Foreseen (The Rothston Series)

by Smiles, Terri-Lynne

  “You’re my best friend, Kinzie. And I thought you couldn’t be a friend and anything else because … because I didn’t really think anything else existed. Nothing important at least.” I paused knowing she was still listening and that I had to continue. I took a deep breath. “I was wrong, Kinzie. Nothing balances anymore, because you aren’t just a friend. And this isn’t something I can ignore. Now I get it. The whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. The wave function just collapsed and now I know what it means.”

  I paused again, mustering the courage to finish. I didn’t want to scare her again, but she needed to know. More importantly, I needed to say it. My heart pounded painfully. She wasn’t looking at me, so I gently lifted her chin. Her beautiful brown-black eyes slowly rose to mine, and I had to take the risk.

  “One plus one doesn’t equal two on this, Kinzie. It equals five billion and three. I don’t want to mess this up, but ... I’m in love with you.”

  Chapter 15

  Kinzie

  The only light was the glow from my phone. I lay in the smooth sheets of the bed, not wanting to take my eyes off of it. Three words: I love you. Not the usual Goodnight Czarina or even the short hand I <3 u. He’d typed it out. I couldn’t wrap my head around it, and didn’t know what to text back. My fingers hovered over the keys, as I imagined Greg lying across the hall, getting my standard reply: Goodnight. It seemed cruel. But what else could I say?

  I shoved the phone into the pocket of the jeans lying at the foot of the bed, then lay back and let the guilt sweep through me. I should have stayed at Rothston, or gone home, or just gone … somewhere. Anywhere but here. But I was here, and now, Greg thought he was in love with me. My breath hitched in my chest. I should have never let this happen. Greg didn’t love me. He was just a rat in a maze and he didn’t even know it.

  But I couldn’t send the simple Goodnight text. He deserved more. Greg was my best friend. Why couldn’t things have stayed that way? And how was I supposed to tell him that he was wrong? Especially when he was trying so hard to make this easy on me. We’d laughed together while we watched hokey Christmas movies on a humongous TV in what he called the “media room,” and he’d tried to act like nothing had changed. But it had. The softness in his eyes had grown, and his arm had draped comfortably around my shoulders as we sat. And … it felt good. Natural. Like I belonged with him.

  But I didn’t belong here. I was adept and Greg wasn’t. I belonged at Rothston, not with Greg. The part of me that still doubted that after Mel’s proof had to give up … after the kiss. I closed my eyes are remembered it through my whole body.

  We’d said goodnight in the hall between our rooms. His eyes smiled down as his fingertips ran down my cheek, leaving a warmth behind. The rich smell of autumn leaves surrounded me before his lips tenderly brushed against mine. They were soft, but powerful and the tingle of his lips pressing against mine raced through me. Exciting and energizing and peaceful at the same time. And nothing like what I’d expected. I’d imagined being kissed before, even thought about trying it once on Chaz, my best friend in high school. But now I was sure that it would have been nothing like this. Greg wasn’t a high school boy. He was a man. The scent of his skin, the warmth of his body against mine, and the feel of the strong arms holding me left no doubt of that. I’d wanted it to go on forever, but I’d been the one to pull away.

  The block had released in my brain, and I had stepped back, stunned at the clarity. The details of the turbula had swirled around me – they still swirled around me – as real and obvious as the visual world. The fluid tunnels stretched out, drawing me in and expanding. Why? What had changed?

  It was the kiss. I tried to shake that thought from my head, but it wouldn’t leave. My thoughts raced, trying to explain how a kiss could revive my adept attributes, hypothesizing about sudden bursts of endorphins or sexual hormones that hadn’t roamed so freely in my body before now. But what did that mean? Was it like some sort of schizophrenia, making my latent adept attributes manifest now that I was an adult? Or did it have more to do with Greg and how comfortable he made me feel. Centered. Or maybe it was nothing more than a coincidence. The block was from the pressure to prove myself at Rothston, and here, that pressure was gone. But none of those explanations told me what to do about Greg.

  I tossed in the bed, until I couldn’t stand it anymore. I pulled on my jeans and crept across the hall. The door was cracked open, but it was dark inside.

  “Can’t sleep?” Greg asked softly from the bed.

  I slipped into the darkened room. “I came to tell you … I … I don’t know what to tell you.”

  At a tap of a switch, soft lights illuminated the room. He sat up to reach for his t-shirt and the sheet fell away, revealing that magnificent sculpted body. He was … beautiful. Why couldn’t I be more like Sasha and just lust for the body that disappeared under the shirt? It would be so much easier than this.

  “Come here, my love,” he said, smoothing out the comforter beside him.

  “Please. Don’t call me that,” I asked. It made my heart beat too hard, drumming in my ears.

  “Okay,” he agreed, pulling me into his arms. I didn’t resist, but stretched out next to him. His warmth felt good, as did his hand lightly running down my back. “Tell me what you’re thinking. All of it.”

  I swallowed and nodded, trying to put my thoughts in order. It was somehow easier lying here with him, but they were still a scattered jumble.

  “It doesn’t have to make sense, Kinzie. Just talk to me,” he prodded gently.

  And so I did, telling him all the non-adept thoughts that floated through my head. The doubts that he actually loved me, the beautiful girls who would rip him away in the bat of their eyelashes, the ways my life was easier by myself. When I finished, I paused, listening to the steady thrumming of his heart and enjoying the warmth of his chest for a moment. “So, it doesn’t make sense – us, together. It will never work,” I concluded, wishing my ramble led to some other conclusion. I was comfortable in his arms. But I knew it wouldn’t work. It couldn’t work – for a hundred reasons that I couldn’t tell him, and the fact that I couldn’t tell him proved that. But maybe, if he understood all the other problems with going down this path, we could still be friends. I raised my head and found him smiling down at me.

  “I’m not going away,” he said, gently kissing my forehead and sending a warm tingle through me. “And I still love you.”

  ψ

  “Hullo?” I groggily answered my phone.

  “I called Rothston this morning,” Dad’s voice growled.

  I snapped awake as if I’d been doused in snow. “Yeah?” I asked, trying to sound casual as I scrambled out of Greg’s bed where I’d fallen asleep. He tried to stop me until he saw my expression, then pulled back the covers to ease my escape. My cheeks burned as I dashed across the hall as if Dad might figure out where I’d been through the bandwidth.

  “WHERE IN THE BLAZES ARE YOU?” he roared. “And you’d better not lie and say you’re at Rothston, because I know you aren’t.”

  “I’m visiting a friend, Dad. In Boston. I didn’t think you’d mind.” The last part was a definite lie.

  “Who? Tell me who this girl is and where she lives. I need to talk to her parents, now,” he demanded into the phone.

  “No. You’re not going to give them the third degree,” I argued back, ignoring the gender part of this statement to give me time to think. But the fact was, if I’d been visiting a girl, I would have told him. But Dad didn’t think the males of the world could be just friends with me, and after the last twenty-four hours, I wasn’t in a position to argue the point. But there was no way I was going to tell him that. And he’d never believe that I was safer with Greg than a company of Marines.

  Still, I didn’t see any way to avoid this fight with my dad. So, I swallowed and told him that my friend was male, emphasizing that we were just friends. But it wasn’t true. Last night, listening to the strong rhythm of his
chest – the steady heart beat over the ebb and tide of his breath – I knew we could never be just friends again. He’d changed it – changed us – forever. But I still couldn’t accept it. It was like the ugly duckling nibbing into a story of a handsome prince. It wasn’t real – I had to have made it happen.

  “Who is he?” Dad demanded, snapping me out of my thoughts.

  “His name’s Greg. Greg Langston. I can let you talk to his parent’s later, but I don’t think they’re awake yet,” I said to comfort him, since I could hear another of Dad’s overprotective rants heading my way. Please, not this morning. I had enough on my mind without listening to his delusions of how everyone was out to get me. And it was Christmas. I reached out with my adept senses, searching for my house, and found Dad pacing across the living room. I pushed to have him accept what I’d said and be done with it. And I succeeded.

  “Greg? Not this same Greg-guy that you disappeared with this fall?” Dad asked suspiciously, but he stopped his pacing and settled into his recliner. “You can’t do this, Kinzie. You can’t go running off with strange guys and not let anyone know where you are. You’re just a kid.”

  “I’m not a kid anymore, Dad.” A stony silence loomed through the phone connection.

  “Don’t do it again, Kinz,” he said with finality, marking the end of the argument. That had been too easy. Being adept was handy.

  I changed the subject to something that would be far away from Greg in my dad’s mind. “Can I ask you something about Rothston?”

  “Sure, Kinz,” he answered. I heard him pulling the lever on the side of the chair to recline back and get comfortable. “It’s a great place, isn’t it? Man, the memories I have there …”

  “That’s just it, Dad. You have memories about the place. One of my friends there told me they make commons forget about adepts if they find out, and Mel … well, Mel said kind of implied they do the same thing with the ones who work there, but that it didn’t matter that you know.”

  “Yeah. That’s right. What about it?”

  “At some point, that doesn’t work anymore, does it? I mean, too many people would know, and adepts wouldn’t be a secret anymore. And over the thousands of years of history, I don’t get how that hasn’t happened already.”

  “Well, the commons who know are mostly spouses and the occasional child who isn’t adept, like me. That’s okay with Rothston, because they aren’t going to go around blabbing their mouths. Everybody knows Rothston would make them look nuts if they did. And …” Dad’s jovial tone began to falter. “Keeping it a secret isn’t as hard as you’d think. Most commons won’t accept the idea. Happened with my dad. He never believed any of it was real. Thought my mom was just having delusional bouts when she’d run off to Rothston. Looking back, maybe he thought she was having an affair. Anyway, he left us. Never saw him again.” He paused for a moment, then cleared his throat. “Anyway, it’s always dicey introducing a common to Rothston’s world,” he said, resuming a cheerful tone, although I could tell it was forced. “Doesn’t happen much anymore, from what I hear. Most adepts end up with other adepts now. Easier that way, I suppose.”

  As I listened, I felt bad for my dad. His mother had died when I was five, and he had no other family. Just me. Even if I wasn’t his flesh and blood, I’d been the center of his life for fifteen years. No wonder he didn’t want to let me grow up. “Sorry I couldn’t come home for Christmas, Dad.”

  “Penny’s coming over,” he said, still with a forced brightness, and it made me curious because I had continued reading him without paying much attention and he’d decided to lie, just before the words came out of his mouth. I switched my focus to search through the house and discovered why. Penny Nesbitt, my high school English teacher who’d asked Dad out this fall, was already there – at least I assumed it was Penny. Turbula didn’t come with nametags. Maybe my dad wasn’t as lonely as I thought. “We’ll probably stop over to visit friends this afternoon. I’ll struggle through without you,” he joked. “How are you doing?”

  “Uh ... I’m fine.” I finally leaned back on the bed in the guest room.

  “Everything going okay at Rothston?”

  “It’s going fine, Dad,” I answered, not wanted to talk about the problems I’d been having. And after last night, I hoped they wouldn’t be back. “I had a little trouble catching on to manipulating the turbula, but I’ve got it now.”

  “Good. You’ve always done well at everything. Didn’t think this would be any different. So, your first Christmas away. How’s that going?”

  “Greg’s parents are nice, I guess,” I told him. “It’s strange not being home. Should we open our presents now?” I sat back up as I asked.

  “Sure. I know they’ll be a big surprise,” Dad chuckled.

  The presents Dad had sent me were in the bottom of my duffle across the room and I needed to bring them over. But before my feet hit the floor, the two brightly wrapped packages appeared on the center of the bed. I stared in shock, nearly dropping the phone.

  “Kinz? Are you still there?” my dad’s voice squeaked from the tiny speaker.

  My heart pounded and I felt my cheeks flush. Did I do that? There wasn’t any other way they would have suddenly appeared on the bed. But, I hadn’t meant to. And that had been effortless. No, not effortless. Easy, but I felt a bit weak, like energy had been drained out of me.

  “Kinzie?”

  “Uh ... yeah, Dad. I was just getting them,” I said numbly into the phone, trying to understand how that could have happened. I picked up the smaller one, turning it over in my hand to examine it. It looked fine on the outside, but it might be a jumbled mess inside. My heart thudded. All I had done was wish for them. What if I’d wanted something else, or …

  “Hmm, whatever could it be? Maybe it’s a hat and scarf,” I teased into the phone as I kept thinking. Maybe I’d hide the presents back in my duffle now before anyone saw them.

  “Nope. You’ll never guess.”

  “I guess I’ll just have to …” My eyes flickered up to the hall where I saw a movement. Darn, it was too late to hide the evidence. “Open … it,” I finished, as my mind went blank at the sight of Greg in a loosely tied bathrobe that revealed his broad chest with curls lightly scattered across the top. My heart beat faster, while my head screamed that this couldn’t be a guy who was in love with me. This was like hitting the hormone lottery, or winning one of those stupid reality TV shows. Except it was Greg, and not some brainless bod.

  “Kinz?” Dad’s voice asked, jarring me back from the fantasy that had been rapidly unfolding in my head. Crap. I needed Greg distracted while I checked on the damage to the presents. I knew what they contained, and the odds of getting it right, without any transposition errors, were … well, unlikely didn’t capture it. I’d have to use my dad for this and hope for the best.

  “Um. I’m sitting in the kitchen, Dad, and Greg just walked in. I’ll let you introduce yourself if you’re going to be civil,” I said into the phone. As the words came out, I realized the description of where I was sounded forced, but Dad didn’t pick up on it.

  “Yeah. I’d like to talk to the guy,” Dad said menacingly, then lightened up. “Don’t worry. I’ll behave.” I was still worried, but handed over the phone, mouthing the words “we’re just friends” to Greg. He tipped his head curiously.

  I heard several uncomfortable “Yes, sirs” coming from Greg, but it didn’t sound too bad. I carefully tore off the wrapping paper, exposing a box that looked completely intact. I tipped it toward me and cracked open the side, holding my breath as I peered inside. Laughing in relief, I peeled open the box to reveal the rows of socks. Greg cocked his head again quizzically.

  “It’s a family tradition,” I told him, letting him think my delight was with the socks and not the fact that I’d just translocated them, box and all. I picked up a pair and examined the knit. Every stitch was in place. Much better than the paperclip. And my brain lingered on the question of why. Had something cha
nged? Or was it just that I understood better now how to do it, and knew that I could. I would still have to be careful and control myself better, but at least no damage was done.

  I turned to the heavier box as my dad continued to question Greg, now asking about his parents’ jobs from the sound of it. I opened this box cautiously as well, although any minor transposition errors were likely to be less noticeable in what I thought was in this one. A laugh shot out of Greg when I removed the lid.

  “Textbooks?” he asked, still holding the phone.

  I took the phone from him as I explained. “This is what I wanted. They’re books I want to read on my own.” I listened as Dad opened his presents from me – a set of bamboo wind chimes that he’d always wanted, and another box of socks. Greg started running his fingers along my arms, making me shiver with the electrical thrill, yet it calmed me as it spread through my body, slowing my heart and steadying by breath. I could get lost in that feeling.

  “Sorry, I couldn’t resist,” he said semi-sheepishly when I finally set the phone down after saying goodbye to my dad. Greg stretched out on the bed, pulling me down beside him and wrapping me in his arms. He kissed me lightly, then laughed. “I never thought much of kissing before, but I like kissing you. This is nice.” He kissed me again, not so lightly this time, and my body melted into his. I knew this was a bad idea, but the reasons eluded me. Something about the future. But that didn’t seem important as now. I snuggled against him, feeling better than I ever had in my life, and for now, at least, my fears were vanquished.