by SM Olivier
“We’ll take the guitar and violin,” Sierra stated firmly, and I was grateful that she had seen my need to withdrawal.
Joe disgruntledly rung up our purchases, jabbing the register as Ronnie stood by with a look of contemplation. Sierra handed Ronnie her card. I impulsively grabbed a guitar case and a violin case.
“This can be my gift for Gavin,” I explained to Sierra as I grabbed some extra picks as well. “If that’s alright?” I looked at her hesitantly.
She smiled at me with a shrug. “That’s fine.”
“Are these gifts for the special men in your life?” Ronnie inquired pleasantly.
“They are,” I confirmed with a smile.
“Well, if you’re ever this way, make sure you come and see me. I’ll give you our friends and family discount,” Ronnie stated as he handed me a business card.
It looked like the shop was owned by him and his brother. I didn’t know why he was so kind to us, but I wasn’t getting a creepy vibe off him, so that was a plus. I smiled my thanks and placed the card in my wallet.
“Thank you. We’ll keep you in mind,” I stated.
Sierra was nearly bouncing on the balls of her feet as she quivered in excitement. I could tell she was just as happy giving Gavin something he would enjoy, just as much as he would love receiving it.
“Thank you,” she called before linking her arms in mine with a rare showing of affection.
I was about to leave the store, when I remembered I had one of Jace’s business cards. If Ronnie’s son really was talented, I wanted to help him out like I’d been helped. I went back over to the counter and handed Ronnie the business card. Knightstown was written in bold letters on it along with Jace’s number at the school and his email address.
“When your son thinks he’s ready, have him send an audition video to this email address. If he’s as talented as my…well, my boyfriend could help him out. He can get him an audition. But I can’t make any promises that it would give him a guaranteed in. Maybe an open door,” I stated honestly.
He smiled and slid the card into his pocket. “Thank you. I think you gave me the best Christmas gift I could have given him. Hope!”
I smiled back at him. “Sometimes that’s all someone needs to continue driving them.”
He laughed and nodded at me. “Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas,” I stated as I went to catch up with Sierra, with Jace’s Christmas gift in my hands.
Chapter 3
“How was shopping?” Noah asked as he closely scrutinized me.
I refrained from yelling in frustration. “Successful and complete,” I stated as I dipped my roll in the gravy on my plate.
“Are you sore? Tired?” he asked in concern.
Megan sighed loudly, drawing our attention to her. Today we allowed the kids to sit a few tables down with their friends, so it was just my connections, Pops, and Megan. We tried to integrate with the people we worked with, even though most of us preferred the comfort of our apartments once our duty day was over. Not that we currently had a duty day.
We were all given a break for Christmas. It couldn’t have come at a better time. Some people volunteered to remain on call here on base, while others had gone home to spend time with their families. Even Paul had felt comfortable leaving the facility in Will’s more than capable hands to go back to be with his family.
Paul was the owner of the company we now worked for, contracted out by the government. We were a particular case. We weren’t under a contract to work for him, but he still paid us. Will’s influences and experience, he had already helped Paul out immensely. They had butted heads a lot in the beginning, but now they had a friendship, of sorts.
“Can’t you see that you’re being…overbearing?” Megan finally said when all eyes were on her. “I think Blake now understands that she needs to listen to her body. She will tell you when she doesn’t feel right. She’s been doing that just fine since she got out of the hospital. She doesn’t need you guys smothering her.”
I gave her a grateful smile while Will huffed out, “It’s their job to look after her. They have every right to be concerned about her. After all, she is their nucleus.”
“True, but she doesn’t need someone waiting outside her door while she uses the bathroom. It’s a fine line, Pops,” Drake spoke up firmly as he gave Remy and Jaxson a pointed look.
I stifled the inappropriate laugh. It was true; apart from Jace, Troy, and Drake, they all treated me like fragile glass. I hadn’t done any laundry, tied my own shoes, used the bathroom, or gotten dressed without one of them insisting on helping me. Admittedly, on my sick days, I needed the extra help at times, but Jaxson and Remy wouldn’t leave my side unless they knew I was with one of them, even on my good days.
“She needs our help,” Jaxson protested.
I held up my hand. “She, Blake, is right here. I really do appreciate how all of you have been, but Drake and Megan are right. There are days I have needed you, but days like today I’m fine. I’ve realized the error of my ways. The moment I don’t feel well or feel my limitations, I’ll let you know. Believe it or not, I don’t want to end up in the hospital wing again. I hate needles. So, please stop treating me like fragile glass and looking at me like I’ve been diagnosed with some incurable disease. I’ll get better. We’ll get better.”
“Had any luck finding your other connection yet?” Jaxson asked bitterly.
I was surprised by his tone and words. He usually avoided confrontations like the plague, but I also knew he was struggling with his own fear and insecurities. He was often the one to joke, pull a prank, or create an illusion in times of stress, but without his gift, he had lost some of his fire.
He was one of the ones who had jumped at my idea to ignore my final connection and allow our gifts to fade. He didn’t want to share me any more than he already did, especially with a stranger. With the combination of not having his standard crutch and his fear, he was irrationally striking out.
I knew if I coddled him right now he would probably continue his downward spiral. I couldn’t ignore his behavior or allow him to believe he could continue down the dark path he was going down.
“Jaxson James,” I said sharply. “This isn’t you, so please stop acting this way. This isn’t easy on any of us. We’re all feeling the same way. We don’t need the added stress of snapping at each other or lashing out. Now more than ever we—” my voice trailed off as my eyes widened at the women now entering the DFAC. “…need to stick together,” I finished quietly.
Hazel, my biological grandmother and probably the person most responsible for my current predicament, was coming into the DFAC with Beth, and beside her was Cora.
Beth and Cora had lost their nucleus almost two months ago, right after they adopted Patrick. Beth and Cora had lost some of the strength of their gifts, but it wasn’t completely lost. Cora had become nearly despondent after his death. She ate enough to survive in the cage of her own making and spent most of her days sleeping in her apartment. Will, Megan, and Beth had tried to draw her out on numerous times, but she had staidly refused.
“Holy Sh−” Troy began. “Crap,” he hastily modified. At twenty-three and an owner of a security company, he still respected the man who raised him and always watched his mouth around him. Pops hated cursing. He wasn’t uptight, but he was old-school and believed you could still communicate effectively without the use of profanity.
Everyone looked around to find out what we were looking at, and the expression of surprise and shock was shared by everyone.
Cora, Hazel, and Beth found seats at our table, and we all looked at each other uncertainly. No one seemed to know what to say.
I initially resented my maternal grandmother Hazel. She was the one who had upset the balance of nature and had a trail of broken, innocent people in her wake. She had given hope to people only for them to suffer more painfully later on. She had helped provide children to childless parents just for the parents to stand by helplessly and watch as
that child ended up causing their own demise or the demise of others.
I had learned to slowly forgive her as I realized she had done it all with good intentions. She wasn’t like Horatio, hell-bent on creating a master race. She had thought she was doing good. She had seen her friend suffer when they couldn’t have children, unable to have the large families they had always wanted.
She had her son, but she always dreamed of her large family, and she had already paid the price with the death of her youngest daughter. She had been shunned by her community. She had eventually lost her other children as well. She had suffered for over twenty years in silence. Her gift had punished her enough; locking her up in her own prison where she was unable to communicate with others, not even aware of her surroundings for most of that time.
I grudgingly admired her intelligence and her ability to know what to say and do. She hadn’t pushed her other grandchildren or me, though I saw her longingly watching them at times. I even had a hunch that she was the one to finally get through to Cora.
The moment she came to the facility a little over a week ago, she had jumped in with two feet. She sat with Megan as she explained to her about us building stronger relationships with other communities. She counseled the young teens we had brought back with us on one of our missions; they were beyond damaged now that the proverbial Kool-Aid had begun to fade. In short, she just wanted to help wherever and whenever she could.
“I’m alive,” Cora said dryly at our stunned expression. “Hazel told me we’re looking for Blake’s connection?” She let out a brittle laugh. “And I thought I had it tough sharing my man with Beth.”
“Hey,” Beth said with a wry twist of her lips. “If you remember correctly, I found Steven first when I was barely out of high school.”
“Imagine her surprise when she found out she had to share her connections,” Cora laughed to herself as she pierced a cooked carrot with her fork.
I had heard a little of their story before. Steven Karn had begun working with Will, fresh out of high school. He was young and hungry. He knew little about his gift and how it worked, even though he was dominant. Will had put him to work and trained him in the meantime.
When the institute was created years later, Steven had joined when Will, Greg, and Horatio created it. He thought he could finally give back. He felt his work with the children and helping them understand and develop their gifts would be a great opportunity. He hadn’t realized that things had begun to spiral out of control.
He had met Beth first, and they had started a relationship, and once Horatio decided to begin his own experiments, Cora had been hired roughly two years after they made the connection. Cora had been two years his junior and had been more compatible with Steven’s personality, but they had made it work.
They had tried to have children for years. Beth hadn’t wanted children and was happy to have Cora bear the one or two children they may be blessed with, but it never happened. Beth knew the strain it was having on their collective relationship and decided to finally relent for their family. It was salt in Cora’s wounds when Beth was able to get pregnant two months after she had stopped taking birth control pills.
Beth was content with allowing Cora to be the primary caregiver of Nadia, their daughter. It wasn’t until after we had met them that Beth felt some remorse for her earlier misgivings and decided to give back to the community by fostering gifted children that had no parents or parents that couldn’t understand how their child was gifted. Patrick had been their first foster, and within weeks, they knew that they would adopt him.
Patrick’s parents couldn’t understand that he wasn’t obsessed by death and he wasn’t a future sociopath. His gift allowed him to see the deaths of other people, and in most cases he was able to see things that law enforcement had been unable to see. He had seen the murder-suicide of what others had seen as a loving couple.
We had contacted Judge Myers to reopen the case and were able to find the real killer. It had been a man that had stalked the woman for months. He suffered from delusions and was mentally unstable. He had killed the woman and then her husband. He thought if he couldn’t have her no one could.
“Is it common for connections to have such a large age gap?” Jaxson said, breaking me from my reverie. “Until recently, I had only met couples with minor age gaps.”
I had been so lost in thought, I hadn’t been following the conversation. I assumed Jaxson was questioning the connection between Miranda and Greg.
“That’s something I can’t work my brain around, either,” I added. “I thought we were generally marked between twelve and fifteen years old. Miranda and Greg are connected, but there’s at least a fifteen-year age gap between them.”
“In rare cases, I think our gift re-marks us,” Will explained. “Greg had lost his connection when they were too young to even formalize the union. He was eighteen, and his connection was thirteen. They never got around to forming the connection. For some reason, he never lost his gift, though, and it never waned. When I knew him years ago, he had a mark that looked like a cursive Z. One of his reasons for leaving the institute was the addition of a line connecting the top of the Z to the opposite point of the Z. He had a feeling his connection may be in danger and in turn, himself.”
“I don’t get how that could have happened,” Drake said slowly. “We were all surprised to have been marked years after we thought we should, well, except Jax.”
“I imagine I had upset the normal balance of things,” Hazel stated as she buttered her bread. “I’ve been gathering information lately, and it seems about eighteen years ago several other gifted people started to report other strange occurrences with their gifts or the marks.”
“So roughly when I was born,” I stated bluntly.
Hazel nodded. “Miranda was my first attempt at using several people’s DNA. I had been more…conservative when I helped make our other… children.”
“Then why didn’t these additional gifts manifest in her? Why Blake?” Jace asked as he reached out to link my hand with his own.
I leaned into him, suddenly full as I pushed my tray slightly away.
Hazel shrugged. “We all know the gifts choose who they want to inhabit. Maybe they felt like no one else was worthy of them.”
“But why me?” I sighed. “I’m no one special.”
“You know that’s not true,” Noah gently admonished me.
Hazel sighed. “I’m not sure yet, child. I wish I had the answers for you. I have a feeling we’re all learning and relearning as we go. But I do know this, you were destined for greater things.”
“Miranda wants to come over on Christmas Eve to give the children their gifts,” I stated as I placed tape on the present I was wrapping.
Several heads snapped up and looked at me.
Earlier, we had started wrapping gifts after making sure the children were down for the night. Well, technically Noah, Jace, Drake, and I were wrapping presents. I’m not sure what one would call what Remy, Jaxson, and Troy were doing with wrapping gifts.
Despite Megan’s insistence, we still felt we should get the children ready for bed from time to time so that she and Will could have some alone time. They were trying to rekindle their relationship, and it warmed my heart to see how cute they were together. They were right for each other. Both had lost their hard edges and seemed genuinely happy. It also helped that they both treated my siblings like their own children.
When Will got us the new apartment, he had gotten one right beside ours and told us he would continue watching over the children for us. It was hard enough for Will to convince Paul to build us a seven-bedroom apartment. There was no way he would have been okay with giving us more space, even though there was more than enough room here.
“Do you think the kids will be ready for that?” Remy asked hesitantly, pulling my attention back. He’d spent a lot of time with Micah. Through his tutelage, my tall and skinny brother was gaining muscles. He took training with Remy seriously
and even started a diet that Remy had put him on so he could ‘bulk up’. Remy had already explained to him that his body type may never allow Micah to get as big as him, but maybe the additional protein would help.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I meant to tell them tonight, but they were so excited about Christmas, I didn’t want to…dampen the mood. She’s not leaving anytime in the near future, and they should have the right to form their own opinions and not base them solely on my own.”
“Sounds fair to me,” Drake agreed. “We’ll be there, and Miranda does seem like she’s a changed person.”
Jace looked pensive. I figured Remy, Jace, Drake, and Jaxson would have the strongest feelings about the whole situation. They all, in essence, had been abandoned by their mothers. Noah’s parents had chosen their work over him, but they had died overseas doing their job. The other guys still had a mother out there somewhere; Jace and Jaxson’s mom was shacking up with Horatio, Remy’s mom had chosen to stick by his stepfather’s side, and Drake’s mom had chosen her career over her children.
“Might as well get it over with,” Troy stated. “They do have a younger brother that might like to get to know them.”
“I don’t think Harry is even aware of who they are or where he really is,” Noah stated dryly. “But I think it’s been long enough.”
“Alex has started to feel him,” Jaxson admitted quietly. “Harry’s locked in there, but he’s perfectly aware of his surroundings.”
“What!” I exclaimed in surprise. From everyone else’s expression, it was news to them, too.
“Alex is too young to understand exactly what’s going on, but he hears him screaming in his head from time to time,” Jaxson shifted uncomfortably. “He told me that today, when we were planting seeds.”
“I don’t even know where we could start to even help him,” Noah said before hastily looking over at me. “That is if−.”
I gasped. “Are you implying that I may not want to help him if I could?”
“Well,” he shifted uncomfortably. “I know you weren’t happy to find out she had another child.”