jack got his body back, he couldn’t see the scars anymore. But you seem to have a tangible body and, yet, you can still see the scars. Why is that?”
Olivia frowned, holding up a hand. “Are you thinking I’m not totally in this reality?”
“You seem to be.” Though without touching her more thoroughly or watching her eat, how could I know for sure? Maybe this was like The Sixth Sense and she was a ghost who didn’t know she was a ghost? Granted, I had shaken her hand earlier, and she had driven here in a car, so the chances of her being a ghost were . . . unlikely.
Olivia angled her head. “You don’t sound so sure. Do you want me to prove I’m real? Put it to the test?”
A beat.
“How would you propose to do that?” I asked.
Her eyes darted from side-to-side. She bit her lower lip. “I don’t know. Uhm, you could hold me or hug me or something?”
All the air whooshed from my lungs.
Hug her? Hold her?
Hell, yes.
The only problem?
I might never let go.
NINE
Olivia
You could hold me or hug me or something.
My statement hung between us, the words reverberating around the room.
Tennyson blinked and then froze.
Right.
Way to go, Olivia. Freak out the Hot Guy by awkwardly coming on to him.
First . . . Wriggles.
And now this.
I should come with a warning label.
“Hug you?” He repeated.
I cringed. Why, why, why couldn’t I keep a lid on my attraction to this man?
“Uhmm, only if you’re okay with it.” I tried to backpedal. “I didn’t mean anything creepy by it, honest. It’s not like it was an awkward come-on or something.” Except maybe it sorta was. “I’m not in a relationship or anything. It wouldn’t be weird for me, promise. Would it be weird for you?” Another cringe. Stop talking. “Are you married? Girlfriend?”
“No. No.” A pause. “Definitely not.” He answered my questions.
Abruptly, he grinned, his whole face sparking to life. “It would be a good way to test your corporeality. Let’s try it.”
W-what?! Had Tennyson Hunkalicious D’Angelo just agreed to hug me?
Or was this a classic case of my mind deciding to role-play my fantasies in a lucid waking dream?
Which . . . score, but maybe not the most convenient time to deep-dive into the scorching heat of my epic, one-sided crush.
Tennyson stood up.
Whoa. This was really going down.
Eeek.
I rose, too, swallowing, firmly telling my hands not to get too sweaty or grabby. Not to mention . . . no drooling.
I mean, no drooling should be obvious, but sometimes the lizard brain takes over and, and . . . and I needed to stop babbling.
He took a step towards me.
Okay, okay, okay.
This was happening. We were going to do this.
He took another step toward me. And then another.
I matched him, stepping forward.
Gah! My hormones were jumping up and down, squealing and fangirling, the little traitors.
Unfortunately, my overactive hormones clearly didn’t understand the difference between a platonic and non-platonic hug.
I preemptively sternly told all of me to, Hold your horses, girlies.
At which point, my hormones pointed out that they would infinitely prefer for Tennyson to hold their horses, whatever that meant—
And then every thought scattered because Tennyson was all around me. His arms slipped around my waist, pulling me to his chest, his hands pressing into the center of my back. He reeled me closer and closer until I was flush against him from thigh to chest.
My eyes fluttered shut. My sneaky hormones didn’t care that Tennyson Hotterson D’Angelo had heartbreaker written all over his oh-so-fine, chiseled jaw.
They had decided that he was it for them. So my traitorous arms enthusiastically reciprocated, wrapping around his broad shoulders with embarrassing tightness, taking matters into their own hands. (Pun intended.)
His entire body deflated, like letting out a deep breath of air, allowing him that much closer.
I sighed into him, my forehead tucked against his chin. Wow. He smelled divine. Woodsy with hints of spice. Very male. Drat. It was definitely an expensive, Hot Person kinda smell.
His chest was lean muscle, hard against my soft. The fine cotton of his shirt smooth under my cheek.
I was so done for.
Tennyson D’Angelo. Lady Killer.
But . . . what a sweet death.
I closed my eyes and sank into him. Just this moment. He held me firmly but gently. As if I were infinitely precious to him.
My logical mind knew that Tennyson wasn’t my m
an. That this hug was purely platonic and meant nothing to him.
But my body didn’t care. Hugging him was the best thing that had happened in a long time.
So maybe my life was boring. Or maybe being held by Tennyson D’Angelo was just that fine.
Besides, every woman needs a conversational starter that begins: So there was this one time I tracked down an insanely gorgeous prophet in Volterra, Italy—like King of the Hot People gorgeous—and he invited me back to his place . . .
The hug went on and on. Past the point of polite. Past the point of awkward.
I never wanted it to end.
Tennyson
Hugging Olivia was a huge mistake.
I meant to merely give her a quick squeeze, just enough to make sure she was fully corporeal and in our reality.
Touching her. Holding her. That was a way to test it. Or at least my fevered brain fixated on it as the only possible solution the second she mentioned it.
Turns out, she was most definitely real. Silky and warm and so very present.
But now that I had her in my arms, I was finding it almost impossibly difficult to let go.
She was soft and pliant, her curves molding to my body. I was a guy who appreciated a curvy woman, and Olivia was definitely my preferred amount of curvy.
More to the point . . . I had never held someone without knowing their emotions.
I was in utterly uncharted territory here.
It was . . . enthralling. Soothing. Comforting.
Nothing intruded. I could hold her and simply . . . be.
Did she like hugging me? Was she enjoying this? She had relaxed into me, so that was good, right?
I had no idea.
Wow.
And everyone else lived their life like this? Always wondering and never knowing? It was simultaneously thrilling and unnerving and terrifying.
The love I had felt for her in my visions was rapidly bleeding into real life. Not good, for so many reasons.
I was essentially a stranger to her. I needed to move slowly, assuming she was even interested in me.