The Space Between (The Book of Phoenix)

by Kristie Cook

  I didn’t like this idea. It didn’t feel right.

  “Maybe they’re yours,” I signed.

  Her face showed the same look of surprise I’d felt when she suggested they were mine, but then her brows drew together.

  “The story does feel vaguely familiar, like I’ve been told it before,” she said. I’d been thinking the same thing as we read—like I’d heard this story a long time ago. “But it’s impossible. I mean look at me. They both sound very white.”

  “Jacey, yes, but we don’t know Micah’s background. Maybe he’s mixed like you—brown eyes, dark hair . . .”

  “She would say something in the journal, especially back then. She even asked if he’d been a skinhead, which would make no sense.” The way her hands flew about, she didn’t like the idea any more than I did. “Besides, they can’t be. Not unless everything my parents ever told me about how they met and got married is a complete lie.”

  I watched her for several beats, waiting for her to realize the irony of her words. But she didn’t. “From what you’ve said about them—disowning you like that—I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  Her eyes hardened as she glared at me.

  “You know nothing about my parents!” she signed angrily, and I expected her to flip me the finger, but instead her hands fell limply to her side and the fire extinguished immediately. Her gaze dropped to the ground, and her toe pushed at a rock stuck in the dirt for a minute, until she looked up at me again with her damn fake smile that looked authentic if you didn’t know her like I did. Already.

  “Why did you do that?” I demanded. “You have a right to be angry. Get mad for once, Leni. Let yourself be real.”

  The grin fell from her face, but confusion filled her eyes. “Why? It won’t accomplish anything, except to make a fool of myself.”

  “So what? It’s only me here. Lash out if you want to. Yell and scream. I can’t hear you, but it’s not like you’d hurt my feelings anyway. I can take your anger.”

  She tossed her hands in the air. “But you’re right. After the way they treated me on the phone the other night, they’re not who I thought they are. But I’m not going to take it out on you.”

  “I’m asking you to. I’m begging. Let it out before you explode like a damn time bomb.”

  “No. It’s stupid.”

  “Then be stupid. Don’t you ever do anything dumb or wrong? Do you ever put yourself out there? Take any risks?”

  She hesitated, but then shrugged. “I’m not much of a risk-taker.”

  “Of course not. You’ve never had to be, have you?” My gaze traveled to the Airstream, then to her truck and returned to her. “You’ve always had everything done for you, haven’t you?”

  She shrugged again. “My mother’s a control freak. She didn’t want anyone—including me—to screw things up.”

  “So you simply did everything she wanted? She told you what to do and you obediently followed her orders?” Agitation built between us and that’s what I wanted from her, but she refused to play my game.

  “Well, yeah,” she said easily. “She’s my mama. She took care of me. So did my daddy, and Uncle Theo when my parents moved.”

  I nodded. “Of course they did. I’m sure teachers, the police, the authorities have always treated you well, too.”

  “Yeah, they’ve always been fine.” She paused, then added, “Until the past couple of days anyway.”

  “And now you’re seeing a different side of everyone, are you? Getting a little taste of disappointment from the adults in your life? And you don’t know what to do. Do you have any idea how to take care of yourself when there’s no one to boss you around?”

  She threw her hip out and lifted her chin, the only reaction to my jab. “I went to Italy by myself, didn’t I?”

  I gave her a rude smirk, pushing her harder. “A trip your uncle planned, paid for and sent you off to, where’d you be with people he knew, who told you where to sleep, what and when to eat and how to dance. Did you even want to go or was that more of everyone wanting to control Leni?”

  “Yes, I wanted to go. It was a dream come true!”

  I felt her giving in, ready to let loose the real Leni, so I kept prodding. “What? To dance in Italy? That was your dream?”

  “To dance at all. Professionally.”

  “Then why aren’t you? Why aren’t you dancing here in the States? Too afraid to put yourself out there where it matters?”

  Her cheeks pinked, and I hoped to see a spark of fire in her eyes, what I was looking for. A hint of anger flashed, but disappeared just as quickly.

  “I wanted to stay to take care of my uncle.”

  “Bullshit,” I said. “That’s an excuse. What’s the real reason you didn’t go to New York? I saw you dance in Italy. I’ve seen you dance here, and you’re damn good. So what happened? Why are you here and not there?”

  She stared at me for a long moment, her chest rising with a breath. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because you need it.”

  “Need what?”

  To stop being a damn puppet. To let you be you. But saying so would derail the progress I was making.

  “You’re avoiding my question,” I accused. “Why aren’t you in New York?”

  She didn’t answer except to cross her arms over her chest.

  “Why, Leni?”

  “My uncle needed me.”

  “So much that he sent you halfway across the world for a month? And now he’s run off with my grams. For all we know, they’re whooping it up in Vegas.”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s an excuse,” I said again. She stood her ground, but I kept pressing. “Unless your parents made you stay? Could your control-freak mom not let you leave?”

  She scowled. “She wanted me to go as badly as I did. It was her dream, too. She’d always wanted me to be a ballerina. Put me in dance when I was four years old.”

  Ah. I’d seen the moms in the modeling agency and at the studios with their kids, with bright eyes of hope and longing, wanting their kids to be a star since they never were.

  “Was it even your dream?” I taunted. “Or just mom’s?”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. Her body began to tremble. Yes. I was getting somewhere.

  “Did you even want it?” I pressed.

  Her fists balled at her sides, and her nostrils flared.

  “Did you, Leni? Or were you only doing what Mama told you to do?”

  “Yes! No! I mean, yes, I wanted it. I just wanted to dance.” She inhaled a deep breath and again snuffed out the real Leni. “I didn’t get in, though, okay? Yeah, Mama arranged the audition with the ballet company, but I put myself out there. I was the one on stage. I auditioned and they said no. End of story.”

  I knew by the way she held herself that was not the end of the story.

  “So one audition and you gave up?” I asked, pushing her further.

  She shrugged and looked away.

  I moved to her line of vision. “You gave up because of one person’s opinion for one dance company out of how many?”

  She didn’t take my bait, but remained calm. “What they said . . . why they didn’t take me . . . Nobody would take me, Jeric. Not in New York, not for ballet. I’m not cut out for it.”

  My own anger clawed at my gut. I didn’t know if it was on behalf of her or because of her refusal to bite or because I’d had my own dream yanked out from under my feet.

  “What could they have possibly said to make you give up?” I demanded.

  Something flashed in her eyes, but again, only for a nanosecond. “I don’t have the right body, and I never will. I’m not long and willowy. Quite the opposite and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ll never be what they’re looking for.”

>   The resignation her body language showed turned my anger into rage, and still, I didn’t know if it was on behalf of Leni—who the hell were they to say such things?—or because she’d given up.

  “That’s your excuse?” I asked, my hands punching the air with each sign. I tugged on my ear. “This is an excuse for giving up on a dream, Leni. Not that! How could you let them do that? How could you let them make you stop dancing?”

  “Because they’re right, and I can’t help the way my body’s shaped. It’s my heritage, and I’m proud of it. Besides, they didn’t say never dance again. They suggested other genres. Better for my body type and the moves I could do. Like what you saw this morning.”

  I couldn’t disagree that her body was definitely made for those kinds of moves. Better than any stripper I’d ever seen, even in the highest-class executive clubs. She’d left my head spinning, all of the blood flowing to my dick.

  “So why didn’t you do that? Why not audition with other dance companies that aren’t ballet?”

  She stared at me for a long moment, a storm churning behind her green eyes, and I waited with anticipation for her to let it out. But then she blinked and squared her shoulders.

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” she said, controlled as ever. “That’s a past life.”

  “Right. Because you gave up. Which tells me it wasn’t your dream to start with.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Let it go.”

  “You were only doing what Mama wanted all along, weren’t you? Not what you wanted at all.”

  “I said to let it go!”

  But I didn’t. I was onto something. “And what does Mama think about you giving up? Looks like she lost control, didn’t she? A little disappointed, is she? Oh, yeah. She doesn’t even admit you exist!”

  Leni’s eyes widened with shock as though I’d hit her. Yeah, I really said that and already regretted it. But she recovered quickly and simply raised a brow.

  “I’m done with this conversation.” She crossed her arms over her chest and put on that stupid, sweet smile, teeth showing and all.

  I stared at her for a long moment, then shook my head. “I don’t understand you. I just pushed every button I could find on you. And still you’re calm as shit.”

  “And I don’t understand you. It’s over. I’m over it all. Why are you so riled up?”

  “Because I’m pissed,” I admitted, kicking the folding chair and knocking it over. Ghost, the cat who’d been curled in a ball sleeping in the other chair, lifted his head and glared at me before returning to his nap.

  “And what does that do for you, being all pissed?” Leni asked. “Punching the air and kicking at chairs? What’s the point?”

  “Because I want to! It’s a release and it feels good! Dammit, don’t you ever do anything for you just because it feels good?”

  She flinched, and then her face reddened even more than before. I’d hit a new button without realizing it was there. And it was as good as her mother button, if not better. Maybe she’d let herself go now, be the real Leni that I knew lurked under the surface waiting to break out. There was no way she was this laid back for real.

  “I said I’m done,” she said, and she stalked off toward the lake.

  That was the best I was going to get? Shit, with everything going on, if she didn’t release soon, I would regret being around when she finally did blow. Nobody could keep everything she had to be feeling in check for long.

  I watched her stroll down to the shore, wondering if I should follow her but her ass distracted me—I’d never seen anything so perfect. Those dancers could fuck off. What did they know? I’d been with enough models and dancers to know what they felt like—my hands were bigger than their asses, and I was afraid my cock would literally break them in two. But Leni. She had the talent and the soft curves. Not too much, but just right.

  Dude. Again.

  Shit. What was happening to me?

  Anxious energy rushed through my veins, but I didn’t want to go for another run to work it off. To be honest, running wouldn’t have done the trick anyway. The anger that had been building while egging Leni on had already evaporated. The need to go, however, to move went deeper. The same gut feeling that had led me to Leni pulled at me again, wanting to go south now, with Leni at my side. And it had been strongest when I saw Jacey’s drawing of the old Victorian mansion in her journal, and laced with an edge I didn’t like. An edge that made me think the lure was dangerous.

  Figuring Leni wanted to be alone, I went inside to retrieve my own journal, bringing Jacey’s with me. I set them on the counter side by side and flipped through the pages of both until I found what I was looking for—nearly identical drawings, although Jacey’s was much better than mine, sketched by an expert hand. Like Jacey and Micah, I’d somehow known when I drew it several months ago it was in the Tampa/St. Pete area. Unlike Jacey and Micah, I had the Internet, but I still hadn’t been able to find the house online. I stared at the two drawings, and as always, the mansion gave me a sinister feeling, as though the house itself might open up and eat us alive.

  An hour or so passed as I researched the Internet for Jacey and Micah, but nothing came up on Google or any of the social media sites. No proof they ever existed, which really wasn’t so surprising, was it?

  I pushed away from the counter and went back outside. Night had settled in. Leni’s form was silhouetted against the moonlight on the lake as she still stood by the shore. I wished I knew what she was thinking. My muscles jumped with the need to move again, and I reconsidered going for another run. But I couldn’t leave Leni, now that it was dark. When I did last night, the Shadowmen had come. I wasn’t letting her out of my sight in case they returned. Shit. I sounded like Micah.

  That dude and I had way too much in common. Why was that? Why did I feel like I knew him as much as I felt like I knew Leni? He and Jacey couldn’t be my parents. I’d know, wouldn’t I? But could that explain the connection I felt to these strangers? Had I heard their story before? But where? From who?

  Our lives had become a big, fat riddle. I’d always hated riddles.

  Leni eventually made her way to the campsite, pushed past me and inside. When she didn’t come out after a few minutes, I went in to see what she was up to. She lay huddled on her side on her bed in the darkened end of the Airstream. She’d gone to sleep? Her form trembled. Damn. She was crying. Yeah, I wanted her to release the pressure valve, but I’d been hoping for a fiery burst. Not tears. I didn’t do tears. I didn’t know how.

  After locking up the camper, I went back to her and tried to get her to sit up and talk to me, to at least let me apologize, but she grabbed my hand and pulled me down to the bed. I lay next to her, and she curled herself into me, tucking her head into my shoulder and burying her face against my chest. I guessed that meant she forgave me. I wrapped my arms around her and held her close while she cried herself to sleep.

  Chapter 20

  My stealthy attempt at disentangling myself from Jeric’s arms without waking him didn’t work. He squeezed me tighter and moaned against my neck. One hand slid down my side and came to a rest on my hip, his fingers pressing into the sensitive area where my panties met my leg. I wondered if he was fully awake and knew whom he lay next to, or if I was just another girl in his sleep-fogged mind.

  “Leni,” he murmured right by my ear, and my body froze. He’d spoken! Said my name! And, whoa, did I not love the sound of it, the way it wrapped around my heart. I lay still, hoping he’d say it again, but he didn’t.

  The quiet of being with him was sometimes unnerving. Uncle Theo had his hearing aid, but when he didn’t put it in, he’d have the television blaring at its highest volume. With Jeric, there was nothing. A rare groan or grunt, but nothing more. Until now. He must have still been asleep. His rhythmic breathing next to my ear confirmed this.

/>   I let out a sigh. How had this man affected me the way he did? How could I feel what I did for him? Already? Jeric Winters was so not my type. Well, not really. Okay, so there may have been a few bad boys at the club who had intrigued me. Maybe all who walked through the door. But it was only curiosity. Something to fantasize about in my mind, but not to act on. Bad boys equaled broken hearts. Lots of them, strewn around like shattered beer bottles because girls meant nothing more to these guys. If I fell any harder for Jeric, I’d be one of those broken hearts.

  But dammit, if I hadn’t already fallen for him, regardless of whether I wanted to or not. What I felt for him went beyond the edgy outer shell that protected the hurt he felt inside, beyond the warm heart I knew he kept hidden, and deep into his soul. My soul greeted his like we were longtime lovers waiting for this reunion. Like we were Twin Flames, separated before, but finally together again.

  Goodness, girl. Get ahold of yourself.

  We weren’t Jacey and Micah. There were lots of similarities and coincidences, but that didn’t mean we were exactly the same. Nothing had said Jeric and I were Twin Flames. Except the marks. And my soul when it met his. But those were hearsay, as my daddy would say. No hard evidence. Jacey and Micah’s story may be like ours, but it wasn’t ours. Besides, from what I’d found on the Internet, the idea of Twin Flames sounded like a crock of New Age crap. Did I even want to be bound so tightly with Jeric?

  Yes, my heart whispered and my soul echoed.

  Ugh. I needed to get up. I struggled against Jeric’s hold again, but he still wouldn’t let me go. He was so stubborn, even in his sleep. He’d been trying hard last night to piss me off, intent on making me explode, and he actually had come close—he had no idea how spot-on he’d been with some of his accusations—but I could be stubborn, too. Mama would have been proud of how well I kept it together. How I hadn’t broken. Except I had. I’d cried.

  Jeric was probably right—I did have too many emotions pent up and I should have just let it all out in an angry outburst. Mama said it was better to cry behind closed doors, but I didn’t know anymore. I hadn’t been able to go behind closed doors. No, instead I’d cried myself to sleep in his arms. Now he probably saw me as weak.