The Space Between (The Book of Phoenix)

by Kristie Cook

  “That’s not what I mean,” Micah said, his voice low and soft. “How do you think this article got on your Jeep? It’s from The Roanoke Times.”

  “That’s the newspaper I had to subscribe to for current events class last year,” I said absently, then his meaning started to seep in. “What’s the date? How did it get all the way down here?”

  “Today’s date. And good question.”

  The hairs on the nape of my neck rose. “The Shadowmen,” I whispered.

  “Probably. And they had to have done it in the three minutes we were just upstairs, because it wasn’t on your Jeep when I came out to my truck.”

  I let Micah lead me back upstairs and into the relative safety of my apartment. Not that it resembled Fort Knox or anything, but at least we no longer stood outside in broad daylight with Shadowmen nearby. My bags slid off my shoulders and fell to the floor as I stood dazedly in the middle of the room.

  “Do you think they . . . Bex? Is she really . . . ?” My brain was less effective at blocking things out up here in the comfort of my home, and the truth began making its way in.

  “I’m sorry,” Micah said again, and I couldn’t deny the sorrow in his eyes.

  I swallowed. I nodded. And I doubled over with full-body sobs.

  Micah caught me when my knees gave out and carried me over to the pile of blankets we called a bed. He sat down against the wall with me in his lap. My tears and snot stained his shirt as he silently held me tight against him, knowing there was nothing he could say to heal my broken heart.

  Time passed. Minutes? Hours? I had no idea, but the light coming through the window had changed before I could finally breathe again. I remained in Micah’s arms, my cheek pressed against his chest, his heart pounding in my ear, and my eyes closed. Memories of the last two years with Bex replayed, and guilt flooded me.

  “I should have gone up there before,” I finally said, surprised at how hoarse my voice sounded. “I could have brought her down here. I should have let her come with me in the first place. Then she’d still be alive.”

  “You can’t blame yourself,” Micah murmured. “Don’t take this on.”

  “How did she . . . die?” I asked, hiccupping on the word. “What does the paper say?”

  He didn’t answer at first, and somehow I knew he wondered if I was ready to hear it. “Somehow” as in the way we frequently seemed to know what the other was thinking. Bex’s death must have been bad.

  “Just tell me,” I said.

  “Well . . . it looks like her car broke down on the highway, and they think someone must have stopped to offer her help but had other plans. There were bruises around her neck, as if she’d been choked, and her body was in the woods only thirty yards from her car, but they didn’t find it for nearly three days.” Micah paused, the gulp of him swallowing sounding in my ear as his hand slid up my back and squeezed my shoulder. “They’re investigating to see if she was raped.”

  I gasped. My poor Bex! My poor, poor Bex. I tried to block the image of her last minutes, but the vision of her struggle—I knew she fought—came to me too vividly, followed by the life leaving her eyes. New tears flowed. I should have been there. She should have been here with me! “Do they have any idea who?”

  “No one they’re reporting publicly. They’re only saying there were two sets of footprints around her car and another set of tire tracks besides hers.”

  “The Shadowmen,” I said.

  “Maybe,” Micah said. “But maybe they only knew about it and know she’s important to you. Taping the article where you could see it might only be another way to mess with you. You said she hung around a lot of shady characters, right?”

  I simply nodded. Regardless, her blood was on my hands. The Shadowmen obviously wanted something from me and had some sneaky plan of getting it, possibly by hurting me through Bex. And if it wasn’t them, if it was one of those assholes she often ran off with for days at a time, then that was my fault, too, because I hadn’t been there to protect her. I hadn’t gone up there when I should have two weeks ago. A fresh round of tears built in my throat and behind my eyes until I could fight them no longer. I crawled off Micah’s lap, curled into a ball and sobbed again.

  I lay in bed most of the afternoon, crying or staring at the wall, wishing the boulder of guilt would crush me already and put me out of my misery. But that’s not how guilt works. That’s not how life works. We have to suffer with the regret of everything we meant to do for others, but never did. It’s always too late for good intentions. Actions matter, not intent, and I hadn’t acted fast enough to save my Bex. Or my Pops. Or my parents. And although I’d felt alone before when Pops had died, I’d had Bex. And Sammy. Now Bex was gone, too.

  Sammy lay next to me, and I hugged him fiercely. He whined from the pressure I put on his shoulder, still sore from the cut the Shadowmen had made, and I released my hold. Why hadn’t the wound healed yet?

  “You need to get better,” I said. “You can’t leave me, too. You’re all I have left.”

  Micah cleared his throat from the other side of the bed. Although I’d pretty much ignored him most of the afternoon, he hadn’t left my side. I rolled over to face him.

  “You have me,” he said simply.

  I couldn’t look at him, but kept my eyes on my hand as I traced a pattern into his jeans-clad thigh. “I barely know you.”

  “You know that’s not true.”

  “I mean, we just . . . it’s only been two weeks. How do we—”

  “Don’t do this, Jacey.” The sharp tone of his voice brought my gaze to his face. Determination filled his eyes. “Don’t question it. You have me.”

  “I don’t know that for sure. You can’t say that for sure.”

  “Yes. I. Can.”

  I sat up, and little lights flashed in my vision, I’d been horizontal for so long. “No, you can’t. Look at me, Micah. Look at my life. Everyone I’ve ever loved is gone.”

  “And what? You think it’s some kind of jinx? Are you really going to pull that? Leave it for the books and movies.”

  “But maybe it is! I’m fire, remember? And fire kills. Maybe I’m some kind of death warrant for everyone I love. Your life could be on the line, and I can’t risk—”

  Micah had been piercing me with narrowed eyes, but now his lips twitched as if fighting a smile.

  “What?” I asked with exasperation.

  “Did you just say you love me?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe not in so many words . . .”

  I shook my head. He cocked an eyebrow. “So you deny loving me or deny saying it?”

  “Neither. Both. I mean—”

  He didn’t let me finish, which was just as well because I really wasn’t sure what I meant. Yeah, I loved him. Already. And it was more intense than any kind of love I’d ever felt before—more than the love I’d ever had for Bex or Pops or even my parents and definitely more than for any guy—saturating every cell in my body from head to toe, into my core. Into my soul. But I didn’t want to admit to it. Not to him and not to anyone, because then the universe would know and come after him, too. Because one person could not lose everyone in her life unless she was a harbinger of death. Maybe I was even the grim reaper himself. Herself. Whatever.

  It should have always been me. Not them.

  Micah braced my face in his hands. “I don’t get it either, but I love you, too, Jacey. I’m not afraid to say it, and I’m not going to keel over and die because I do. Please don’t fight it. Please don’t fight us. We need to be together. You’re all I have, too, you know. We’re all either of us have. And if loving you does by some fucked-up chance kill me, I’m okay with it. I couldn’t die a better way, Jace.”

  “Easy for you to say. You’re not the one left behind with a broken heart.” And a fractured soul.


  “Well, if you want to look at it your way, I could say the same thing. Everyone I’ve ever cared about has died, too. So it could just as easily be you who d—” He broke off, unable to finish his sentence. He swallowed, then simply ended with, “We don’t know who will go first, but for now, we have each other.”

  When my gaze lifted to his face, I felt like I was seeing him for the first time all over again. Touching him for the first time. Falling into his eyes. When his mouth lowered onto mine, I kissed him back fiercely, and I don’t know what overcame me. Maybe the feeling of our souls once again coming together was too much for me to handle this time in my vulnerable state. Or maybe it was the need to know I did still have him. That there was still someone on this earth who cared about me, who made me feel like I mattered, who acknowledged I even existed.

  Who loved me.

  I gave in to whatever it was, and so did Micah. Our mouths moved together, kissing and sucking. Our lips separated and I inhaled him and he inhaled me and our tongues flicked and tasted and tangled with each other. Our hands moved from face to head to neck to shoulders. Down the back, the sides. Under the shirt. Muscles pulled taut under our touches. Fingers tugged at hems. Micah’s shirt came off. He began to lift mine, but I rerouted his hand to the button on my jeans instead.

  It had always worked before. I wasn’t flat-chested—I had enough to not look like a boy, but not enough for guys to be infatuated with my bodacious ta-tas. I’d always been able to get away with keeping my shirt on, easy enough when you’re in the backseat of a car or in someone’s closet at a party, when it was all about fucking and not about making love.

  But it didn’t work with Micah.

  He lifted his head and looked at me, questions in his eyes.

  “I want to enjoy all of you,” he murmured.

  “No, you don’t,” I said, shaking my head. “Trust me. It’s not all enjoyable.”

  He cocked his head. “Yes. I do. I love every bit of you, so how could I not enjoy it?”

  He pushed my shirt up barely enough to expose a strip of skin, where his lips planted soft kisses. My stomach quivered under his touch, which he took as encouragement, raising my shirt even more. I clamped my hands on his.

  “Micah—”

  “If you’re not ready, tell me,” he said between kisses, his breath hot against my skin. “We’ll stop right now.”

  “I don’t want to stop. I just—”

  “Then let me love all of you.”

  He pushed my shirt up farther, and I stiffened. That was far enough to see. But instead of stopping and recoiling in horror, he lifted my shirt all the way up and over my head. Then he gazed at my ugly body. At the gross, puckered burn scars across the top of my stomach and over my ribs. My body began to shake. I moved my arms to cover my midsection, but he clasped my wrists and held them out to my sides.

  His eyes lifted to mine, and I expected to see disgust or pity in them. Instead, I only saw love.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said. “Every inch of you.”

  He leaned down and peppered my scars with gentle kisses. Overcome with emotions, I grabbed his head and brought it up to mine, needing to kiss him. To show him the same love he’d shown me. His mouth didn’t leave mine as his hands pushed to my back to undo my bra. He slid it off, one arm at a time, then his lips moved from mine and I let out a sigh as he kissed his way over my jaw and down my neck. His hand found my bare breast and squeezed softly, and my whole body ignited. No one had ever seen me like this, let alone touched me. Heat consumed me as his mouth trailed over my collarbone and down, and then flamed hotter when his tongue wrapped around my nipple. His lips pulled my breast into his mouth, and my back arched into him as a moan burned in my throat.

  My hands slid over his muscular torso, one exploring the valleys and ridges of his pecs and abs, the other digging into his back. My hand slid down, over his jeans, and stroked his erection. My God was he hard. And huge, at least to me. He groaned against my breast, then moved out of my reach as his mouth traveled to my torso, leaving a trail of kisses over the scars again and down, until he reached the waistband of my jeans. He stopped and looked up at me with scorching eyes. Asking for permission. I lifted my hips, giving it.

  He pulled my jeans off, then his fingers lightly stroked around the edges of my panties, the tickling sensation making me tremble. My whole body ached for more, but he teased with feather-light touches and kisses over the top of my underwear and on my thighs until I practically ripped my panties off myself. And finally, finally he touched me in the hottest place of all, sending a ripple of pleasure through my core. His fingers and lips and tongue did things no one had ever done to me before, making me writhe and buck against him until I soared into the first real orgasm I’d ever had, although I hadn’t realized it until then. Nothing I’d ever experienced before compared to this. I finally understood the big deal about sex.

  And Micah wasn’t done. Not even close.

  My fingers digging into his hair, I had to pull him up before I shattered into so many pieces that I’d never recover. I wanted to pleasure him, but he wouldn’t let me.

  “I don’t think I can last,” he whispered hoarsely, “and I want to be inside you the first time.”

  Holy shit, no one ever said anything like that to me. I lifted my legs and hips, and grabbed his hard ass and pulled him into me. We both cried out as he entered. And immediately our bodies burst with an urgent need that took completely over. At least, I thought everything was purely physical, sensual, sexual, even animalistic as he pumped into me and I rocked against him. But then we both climbed higher and higher until we hit our peaks and came together, and that’s when I knew my soul was still in the moment.

  Utterly and completely in it, but then . . . not.

  Our first kiss didn’t compare. Our souls hadn’t really bound then. Now. This.

  Oh. My. God.

  What was happening? How could this even be possible?

  I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I didn’t ever want it to end. I’d never felt so removed from my body, literally, yet so whole. So complete.

  We are one.

  Together.

  Again.

  Night blackened the window when we finally collapsed from exhaustion. Sammy’s whining and barking jerked me awake when I began to doze off in Micah’s arms. My dog frantically scratched at the door as if trying to tear through it.

  Chapter 19

  Leni’s hand moved from her flushed neck to her mouth, her elbow bumping my arm because we huddled so closely together, leaning over the book on the table. Her body had tensed up next to mine, and heat radiated from her skin. I couldn’t help but wonder if her panties were wet after reading Jacey’s detailed description, and the more I thought about it, the more the urge grew to find out. So I bolted from the table, and walked several paces to the truck, needing to put some distance between us. I placed my palms on the truck’s hood and dropped my head between my arms.

  What the hell was she doing to me? The old Jeric wouldn’t have given a second thought to finding out. He would have wrapped an arm around her, grabbed a tit with one hand and slid the other between her legs, and if she wasn’t wet yet, he would have made her so until she begged for him to take her. The old Jeric would have already had her in the sack, one head or the other buried between her legs.

  But the old Jeric then would have sent her on her way, everyone content with the sexcapade.

  I’d never let girls get to me like this. I had fun with them. We drank, we partied, we laughed, we played in the sheets, and then they went home. I felt nothing else for them. Friends, with benefits. No female had ever slid under my skin like Leni had.

  And she hadn’t even tried. She didn’t seem to know what she did to me. So many girls had wanted from me what I couldn’t give them, but Leni had no idea she
was the exception. The only one who could make me want to give her everything. The world. Myself. Whatever she wanted. For the first time ever, Jeric Winters was whipped. Already. What the hell was I supposed to do about it?

  Nothing. Live with it. That’s all I could do.

  Because Leni wouldn’t put up with the old Jeric. She’d be the one sending me on my way and that thought hurt worse than a kick to the ball sack. I’d rather that spine-curling pain than the agony of losing her. Which brought me to my original question: What the hell was she doing to me? How could I feel the way I did about her? I didn’t think it possible to ever feel like this about someone again. But this was different and so damn strong, I couldn’t imagine not ever having these feelings for Leni. Like they’d always been there, buried, just waiting for me to meet her.

  I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, trying to get ahold of myself. When I turned back, Leni was up, too, leaning against the table, her eyes glazed over with thought as her hand stroked her throat. The late-afternoon sun glowed fiery orange over the lake behind her, creating silhouettes of the pine trees on the far bank.

  “Do you think their Shadowmen are the same guys who attacked us?” she signed as her eyes focused on me. Not exactly where my mind had been, so it took me a moment to understand what she meant.

  I shrugged. “That was twenty-three years ago.”

  “Maybe it’s the same group, if not the same men.”

  “Who? What kind of group? And why us?” The questions made me edgy, and my hands moved sharply as I signed. “Who are they to us, this Micah and Jacey?”

  Leni chewed on her bottom lip then looked at me. “I have a theory about that.” She hesitated for a moment. “What if they’re your parents? Your biological parents?”

  Fuck. I wasn’t expecting that. The idea hadn’t even crossed my mind. “You found the book. Why would you think they’d be my parents?”

  “Maybe Mira had had it. Maybe it came with you, as a baby.”