Picking at what remained of my fingernail polish, I waited for someone to speak. When the silence had suffocated me beyond my comfort zone, I finally opened my mouth.
“When do you think they’ll get here?” I asked.
“It’s hard to say, but you really should leave now, Addison,” Theo said. His voice was low and full of authority. “Kace should have already finished the Locator spell by now. You need to head to a dock or someplace close by like my grandmother suggested.”
“No,” I said firmly while looking directly into his eyes. “Stop telling me what to do.”
Kyra let out a loud sigh and propped her feet up on the remaining empty chair beside her as though she were over all of the melodrama as well.
“You shouldn’t be here. If my grandmother says to leave, then you need to obey her. She’s only telling you what the Spirits want her to,” Theo insisted. His jaw grew visibly tense, and I watched as he clenched his hand into a fist and beat it lightly on the table to emphasize his words more as he spoke.
“No,” I repeated, this time with more force. “I’m not leaving. Let them find me here. I’m sick of all the lies. Keeping track of them all is exhausting. I won’t say anything yet about my new ability, but that’s the only secret I’m keeping.”
I had to be straight with Kace if I wanted things between us to work. Besides, after how well he handled the first kiss Theo and I shared, he deserved to know where I was and why. I knew I wouldn’t be keeping the knowledge of my wacky ability from him forever either. How could I when I didn’t even think it was possible to control it?
Kyra chuckled at me. “I like your style.”
A little sliver of pride rolled through me from her comment. It disappeared as soon as I heard the crunching of gravel and the sound of a vehicle driving wildly toward the house.
“Things are about to get interesting real quick it seems,” Kyra said, the toe of her shoe tapping against the metal chair she had her feet propped up on.
Theo stood and came to my side. “You should have left while you had the chance. I don’t think it was wise to go against the Spirits' orders from my grandmother.”
I opened my mouth to speak—to tell Theo exactly what I thought about the Spirits, him, and his family—but Kyra cut me off.
“Actually, she didn’t go against the Spirits.” Kyra smirked. “In fact, she did exactly as they wanted her to.”
My heart dropped to my toes.
“What do you mean?” Theo asked. His eyes grew hard as he shifted to look at her.
“Gran said to tell her to leave—she even gave me the excuse of going to the dock—but only because the Spirits know her so well. They knew that if she was told to leave, she’d do the opposite.” Kyra tossed her hands up and glanced at the sky. “Spirits win.”
I gaped at her, disbelieving what she said. The thought of dead people, or whatever the Spirits actually were, being able to predict my every move was beyond creepy.
“Anything else?” Theo asked Kyra pointedly, just as we heard three car doors slam shut.
She flashed him a devious smile. “Just that all three of us are supposed to be here right now. Whatever they have planned to keep the balance in order is about to begin taking effect.”
When she said they, I knew exactly who she was referring to, and it gave me the heebie-jeebies.
Theo began to pace back and forth. I didn’t know what to do, so I remained where I sat.
“Calm in a stressful situation,” Kyra said. “I like you.”
I flashed her a nervous smile. “Eh, not calm, just mind-boggled. Sitting seems like the best option at this point.”
My heart pounded against my ribs as I saw Kace and the others come from around the side of the house. I watched Kace’s face closely, waiting for the moment when he would notice me sitting at the table. It didn’t take him but a few of my rapid heartbeats before his eyes met with mine. A complete look of relief washed over his face, and he sped up as he rushed to where I sat.
“What the hell is she doing here?” Kace asked Theo once he reached me. “I swear, if I find out you’ve hurt one hair on her head, I’ll fucking kill you!”
I stood up. “Kace, he didn’t. Calm down.”
Kace placed his hands on my waist, and the smallest flickers of warmth I’d ever felt from him met with his touch and fluttered across my skin before dying out. It was more muted now than it ever had been before. My stomach sank.
“What’s going on?” Kace asked. His hands pulled away from me. Obviously, he’d felt, and taken note of, the muted sensation just as I had.
“What on Earth are you even doing here?” Callie asked, not realizing what Kace had been talking about. Her voice was soft, but there was a large amount of concern and nervousness mixed with it.
I opened my mouth to speak, but the words couldn’t seem to get from my brain to my lips fast enough. Maybe telling them why I was hanging out here wasn’t going to be as easy as I’d initially thought. Especially not with the muted sensation of Kace’s touch that seemed to baffle us both.
How was I going to explain that without giving away my new ability and telling them I was part Conjurer now because of the tether?
“Avery, seriously, this is messed up,” Adam said as he took another step closer to me, causing me to feel like I was being cornered.
“She can go wherever she wants,” Theo growled. “You don’t own her.”
A twitchy feeling coursed through me—Theo’s irritation directed toward Kace and this entire situation. I quickly shifted to look at him. He stood just off to the side at my right. His eyes were narrowed at Kace, and his hands were clenched so tightly at his sides his knuckles were white.
I spoke before anyone else could respond to him, turning my gaze back to Kace. “I came to see if the tether was broken.”
Kace locked eyes with me. Callie and Adam didn’t speak, and I wondered if Kace had taken a moment to fill them in during their frantic search for me or the ride here. It seemed as though he had. I was glad. It was less explaining that I had to do.
“And?” Kace prompted.
My eyes gazed between the three of them standing around me. The words were on the tip of my tongue, but I just couldn’t get them out. Finally, I settled my stare on Kace. He looked so pensive and hopeful that my answer would be a resounding yes, but the longer I dragged the silence out, the more those emotions faded. He knew what my answer would be without me having to utter a word. They all did.
“It’s not,” I said, shaking my head. “In fact, it’s stronger than it was before.”
I had expected that saying the words aloud would have somehow made me feel at ease, but they didn’t. In fact, they only made me feel worse. Now, not only was I feeling Theo’s intense irritation, but my scalp also began to prickle from all of the tension building between the six of us.
My eyes never left Kace. I noticed the change in his demeanor the second the words had passed from my lips. He dropped his gaze from me as he drew his lips together, making them into a thin line. His shoulders slouched, and a stony expression spread across his face.
“But didn’t you say going through with the initiation would get rid of it?” Kace asked without meeting my stare.
I hated the fact that he couldn’t even look at me right now.
“It was supposed to,” I said, fiddling with my bracelets. “At least that’s what Admer told me.”
“Then why didn’t it?” Adam asked.
I shifted on my feet. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe he lied,” Kyra chimed in.
I’d actually forgotten she was there. She still sat at the table with her feet propped up in the chair beside her. My eyes shifted from Adam to Callie and then to Kace as I watched them all stare at her. It became clear that, for whatever reason, no one had paid her much attention before now. No one had even seemed to notice her. Their confusion over who she was hung heavily in the air.
“And who are you?” Adam, always the straightfor
ward one, asked her.
“Kyra, I’m Theo’s cousin,” she answered. A smirk twisted her plump red lips. She continued to tap her shoe against the chair her feet rested in without a care in the world, and she toyed with a string hanging from the neckline of her top. I envied her ease in the moment.
“Why would Admer lie?” Callie asked, her soft voice breaking the awkward silence that had been blossoming between us yet again.
“You have to admit, he hasn’t been the most forthcoming person I’ve met here,” I muttered, amazed I could speak at all.
Maybe what Kyra was saying held some truth in it. Somehow that didn’t surprise me as much as I’d thought it would.
I watched as Kace shifted his gaze from Kyra to me. I couldn’t label the emotion flittering across his face. Did he not agree with me? His eyes drew back to Kyra too soon for me to decipher what he was feeling. I caught myself wondering if Kyra was using her talent of fascination on him, and felt extreme levels of jealousy float through my mind at the sight of them staring at one another.
Movement from Theo caught my attention. I figured he didn’t like feeling my jealousy much. He turned toward the path that led to his house.
“I’m not standing here any longer,” he said, his back to us as he walked away. “The tether isn’t broken, and I’m not about to fight any of you for the sake of Addison and her decision to seek out whether it was or not. She had every right to wonder.”
Nobody stopped him as he disappeared down the worn dirt path.
My insides twisted as I watched him go. It took everything I had not to go after him. Instead, I chose to ignore that part—no matter how big—and erase the tiny distance between Kace and me. Taking his hand in mine, I squeezed it slightly.
“Come on. Let's go,” I said, noticing he was still sharing a stare-down moment, or whatever it was, with Kyra.
He dropped his eyes to our intertwined fingers and then looked at me.
“Fine, let’s go,” he muttered. His words seemed cold and hard—detached even—but he never dropped my hand.
We hadn’t made it far before Kyra spoke. “I’ll be seeing you soon, Addison. We’ll have to pick up where we left off with that thing,” she called. Her voice was sultry and sexy.
Kace glanced over his shoulder at her, and I couldn’t help the anger that boiled within me from the action. She had to be using her talent on him, because he seemed completely captivated by her right now.
“You’re right,” I said. I shifted slightly to glance back at her.
She wiggled her fingers at me and smiled the most malicious grin I’d seen on her yet. Heat simmered across my skin, and I thought I would burst into flames when she blew me a kiss. I turned back around without returning her smile. Kace was still looking over his shoulder at her. I cleared my throat at him and heard Kyra laugh as we rounded the corner.
She knew exactly what I was feeling and she was enjoying every moment of it. This whole thing had been nothing besides a big show to her, a little live entertainment. What a witch.
The ride to my house was an awkward one. I drove my Jeep while Kace followed behind me in his car. Part of me was glad we’d taken separate vehicles, because I needed time to think. After all, I had to tell Kace about another kiss.
Dread was the only word I would use to describe what I was feeling when I thought about having that conversation with Kace, but it still didn’t do the sensation much justice.
“So, what was that all about back there?” Callie asked. She’d opted to ride with me. “And what’s this whole tethered business all about? I’d never heard of anything like that before until Kace explained it to us on the way over here. Was that why Theo was staring at you so hardcore the other day at the beach?”
Taking in a deep breath, I gripped the steering wheel tighter. I’d known the questions would come at some point during this ride. I didn’t mind explaining things to her, but Adam was another story. I could only imagine what his first question would have been, considering his mouth had no filter.
“What all did Kace tell you?” I asked, because I didn’t know where to start.
She grabbed the pen I always kept in my cup holder, and began slapping it nervously against the palm of her hand. “Not much. He was pretty freaked when he woke up this morning and realized you weren’t in the house and your Jeep was gone. We all were actually.”
“I should have left a note, I know,” I said, keeping my eyes straight ahead. “I honestly didn’t expect to go to Theo’s house. I went to Fisherman’s Brew first, but he wasn’t there.”
“Kace knew where you’d be—or at least who you’d be with,” Callie said. From the corner of my eye, I saw her shift in her seat to face me. “He knew the second we all noticed your Jeep was gone.”
“How?”
She set the pen back in my cup holder. “I don’t know, but that’s when he started rambling about the tether to Adam and me. I thought he was crazy or something at first. He said he had to go to the Van Rooyens for a spell to find you. Then we realized he was serious.”
Everything she said made Kace sound somewhat stalker-ish.
“I needed to see if the tether was broken. Admer told me becoming initiated would break it, because it would bond me with those more natural to me,” I said, ignoring the creepy sensation running along my spine.
“Was that the only reason you went through with the initiation then, to break the tether?”
I swallowed hard. Here was my moment of truth. “Not solely, but it was a big part of why. I needed to break the tether in order for Theo to be out of my head so I could give whatever Kace and I were becoming a fair shot.”
That and I also wanted to be able to leave Soul Harbor whenever I wanted to, but she didn’t need to know that.
“What does the tether do exactly?” She leaned back against her seat again and cracked her window a little more as we passed the docks. A salty breeze came in through the window, and I inhaled deeply. “Does it make the two of you hot for each other or something?”
I gaped at her. “Wow, I wasn’t expecting something like that to come out of your mouth.”
Shifting my eyes from the road for a split second, I glanced at her. Her cheeks had already tinted to her standard embarrassed shade of pink. She smiled and turned her head to stare out her window.
“Yes, it does,” I answered honestly. “That and so much more.”
“Does Kace know?”
I nodded. “Mostly.”
“So that’s why he was so ill when the spell said you were at the Van Rooyen place.”
I shrugged. “Guess so.”
A lump rose in my throat. He had every right to be ill about it. My stomach grew hard as I slowed to a stop at a stop sign. I glanced in my rearview mirror at Kace sitting in the driver’s seat of his car behind me; he looked ill.
I was a shitty girlfriend. A very shitty girlfriend.
“Which way do I go—left or right?” I asked, unable to remember the directions to Theo’s house in reverse.
“Left.”
We rode for a little while in silence, until Callie reached over and turned the volume on the radio up. She flipped through a few stations, finally settling on one playing old rock and roll, because nothing else would come in clear. I was grateful for the noise; it filled the silence and left no room for more questions.
I would have to answer plenty later, I was sure.
The first thing I did when we made it back to my place was walk straight to the pantry and feed Binks. I wasn’t one for confrontation, and the thought of what Kace might have to say to me after I explained in more detail why I was at Theo’s house—and also what had happened, again—didn’t make me want to give up that trait right now.
Binks rushed into the room as soon as he heard the pantry door open. I’d long ago figured out his favorite sleep/hiding spot—on top of the only bookshelf in the living room. How he managed to get up there, I had no clue. He brushed against my bare legs and meowed loudly. This was hi
s hungry cry; I knew it well.
“I’m getting it, buddy. Hold on,” I said. I reached in the bag for the measuring cup I used to scoop out his food and placed one scoop into his bowl. He went crazy eating it before I could pull my hand away.
Footsteps from more than one person headed up the stairs toward the second floor, and my heart began to pound. Kace walked into the kitchen. I figured that was why Adam and Callie were hightailing it up the stairs.
From in my peripheral vision, I noticed him saunter over to the sink and lean against the counter. He didn’t look at me; I would have felt his eyes if he had. The tension was so thick in the small kitchen you could cut it with a knife. Taking in a deep breath, I tried to slow the pounding of my heart, but it did no good.
This would be our first fight. I was sure of it.
“So,” he started, breaking the silence and causing me to jump.
Cramming the measuring cup back into the bag of Meow Mix, I rolled the top down, sealing up Binks’s goodness, before placing it back into the pantry and closing the door.
“So,” I repeated awkwardly, turning to face him.
His eyes were on me, but they didn’t appear to want to be. There was an epic war waging within the icy blue of them. Kace had his hands shoved in the front pockets of his blue plaid shorts, his legs crossed at the ankles as he leaned back against the counter.
“I’m not too good at this whole beating around the bush thing. I’m actually feeling really nervous right now,” he admitted. He ran a hand through his hair, and a hint of a smile lit his face and deepened my favorite dimple. “So I’m just going to come right out and ask…why did you choose to go to the Van Rooyen place alone?”
My heart stopped for a moment. That wasn’t the question I’d been expecting him to start with.
Stepping away from where Binks was wolfing down his food, I crossed over to the edge of the counter, just about a foot away from Kace.
Confined (A Tethered Novel, Book 3) Page 12