Emanate: Insight Series ((Insight) Web of Hearts and Souls) (15 page)

She never
liked traveling like this. It always made her dizzy. This hidden world wasn’t far, but I did what I could to protect her anyway by shielding her in my energy and sending a calm emotion through her body.

“
We’re here.”

She opened her eyes and gazed up at me from
beneath my shoulder. I felt her intent. She wanted to explain away any connection to Justus she may have. She wanted to know what war was waiting on us. Who was in danger and how it was her fault. Her intent was easy to recognize—it had always been the same since we had met, only now instead of Drake’s name on that list, it was Justus’.

“
The only war we need to worry about now is the one between you and me,”
I said to answer the look in her eyes and the intent that was slamming into my thoughts.

So much for being a poet. All that ph
rase did was terrify her. I could see her eyes searching over my image, feel her questioning what could be wrong between us.

“
I would never lie to you, Willow…but sometimes lies are unspoken.”

“
I don’t want to hear it,”
she thought with a quiver. “
I want to know what I did, what you did, but I don’t want to hear it.”

That was
a true Willow statement. She always wanted to know what was wrong and how to fix it, she wanted to know her past so she could answer for her actions, but that desire had given her nothing but heartache and confusion before. Recently, it was my fault she felt like that.

Before Skylynn or Phoenix came into our lives
, she carried the guilt of past mistakes on her own; now we both fought that demon. She may have seen the times she was in Drake’s arms, even dreamed them in enough detail to remember them as her own, but dreams are not as solid as living in the moment.

I remembered every time I’d strayed away from our love. I remember
ed every single deceiving thing I’d thought or the words I’d said as if it were yesterday. That revelation made what was before us so much harder. The mystery of why we were so entangled with evil didn’t exist anymore, at least not to the degree it had before. I knew how much time had passed, how many chances we’d had to make this right, to make us right, and I knew how many times we had failed.  I knew we were out of time. She had to sense that. That’s why she wanted, but didn’t want, to know.

“
I wish I could go back to when I first laid eyes on you and choose a different path.”

I braced her arms
, sending calm through her. As much as I was giving her, she should have been in a trance at this point, but she trembled on.

“
Listen to me…”
I thought as my hand caressed her beautiful face. “
I feel like a coward for telling you this when you do not have anger for a defense, because you deserve to be angry.”

Her stare went wide. I brushed my thumb across her lips
, silently asking that she would not stop me. I had managed to come this far with this well-rehearsed speech; if I halted now, I may never say it.

“
I knew a long time ago what we would face right now. I didn’t tell you for a thousand reasons, and even today, right now, I can’t tell you what’s in front of us, for sure what will or will not happen. I can’t tell you that I understand it because I don’t. All I can promise you is if we don’t fix what’s wrong between us, it’s not going to matter—if you and I are not right, then there is no threat larger than that.”

He
r brow furrowed as her eyes shifted over my image. She had no idea why I would think anything was wrong, and she was waiting for me to confess the worst.

“
I should just start at the beginning.”
I glanced around. “
This is where Drake and I grew up together, or at least ran away to when we could not take the pressure of the roles given to us…he was my best friend, my only friend for a very long time.”

Those eyes of hers grew wide with shock as she looked around for the first time.

The makeshift camp was weathered, but you could see the hammocks we had under the shelter, you could see the outline of the fire pit. The stones that sheltered our equipment to dive.

“
What are you trying to tell me? You knew him? Before? You knew about me? The nightmares?”
There was no anger, no there was only more anxiety and confusion.

“
In a sense. I knew he dreamed of someone. I knew he vowed to never find her, for he feared what Donalt would do. But we didn’t dwell on that. We came here to escape. You only came up on lingering nights when we laid exhausted from our day. We both spoke of you but never knew you were the same girl.”

“
You spoke of me, but what I looked like never came up?”

“
It did.”

She just stared at me
. That little crease between her eyes was deep, telling me she was rehashing it all—every moment she saw me and Drake side by side. She was remembering everything I had ever said to her about him.

“
I told you, Willow, I always saw your soul in our dreams. The details of your image didn’t matter to me then any more than they do now. You are not merely beautiful to me…you are the only beauty I have ever seen. No words could justify how breathtaking every inch of you is to me.”

“My soul
,” she said under her breath.
“Why now? Why are you telling me this today, of all days? The triangle is behind us.”

“
It was never in front of us.”

She stared at me with
wide eyes, with her lips slightly parted. From the outside looking in, she had never looked more lost.
“My memory is cruel right now, Landen. What I had rage for in my past, I now have fear for. We fought over him with both words and silence, and all the while you were not fighting with some dark prince. You were fighting with your
best friend
. I never got it.”

I never really saw it that way
—if I knew him or not, I would have treated Drake the same way—but now, looking at her, I felt even worse. “
Got what?”

“
Why you let him say what he said—do the things he did—sent me to speak to him alone. I thought it was because you trusted me. Because you knew that I loved you. That nothing could come between us.”

“
And you doubt that now?”
I asked with an ache in my chest.

“
I’ve never doubted how I felt about you, but I fear that you have. Were you just giving him a chance? What was that at the end? Those fights between you and him? Were you scared he was getting close?”

Those fights between
Drake and me were nothing less than human. He could have been my brother, and I would have still charged him. What man wouldn’t when he saw another man reaching for what was clearly his? 

“
Drake has never given me doubt. I didn’t understand why he was the one between us—why anyone was now or in the past. But…I had to let you go.”

“Let me go
,” she breathed as she covered her mouth and stepped back. A wave of blue washed over her eyes for an instant. I leaned forward, surely with an expression that was full of shock, which only confused her more.

“
Do you feel me?”
I asked her. “
You said the other night you could feel emotions if you wanted to—that they were just muffled.”

She moved her head
from side to side as she dropped her hands, and took a deep breath, and held her chin up slightly, a gesture she always did just when she decided to fearlessly face what was before her. But right now she was not fearless; she was trying to be mad. I could feel her fight for that emotion, but she could not reach it. Instead, she was hurt, and that was stabbing my soul.

For so long
, she and I hadn’t bothered to use words, at least not as much as most couples do. We felt each other on every level. You would think that would make life simple, that we would automatically understand one another, but that thing is we cannot read each other’s thoughts. We had no idea what
exactly
we were mad, sad, scared, or even jealous of. We could always assume. We were looking at the same thing when we felt those emotions, but circumstance had led us both there for different reasons.

I thought
back over every word I’d said since we had been here—knowing that she could not feel me right now made me feel like an ass. She couldn’t feel the pain in my heart, the regret for keeping that friendship between Drake and me from her. Without emotion, my words fell flat. Nothing more than sounds that carried no life.

Carefully
, I stepped forward and let my thumb trace the bottom of her eye, which was now green. My fingertips were hungry for the touch of her smooth skin, and they fell down her cheek across her collarbone, finally reaching for her waist and pulling her to me and leaning my forehead to hers.

“
I let you go because I loved you. I never had a single doubt that you were mine…the pain I felt as I watched you with him confirmed that.”

A tremble went through her body as she closed her eyes
. I pulled her lips to mine, carefully allowing us to melt together. Her lips danced with mine, flesh to flesh, but she was holding back, and rightly so.

“
It terrifies me to let you go, but each time I do,”
my tongue wisped against hers, and she let out a near silent moan, “
you come back to me.”
I deepened our kiss, wanting to hear her body respond to me once more. Her nails dug into my arms. “
You always come back to me.”
I pulled away slowly, leaving a whisper of a kiss on her bottom lip.
“The only reason I ever completely mastered fear was because of you.”

“
I never leave.”

I felt a vibration
under my lips. Actually, it was more like a volt of energy, one that was demanding that I did not retreat from the passion I had sparked. In shock, I pulled away and glanced down. There was the slightest fading glow on her lips.

“
Open your eyes.”

As she did
, the wash of blue was there and gone again. Dear Creator, she was truly trapped in there, she was trying to rise, to let me see the real her. I had no choice but to tell her that I could see that fight, that I knew when she was rising and when she was hiding.

I
braced her in my arms as gently as I could before I spoke my next words. “
I dreamed of a blue-eyed girl, and he dreamed of green-eyed girl.”

She started
to sink in my arms. Her legs had given out. You would have thought I’d sucked the life out of her. I was the brilliant one that decided to wait until now, the very last moment, to confess that sin. Confusion was coursing through her soul. She was in my dreams with me, and could not figure out why I was denying them now.

“
Your soul. The color of light that beams from your soul—from your eyes, is blue, Willow. You are
mine
.”
My arms flexed around her; they were trembling with raw emotion.

Strength came back to her instantly. I felt her tense in my arms as her gaze r
ose to meet mine. It was emerald, no blue to be seen. I was starting to understand what Justus had said to her. For the first time ever, I understood my dreams. I understood that her ego had changed the shade, not the herbs that Drake had given me. Her ego came to her defense. Her anger for her disposition had put that barricade between her soul and the rest of the world. Between her and me.

“
What’s happening to me?”
she asked.

“
I think you’re trying to let your soul rise for the first time in this life. That is our war right now, Willow. To face the future set before us, we have to be soul-to-soul. We have to trust each other with our entire selves. We have to forgive each other and ourselves for the wrongs we have committed.”

She closed her eyes softly and took in slow breaths. She was trying to quiet her mind. I knew her expressions well enough to know that she was not faring well. I was her rock, her anchor, someone who had little to no flaws in this lifetime when it came to her, and I had just shattered that by revealing an unspoken lie. I was going to have to help her face her fear before I revealed any
more.

“
I don’t like fear,”
she thought. It was as if she had been listening to my thoughts. She always had that power, that uncanny way of saying what I was thinking, or answering an unasked question. I stayed in a constant state of wonder at her side.

“
I never have. I had to shelf it long ago. It was the only way I could find the will to help my images. The only way I could find the will to fall asleep on the night of the new moons. I put fear aside so I could see you those nights. I even had some thin line of hope that one of my images would lead me to you. And in a way, I was right. I found you, and then I had no choice but to push fear further back; otherwise, I would never have left Franklin, stepped into that string.”