Rise (Roam Series, Book Three)

by Stedronsky, Kimberly

  He watched her walk away, and I closed the book with a soft snap. “I don’t think Violet wants me here, even if she says she does…,”

  “You should worry less about what other people think,” he advised, carrying the glass of water to the couch where Violet had been. “What are you not sure about?”

  “In chapter two…,” I tried to lower my eyes to the book again, but his broad chest beckoned my gaze, tempting me to move to the couch next to him.

  “Wait,” he smiled. “First, happy birthday.”

  “Oh, thanks,” I hurried, slapping the book to my knees before it could slide down the silken material of my short, beige nighty. I had packed two hip-skimming negligees for my weekend with Logan, and tried my best to appear decent beneath my oversized, Princeton sweatshirt. “Um, economics… I…,”

  The sound of the ocean through the screen door on the balcony distracted me again, and I watched as he noticed my concentrated struggle. “Why don’t we talk about the book later?”

  I nodded through the dim lamplight, gripping the book as I stood. Just go over there until he kisses you. The current between us was strong enough to send him to his feet as well.

  “I’m not sure why I can’t stop thinking about you.”

  He stared, gathering the glass from the coffee table and rising to his feet. “Roam.”

  “No, you value honesty?” I stood up, my feet nailed to the floor through the heavy pounding of my heart. “I’m an adult. You’re an adult. You’re not my teacher anymore, West. If you’re not attracted to me, just tell me.”

  His fingers curled around the glass. “I’m very attracted to you.”

  “Well, then.” I tossed the book to the chair and then held my arms out at my sides. “What’s the problem? I’m not looking for a commitment here.”

  “You have a lot going on right now.”

  “What I’ve got going on has nothing to do with you.” I took a step forward, and he took a step back, and I scoffed at our unified movements. “Well, I’m not going to throw myself at you. I have a little self-respect. I’m just trying to… understand.”

  He lowered the glass to the coffee table, taking a step toward me. His eyes darkened to a blue flame. “Put your hands behind your back. Keep them there.”

  His gruff voice, combined with his strange command, sent my blood in every direction away from my brain. I did as he asked, clasping my fingers together behind my back, twisting them into knots.

  Taking another step, his face stopped inches from mine. “Do not touch me,” he ordered, so grave, that my head nodded in conformity without a thought in my mind.

  Impossibly close to my mouth now, without his lips touching mine, he exhaled slightly. Every nerve ending in my body lit with exhilarating awareness, constricting my chest. “Why not?”

  “Roam,” he whispered, hovering, his face moving over my cheek before lowering to my neck. Inhaling deeply, his fists tightened at his sides.

  Unable to control my hurried breaths, I involuntarily leaned into him. He shifted, maintaining the fraction of a space between us. “Hold still.”

  So erotic. I tilted my face up to his, my eyes heavy with wanting. “Kiss me, please,” I managed, my chest rising and falling between rampant breaths.

  “Daddy?” Eva’s small voice startled us both. Only half of her face peeked past her purple blanket as she brushed against the cool material sleepily.

  “Come on, babe, let’s go back to bed,” he bent, letting her hook her small arms around his neck and snuggle against his chest. Exactly where I’d like to be. “I was just saying goodnight to Roam.”

  “Night,” she called to me with a tiny yawn, and I smiled, taking a shaking breath.

  “Goodnight, Eva.”

  West met my eyes once more before carrying her down the hallway.

  What was that? I steadied my rapid breaths, grabbing for the book on the chair. Unrequited desire ached heavily in limbs. I can sacrifice a little self respect, right? Concocting as many creative scenarios as I could to flaunt myself in front of him, I started back upstairs.

  “Wait.” I turned at Violet’s voice in surprise. She walked across the vast living room, turning off the lamp. Moonlight illuminated the space. “You want to know why he’s only eleven years older than I am?”

  I shrugged, embarrassed. “I guess…,”

  “Do you or don’t you.”

  Stiffening, I turned away from the stairs. “You’re obviously biologically related. Your eyes are exactly the same.”

  She leaned forward, pursing her lips determinately. “Do you want to know the truth.”

  “Yes.” I fired heatedly.

  “He was immortal, until two years ago. He’s almost seven hundred years old.”

  I sighed, rolling my eyes and attempting an amused smile. “Goodnight, Violet.”

  “Not kidding.” She glanced at the hallway that led to Eva and West’s bedrooms. “And you are Eva’s mother. If you want the whole story, I’ll tell you. If you think I’m a mean and crazy bitch making this shit up, that’s fine too. Or,” she stared at me intently. “If you want to stay in the blind reality that you’re living in right now, we’ll pretend this conversation never happened. I’ll leave it up to you.”

  I stared at her skeptically. Maybe she’s clinically depressed… or on some kind of medication. “I’m Eva’s mother.”

  “Talk about eyes… and your middle name.” Violet stood, her dark, blue tank top and matching pajama pants snug on her body. “Come on, let’s go to the balcony. If my dad hears, he’ll hate me for telling you.”

  I had no idea why I stood and followed her to the balcony. Desperate to help her (if she needed help) I let her slide the glass door closed behind us. The moonlight drew a V on the surface of the ocean, and the sound of the waves crashing against the shore was strangely comforting.

  “Well? Do you want to know or not? I’m being completely selfish right now, but if it was me, I’d want to know.”

  I sat in an oversized Adirondack chair, pulling the zip-up sweatshirt tighter around my chest. “I really don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me, but I’m willing to listen to you, if that’s what you’re asking,” I replied, hesitant, my bare feet sliding against the wooden deck.

  Her long, blonde spirals tossed in the wind. “Then answer this. If you truly loved someone, with all of your heart and soul, what would you do to get him back?”

  I tilted my head to the side, shaking it slightly. “Well, anything. Whatever it takes.”

  She nodded, beginning to pace. “Then promise you won’t hate me.”

  “I won’t hate you, Violet, I barely know you.”

  “You can’t touch West. You are under a spell. If you touch him in any way, you will remember your life with him, and so will Logan, and Morgan, and Jason, and my mom… I know he’s tempted, being this close to you. I expected him to do it at the beach, but since he didn’t know how you’d react, he probably didn’t want to do it in front of Eva.”

  I listened carefully. “I’m under a spell.”

  “All you have to do is go in there, open his bedroom door, and touch him. And the memories will all come back.”

  “What memories?”

  She took an exaggerated breath. “Okay, here goes.”

  Her tale began with the first day of school, a man named Troy, immortals, numbers, parallel universes, and fountains. By the time she described time-traveling, I decided she obviously had some kind of paranoid schizophrenia.

  “You gave birth to Eva in 1955. She didn’t come through the fountain with us. Instead, she went to the other world. You traded your life for my mother’s, and Troy kept you as his… queen, love slave, or whatever, for three months. My dad finally went in to rescue you.”

  “There was some kind of giant battle. You were dressed all crazy, with face paint, and started killing soldiers with a ninja sword. You tried to kill Troy, but he stabbed you with his sword, pinning you to the floor through your body. He almost ki
lled you, but my father shot him in the head.”

  She obviously sensed that she lost me. “Oh, wait, it gets better. Just before you took your last, dying breath, Dad found his father, the creator of the spell. He couldn’t reverse the prophecy, but he could reverse time. He took you back to the day you met my father. And he erased your memory.”

  “But you, Eva, and West all have these memories,” I clarified, glancing nervously into the living room. What if she becomes dangerous?

  “Roam, you don’t have to believe me. All you have to do is touch my father. Bump into him. Shake his hand. Haven’t you noticed that he’s avoided you like the plague? In school, at our house… here?”

  Do not touch me. I grew faint at the memory of his lips so close to mine only a short time ago in the living room.

  I thought back to the morning I hurried to school early, ready to tell him I’d been accepted to Princeton. He refused to shake my hand, a gesture I found very out of character for someone as polite as he appeared to be.

  “He loves you with his entire life. And… I love Logan. I love him so much, and I am scared to death that he’s going overseas. If memories of the training he learned in that other world will help him at all over there, then I want him to have them. And I want him to come back… to me.”

  I stood up, slowly inching toward the door. “This is… a lot,” I murmured softly. “I don’t know what to say. I think I should try to get some sleep,” I slid the glass door open, and she followed me inside.

  “You deserve to know the truth. No one should decide how another person should live. He’s going to hate me when he finds out I told you. But… I’m done caring. I miss Logan so much that I can’t… breathe. And it gets worse every day, instead of better, because I know if he remembered, he’d want me too.”

  I stared at her, thinking of Logan’s preoccupation with blondes all of a sudden. I dreamt that you had blonde, curly hair… Smiling gently at Violet, I moved to the stairs.

  “I don’t know what to… think. I’ll talk to West in the morning. Goodnight, Violet.”

  “Goodnight.” She gave me a fleeting glance before turning down the opposite hallway and into her bedroom.

  Once in the room I was staying in, I locked the door behind me securely. Lowering to the edge of the bed, I stared at my reflection in the mirror over the dresser.

  All you have to do is touch him…

  The details of Violet’s story were specific and so, so frightening. I lay back on the pillow, trying to imagine a life with West.

  The dreams. I’d gone to my doctor for sleeping pills after confessing my crush to West, and finally, I had stopped dreaming of him.

  He’s an incredibly handsome man. You saw him every morning, first period, at school. Of course you’re going to dream about him. You’re attracted to him.

  Covering my stomach absently, I shook my head.

  I’d be lying to myself if I said that I wasn’t curious… a little.

  Turning onto my side, I closed my eyes, searching for sleep.

  The rest of the night felt like only minutes before three light knocks jolted me awake. “You have mail!” Eva’s voice stirred me only hours later, and I opened my dry eyes, blinking away the confusion of the bright, morning light. Where am I? “See… it’s under the door. See?”

  “I see it,” I called softly, swinging my legs over the side of the bed and moving to the door. She’d folded a pink piece of construction paper in half. On the front, two people were holding hands, with arms and legs growing directly out of their oversized, circle heads.

  I smiled, rubbing my eyes as I opened the card.

  Happy Birthday Roam was written very neatly, and under her painstakingly even printing, she had drawn a heart.

  Twisting the lock, I pulled the door open, gazing down at her. She wore a blue Cinderella dress, Mardi-Gras beads, and a purple tiara. On her wrists, she’d taken the same magic markers that she’d used on my card and drawn bracelets on her wrists and rings on her fingers.

  “Eva, this is the best birthday card I’ve ever gotten.”

  “I got you a ring for your birthday,” she said, tugging the cap off of her red magic marker. “What finger?”

  I grinned, kneeling to her level and flattening my left hand. “My ring finger, please,” I pointed next to my pinky, and she bit her lip, concentrating on drawing a circle around my finger. “Thank you. That is the most beautiful ring I’ve ever seen.”

  “Will you put earrings on me?” Her eyes sparkled like rain on a mossy, forest floor.

  Accepting the magic marker, I brushed her hair away from her small, perfectly curved ears. The felt tip left two tiny dots on each earlobe, and I hoped with an inward smile that West wouldn’t mind that I drew on his daughter.

  “Thank you,” she enunciated formally, curtsying before me. I smiled, nodding once. “Daddy is making you a birthday breakfast. Pancakes with chocolate chips. Report to the kitchen at seven o’clock. Wear your pajamas. Don’t be late, or they’ll be cold,” she warned.

  “I’ll use the bathroom and be right down,” I promised seriously. “Thank you again, princess.”

  “My pleasure,” she responded, forcing my lips into a broad smile.

  I hurriedly brushed my teeth and washed my face, contemplating make-up for less than a second before shrugging and leaving the cosmetic bag in my suitcase. Dousing my eyes with saline solution, I cursed my laziness for sleeping in my contacts- again.

  My hair in a messy bun, I slipped my hooded, Princeton sweatshirt over my short, cream-colored negligee again. The lacy trim was far too provocative for my taste, but I’d intended to be celebrating with Logan, not attending a birthday-pancake breakfast with West.

  He stood at the stove facing away from the stairs, with Eva on a stool at his side. “Okay, babe, flip.”

  “Flipped,” she answered, carefully turning the spatula with her palms. She wore oven mitts on both arms, and I smiled at West’s protective precautions with his daughter.

  Should I tell him what Violet said? Maybe he’s aware that she’s got psychiatric issues? I assumed she was still sleeping.

  “Good morning,” I called softly. He lifted his eyes from the stovetop, and I watched them sweep over my body in one singular motion.

  “Morning,” he managed. I tugged the sweatshirt tighter around my shoulders.

  “I didn’t pack appropriately for a pancake breakfast. Sorry,” I apologized.

  He gestured to his gray, pajama pants and plain, white tee-shirt. “You’re meeting the dress code. Just more… attractively… than we are,” he added, winking. “Happy birthday.”

  “Thank you,” I grinned, flashing my ring finger. “I was given a beautiful card and this diamond ring for my birthday. Best presents a girl could ask for.”

  “And Roam gave me earrings,” Eva added, smacking at her head with the oven mitts to try to show off her earlobes. West chuckled, brushing her hair behind her ear to observe.

  “Very nice. And- they won’t fall out in the ocean. Perfect.”

  “Roam!” Eva dove from the step-stool, and I caught her just in time, laughing.

  “Eva, please go see if your sister would like some pancakes.”

  “Kay, daddy.”

  “Violet got up again late last night… before I went back to bed. We talked for a while,” I added as Eva ran for Violet’s hallway.

  He turned and focused on a pancake, loosening the edges with a spatula. “Oh, yeah? What did you girls talk about?”

  “Honestly… some crazy stuff,” I took a step closer to him, and he froze, reaching for the knob to turn off the burner. Is he going to acknowledge our conversation last night? Or that he almost kissed me?

  As he turned his face to mine, I searched his eyes for any indication that he knew what I was talking about. “Like what?” he prodded.

  I started to take another step, but Eva bound back into the kitchen, singing at the top of her lungs. “Vi-o-let wants to slee-eeeeeee-eeeeep!”


  “Well, more for us,” West replied, sweeping her into his arms. “Roam, would you grab the plates out of that cabinet over there?”

  “Of course. Thank you for doing this.”

  “Any reason for chocolate chips is a good reason, right, Eva?”

  She responded by grinning, nodding with the widest eyes possible. I laughed, thoroughly enjoying everything about her.

  “You’re so silly,” I told her, handing her a handful of napkins. “Would you bring these to the table, please?”

  She obliged, and as we settled into eating, West cleared his throat. “The garage called first thing this morning. The transmission is shot,” he poured syrup onto Eva’s pancakes before cutting them into bite-sized pieces.

  “Does that mean we get to keep her?” Eva clapped her hands excitedly.

  I gave her a smile, dropping my fork to my plate. Meeting his eyes, I sat back dejectedly. “How much?”

  “Nine hundred, not including labor.”

  “No,” I squeezed my eyes tightly. “That’s too much.”

  “However,” he piled three pancakes on my plate, pushing the syrup my way. “I would like you to consider staying until the second week of August with us. We can drive you back when we leave, and you’ll be home in plenty of time for Morgan’s wedding.”

  “Please!” Eva shouted excitedly, bouncing in her chair.

  I stared at him from across the table, resting my hands in my lap. “You are so generous, but I couldn’t ruin the rest of your entire summer-…,”

  “Do you really feel like you’re ruining our summer?” He tilted his head in Eva’s direction, and raised his eyes. “You already have a fan.”

  “I only have two outfits and two of these ridiculous nighties… I’d have to get some clothes…,”

  “That’s nothing. Violet would love someone to go shopping with.”

  “I’d insist on paying you, at least for groceries. Please.”

  “How about this,” he sat back. “I have work to do before the school year starts, and Violet needs a break sometimes. Help with Eva, that’s all. Deal?”