by Eva Chase
As soon as I’d made the decision, the pressure in my chest released. I was still wired, but I no longer felt like I was suffocating. I flopped down on the couch and pulled out my regular phone.
Change of plans, staying in, I texted to Grace. If you have any more urgent impulses to hang out, just give me a shout.
If anything happened that worried her even slightly, I wanted to hear about it.
12
Grace
Change of plans, staying in. If you have any more urgent impulses to hang out, just give me a shout.
I read the words, and read them again, leaning against my front door. The knot in my chest that had been aching since Jeremy had left the cafe loosened a little.
He’d thought about what I’d said. He’d changed his mind.
And he cared about me enough to want me to know he was still here for me.
My face heated a little remembering the admission I’d blurted out. God, I hoped I hadn’t sounded as pathetic as I’d felt in the moment afterward.
But it was true. With Gran gone... My mom wasn’t even here to care what happened to me. It wasn’t like I could assume that Britta or Ceren or our boss at the shelter, the guy who delivered my pizza or the barista at my favorite coffee shop, would have jumped in front of a speeding truck to save me.
Jeremy hadn’t known me at all, and he’d obviously risked even more than I’d realized at the time. If he hadn’t stepped in, these guys after him would never have found out where he was. But he had, because that was just the kind of person he was.
Maybe I’d been a little too harsh on him, accusing him of giving up too quickly.
I bit my lip and finally typed out an answer. I’m glad you’ll be around. And I will. That hardly captured a fraction of my feelings, but my skin crept at the idea of someone else monitoring these messages. From the vagueness of Jeremy’s text, he must have thought that was possible too.
So now what? I lowered the phone and dragged in a breath. Here I was. I was falling for this guy—falling for him hard. But he wasn’t any ordinary guy. He was a guy who could shift a car and make a coffee cup dance just with the power of his mind. A power other people, dangerous people, were very interested in.
I was falling for him, yeah, but was I ready to step that far outside my comfort zone? Should I be?
It was hard not to wonder what Gran would have said. To wish she were here so I could talk it through with her.
I wandered through the house in a daze, stopping when I reached the sewing room. I still hadn’t finished tidying in here. Halfheartedly, I reached for a few of the CDs stacked on one of the shelves. Garbage or pawnshop? Did anyone listen to CDs anymore?
My fingers tightened around the plastic cases. Was this the life I was protecting if I stayed away from Jeremy? Puttering around my grandmother’s old house, putting her things in order? What was I going to do with myself when I finished sorting out the last few rooms? I knew, absolutely, that wasn’t what Gran would have wanted for me.
I’d wanted more of a life for myself too. I’d thought that meant finding people I connected with to bring into my safe and familiar existence. But maybe that wasn’t how it was going to work. Maybe I had to tumble headfirst into someone else’s life and leave the tentative security of this one behind.
I didn’t even know where to start. I set down the CDs and walked back through the house. What could I do that might help Jeremy? How could I show him I could handle this—and that we could fend off these intruders together?
My gaze slipped past the living room window before jerking back. I stepped toward the curtains, peering out into the street.
A car was parked on the opposite side of the road. It was a deep navy blue, not black, but I was pretty sure it was the same model as the sedan Malcolm Finch had arrived at the shelter in. That might not have been enough to prove anything strange was going on, but it also had the same tinted windows. No one in this neighborhood drove a car with tinted windows.
The driver side window eased down an inch. A slender hand tapped cigarette ash onto the road and withdrew. My stomach flipped over.
Someone was sitting in there—just sitting. Not getting out and going about his business. As if his business were to stay there and simply watch. And he had a perfect line of sight to the front of my house.
I stood there, completely still, for several minutes, waiting to see if I was overreacting. The rain had faded to a drizzle that tapped against the porch awning. But no one came out of the other houses to meet the driver. The driver didn’t get out of the car. With the tinted glass, I couldn’t tell for sure where he was looking, but it seemed like way too many coincidences for me to just ignore.
The start of a plan sparked in my head. My pulse sped up. I ignored its nervous thumping and headed for the front door.
I crossed the street and ambled casually up to the blue sedan. Plastering a smile on my face, I knocked on the window. For a few seconds I thought the person inside was going to pretend the car was empty. Then the window hummed down.
I’d misjudged. It wasn’t a he in the driver’s seat, but a broad-shouldered woman with black hair cut close to her scalp. “Yes?” she said in a smooth, clipped voice.
“Oh, hi!” I said with my best cheerful, welcome-to-the-neighborhood voice. “I just noticed it seemed like you’d been sitting out here for a while. I wanted to make sure everything was okay. Were you waiting for someone? Maybe I can tell you where they’ve gotten to.”
I didn’t actually chat with my neighbors enough to know where they were on an hourly basis, but it wasn’t as if this woman could know that. I let my gaze drift over the inside of the car as if aimlessly wandering, but I was mentally cataloging what I saw. The cigarettes in the box sitting on the passenger seat were Camels. The phone lying next to them was the latest iPhone. A crumpled, empty potato chips bag lay on the floor. Was any of that going to be useful information?
“There’s no problem,” the woman said. “I just showed up early. Nothing to worry about.” She gave me a thin smile that wasn’t remotely reassuring.
“Oh, well, sorry to have bothered you then. I’ll get back to making dinner.”
The window was already whirring back up before I’d finished speaking. I headed back to the house without glancing back, but my skin prickled the whole way.
I did poke around the kitchen a little, but I’d mostly told the woman I was making dinner to give her the idea I’d be staying home. When I checked the living room window fifteen minutes later, the car was still parked there. Knowing I’d noticed her hadn’t been enough to budge her. Was she going to sit there all night? How would she explain that?
I guessed if she stopped smoking she could pretend she wasn’t even in the car anymore.
The wind rose, rattling a branch against the roof and making me flinch. I gripped the back of the couch as I willed my nerves to settle. I hadn’t seen much, but Jeremy needed to know it wasn’t just that Malcolm guy after him, didn’t he? That there was another car to look out for. And maybe the rest of my observations would be useful to him one way or another too.
I wavered for only a moment this time. Then I pushed away from the couch, grabbed my jacket, and made for the back door. If I texted Jeremy for another meeting tonight, anyone would think that was weird. But I’d already proven I could get out of the house without anyone noticing. And I knew where Jeremy lived.
Even though I’d had no problems the first time I’d snuck out, I scanned the streets even more carefully as I made my way around my back-to-back neighbor’s house and to the bus stop. No sleek sedans of any color. No tinted windows. No figures suspiciously loitering on the sidewalk. I sat down on the bench by the stop with my hood pulled over my head and kept my eyes peeled.
Apparently I’d escaped without detection again. The bus rumbled up, and I hopped on. I sat at the very back so I could keep an eye on the cars behind us. By the time I reached Jeremy’s neighborhood, my heartbeat had slowed to only slightly panicked.
It picked up again as I walked into Jeremy’s lobby. I looked at the buzzer codes, and my chest clenched. What was he going to think of me barging in here without even a warning?
No. I could do this. When I told him what had happened after I’d gotten home, he’d understand.
I punched in the code for his apartment number. The intercom crackled. “Hello?”
“It’s Grace,” I said, hugging myself. “Can I come up?”
There was a startled pause. “All right,” Jeremy said. The inner door clicked open.
I hurried to the elevator. When I stepped out onto Jeremy’s floor, he had his apartment door slightly ajar. He opened it wider at the sight of me. His gaze darted behind me as if making sure I hadn’t been followed.
He grasped my shoulder as I reached him and hustled me inside. As soon as he’d closed the door, he turned to me. “What’s going on, Grace? Why did you come here?”
“I was careful,” I said. “I went out the back of my house like I did earlier. I watched to make sure no one was tailing me. And I left my phone at home so they can’t track that.”
“You thought of everything,” he said with a faint smile. His eyes stayed intent on my face, his hand still gripping my shoulder, warm and solid. “But why did you come at all? Did something else happen?”
I sucked in a breath. “I think they have my house staked out. There was a woman there, in a sedan like Malcolm’s but dark blue. I went out and talked to her, pretended to be a concerned neighbor—”
“You what?” Jeremy broke in.
“It was fine,” I said firmly. “I got to see who was in the car and a few other things too.” I described the woman in as much detail as I could remember, as well as the items I’d seen with her. Jeremy nodded, but his expression only showed concern. “You don’t know her either?” I said when I’d finished.
“I’ve never met any of these people before.” He raked a hand through his dark hair. “I was worried they might not leave you alone. But just watching isn’t too bad. If you don’t end up giving them any information, they might just leave after a while. The best thing you can do is go back home and live your life like normal. Just be ready to contact me if anything changes—if you get scared.”
My jaw tightened. “No. I can’t go back to ‘normal.’ I’m in this now, Jeremy. I want to help you, any way that I can. Whoever these people are, you shouldn’t have to face them alone.”
Jeremy stared at me for a second. His voice came out strained. “Grace, you don’t understand—”
“But I want to. You just have to let me.” I set my hand over his on my shoulder, curling my fingers around his palm. “I know there’s something special about you. You can do things you shouldn’t be able to. As far as I’m concerned, that’s just amazing. I’m not scared of you. So will you tell me the rest? Please, let me in.”
13
Jeremy
Grace gazed up at me, so determined and so devoted I felt humbled. She hadn’t known me very long, and a lot of what she did know would have sent most people running for the hills. But here she was, wanting more. Wanting to stand with me.
I took a step back into my living room. Just to get a little distance from those big brown eyes and the scent of her perfume, softly sweet but intoxicating. My heart was thumping, my stomach balled tight.
I didn’t do this. I didn’t show who I was, what I could do, to anyone. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d even put on a show that wasn’t completely necessary for anyone in my family.
But Grace already all but knew. She was ready to throw herself all in. I owed it to her to let her see exactly what she was getting into.
“Jeremy,” she started, as if to keep trying to convince me.
I held up my hand to stop her. “I’ve had this... ability since I was a kid,” I said. “I was born with it. I want you to know I’ve never hurt anyone with it. I can’t always control it well when I get emotional, and there was a learning curve when I was younger”—my fingers twitched toward the shard of glass in my pocket—“but since then I’ve always kept it under control. The people who are after me, they’re after anyone like me, because they want to use us. Not because I’ve committed some crime or anything like that.”
I wasn’t going to bring my family into this, not yet. As much as I trusted Grace, I didn’t want her having more information the Alpha Project people might want to get out of her.
Grace nodded. “I know,” she said. “Of course you’d never hurt anyone.”
She had so much faith in me it killed me. She had no idea how many times I could have, how many close calls there’d been. Not because I wanted to—just because of what I was.
I dragged in a breath and reached down into the thrum of psychic energy that ran through the core of me. A bright jittering sensation spread through my chest and into the muscles of my arms. I looked around the room, picking my spots of focus. The couch. The coffee table. The lamp in the corner. The breakfast dishes I’d left on the counter by the sink.
I felt each of them as if my fingers were literally grazing them. The sensation in my chest thrummed harder. I raised my hands, willing all those objects to follow me.
The furniture, the dishes, they rose from where they’d been resting in time with my hands.
Grace’s jaw went slack, her eyes going round. I tried not to pay attention to her reaction. It took all my concentration holding all those objects in the air. I motioned, and they lifted a little higher, hovering a few feet off the floor. Damn, I really wished I’d swept under the couch more often. I’d just revealed a huge patch of dust bunnies.
I set the couch back down. It required the most effort anyway, because of its weight. I tightened my focus on the lamp and the coffee table, and they whirled around each other before I sent them back to their places. The dishes floated in a circle like a merry-go-round. Then I banished them to the sink. Finally, I let myself look at Grace again.
Her expression was still shocked: eyes wide, lips parted. Her gaze slid from the dishes I’d just put away to my face, and I realized it wasn’t just shock. An awed light glowed in her face. She beamed at me, in every sense of the word.
“You’re magic,” she said, sounding breathless. “To be able to do that—you can’t call that anything but magical.”
My heart started to thump again, but in a much headier way. I found myself smiling too. Magic. I’d never really thought about my talent that way. Maybe because for as long as I could remember, my strange ability had been something to hide, to pretend away. Something that would scare people or make them want to use me.
And it was those things, some of the time. But it was also a talent in every sense of that word. A talent that had made Grace light up like Christmas.
For the first time in my life, I had someone I didn’t have to hide from.
The feeling overwhelmed me. I walked back over to her, and she grinned up at me, her eyes sparkling. “Grace,” I said, not knowing how to put my own awe into words. She reached for me, tracing her fingertips up over my chest. So I simply leaned in and kissed her.
It didn’t feel quite as desperate as the kiss we’d shared in this same spot yesterday, when I’d been trying to convey all my desire for her in one embrace. It didn’t need to be. She knew me, all of me, and she was kissing me back with equal enthusiasm. Her fingers trailed up my neck and into my hair, sending sparks over my skin in their wake. The hot slide of her soft lips against mine was everything I could ever have wanted.
Except I wanted more of her, all of her. Fuck, it had been too long. I left her mouth to press kisses along the length of her jaw. She whimpered, clinging to me. Her body swayed against mine. I was already hard, my erection straining against my jeans.
She tasted as delicious as she smelled, like smoky vanilla. I grazed my teeth down the side of her neck and earned myself another whimper. She wrenched my shirt up, slipping her hands under it to caress me skin to skin. I groaned and captured her mouth again.
&nb
sp; She explored every plane of my chest until I was dizzy with need. I teased my tongue over hers and brushed my palms over her chest at the same time. With an encouraging sound, she pressed into my touch.
Oh, God, her breasts were perfect, softly firm and just the right size to fill my hand. I flicked my thumbs over her nipples. She moaned into my mouth as they stiffened beneath her thin bra. Suddenly I couldn’t think of anything except getting rid of every layer of fabric between me and them.
“Jeremy,” Grace murmured, so needy I almost caught fire. I slipped my hands up under her shirt. Dipped them into the cups of her bra. She shuddered against me as I stroked her, gripping my back. Her hips arched against mine. I burrowed my face in the crook of her neck, nibbling her smooth skin, high on the smell and the taste of her.
She reached to pull her blouse right off—and my phone buzzed in my pocket with an incoming call. I gritted my teeth in protest, but at the same time my heart lurched.
I couldn’t ignore this, no matter how much I wanted to. Not when the Alpha Project people were already so close.
I pulled away from Grace with an apologetic sound. My heart was hammering, my cock protesting. I sucked in a ragged breath. “I have to take this. Just in case.”
Grace looked back at me with cheeks flushed and lips tender. The desire in her eyes was almost enough to change my mind. But she nodded to show she understood.
The call was on my regular phone. I didn’t give out the number very often, mostly to clients. The number on the screen showed as unlisted. Hmm. Pacing to the couch and back to try to cool off, I raised the phone to my ear.
“Hello?”
“Oh, hello,” a measured male voice said. “Glad I could get in touch. Are you in San Jose at the moment?”