Hidden Worlds

by Kristie Cook

  “Well, I’m glad to be the first then.” He licked his lips, drawing my attention to them. I watched as they curved into a little smile.

  Was it bad to kiss a guy you’d just met yesterday? I was positive Vera would say no, but I wasn’t sure I agreed with her ease with guys. I couldn’t remember ever feeling this attracted to someone right off the get go, though. This was instant. As I sat there, staring at his lips, the only thing I could think about was what they would feel like pressed against mine. I literally wanted to throw myself at him and silently wondered if someone had slipped something in my drink when I hadn’t been looking because of it.

  It wasn’t just his physical appearance that made him attractive. No. It was his attitude, his confidence, and that pulsating sense of connection I’d had with him when we’d touched. It throbbed within me now, because of his sudden nearness, because of my thoughts, willing me to press my lips to his just to feel it more. I gazed into his eyes and was rendered speechless when I realized he was holding back too.

  “Hey guys, what’s up?” Vera asked in a slur of words way too loud for the distance she was from us. And just like that, the pull, the trance between Kace and I was broken. “Aren’t you gonna dance?” she asked me.

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so. I’m really not in a dancing sort of mood right now.”

  “Oh, come on, have a little fun. Just once … please!” Vera begged.

  “I am having fun.” I smiled wide to prove my point and tipped my cup back, taking another long sip. I hadn’t consumed nearly enough alcohol to be dancing yet. And with my insanely sexual thoughts about Kace—someone I’d just met—more alcohol was not a good idea.

  “No, you’re not. You’re just sitting here,” she insisted.

  Darren came up from behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. “Did you get a refill? Come on, let’s dance some more.”

  Vera giggled and playfully swatted at his arm. “Of course I did. I was just trying to get my friend out there with us.”

  Darren glanced at me, giving me a crooked grin as his eyes seemed to undress me. “Come on, there’s plenty of room, baby.”

  “No, thank you,” I said. Wow, he seemed like a real charmer.

  “Suit yourself,” Darren said, spinning Vera back out toward the fire.

  “Geez, she’s lit,” Kace said.

  “Yeah, and she doesn’t know it yet, but after this drink, she’s cut off.”

  “I’ll agree. She’s reached her limit.” He grinned. “So, want to meet those people I told you I’d introduce you to?”

  “Sure.”

  “They’re over there,” he said, pointing to the same couple I’d seen him talking with on the beach yesterday.

  They stood off to the side, sipping from cups and gazing out over the party with this air of superiority about them. My palms began to sweat as I stood to follow Kace. We were halfway to where they stood when both of them turned and glanced in our direction with cool eyes.

  “Don’t be intimidated,” Kace said, as though he could feel my insecurities rising. “They’re really not that standoffish.”

  I licked my lips and took in a deep breath. It didn’t seem that way from where I stood. “I’m fine,” I lied.

  Kace grinned at me like he could see through the front I was attempting to put up and failing miserably at. “Sure.”

  The brunette turned her head and whispered something to her boyfriend just before we reached them. He glanced at me up and down before shifting his gaze to Kace and smiling. “What’s up, man?”

  “Not much.” Kace put a hand on my lower back, and I swore I could feel the warmth of it singe through my shirt. Maybe it was just me though—my temperature seemed to rise in his presence. “Guys, this is Addison. She’s staying in old lady Avery’s house.”

  The dark-haired guy nodded. “Hey, I’m Adam.”

  “Callie,” the brunette said softly.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Awkwardness swam in the air around me, suffocating me from all angles. I didn’t know what else to say. Obviously I hadn’t had enough to drink to be meeting new people. Maybe I should have rethought my one and done rule for tonight. After all, it wasn’t like I was driving, because we’d walked here.

  “So you’re the one who inherited the old Avery house, huh?” Adam said, his bright green eyes boring into me and giving me a once-over all at the same time. “You’re the missing Avery kid.”

  I shook my head, confused. “The missing Avery kid?”

  “Yeah, didn’t your mom like run away to have you or something?” Adam asked. A creepy grin twisted his lips as his eyes flashed as though he knew more than he was saying.

  “Adam, stop,” Callie demanded, obviously noticing my confusion. “It’s just a story people created, that’s all.”

  “I’m down for a good story,” I said, taking another swig of my beer. I was supposedly a missing kid? Why would my mom have run away from here? And why would she have done it and then given me up?

  “Ah, it’s just a town story. You know, one every small town has,” Kace said. “You and your family were somewhat of a mystery around here for a while. No one understood why your mom ran away to have you and never returned.”

  “Maybe you could clear it all up for us,” Adam insisted, taking a swig of his drink and peering at me from over the rim of the cup with his intense green eyes. “Where did your mom take you? People around here say she took you to some commune in the middle of Utah and became a hippie.”

  I literally laughed out loud at the idea of being raised in a commune, but only because my childhood was so far from that it was laughable. “Umm, no.”

  “So what happened, then? Did she become a stripper? Because that was another one.” Adam grinned, draping am arm across Callie’s shoulders.

  I could see where this was going. I was some form of amusement to him at the moment and I didn’t much appreciate it. He reminded me too much of Ryan and that was not a good thing. Ryan was an ass … and I was betting Adam was too. “Actually, I have no clue why my mom ran off to have me. Are there any theories in town about why she gave me up for adoption too?”

  Adam spit a swig of beer all over the place. The shock on his face was priceless. This was a bigger foot-in-mouth situation than what Vera had caused last night with Theo. “What?”

  “Oh my God, we, umm …” Callie squirmed to come up with something to say other than she was sorry, because sorry didn’t cut it. Not with something as serious and sad as being given up for adoption by your parents. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a person’s eyes shift from one emotion to straight-up sympathy at the knowledge that I had been adopted at birth. “We didn’t know.”

  “I don’t … I had no idea, I wouldn’t have toyed with you like that if I had,” Adam insisted in a sincere tone. “Honestly.” He turned to Kace then, his eyes wide. “No one knew that. You know they didn’t. I wouldn’t have said anything if I’d known. Jesus, now I look like a freaking prick.” He muttered the last part to himself.

  “I’m sorry my friends are such assholes,” Kace said, shifting his hard stare from Adam and turning to flash me a sympathetic smile. “Come on. Let’s go check on your friend.”

  I glanced around for Vera. “Yeah, I probably should find her and drag her home before she does something stupid and hates me in the morning for letting her get away with it.”

  “Well, it was nice meeting you, Addison,” Callie said as I started to walk away, led by Kace.

  “Nice to meet you guys too,” I called over my shoulder.

  “See you around, Avery,” Adam said.

  Avery, there it was again, my middle name, which apparently should have been my last. I’d always assumed my adoptive parents had given me the name since I’d never been told any different. As horrible as it might seem, I found myself questioning if there was anything else they’d hidden from me.

  CHAPTER SIX - Something Missing

  Kace helped me drag Vera home. We
even made it all the way up the stairs carrying her dead weight and dropped her onto her bed.

  “Wow, I haven’t been in this house in years,” Kace said as we descended the stairs, heading back down to the first floor. “It still looks exactly the same.”

  “The lawyer said that no one has lived here since my grandma passed.” I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. My skin tingled with the realization that Kace and I were incredibly alone. “I guess my mom never came back when she inherited it.”

  He put his hands in his front pockets. “No, no one did. It’s been empty for a while.”

  We stepped into the living room, and I walked to the couch and sat. “Did you know my grandma well?”

  I couldn’t help asking. Being here opened my mind to questions about my family, my real family. Guilt spread through my mind as I thought this. I’d had a good childhood, a great one. I loved my adoptive parents, but there had always been something missing from my life. It was them. My biological family. There were questions that had always haunted the deepest parts of my mind, but now that I was here and had found someone who knew them even the tiniest bit, it made those questions arise in my mind and enter my every thought. Ones like: Why didn’t they want me? How could they have just given me away? What would my life have been like if I had grown up here?

  “I did.” Kace smiled. “Like I said, she made the best peanut butter cookies. She was a really sweet lady. I always thought she seemed kind of sad though. My mom told me it was because Angela, your mom, had run away. They were friends, my mom and yours, best friends actually.”

  “Angela … I never even knew her name.”

  The name vibrated through me. I repeated it in my mind.

  Kace looked taken aback. “Really? Didn’t your adoptive parents tell you anything about her, or anyone for that matter in your biological family?”

  I shook my head. “Not really, no. I think it upset my adoptive mom too much. She couldn’t have kids of her own. Telling me I was adopted was as far as she went, like to her that was all I needed to know because she was now my mother.”

  “Seems kind of selfish to me,” Kace muttered as he reached up to scratch his eyebrow.

  I shrugged a shoulder. “Eh, I always thought it was just too hard for her to talk about it and I respected that.” I wasn’t so sure now, though. Kace’s viewpoint was twisting my thoughts, making me see things in new ways I hadn’t before.

  “I can understand that,” he said with a slight nod, flashing me a small smile. “Listen, I have to say that I really am sorry about Adam. I didn’t realize he was going to say all of that. If I had, I would never have taken you over to meet him. I’m sure he didn’t really mean anything by it. He’s got one of those personalities that you either love or hate; there’s really no in-between.”

  I grabbed the throw pillow from behind me and placed it in my lap, snuggling back into the couch. “It’s all right, I can handle it. It’s not like it was the first time I’ve had to deal with someone being an insensitive ass to me about something.” I smiled, hoping to lighten the mood.

  This was not what I’d envisioned us talking about while we were alone together in my house. In fact, I hadn’t envisioned us talking at all.

  Silence bloomed between us. It wasn’t awkward, just noticeable. Kace shifted on the couch, extending his legs out in front of him farther, getting comfortable. His knee was only an inch away from touching mine. One single, scorching inch of air rested between us. I focused on this maybe more than I should.

  Licking my lips, I shifted my gaze away from our knees. “Do you want anything to drink?”

  “Sure, I’ll take some water.”

  I tossed the pillow to the side and stood, eager to do something, to get up and move. The intense energy that seemed to swell up inside of me when around Kace was getting to me now. We were too close. Too alone. And I wanted to take advantage of the situation a little too much.

  “I think I can manage that,” I said, enjoying the space that was now between us. The heat that had built across my skin from his nearness began to subside some as I walked toward the kitchen.

  Binks was curled into a ball, resting on the countertop, when I walked into the room. I hated that. It was gross, but dang it if he didn’t look cute doing it. I scooped him off the counter and onto the floor gently.

  “Sorry, buddy, but you can’t sleep on the counters,” I scolded. “It’s just nasty.”

  “You have a cat.” It wasn’t a question, but more of a statement. There was something off about Kace’s tone, and I couldn’t decide if it was because he wasn’t a cat person or something more.

  “I do.”

  “Your grandma had a cat too,” he said simply.

  “I know.”

  Kace raised an eyebrow at me like I’d surprised him somehow. “You do?”

  “Well, yeah … I mean I found all the old cans of cat food in the pantry and a bowl beneath the sink. I think this little guy was one of her cat’s kittens or something.” I bent down to scratch behind Binks’s ears the way that he liked. “I found him in a bedroom in the basement. He’d been coming in through an open window.”

  Kace chuckled. “Yeah, I don’t think it was one of her cat’s kittens. She only had one cat, and if I remember correctly, he was a boy. His name was Binks.”

  My jaw dropped and I swore my heart skipped a beat or two. She only had one cat and it was a boy … named Binks. Hearing someone else say it all out loud made goose bumps prickle across my skin.

  “Are you messing with me or something, because that’s just too weird,” I said, brushing my hands off and standing.

  “What is?”

  “What you just said. See, I named him Binks when I first found him, and then yesterday I was restocking the cleaning cabinet and found a ceramic bowl with the name Binks painted on it. Now you’re telling me that my grandma only had one cat, and it was a boy who was named Binks.” I snapped my mouth shut so I wouldn’t be able to babble on any further. I liked Kace and I damn sure didn’t want the one person who’d been nice to me since I’d arrived to think I was crazy. Because I wasn’t. Was I?

  Kace chuckled. “Slow down.” He reached out and gripped my arm lightly. The same soft sigh of something unfurling within us both coursed through me again. “You mean to tell me you don’t know about the cat? Didn’t your mom leave you a note or a journal—anything that would explain everything to you when she died? I mean, she didn’t just give you the keys to this house without telling you anything, right?”

  “I don’t understand.” They were the only words I could form with him touching me.

  The warmth coursed through me from his touch, sparking up my arm, and I wondered if I’d been wrong about him feeling it too. He didn’t seem to be right now.

  His eyes widened. “Oh, wow. You don’t even know who you are, do you?”

  I winced and jerked my arm free from his grasp. His words were like a slap to the face. They resonated somewhere deep inside of me, hitting me in a tender place I didn’t like. “I know exactly who I am,” I fumed.

  Who was he to say such a thing to me? So what, he knew my grandmother. That didn’t mean he knew who I was.

  Kace shook his head. “No, you think you do … but you don’t. You don’t know who you are at all.” His voice was sad, as if it were the most depressing thing he’d ever heard.

  I closed my eyes, shocked by his choice of words and how they made my eyes swell with tears I didn’t want to shed. You don’t know who you are at all. The words continued to ripple through my mind. It was a childhood fear spoken aloud by a stranger, but it held so much power over me.

  I felt the air shift between us before I even felt him touch me again. I opened my eyes at the feel of his hands against my hips. My skin heated as though it were ignited by something within him. Kace stared at me for a drawn-out moment. A look of uncertainty passed across his face, and I knew in an instant he was going to kiss me.

  “Let me show you.” His mouth de
scended upon mine then and everything that he’d just said floated from my mind to be forgotten as I responded to his kiss.

  Kace’s mouth slanted across mine, his soft lips tasting sweeter than I’d even imagined. My hands ran up the length of his torso, feeling the ridged muscles beneath. Whatever it was that seemed to be unfurling every time we touched had centered itself in my chest now. It grew and pulsated with each brush of his lips, each flick of his tongue, against mine.

  Something was inside of me … Something was awakening.

  But it wasn’t just me. The same was happening inside of him too. I’d been right before. I could sense it now somehow. As our kisses deepened, so did the sensation I was feeling. Whatever it was had long grown warm, heated by his nearness. It simmered in the center of my chest, powerful and still in waiting. Kace’s hand slipped beneath my shirt and pressed against the skin of my lower back, causing the sensation to spread rapidly through me. The more skin he touched, the faster it spread. Just as abruptly as Kace had initiated the kiss, he ended it.

  He pulled back and leaned his forehead against mine. Keeping his eyes closed, he struggled to catch his breath the same as I was. “There … I know you had to have felt that. Do you have any idea who—what—you are now?”

  “What was that?” I whispered, breathless and afraid to speak too loud, because it would crush the moment I was still trying to savor.

  “Magick,” he answered simply as though it were the most natural response.

  I pulled back from Kace and grimaced. Partly because of his answer and partly because whatever he had released during our kiss was now receding once again. It was tucking itself back into an unknown area, back to where I couldn’t reach it on my own. This I was sure of.

  “Magick?” I repeated, dumbfounded.

  Magick wasn’t real. It was something magicians claimed to use to create illusions and tricks of the eye, but not something I would have inside of me. No, what I’d felt was lust. Passion. God, Vera was right. I really needed to find a rebound guy. I glanced at Kace, meeting his eyes and basking in their incredible shade of blue.