The Space Between (The Book of Phoenix)

by Kristie Cook

  Not that we had time anyway. We still needed to return to the lumber store and buy me a new door, and Micah wouldn’t leave me alone and vulnerable. As everything became more bizarre by the hour, I really didn’t want to be alone anyway. So together we found a couple of promising books, and Micah checked them out using his card, since I didn’t even have a local driver’s license. I was pleasantly surprised he had a library card.

  By the time we arrived home, the sun dangled low over the Gulf, my door hung open, and Sammy was gone.

  “Anything missing?” Micah asked from behind me as I gaped at the mess from the doorway.

  The nice, neat pile of suitcases and bags I’d brought in from the Jeep was now strewn throughout the main room, my stuff dumped out of them.

  “Yeah. My dog. Who cares about the rest of this stuff?” I pushed past him and ran down the stairs, yelling Sammy’s name.

  When I paused for a breath, a scurrying sound came from the overgrown bushes. My stomach flipped and my heart stuttered with the thought of the two men from last night diving into those same bushes.

  “Sammy?” I said, my voice a little shaky with trepidation as I slowly moved toward the sound. A twig snapped and a puppy-like whine came from the bushes. I inched closer, worried he was hurt, but also afraid I was walking into a trap. “You okay, boy?”

  Silence answered me. I moved closer then crouched down, trying to peer into the bushes. I reached a hand out to move a branch to the side. A large, dark shadow flew at me, a lot like the one this morning by the pay phone. I screamed, and tried to jump to my feet and run, but terror made me clumsy. The object plowed into me, knocking me on my back. The breath flew out of my lungs as stars wavered in my vision. Something wet dragged over my cheek.

  My eyes focused on the square, yellow head, dark brown eyes and black nose hovering right over my face. A pink tongue darted out and covered my cheek again.

  “Sammy!” I shrieked with joy this time and threw my arms around his neck.

  My joy at finding him safe, though acting a little funny, quickly changed to disappointment when we entered the efficiency. Sammy had never misbehaved so badly, but it explained his strange, timid behavior right now.

  “Sammy, did you do this?” I said accusingly. His head sunk and his tail drooped between his legs.

  “Not unless he can work zippers,” Micah said as he squatted over one of my bags and a pile of clothes next to it.

  My gaze slid over the mess. Every bag and suitcase remained intact, gaping at the zipped or snapped openings, and my stuff was in fairly neat piles, as if dumped, rather than each piece being pulled out one at a time and strewn around the room. The clothes weren’t folded—they’d definitely been rifled through—but this wasn’t the kind of mess a dog would make. My skin crawled, and I felt dirty and grimy. Violated.

  Micah took my hand and dragged me across the street to the pay phone to call the police because he refused to leave me alone even for a few seconds. I staggered in a daze after him. All I really wanted was a shower. The police came, briefly investigated and took our reports.

  “You didn’t notice anything missing?” the blond cop asked me.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I don’t have anything of much value.”

  “Anything they’d be searching for?”

  “No.” I shook my head again. “And who? Nobody knows me here. What would they think I had?”

  The cop chuckled. “Everybody—the locals anyway—knows you’re here. It’s a small town, ma’am. Unfortunately, we do have our riffraff. They were probably looking for jewelry or other valuables. I’m sorry this happened to you.” He nodded at my door. “I suggest you fix the door and put a good bolt lock on it. Doesn’t look like that mutt of yours is much of a guard dog.”

  I frowned, but bit my tongue from defending Sammy. My dog had done an excellent job of protecting me last night, so whoever did this had scared him. Badly. And it took a lot to scare Sammy.

  “Why did you bother calling them?” I asked Micah after the police left into the night with absolutely no evidence. “You know who did this, and I doubt a couple of small-town cops can do anything about what’s going on. Those guys aren’t normal run-of-the-mill thugs.”

  “No, but it doesn’t hurt to have patrol cars driving by every now and then and keeping an eye out.”

  While Micah hung the new door and added a bolt lock to it, I took a long, hot shower. Funny how this morning I attempted to wash away the feeling of Micah in my veins, and now, twelve hours later, I tried to scrub off the violated feeling of some grody dudes pawing my clothes. My bras and my underwear. Yeah, real funny. Maybe this was a sign I needed to get out of here, go back north, take care of Bex and forget about the gnarly mess here.

  But when I walked out of the bathroom, I knew I couldn’t do such a thing.

  I held a towel wrapped around me and stared at my clothes still in their strangely neat piles. The thought of putting a single scrap of those things on my body right now gagged me. Micah came through the door then with his big military bag. He dropped it next to the door and began fishing through it, then he handed me a t-shirt and a pair of boxers.

  “They’re clean, don’t worry,” he said with a crooked smile. “We’ll wash all your stuff tomorrow.”

  I blinked away the tears threatening to fall because of his kindness. He understood. How could someone so rough be so sweet? How could someone who barely knew me care so much? Deep down I knew the answer to that one, which was why I knew I couldn’t leave.

  I hadn’t realized I’d been trembling until Micah came over, wrapped his arms around my shoulders and pulled me tight against him. I buried my face into his chest and fought back the sobs. He held me for several minutes, not moving as I breathed in his now familiar scent, as I felt his presence once again swirl within me, warming me from the inside out. Once he felt me calm down, he stepped back and took the t-shirt wadded up in my hands. I tightened the towel around me, an automatic reaction, when he pulled the shirt over my head and down over the terrycloth. Then he took the boxers from me and helped me step into them, then pulled them up and under the towel.

  “Um,” he said when they were halfway up, his voice rough, “if I go any farther, they’ll end up coming back off.”

  The sound of a strangled laugh came from my throat, and I reached under the towel to pull the boxers up, then dropped the towel to the floor. The shorts barely hung on my hips, but the t-shirt came to my thighs and practically covered the boxers anyway. Micah stared at me—well, my body in his undergarments—for a long time, then turned away, his tongue swiping over his lips. I wondered if he’d be reacting the same way if he saw what was underneath his clothes I wore, or if he’d wrinkle his nose in disgust.

  He proceeded to bunch up my pallet of blankets and then tossed them onto one of the piles of clothes before spreading his own out on the floor.

  “I’m not trying to say I’m staying here,” Micah said as he made me a new bed. “Honestly, I’m not presuming anything. Except . . . I didn’t think you’d want to sleep on those . . .”

  “Micah?” I said, my voice soft. He stopped what he was doing, inhaled a deep breath, then turned to look at me. “Please stay with me. I don’t think . . . I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Totally.” Strange how comfortable I’d already become with him, considering we’d only known each other for two days. Or had we? How long had we really known each other? Were we really the same soul split in two?

  Micah’s dimples flashed. “Guess I don’t really have anywhere to go anyway, do I?”

  I reheated leftover pizza for dinner, but although I hadn’t eaten anything all day, I had no appetite. Micah did, though, so in addition to pizza, I brought out some chips and dip for him and strawberries for me, about the only thing I could
stomach. We munched while starting in on the books we’d brought home from the library. They told us nothing more than what we already knew.

  The one book we’d found specifically on Twin Flames described the phenomenon the same way as the handwriting in the back of my dictionary had—one soul divided into two and the two halves constantly searched for each other—but most of the book was dedicated to finding your own twin flame, as if everyone had one. Maybe they do, but not everyone went through what Micah and I were dealing with.

  “But what does it all mean?” I asked when we finished skimming through all the books and realized we had nothing useful. “What’s the purpose of it all? What’s causing everything to happen? And why us?”

  “Obviously nobody’s experienced what we have, or someone would have written a book about it. We must be unique. Or someone’s screwing with us. Maybe there isn’t a ‘why’ or a purpose.”

  I considered this. “But I feel like there is. In my gut. Don’t you?”

  Micah tossed the last book on the floor, pushed to his feet and began pacing. “I’m not sure I can trust my gut right now. It’s been acting all kinds of crazy lately.”

  I looked up at him and said, “It brought you to me. Do you think that’s a mistake?”

  He threw his arms in the air. “I don’t know, Jacey!”

  Oh. Dude. Did he really say that? I didn’t know whether to be hurt or angry. Something must have shown on my face because when he made his turn and saw my expression, he was instantly on his knees in front of me.

  “Ah, shit. I’m sorry, Jace. That’s not what I meant.” He wrapped me into a hug. “I’m glad I met you. This . . . this holding you in my arms right now . . . I never would have imagined a feeling like this. This feeling of being whole. I only meant I don’t know if following my gut has created all this other fucked-up stuff or if all this other stuff was happening anyway, causing me to follow my gut. Am I making any sense?”

  I pulled back a little. “Yeah. Like the chicken and the egg?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So I don’t scare you? I mean, this whatever it is between us?”

  “Well, I didn’t say that. You kind of scare the hell out of me, actually, even if we didn’t have all this whatever it is between us.”

  I swiped my finger over his nose and chuckled. “How on earth do I scare you, Marine?”

  “I told you. You cause me to lose my self-control. These feelings I have for you . . . already . . . they scare me.” He gripped my chin between his fingers and thumb, and his eyes bore into mine. “But more than anything, the thought of losing you . . . that would break me, Jacey, like nothing in my miserable life ever has.”

  The sincerity in his eyes showed the truth of what he said, and my heart flew into a panic. He’d stepped right up to the line of saying those three words, and if he crossed it, I might punch him. This was all too much, entirely too fast. I felt the same way, and he was right—the feeling was scary as hell.

  I pulled away from him, and now it was my turn to pace, but I wasn’t much of a pacer. I stopped in front of the kitchen counter, the only indication of where the living room ended and the kitchen began, and stared down at the leather-bound book we’d found this afternoon. Something in the embossed image caught my eye.

  “Micah, this may sound crazy—”

  “Define ‘crazy’ because it’ll take a lot to impress me now.”

  “Well . . . I think this book may have our answers.” I took it over to him and sat down beside him, then placed the book in my lap. I pointed to the image carved into the trunk of the tree that neither of us had noticed earlier, then clasped his hand again so our tattoo-marks matched up. The little carving in the tree trunk was a bird with flames for wings. Flames exactly like our tattoos.

  “Nice. Hooray. If only we could get it open.” He lifted the book from my lap with his free hand and inspected the clasp closely. “Maybe a sharp knife? I have one in my toolbox.”

  He moved to stand up, but I didn’t let go of his hand. “Wait. Look. That wasn’t there before.”

  The same fiery bird had appeared on the metal clasp that had been perfectly smooth. I ran my finger over the clasp. The book fell open.

  And every page was blank.

  Chapter 17

  “You’re hired,” I told Micah the next morning before popping the last strawberry into my mouth.

  He looked at me across the makeshift table he’d created out of the scraps from my stairs. “You want to fix the place up?”

  I shrugged. “May as well, right? Looks like I’ll be here for a while anyway.”

  “Cool beans,” he said with a smile. “What about Bex?”

  My shoulders sagged. “Maybe I’ll fly up there for a couple of days to make sure she’s okay.”

  “Not alone, you won’t.”

  “You have to stay here and work.”

  “You’re not going alone, Jacey,” he said more firmly.

  I considered arguing with him, but chose to drop the subject for now. I’d awoken in a relatively good mood—the first time in a long time—and I didn’t want to ruin it. Maybe I had accepted this fate of ours overnight and realized I must make the most of it, or maybe waking up in Micah’s arms had put me in high spirits.

  I’d been a little worried when we first lay down together last night, since we possessed little control over ourselves with each other. Neither of us were virgins, of course, and we were both adults, and we seemed to be more permanently bound than any married couple, considering the bonds our souls had made, so sex didn’t have to be a big issue. But I’d learned too late what people meant when they said relinquishing your virginity to someone was a gift, and I’d regretted every sexual encounter I’d had to date. Not that there were lots, but in hindsight, one time had been too many.

  I’d hung around enough guys since then, had been exposed to enough porno and seen enough sex in public to learn guys worshipped the cootchie. They talked about it frequently and thought about it even more. They wanted to see it, touch it, taste it, master it. As if once they came out on the day they were born, all they could think about was how to get back in. They may take you out, treat you like a princess and maybe even really care about you, but as soon as you give them access to the jewel between your legs, you’ve made their dreams come true. You’ve given them a slice of heaven. And not every guy deserves to have that, not my slice of heaven anyway.

  Like I said, I’d come to appreciate this too late to keep my virginity, which was the most precious slice of all, but now I knew better. I decided a long time ago I would only give my little gift to a man who deserved it, and I wasn’t sure yet if Micah was that man. My heart and soul felt certain, but my brain still questioned this unbelievable connection we had. What if this was all a fluke and a few months down the road, we went on our separate ways? Or even in a few weeks or days? The thought pained me, but I couldn’t see the future. And since the craziness had only started a few days ago (not counting our meeting in Virginia), it could end just as quickly. I wasn’t ready to go all-in yet. Not in that way.

  We were able to control ourselves, though, basically by not starting anything in the first place. We didn’t even kiss goodnight. I settled into the “bed” with my back to him and he did the same, and we lay there awkwardly for a while as the charged energy around us settled. We didn’t talk. We barely breathed, afraid any movement would set us off. And somehow, we’d both fallen asleep.

  Sometime in the night, we’d become entangled, though, and I’d awoken to his arms around me and my back pressed against his chest. And it felt alarmingly right.

  “So, anyway,” I said to drop the subject of going north, “I want to start with this apartment, if possible. I want to make it more comfy for us to live in while we work on the rest of the place.”

  He lifted an eyebrow, but
I didn’t know if it was for the “us to live in” or the “while we work.” Both had been slips of the tongue.

  “Um, I mean, if you want to stay here. Just, uh, thought it would be more convenient . . .” I stood up, my face flushing, and walked over to the French doors. I turned my back to him, presumably to gaze at the fog hanging over the beach side of the street, but more to hide my face. “Actually, this place is livable enough for now, I guess, so we could start on one of the others, and you could stay in that one as soon as it’s done. It’s the least I can do for you.”

  He didn’t say anything, so I glanced over my shoulder. His beam showed nearly all of his pearly whites. I narrowed my eyes, using the façade of anger to hide the flush.

  “Actually,” he finally said, “I was more intrigued by the idea of you helping me.”

  I stiffened even more. “Yeah, I didn’t, like, mean that either. Even less than . . . the other thing I said. I can draw floor plans or whatever you need, but I’m clueless about construction. It could be totally dangerous.”

  “I can’t do everything by myself, but I’ll try to keep you out of it as much as possible, okay?” he offered. I nodded. “As for the other thing . . . whatever you feel good with. I don’t expect anything, but I do have this need to be close. You understand, right?”

  I nodded again. “More than I should.”

  He glanced around the one-room unit. “It won’t take much to get this one up to your standards. Why don’t we start with it and go from there?”

  So we did. He inspected the efficiency more closely, made a list of supplies, and we went shopping together. We went everywhere together because he’d hardly let me out of his sight. While he worked, I began keeping a journal in the book we found.