“I’m…okay,” she managed, blinking as if the light was too bright. She opened her mouth and then closed it again, the words caught, and then she said them, surprising them both. “I’m pregnant.”
* * * *
What in the hell am I doing here?
John checked the card in his hand, making sure he had the correct address. It was just a residence—no storefront or neon signs with posters of chakras and palmistry pasted in the windows—just a modest house with a faded picket fence. Nothing he’d expected.
He took a deep breath, preparing to raise a hand to knock. He didn’t need a psychic—he’d stopped believing in miracles a long time ago—but Julia had been ecstatic since the phone call in the café and couldn’t stop telling people about the woman who had predicted her good news.
He was happy for her, but he couldn’t get the thought out of his mind.
What if she’d been wrong?
He wanted to meet this psychic doling out thoughtless, unfounded predictions to desperate customers, trading hope for cash. So she’d managed a lucky guess with his sister—even a broken clock was right twice a day. He still intended to give her an earful about what he thought about her unscrupulous business.
If the psychic’s card and her house hadn’t been what he’d expected, the actual woman who opened the door in anticipation of his knock was truly a shock, making him drop both his arms and his jaw, the card fluttering to the porch.
“Rebecca,” he whispered, surprised he could find his voice at all.
“Hi, John.” She stepped back, waving him in, looking for all the world as if she’d been expecting him, as if something like that could be possible.
Dazed, he followed her lead, finding himself sitting at her kitchen table and sipping tea before he could murmur more than an a faint affirmative to her offer of something to drink.
“I know why you’re here.”
His stomach dropped at her words and he couldn’t swallow past the lump in his throat, expecting her anger, her hate. Of course she knew, had always known. He had just never believed, and his obstinate refusal and skepticism had ruined her.
Jesus Christ, get hold of yourself, he thought, bringing the hot, sweet tea to his mouth to give himself something to do, even though his hands were trembling and the damned cup shook the whole way from saucer to destination and back again.
“Well, I should hope so,” he managed, swallowing, the tea cloying, leaving a bitter aftertaste. “You are a psychic after all, right?”
Her steady gaze didn’t leave him. “Give me your hand, John.”
He wanted to refuse. He wanted to find the furious energy he’d mustered before coming here, to really give it to her about telling people lies, giving them false hope. He wanted to give her hell.
Instead, his betrayal had put her through hell. He could see it in her face and the guilt hit him hard, leaving him dizzy, unable to speak. He gave her his hand like a peace offering, and the familiarity of her touch was almost unbearably painful, making his throat burn, his eyes water.
Her eyes closed, her breathing becoming slow, deep, even. He took the opportunity to really study her—Becca, his Becca. He’d lost her and found her again. He didn’t think it would ever be possible to sit across from her like this, to face her, but the years they’d spent apart seemed to melt away in an instant. He remembered familiar mornings watching her sleep, her mouth turned slightly down at the corners as it was now, her eyelids twitching as she dreamed.
“She loves you.” Becca opened her eyes, those stunning hazel green eyes, and squeezed his hand. “And she will be yours within twenty-four hours.”
He snatched his hand away, startled. He hadn’t told his sister he was proposing until this afternoon. How? But he remembered Julia’s smirk and realized—his sister had probably called Becca, had planned this whole thing.
“Parlor tricks.” He shook his head sadly. “Becca, you’re above this. Why would you do this?”
“You don’t believe me?” She sat so still, but her hands, small and delicate—he remembered them all too well—clenched on the table’s surface. “You never did believe me.”
“I wanted to…” He leaned back in his chair, doing the opposite of what he felt, afraid of how much he wanted to get closer to her. He’d doubted even then, giving his statement to police after the fire, telling that young, clean-cut cop with the sharp blue eyes that yes, she had mentioned the fire before it happened, and no, he couldn’t say for sure she hadn’t set it. He cringed at the memory, trying hard to block it out. Yes, yes, he’d doubted his betrayal a thousand times a day.
But…
“But when your girlfriend tells you the apartment house you’re living in is going to burn down, and then it does?”
She didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t try to explain or defend herself.
“I mean, what else could a rational person believe?” His voice cracked, betraying his emotion. He wanted to run. But no, that wasn’t quite true. He wanted to sweep her up and take her with him, carry her off into some distant future or past where there was no betrayal, no pain, no fear.
“John, I can predict the future…” Her voice was soft, words like flower petals falling from a dying bouquet. “But I can’t change it. I learned that the hard way.”
“They told me you were mentally ill,” he went on, sounding, feeling desperate. “Why wouldn’t I believe you’d set that fire?”
Her eyes flashed but still she didn’t speak up to defend herself. He couldn’t stand it, her silence. Was it a denial? An admission? He stood to go, turning away from her, away from his past, but she reached out and caught him, her hand gripping the meat of his forearm, and he stopped, turning to face her.
“It wasn’t me who set the fire. I just knew it was going to happen,” she whispered, her face turned up to his, eyes filling with tears that she struggled to keep from falling. “And I never stopped loving you. Never. Even when you didn’t believe.”
It happened in an instant, his mouth capturing hers, his arms around her, crushing her to him, bruising her tender flesh with his longing, his pain. She didn’t resist or cry out or deny him. They were both shaking when he broke the kiss, pulling the bright fire of her hair out of its confines and burying his face in it.
“I still would have come for you,” he confessed hoarsely. “I couldn’t believe you would do something like that. But they said you didn’t want me, Becca. My sweet, sweet Becca.”
He felt her sobs but didn’t hear them until she tried to speak, her voice coming in hitches. “I told them…to say that...to tell you to go…”
He pulled back to look at her. “You must hate me so much.”
“No!” Her wet face, her nose red from crying, just made him love her even more. “I loved you. But you deserved someone without my…baggage.”
Don’t do this, he thought, even as he held her. Don’t let yourself do this.
“I never wanted anyone but you,” he whispered.
“John, I’m sorry.” Tears slipped down her cheeks, wetting the neck of her blouse. “I wish it would have been different.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.” He pulled her in close—tight—one last time.
One last time. That’s what he told himself.
“Do you believe me now?” she asked.
“I do.” He let her go, mouth twisted in an ironic smile. “I’m proposing to my girlfriend tonight. I’m sure Julia told you.”
She watched him walk toward the door. “All I’ve ever wanted was for you to be happy.”
The thing was, he really did believe her.
* * * *
I should be nervous. That’s what he kept thinking all through dinner as Josie sipped her wine and told him about her latest client, the Bridezilla of all Bridezillas, whose current drama involved her mother-in-law and some sort of family wedding tradition involving a live turkey.
She set her glass down, smiling. “John, you’re distracted.”
H
e put down his fork, his heart lurching in his chest. “I am,” he admitted, glancing around the little restaurant.
It was dark and intimate, the candles in the center of each table giving the room a warm glow, making Josie’s hair even more fiery in the light. Hers was shorter than Becca’s, coming just to her shoulders in a mass of curly brilliance. He’d ignored both his sister’s and his mother’s comments when they’d first starting seeing each other a year ago, how much Josie reminded them of Becca, but after seeing them both today, he understood. After Becca, his world had turned cold, and Josie had been the only warmth he’d known since.
“I have something to ask you.” John pulled his napkin from his lap and put it on the table. Josie watched him, bemused, as he stood and then dropped to one knee before her. Her eyes widened when he pulled the ring box from his pocket.
“Oh John.” She swallowed and he saw tears in her eyes.
“Josie, will you marry me?” He opened the box and saw her gaze shift to the ring. She reached out to touch it, her hand brushing his. Around them, tables were beginning to notice and take in the scene.
“John, I…” Her voice was choked and she closed her eyes, biting her lip, her hand covering his, snapping the box closed. “I can’t.”
His breath left his body and he didn’t know how to take another. He’d anticipated her initial surprise, her first wordless response, but this rebuff was completely disarming. He struggled to his feet, stumbling back into his chair, hiding the ring as if he could pretend he’d never taken it out.
“Listen to me.” Josie leaned forward, grasping his hand in hers, and he found himself thinking shamefully of Becca, the way she’d held his hand this afternoon. “I love you. I do.” She swallowed, the tears that had filled her eyes now spilling down her freckled cheeks. She had freckles everywhere, a typical redhead. Becca, she was all peaches and cream, skin like…
Josie’s mouth was moving, but he wasn’t hearing her. His head was too full, his chest bursting.
“You don’t love me, John.” Josie squeezed his hand. “And I’m not selfish enough to accept you just because I love you. I know in my heart that when you do marry, she will be the luckiest woman alive. I envy her. But I’m not that woman.”
* * * *
He wasn’t in the mood for jokes. He’d spent half the night on the phone trying to convince Josie she was wrong—that he did want to marry her. He’d spent the other half of it rolling around looking for a cool spot on the sheets, dreaming of Becca. And now the new kid he’d hired said someone was up front, looking for a…
“I’m looking for a crystal ball.”
Her voice made everything inside of him go quiet. She was impossible, smiling, forgiveness and redemption coming toward him like a dream.
“You were wrong, Becca,” he murmured as she slipped her hands into his. “She turned me down.”
“I know.”
He frowned. “But you told me… what did you say? ‘She loves you. She’ll be yours within twenty-four hours.’”
“She does. And she is.” Becca turned her face up to his, her expression hopeful. “If you want me.”
He swallowed, comprehension dawning slowly. “You meant…? It was you?”
He didn’t give her a chance to answer. He didn’t give her a chance to breathe. “I believe you,” he whispered against her mouth, her lips impossibly soft, body melting into his. “I believe. I believe.”
He felt new again, and didn’t know why they’d had to go through it all, but was past questioning things he didn’t understand.
“Now you get your fortune told for free.” She smiled as he kissed her neck, daring his assistant and the new kid to say a word as they stood at the register, gaping.
“I can hear it now,” he chuckled. “You will soon be taking out the trash…and cleaning out the garage…and…”
“How about, you will soon be spending the next three days in bed?” Her husky, whispered tone and the way her thigh slid up the inside of his made him groan.
“I hope I won’t be in bed sick.” He grinned.
“Lovesick maybe.” Becca smiled up at him, his Becca.
His eyes narrowed. “You did something to me, didn’t you? A love potion? What was in that tea?”
“I’ll never tell…” Her laughter was like rain and he let it fall all around him.
The world was no longer fire or ice. It was water and tears and love and life and Becca, and everything was as it was—it always had been and always would be.
Wolf in the Night
by Runere McLain
It was my long-buried nightmare come to life. That face-to-face confrontation I’d both dreaded and desired for so many years.
He—or should I say it?—stood at the club door, between me and the exit.
Panic spurted through me. Why had I visited my old college nightspot, lingering? With no real answer, I suspected it had something to do with feeling so utterly lonely, and the expectancy that lingered in the air, persistent as smoke. Our encounter inevitable, relief at being in a public place feathered my skin.
The bar and entrance were raised, the dance floor almost a pit between. Our gazes locked over writhing dancers’ heads, my heart throbbing in time to the bass beat pulsing from giant speakers suspended overhead. Fatalistic as a contrived scene in a low-budget movie. But it was all too real.
You’re born to trouble, Wren, I thought. Otherworldly trouble.
The signs had always been there; but their constant presence made them falsely familiar, less recognizable. Like not seeing the forest for the trees.
Suffering a mixture of anticipation and anxiety, I studied his black T-shirt and black leather jacket as he spoke with the bouncer stationed at the entrance. Even his pants were black leather now.
I tried to work up a sneer over such clichéd I’m-a-badass attire, but ended up biting my lip. The hide molded the masculine flesh of his long legs as he strode toward the steps leading into the crowd; my fingers itched to test its texture stretched taut over hard muscles. It certainly showcased narrow hips and thighs heavy with muscle.
The phrase ‘love-muscle’ popped unbidden into my mind.
My gaze dropped, totally without my permission, before I realized how low my thoughts—and now widened eyes—had descended. I jerked my gaze back to his face, hoping not to have been caught ogling. He smiled as he descended into the swaying dancers.
I closed my eyes and groaned. He’d seen.
Humiliation heated my face; his form burned into my brain. When, I wondered distractedly, had Micah become so big? So buff? Wide shoulders and that thick chest in biker garb rendered him sexy as hell. Why hadn’t I noticed before? I’d seen him off and on for literally years.
Not up close and personal like that first time, but he’d been hanging around the fringes of my life.
Realization dawned with the force of a slap, dizzying me.
Somehow, maybe through his creature powers, he’d managed to always appear to me an age-appropriate epitome of an alpha male some . . . thing. Currently, he looked downright dangerous. Clever, clever critter. Because he certainly wasn’t human.
I turned away, overwhelmed, worrying over how I’d come to this.
It’d begun innocently. Things have followed me home since I could walk. Dogs. Cats. A duck or two. Even hungry boys. Think that was more Mom’s cooking though; at least at first. Word of a real cook gets around a town of working mothers. Ones who’d do well to buy stock in Stouffer’s to recoup their grocery expenditures.
But after my boobs magically inflated one summer, it’d be fairer to call it a draw. Boys are strange indeed with stranger fixations, most of them oral. Uncomfortable with the bouncy things newly pointing my way, far as I was concerned, they were the elephant in the room; seen but never acknowledged.
When I hit fifteen other things started dragging in after me.
And he’d started making himself known, more and more.
The three years between fifteen and eight
een, I learned my own version of strangeness, mostly alienating, crippling my social skills. I tried dating like other girls, but it’s difficult to escape small town gossip when otherworldly things constantly approach you. And no date remains understanding when even a hint of intimacy in a conversation ends up a heated three-way diatribe. Especially when he can’t see or hear the third party you’re arguing with.
If ignored, my unwelcome chaperones resorted to spilling things. Or, if I was exposed to a subtle romantic suggestion, the candle flame jumped from wick to my date’s sleeve as he reached for my hand across the table. Another one’s parked car began rolling down the street. No denying where I stood priority wise with the guy with the Camaro. Hard to ignore the double whammy of being left standing alone on the sidewalk, watching his anxious face reflected in the mirror finish of all those lovingly applied coats of wax as he stumble-stepped alongside the driver’s door trying to get in, crying, “Not my baby! Not my baby!”
I was the only one to see the ghostly figure at the wheel, grinning each time the vehicle accelerated—without the motor running—just out of reach. Or Micah, arms folded across his chest, shoulder against the wall in the shadows. He witnessed every dating debacle.
No matter how deeply I yearned for experiences of the heart, it was easier to give up the humiliation of dating, hormones unresolved, and concentrate elsewhere. Like trying to help the other things showing up.
Refusing to run, I snatched a furtive glance, gauging his position. The only way to describe his progress across the floor was a moving pocket of stillness. Dancers froze at the sight of him, staring motionless in hunger or awe until he was shielded from view once more by tightly swaying bodies.
Concentrating harder, I drew on harried memories, a deliberate effort to avoid acknowledging his presence in this smoky place.
Fairies are tiny and shy, happy to hide among foliage and flowers once settled in the garden. I’ve convinced at least a dozen people fireflies glow according to the color flower they feed from, my explanation for the brilliant hot pink, electric blue, and glittery silver nighttime flashes seen only around my yard. Yay for gullibility?
Just One Bite Volume 3 Page 5