Foreseen (The Rothston Series)

by Smiles, Terri-Lynne

  “Oh my god! I heard you had it!” Molley trilled as she pointed at the chivasta lying between my breasts. “Did this really belong to Gordy Prescott?” she asked, sounding awed.

  I held the pendant up by the chain so she could see it better. “I guess so. That’s what Mel told me.”

  “So cool that you have something of his,” Molley cooed.

  I glanced over at Sasha to question why Molley was so impressed. “Everybody loved Gordy,” Sasha said in response to my look. “He spent a lot of time with all of us. It was awful last year when he died.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “What happened to him? Was it a heart attack or something?” I asked, thinking his death must have been a surprise based on their reaction.

  “No,” Sasha said, hesitating for a moment before adding, “He was hit by a semi.” The chivasta fell out of my hand. I’d expected to hear about a stroke, or cancer, or some other way I’d expect an old person to die. But run over? Goosebumps raised on my arms at the randomness of it. “He took a walk every day on the roads outside the complex,” Sasha continued. “The truck driver was beside himself afterward. Grandpa and Mr. Jamison went to see him at the jail. He said he never saw Gordy and couldn’t believe it had happened.”

  Molley nodded as tears began filling her eyes at the memory. “I heard Mr. Jamison spent a week visiting the guy to help him cope with what he’d done. That was nice of him. Gordy would have wanted it that way. The driver finally admitted he’d been messing with his iPod or something instead of watching the road.”

  “Joining us for some water polo?” a voice asked. I looked up as Molley wiped her eyes and found Curtis Mechenbaum’s squinting at me without his glasses. The others quickly took up his suggestion, and scrambled into the water. I stood up, dropping my towel back to the floor and smoothing my black maillot, before stepping to the edge of the pool and diving in. We started a lopsided game of water polo – me, Curtis, and Sasha against Molley and Derrick, a lean, dark grad student – engineering, I think – who was here for the week. With the three of us influencing the two of them to miss a throw, or position themselves to get dunked, they didn’t have a chance.

  As our victory was nearly complete, Molley called a time out with a huge grin on her face. “We have a new player to even the numbers – three on three,” she announced, pointing at the entrance to the men’s locker room. Crap.

  Rex strutted out in his board shorts, carrying his clothes with an air that he could get called away at any moment and needed them handy. He dropped them on a chaise on the pool deck before breaking into a broad grin. “I’m on the losing team?” he mock-complained. “I’ll fix that.” He strode forward and made a smooth dive into the water.

  If this had been a regular game – without influencing – we’d still win easily. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. And as much as I might have wanted Rex to be nothing but hot air, he was good at this. He had us throwing the ball out of the pool, and missing the net by feet. I even bounced one off of Curtis’s head, directly into the wrong net, to score a point for them. Very quickly, the score was even. Whoever made the next goal won, and my head was pounding with determination that it not be Rex. I’d bested him in the arcade, and I wanted to make my victory complete.

  I moved closer to our net, while Sasha and Curtis passed the ball between them. Molley was more occupied positioning herself to be in Rex’s line of sight than playing the game, so she wasn’t much of a threat. Derrick was doing a pretty effective job of guarding both Sasha and Curtis, preventing them from moving forward. Time to intervene.

  I influenced Derrick to lunge at Sasha. When he did, she lobbed the ball over him to Curtis, who quickly pushed forward, passing it to me before Rex closed in on him. But now Rex turned all his attention to me. I read him and he planned on dunking me hard and holding me under. I’d play along. My head pounded as I tried to time this – drawing him in. I had to let him get close. Only be another second … and …

  “Now!” I yelled.

  Curtis reared up right behind Rex, coming down hard on his shoulders and forcing him under. I darted around the two of them, pelting the ball neatly into the center of the net. We’d won! I turned around cheering, but cut off when Rex sprang up from the depths swearing incoherently, with “Mechenbaum” being the only intelligible word. Curtis swam as fast as he could for the side. Molley, Sasha and Derrick had stopped in their tracks, tittering as Curtis pulled himself from the water with Rex right behind him.

  “You think that was funny?” Rex challenged, bathing Curtis in his spit at the short range. Curtis began to grovel into submission, or maybe he was about to sink through the tiled floor. Rex marched over to the chaise, fishing into his pants pocket, and Curtis visibly trembled. Rex turned back holding a flexible blue band, and I heard a gasp from either Sasha or Molley behind me.

  “Ooh, Curtis. You get to play with the kitty,” Molley giggled, sounding excited and nervousness at the same time.

  Curtis was shaking as he appeared to willingly hold out his arm, though I doubt “willing” applied here, since it was exactly what Rex wanted. He wrapped the tube twice around Curtis’ upper arm, and the ends snapped together, like some sort of magnetic connection. The device began to glow. I stared in fascination because as the glow increased, Curtis diminished. The depth to him was gone, as if he wasn’t real anymore. I could see him. Nothing appeared visibly different, but his turbula just sort of dropped out of existence, like a hole in the quantum foam.

  “What is that thing?” I asked Sasha.

  “It’s a QIT,” she said. “Um … quantum interference transmitter. Stops us from reading the turbula. He’s …” She stopped for a moment, then lowered her voice. “He’s not supposed to have one. Only the Guard.”

  “The what?” I asked, astounded that I’d been here for four weeks, and Sasha was still talking about things I’d never heard of.

  “The Guard. They’re like …” Her eyes rolled around and she searched for the right description. “Kinda like the Secret Service for the commons, except they work for The Seven. They’re like the police or something if we need them.”

  “What’s it doing to him?” I asked Sasha, as panic swept across Curtis’ face.

  We can’t see the turbula around him because of the QIT. So we can’t read and influence him while he has it on,” Sasha told me. “But he can’t see the turbula at all, anywhere.” That was the panic. Curtis was blind – like a common.

  “Why’s he doing that?” I whispered back to Sasha. I didn’t like where this was going, but wasn’t sure how bad it was.

  “Because it’s Curtis,” Sasha said back, picking up a lock of her wet hair and flinging it behind her. “Curtis gets so scared and grovels. It’s funny in a sort of pathetic way.”

  I glanced at Sasha in disgust, but a yelp from Curtis drew my attention back to the pool deck. Rex had grabbed a handful of Curtis’s curly brown hair, and was forcing him onto his knees.

  “Please don’t. I’m sorry. Please don’t,” Curtis begged, but Rex just laughed again.

  “You should have stayed out my way, worm,” he sneered, then his foot shot out to kick Curtis in the gut, not hard, but hard enough. Curtis tried to double over in pain, but couldn’t with Rex’s hand still knotted in his hair. Molley, Sasha, and Derrick had grown silent and were no longer looking at them. But they weren’t doing anything to stop Rex either.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I won’t ever again. You won. We all know you would have won. We can do it again and …” His words broke off in a gag as Rex kicked him again.

  “Stop!” I blasted, launching myself out of the pool. I reached them in two strides and pushed Rex aside. He moved easily, not expecting the intrusion. “Leave him alone,” I demanded.

  “Oh, look. Mechenbaum has a girl to protect him,” Rex sneered.

  “He didn’t do anything to you,” I continued, as my chest heaved with determination. “It was a game. And you lost. Sometimes that happens.”

  Rex’s eyes harde
ned. He reached over to Curtis’ arm, tapped some buttons and snapped the QIT off it. “Not to me,” he spat, tossing the device in his hand as he strode triumphantly back to the locker room. Sasha, Molley and Derrick followed, without a word. They’d obviously all been cowed by this sadistic jerk.

  I helped my friend up from where he’d crumpled onto the tile deck. He coughed a few times as he rose. “Are you okay?” I asked.

  He waved his hand as he caught his breath. “Yeah. I’ll be fine,” he assured me. “But you shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Somebody needed to,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah, but you made an enemy.”

  I gave a sarcastic laugh at that. “I’d already done that, so I don’t think it matters.”

  Curtis shook his head, as I handed him a towel to wipe the spittle from his face. “It matters,” he said gravely. “Rex always gets even.”

  Chapter 17

  Greg

  I was in love with Kinzie Nicolosi. I wanted nothing more than to spend the evening telling her that, over and over. But she was still on the phone with her dad, so I flipped to the playlist labeled “Kinzie” instead. Songs that made me think of her – the kind I used to think were written for swooning girls and guys who needed help to get laid, but I’d been wrong. I kicked my feet up onto my couch, listening to the soulful crooning being piped into my head, and for the first time, I could relate. Life was like a sappy, love-drunk song. Man, I had it bad. And worse, I didn’t mind. But that left me not knowing what to do.

  Kinzie paced across my room in the basement of the Alpha Delt house as shouts and crashes of my frat brothers returning from break occasionally shook the walls. She waved her arms in frustration as her father ranted on the other end of the phone. He’d grilled me on the phone on Christmas Day when he still thought we were just friends. When Kinzie told him I was picking her up at the airport in Indy, she’d confessed I was her boyfriend. And from the tenor of the conversation, I’d say the man hated me now. Of course, if he’d known what I’d been doing when he called, his reaction would be justified.

  As we’d reached campus, Kinzie had suggested coming here before taking her to Bolt Hall to unpack. She’d wanted time alone, just the two of us, and I’d eagerly agreed. I’d barely closed the door before she was in my arms and I’d put my body on autopilot. I knew exactly what to do – what I’d done with other girls, and what ensured Kinzie would have been in my bed, feeling properly seduced, within the hour. But her cell phone rang and jolted me back to reality – this wasn’t just another conquest. It was Kinzie.

  “You can’t tell me what to do anymore, Dad,” she snapped into her phone, abruptly ending the call. I pulled out the earbuds as she plopped onto the couch beside me. “My dad’s a jerk,” she said tersely.

  I picked up her hand and placed it against my own. We were so different. Her graceful fingers and tiny palms were delicate, almost frail, against my broad, thick ones, and yet – I slid my fingers between hers – they fit together perfectly. And tingled, making us both relax. I leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the forehead. I needed to slow down.

  She gave me a curious grin, and climbed onto her knees beside me before stretching up to press her lips to mine. God, that felt like nothing I’d ever imagined before. I wanted to smother her in kisses. I wanted to hold her all night to watch her sleep. I wanted her body wrapped in mine just to feel her heart beat. She kissed me again, but then settled back on her knees.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, running her finger across my furrowed brow. It smoothed at her touch.

  “Nothing,” I assured her. “It’s just that I love you.”

  “Mmhm,” she murmured. “I blew it, huh? My dad’s call, I mean. It broke the mood.” Her tone was serious, like she was studying for a final exam. It made me smile.

  “That wasn’t so much a mood as hormones,” I pointed out.

  A laugh burbled out of her. “I guess that is more accurate. But isn’t that how it’s supposed to be?”

  My brain twisted around her words. “Supposed to be?” I asked, knowing that’s how it always had been with any other girl who’d passed through here. Just do what my body wanted. But now it didn’t seem that simple. She twisted around on the couch and stretched her back across my lap. My thoughts jammed as the drape of her t-shirt settled around her to reveal the stunning body that I knew lay underneath.

  “Maybe ‘supposed to’ was the wrong way to put it,” she continued, not noticing my stare. God, she was beautiful. And she didn’t know it. She had no idea what she was doing to me, just by lying in my lap, presenting her body to me. The primal part of me roared inside, rattling the bars of its cage to break them down, making me almost miss her next words. “But I don’t really know how to be sexy or seductive or …”

  “Langston, you’re home!” Murphy’s voice boomed as the door snapped open. Damn! I jumped up, dumping Kinzie onto the couch in hopes he hadn’t seen anything. This wasn’t how I wanted the guys to find out. I didn’t know how I was going to tell them about Kinzie – but it wasn’t like this.

  “Shit, you ought to lock your door,” he laughed with an impressed tone and backed out of the room. I followed him, wracking my brain for words to explain to Murphy what I felt for Kinzie without relinquishing my guy-dom. But when I reached the hall, he’d already started loudly crooning that I was getting some from “that girl, Kylie.”

  “Stuff it, Murphy,” I snapped, but it was too late. Boomer and Pete stuck their heads out of their room next door.

  “Kylie?” Pete asked curiously.

  “I don’t know anyone named Kylie,” I said, hoping they’d drop it. I couldn’t tell them it was Kinzie. Not now. In their minds, she’d become another slut who’d passed through my bed. And no one had the right to put her in that category.

  “Who is it?” Boomer piped up.

  “You know … Kylie,” Murphy said again. “The dark-haired chick he was hanging out with last semester.”

  “You have Kinzie in your room?” Pete asked incredulously. Damn. This was spinning out of control, fast.

  “About to go in for the kill,” Murphy opined. I wanted to slug him.

  “No. It’s Kinzie. I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Could have fooled me.”

  “Kinzie? I thought she wasn’t your type, Langston,” Boomer laughed.

  “No. She’s not. It’s not like that. I just … just … I’ll talk to you guys later. Just shut up, okay?”

  I stormed back into my room and slammed the door. They didn’t get it. I knew I’d have to face them eventually, but right now, I wanted to back up, to forget they existed, so that Kinzie and I were the only two people in the world. But I was met by a scene that sent razor blades slashing through my heart – Kinzie had drawn her knees up on the couch, hugging them as she rocked back and forth. Tears she was trying to hold back streaked her face, and her dark eyes had withdrawn. I stopped in my tracks, hoping I’d been transported to an alternate universe, and any moment would be retrieved.

  Kinzie lifted her head, but didn’t look at me. She stared straight ahead as she forced calm and deliberate words from her mouth. “This is my fault, and it’s okay. I knew it wouldn’t work. We …” She took a stuttering breath, unable to go on.

  Fuck. The razor blades went into a frenzy, shredding the last bits of my cardiac muscle and leaving me in full arrest. Somehow, everything had unraveled in the last thirty seconds. But why? I sat down and scooped her onto my lap as she let go of her vain attempt to stop the tears. She sobbed into my chest and I rocked her slowly.

  “Shh. What’s wrong?”

  “This … you …” she hiccupped through the sobs, and I waited, slowly stroking her back to calm her. After a few minutes, she swallowed hard and tried again. “You don’t have to be so nice to me. We don’t belong together. You … you couldn’t even admit I’m here. I’m not pretty enough or … or … whatever enough to be here.”

  My brain became numb, and I forgot how to mov
e or breathe or even swallow. How could she think ... Then, my words in the hall came back to me, agreeing that she wasn’t my type. It was true, but that didn’t mean … I looked down at her tear-clumped dark lashes. Damn. She was much too good to have anything to do with me. She was the most beautiful girl I’d ever known and would ever know, and was infinitely better than any girl who’d ever entered this room. But words would never fix this. The one thing I wanted in life was for her to trust me and need me and know that I’d never hurt her. But with a few stupid words, I’d destroyed it. God, I was bad at this. “Kinzie,” I said, “you misunderstood what I told those losers.” But she wouldn’t look at me.

  An idiotic idea entered my head, but I had nothing to lose – at least nothing that mattered. I moved her off my lap, then walked back out to the hall and planted my feet, knowing I’d hear about this forever. But the only one who mattered was in that room. After a deep breath, steeling myself for the jeers, I bellowed, “I’M IN LOVE WITH KINZIE NICOLOSI, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN THE WORLD. EVERYBODY GOT THAT?”

  The expected heckles came from upstairs but, thankfully, silence in the basement. I grinned with satisfaction and looked back into my room at the shock on Kinzie’s face. Then the corners of her mouth rose slowly, until a laugh burbled out.

  “That was random,” she said smiling at last.

  Boomer’s head poked out of his room. “Wish I’d had money on this, Langston. Could’ve been a rich man.”

  Pete’s voice called out. “We’re going to Brewer’s. Don’t suppose you guys want to join us.”

  Kinzie was still smiling as she wiped away the tears. She nodded, and I looked back at Boomer. “We’re in.”

  ψ

  I held the tavern door for Kinzie, then flashed my fake driver’s license at the bartender. “Erwin,” he greeted with a nod, but eyed Kinzie suspiciously. “She old enough to be in a bar?” he asked.

  “Yes. And I’m the designated driver,” she said, holding up the keys to Mr. Heisenberg with a funny look on her face.