by Nichole Van
Of course, all these thoughts didn’t stop me from admiring Tennyson. He was a fine specimen of manhood. I drank him in for a moment, unnoticed. He had changed his clothes too, opting for loose track pants and a chest-hugging t-shirt.
I knew he was a casual dresser at heart.
I may have sighed.
He turned around.
“I didn’t hear you enter.” His expression a mixture of wonder and exasperation. “It’s just so weird to not feel your emotions. I always know when someone is close to me, but not you.”
He crossed over to me, his left pant leg flowing around the thin steel of his prosthetic.
I realized something.
“Are those . . . are those Crocs?” I pointed at his feet as he walked . . . well, real foot and bionic foot.
He paused, looking down at his toes tucked into comfortable molded plastic. “Yes. Though I sense some judgment there.”
“It’s more than just ‘some.’”
He grinned and continued toward me. Blue eyes intent, chest muscles flexing underneath his t-shirt. Part of my brain shut down at seeing him in motion, Crocs and all.
They did look good on him, dammit.
He was hot-liciousness defined.
Would his gorgeousness ever become common place? Would I ever adapt to it?
Yeah. I obviously had misread Judith in the car.
No way this exquisite human being was actually into me for me.
He reached out, as if to take my hands. I reached for him, too. It seemed only natural to be touching him.
But he pulled back at the last minute, perhaps unsure if he wanted to touch me. This left my hand hanging in mid-air. I pulled it back, just as he extended his hand again.
The whole scene was Three Stooges bungling—funny, I’m sure, from the outside, but painfully uncomfortable in the moment.
Man, I was such a Not Person.
Tennyson covered the movement by threading his hand to his hair and letting out a slow breath.
“I . . . uh . . . clearly don’t know what to do here.” He huffed, shaking his head. “I’m not used to feeling so uncertain around someone else. I have no idea how to navigate this, so you’ll have to forgive me.”
Uncertain? Why did he feel uncertain?
I so didn’t understand what was going on here. He acted like he genuinely liked me.
Sorta.
Maybe.
Who knew?
I was so bad at reading people.
His behavior was confusing me, and I didn’t know what to do about it.
Well, I knew what I wanted to do about—namely snuggle into that fine chest I could see underneath his shirt and kiss him senseless.
So . . . not helpful in our current situation.
I needed to get my over-eager hormones to settle down. Thoughts and wants like this were only going to get my bruised heart broken.
Before I could formulate a more coherent, non-kissing thought, a sad-eyed hound dog loped into the room.
Tennyson’s face lit up, clearly eager for anything to dispel the bungling silence between us.
I had that effect on conversations.
“Hey, Elvis. C’mere, boy.” Tennyson squatted down and beckoned the dog over. With an eager sniffle, the dog rounded the sofa, passing right through a scar and waddled into Tennyson’s waiting hand.
The dog nuzzled Tennyson’s palm, demanding he be scratched.
“Such a diva, aren’t ya, Elvis.”
Elvis rolled onto his back, offering Tennyson his tummy.
I gave a nervous giggle and knelt down beside them, patting Elvis’ flank.
“Well, his namesake was a bit of a diva, so I guess the name fits.” I said the words with a nervous laugh, trying to defuse the awkwardness.
Tennyson snorted at my comment, which wasn’t quite the reaction I was going for.
“What?” I asked before I could better filter myself. “He’s named for Elvis Presley, right? You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog . . .” I hummed the words under my breath.
Tennyson shrugged. “Yes and no. My brother, Dante, can see the past lives of everyone and sometimes that includes animals. He’s fairly certain that Elvis here actually is Elvis Presley.”
My reaction was visceral. “No way.”
“Way.”
“Shut up. Be serious.”
“I am being serious.”
“The universe decided to reincarnate Elvis Presley as a hound dog? That’s . . . just . . .” I shook my head.
“What?” It was his turn to ask. “Comforting to realize that the universe has a sense of humor?”
“More like the universe has a keen sense of karmic retribution—to be reincarnated as something you accused someone else of being.” I flipped back my hair. “If that’s how it works, I should start calling everyone ‘Elizabeth Taylor.’”
I meant the comment to be self-deprecating, but it mostly came off as dorky.
Because . . . me.
“No. It would have to be Lovely Livy,” Tennyson said, a small smile on his lips. “But then you could only come back as yourself, which would be preferable anyway.”
Gah!
That was so good.
My heart did this stupid gymnastics thing where it lurched into my throat and did three somersaults and a backflip before I managed to tie it down again.
Worse, there was a warmth in his eyes as he spoke, a soft tenderness that melted all of my good intentions to avoid becoming emotionally attached to him.
This man was lethally potent.
I was flustered, my skin too tight.
I didn’t know how to reply because the hearts in my eyes were choking my tongue, and then Tennyson looked away like maybe he was embarrassed I had taken his words the wrong way, and he didn’t know how to explain to me that he meant them differently and just . . . yeah.
I was such a mess over this man.
Awkward silence descended. Again.
Sad trombone. Whomp-whom.
“Are you hungry?” Tennyson rallied, giving Elvis’ belly another rub. “If nothing else, I think we have some Easy Mac in the kitchen.”
“Oh. Uh, thanks. I ate at the hospital. Besides, I’m sorta off mac-n-cheese since I burned it that one time.”
I instantly bit my tongue. Could I go thirty seconds without a nervous gaff? Was that too much to ask, huh, brain-to-mouth synapses?
A pause.
He angled his head. “You burned mac-n-cheese?”
“Don’t ask.”
“It’s kinda hard not to.”
All my flustered emotions of the last few minutes boiled over. “Fine. I forgot to turn off the burner and got distracted thinking about how raspberries and strawberries aren’t really berries at all, but bananas and avocados technically are berries, and why do we attach so much power to labeling things when we should just let them be things without needing to stuff them into a box. Which, of course, led to me wondering why I wasn’t comfortable labeling fruit, but for some reason, I have no problem broadly categorizing people—”
“Wait. Bananas and avocados are berries?”
“Uhm, yeah. Watermelons and pumpkins are berries, too. At least, at the biological level.”
Silence.
I kinda wanted the ground to swallow me up.
“Also . . . you categorize people?” Tennyson laid the words carefully, blue eyes probing mine.
I bit my lip and looked away. “Sometimes.” I shrugged. “I’m not proud of the fact.”
“So . . . what are your people categories?”
Hah! As if! No way I was discussing my two categories with him.
My overwrought mind scrambled, trying to latch onto something, anything to talk about.
I lurched to my feet, wiping my palms on my jeans, as I made a production of looking around the room.
Ask questions about him. Don’t let your brain wander. Obviously, that never ends well.
I looked at the frescoes on the wall, the TV with the scar r
unning through it, the light pouring through the french doors.
I turned back to him. “So do you crash weddings a lot?”
Yeah. That’s what came out of my mouth.
“What?” His head whipped up, eyebrows down.
I should have let it go. Instead, my flustered self doubled-down. “With your emotions and stuff . . . do you crash weddings? Are you a junkie?”
He blinked and slowly stood up, dragging a hand across the back of his neck, mouth slightly open. “Uh . . .”
I replayed what I had just said and then blushed bright red. “I mean—I’m not implying you need to get married or anything.”
I waved a hand in the air and tried to chuckle my way out of my gaff. Unfortunately, my mind decided to laugh, but my mouth wanted to snort, so what came out was a snarfling mix of the two.
I was suddenly a cat horking up last week’s hairball.
Was it possible to die from embarrassment?
Of course, after a moment of stunned silence, Tennyson laughed, the jerk. Head back, white teeth flashing in his smexy, chiseled face.
His laugh did all sorts of illegal things to my mushy insides, fanning that spark of intense attraction into smoldering flames.
Somehow, my blush intensified.
Kill me now.
Tennyson collapsed into the couch, still laughing, maybe even wiping his eyes a little.
“Man, that noise . . . that was hilarious. Thank you. I needed that laugh.”
“You’re welcome?” I wasn’t sure whether to curtsy or melt into a puddle of mortification.
He grinned at me. “Explain your question. I’m not quite getting it.”
I slid into a chair across from him. “Uhm, I was just wondering if you visit happy places to get an endorphin hit? Like if you want to feel positive emotions, then you go to a wedding or an amusement park or maybe a place with little kids?”
He nodded, taking the question seriously. “Interesting. Haven’t really thought of that, to be honest. Weddings are a hot mess of emotions at best and kids’ feelings are usually all over the place. They’ll swing from happy to anger to sad to giddy all in the space of a couple heartbeats, so not exactly the best. Besides, I’m pretty sure if I went skulking around the local Chuck E. Cheese, I would be asked to leave.”
“Right.” I awkward-laughed again. I scrubbed my hands down my legs again, trying to force my over-eager body to calm down.
Tennyson studied me through hooded eyes, a grin still floating at the edges of his lips.
“Any other questions?”
Hah!
I had hundreds.
I did a frantic mental search, rejecting ideas until I found one that seemed more . . . normal.
“So . . . uh . . . you had a vision when the daemon attacked me. Was it a good one? Did you get lotto numbers or something?”
Dead silence.
I asked the question casually, but given how fast Tennyson’s expression morphed from open to evasive, I must have misstepped again. It was like watching the curtain come down on a performance, all the wonder instantly hidden.
He let out a harsh breath. “I won’t talk about the vision.” His gaze met mine. “I’m sorry.”
His word choice hit me hard. Not can’t.
Won’t.
He wouldn’t talk about the vision. His choice.
I couldn’t ignore the sincerity behind his eyes.
But why? Why wouldn’t he?
What had he seen?
Ideas flashed through.
Had he seen a catastrophe? Did the world end in a fireball next week? And if so, why not at least give us some warning? That’s what he supposedly did in Afghanistan, right? He talked about his visions there—
“Don’t,” Tennyson’s voice warned.
“What?”
“I know that look. I’ve gotten it a lot over the years. I’m not going to talk about the vision.”
Uhm, okay.
Clearly I had wandered into a ‘Do Not Go’ area.
I needed to leave it alone. I needed to change the subject.
So, of course, I waded right into it.
“But you talked about your visions in Afghanistan? Why not now?”
He blew out another loud burst of air and pushed out of the couch, walking to look over the terrace. He kneaded his upper left thigh with his left hand, jaw firm.
His expression might have been upset or frustrated or confused or wary.
I couldn’t read him.
And I honestly had no clue what he was thinking.
I just knew I had screwed up again.
SIXTEEN
Tennyson
I stood still, staring sightlessly over the back terrace to the garden beyond with its tumbled stones, trying desperately to corral the onslaught of memories that assaulted me at Olivia’s words:
But you talked about your visions in Afghanistan.
Yes, dammit, I had talked about them. I had thought I was helping. I had thought to save lives.
I had been such a cocky bastard, thinking I was some demi-god with a mainline to truth and omniscience.
“You said I . . . be okay.” Zach gurgled, blood frothing his lips.
I pressed my hands against the wound in his chest with one hand, frantically trying to wrestle gauze from my pack with my other. “Stay with me, Zach.”
His anger razored through me, followed quickly by pain and betrayal and panic.
The sinking realization we both knew: he wasn’t going to make it.
Behind me, I could hear Chris on the radio, begging for a medic and a heli-evac.
Tears blinded me, making my actions even clumsier.
I had gotten it wrong.
I had told Zach he might die today. I usually didn’t deal in specifics. Generally, I would simply state the area that a bomb would go off, point to the area on a map and let others deal with it.
But . . . I had seen his death so clearly, Zach sailing through the air, landing with a hole in his chest.
He was my friend. And he had asked.
And so I told him.
But the telling had been self-fulfilling prophecy.
Instead of going out on the patrol he was supposed to, Zach had switched shifts, determined to avoid his fate.
If he hadn’t acted based on the information I fed him . . .
Zach arched in agony, his fear and soul-deep horror hammering me. “Why did you tell me? Why couldn’t you keep your damn mouth shut—”
I threw myself out of the memory.
The fractured madness surged forward, seeking a way in, wanting to take me.
Jump. You need to jump. Break the chain. Punish yourself for Zach’s death.
No!
I sucked in a lungful of air. Then another.
Swallowing, I forced that angry inner voice down. It could yell and scream all it wanted. I didn’t have to listen.
I continued to take deep breaths, one after the other, digging my fingers into what remained of my left leg.
My thigh ached. Sometimes I think I took the hit to the leg as punishment for getting Zach killed. Saving those school children had been my penance.
After Zach’s death, I had made a vow: I refused to tell someone when I saw them die in a vision.
Too often, it turned into self-fulfilling prophecy. Like the guy who is told he has cancer and dies a week later, the will to live draining from him.
Or, like Zach, the person goes to extreme effort to avoid the death-causing situation and the avoidance itself is what lands them in it.
I would not add Olivia to my grim statistics.
I would not be discussing my vision with her. Not now. Not ever.
We had scars to close and a daemon to defeat with Olivia’s health and very life on the line.
That was all I was going to focus on right now.
Olivia shuffled behind me, her light breathing the only reminder that she was still in the room.
“I’m s-sorry.” Her voice low and soft. �
�I didn’t mean to—”
“No, please don’t apologize.” I turned around with a weak smile. I hated that any part of my actions hurt her. “I’m the one who is sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable. I just generally don’t talk about my visions. It can cause . . . problems.”
She had stood up too, a hand on the back of the sofa, Elvis lolling at her feet. Sunlight poured over her, washing across her high cheekbones and the tip of her pointed chin.
Again, it hit me.
She was here.
My woman.
Funny, disarming, geeky, gorgeous, perfect.
“Where are my manners?” I motioned toward the couch. “Sit. There is a lot for us to discuss. We’ve only dipped a toe into the daemon and the scars and everything.”
Olivia curled up in a corner of the large sofa, Elvis instantly scrambling up to lay his head in her knee, boldly nudging her hand until she obligingly scratched his head. Sheesh, he was so shameless sometimes. Funny how whether in human or dog form, some personality traits were timeless.
Her color looked better than in the hospital earlier. Obviously, some food, a shower and rest had helped. She wore tight black pants and a loose pale green silk blouse that caught the green-gold highlights in her unusual eyes. Her hair tumbled wild and curly around her face. I couldn’t stop looking at her, memorizing every tiny detail.
Perfume hadn’t followed her into the room; which was good, as I wasn’t a perfume kinda guy. What would she smell like up close?
Stop obsessing.
I forced myself to sit across from her instead of next to her like I wanted. If I sat next to her, I wouldn’t be able to resist touching her and that was such a slippery slope. Better to not even tempt fate. But I couldn’t help resting forward on my elbows, as if my body had to tilt just those few inches closer to her.
Mentally, I sank myself into her nothingness, feeling the soothing emptiness of her emotions drain the tension out of me.
Love hard. Love true. When all hope is lost, remember only love will see you through.
The love I felt for her from my vision had already bled so completely into real life that I could barely distinguish between it and my own feelings anymore.