Emanate: Insight Series ((Insight) Web of Hearts and Souls) (16 page)

She
covered her mouth and tried to turn away so I could not see her eyes welling with tears. “
I’m not heartless. I was always afraid on some level. I did tremble when I faced Donalt. But, each day I became less afraid…angrier. I just wanted bliss. I wanted to live without regret. Without fear that someone was going to rip us apart. Now I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to be afraid, but I don’t want to be mad either.”

“
You have to face it. Trust that I am right here, that I will love you so fiercely that no one would ever dare to bring harm to you.”

“I’ve always had that trust.”

Her voice was hollow. I felt her pain. She had no idea how deep she was inside herself. She thought she had given me everything, given us everything. I hated myself for not coming out and asking her outright for this trust in the first place.

“
It’s not fair to have to live it all over again,”
she thought.

The illusions of the past were going to eat
her alive as our home called us to make a stand. This was the worst of Saturn and Neptune rolled into one. I wasn’t going to let her mind get the best of her if it was the last thing I did. I had to make her see how far she had come today alone.

“
No, it’s not, but listen,”
I thought as I pulled her chin up and searched her eyes. “
When you woke up today, blue waved across your eyes, and every time you touch on a deep emotion it’s there again. That’s you. Fighting to get out. Your skin is humming, there is a glow under my touch…you’re fighting to come out.”

“
My skin glows? My eyes are changing? And you’re good with that? That doesn’t seem odd at all to you?”
She rushed her hands through her long, dark hair as she clearly fought to grasp a thought, to understand what the hell I was trying to tell her.

I bit my lip as I let out a sigh.

“The humming flesh, the glow…that is something that all soul mates in Chara sense and see with each other. That is something that, up until recently, we have been lacking.”

She stepped back abruptly.
“
We’re
lacking
a connection? Is that what you are saying? After dreaming every night together—being soul-to-soul, living life after life together, you’re telling me now we are
lacking
a connection?

If this w
ere a few days ago, I would be standing in the center of a hurricane, wrath would have been her weapon, and rightly so. Yet, right now she wasn’t mad, she was anxious. Scared that I was going to walk away from all of this. She still had no idea that she was my entire life.

“
No…I’m saying that you have been well sheltered in your vessel. I can’t tell you that I always knew that or assumed it. I never lied. I see your soul when I’m with you. I see everything I’m in love with. The color of your eyes, I saw that as my fault. I saw that as me not trying hard enough to connect with you.”

She stared at me as if I w
ere a mad man; maybe I was. I envisioned this revelation going any way than it was. There was sympathy in her eyes. She felt bad that I endured this on my own, that I knew this truth and she didn’t.

“
Why didn’t you tell me? You know you are the only one I trust without question. Why would you not just say, ‘Hey, Willow, back in the day before all this hell on Earth stuff, your eyes were blue. Why don’t you muse on why that changed?’”

I
brushed my hands through my hair, swallowed a curse. “
I know I could have. I could give you a million reasons. I could lay this out day by day, tell you what was going through my head every chance I had to bring it up, but honestly, Willow, we don’t have time to relive the past. We have to live now. If Justus is right, then your ego is large and in charge, or it was, and side-by-side with your ego was mine. I wanted to fix this curse, I wanted to prove that myths, scrolls, and whatever else could be told to go to hell. That we had free will and if we didn’t want to do something, then so be it. I failed at that. I failed you. I was too busy looking for a way out of this—to give you bliss, that I neglected to help you break out of this cage. And now some unseen force has seen fit to make you learn this the hard way. I want to take the pain. I want to feel the fear for you. I want to give you every reason to trust me enough to come out of that shell you’re in.”

Those sweet lips of her
s parted in shock. “
I’m not hiding from you. I didn’t think I was hiding from anything. I thought I was pushing through.”

And I knew that. I knew that and let her do
that.
“I thought we both were, but all we did was stand back-to-back and fight. We put a wall between us, we lost our innocence…long before this life.”

“
Then tell me how to get it back. How do I make it through these flashbacks, this cringing fear, and come out of it with any sanity at all?”

Even without anger
, she was still a fighter. For a second, I just stared in awe at her, not knowing how I managed to become the lucky fool that shared a soul with her.

“
When those moments come, I want you to remember the end. Not when we brought down a part of Donalt, not how bad it became after the visions you see, but the end. See me holding you, see us dancing under the stars, find those fleeting moments we fought tooth and nail for…fear only exists because we do not know the outcome. You know the outcome of those flashbacks.”

“
I don’t know the outcome of now. Why Justus is calling me what he is. Why you and Phoenix looked as if you had just been given your last rites when he spoke to you in the field. I don’t know what’s going on in Esterious, but I know I don’t...I can’t go there right now.”

“
You don’t feel called to Esterious right now?”

She clenched her chest and squinted her eyes closed as if she were in pain.
“
I just don’t think I’m supposed to be there right now. My…my soul wants to be in Chara. Even now, I want to rush back. I want to protect it, but I don’t know why.”

Moments like this
, I can always hear random words of wisdom my grandfather used to speak over me. I can’t even remember why he said it, but I clearly remember him raising a brow to me and saying, ‘Never underestimate a woman’s intuition.’

Willow was feeling called to Chara
, a sign my family would rejoice for if they knew of it.

She was confusing the life out of me
, though. Not more than two hours ago, she told me she was ‘not done.’ She led me to believe she saw right now as just another step toward a fate that was waiting on us, but with that last statement—it was like she wanted to commit to Chara and Chara alone. My grandfather never told me what to do when a woman’s intuition took her in two different directions.

“
I want to try something before I take you back, before I tell you what I know about what is waiting for us with this trial and what may or may not lie beyond it,
I said as turned to my side and pulled my shirt over my head and went for the buckle on my pants.

I glanced up when I felt her emotion. It was full of shock, co
nfusion, and a tinge of anticipation. I was sure I was blushing. Good. God. This woman was nothing less than intoxicating. Her lips were parted slightly, the glass panes of tears were gone, and her brow was raised just slightly.

She wasn’t afraid right now
, and she surely wasn’t mad; she thought we were about to lose ourselves in a seductive embrace. The thought was tempting, very tempting, enough so that I had to command that my body did not react to that request.

“
We’re jumping,”
I said with a nod to the cliff that was only a few feet away.

I felt fear spike in her
, but I smiled anyway. I walked over to her and pulled her top shirt over her head, revealing a thin tank top, then dropped her jeans. “
Adrenaline. It’s what most people use to fight fear.”
I shrugged as my gaze bashfully glanced over her. I could see her heart pounding in her chest…it was just under that glistening flower that promised a connection we had not yet found.

“
I don’t have a death wish, Chambers. I’m trying to find a way to avoid it,”
she quipped.

She was driving me mad in the most
amazing way. I’ve always felt too young to die. Too young for this to be the end. Standing here right now, staring at how perfectly the sun basked over her tan skin, I felt alive. I felt full of life.

Her gasp was the only thing that brought me crashing down to reality. She stepped forward
, staring at my chest. I closed my eyes and swallowed a curse. I had learned to pretty much ignore the pain in my chest. It wasn’t as bad now that the dagger could clearly be seen. It was growing darker by the minute, and details that I hadn’t seen before and couldn’t even fathom were starting to show.

“What is this?” she asked
, reaching for it. I held in the sigh I felt when she touched it and stilled my shocked expression when I saw the flower on her chest flash as if in recognition of my mark, when I saw a flash of blue wave across her eyes.

I clasped my hand over hers.
“
We are going to talk about this when we get back to Chara. Right now. Adrenaline,”
I said as I picked her up and moved her to the cliff. I stopped short and set her down before me. There was only enough room for her tiptoes.

Down b
elow, at least fifty feet, there was water. That water, which was deeper than it surely looked, spilled into another fall, then another. The stepping stones of giants, as Drake used to call them.

Her heart was
hammering; I could feel it against my skin where my arm was bracing her. I felt that fear saturating her. I leaned her forward, only for her to flare out her hands. There it was. I felt adrenaline. The fear was absent for a brief second.

“
I’m not throwing you off this cliff. You are going to have to fall. You are going to have to face this terror.”

“Did I not
tell you of my fear of heights!” she said, pushing her body against mine. I couldn’t stop the grin that spread across my face. I loved how she felt against me. How perfectly she fit in my arms. The slight laugh in her tone was washing away the heavy moment we had shared just before. I didn’t feel like an old soul at that moment. I felt nineteen. I felt like I’d stolen an afternoon with the most beautiful girl in creation.

“
You told me you didn’t want to be afraid.”

“You have jumped this?”

“More times than I could count.”

“You didn’t fear this
?”

“
I’ve only ever had one fear,”
I said as I playfully leaned forward. One of my arms braced her against me as my other hand provocatively moved across her body, my lips brushing across her shoulder. “
Not being the man you needed me to be.”

“
You are the only man for me, Chambers. Get me off this cliff, and I will express that earnestly.”

“
Is that a promise?”
A low, sinful laugh came from somewhere deep in my throat as I leaned her forward once more.

She screamed
, but it was laughing scream. A nervous laugh, but it was still a laugh.

“
No cheating. No energy. Just fall. Trust the end. Regret is worse than anxiety.”

“You think I’m going to regret not jumping off a cliff?”

That made me bellow with laughter. I loved her wit. “
You know what I mean. This is play. You learn best at play.”

She glanced back at me as if my words were an echo of what she’d heard before. Through my touch
, I saw Nana, Draven’s grandmother, telling her the same thing. “
She was right then. I’m right now,”
I said with a wink. I let my arms fall from in front of her and stepped to the side. “
Together. We’ll go together.”

Her eyes were wide as
she stared down at the pristine blue water below.

She gave me one quick nod
, and before I could blink she broke out into a swan dive and was sailing through the air, laughing or screaming—I wasn’t sure which. All I knew was that fear was gone right now. Adrenaline was consuming her.

Chapter
Ten

~ Willow ~

I fear deep water. I fear heights. Those are foolish things to fear considering what I’ve done in my lifetime. These are fears you deal with as a child. You learn your boundaries. What you will and will
not
do. I never learned those. I avoided them. And apparently, I have avoided a lot of other fears, too. But I didn’t care about that as I flung my body over that cliff.

The wind was cool
, but the warm sun was glistening on the water that was coming closer and closer every second. Before I could find fear, my body soared through the water below, which was clearer than any swimming pool known to man. The weight of my fall only took me halfway down, but I kept swimming; I wanted to reach the bottom just to say that I did.

Before I could reach
it, I felt Landen’s arms around my body, the heat of his frame warming a chill I didn’t even know I had. He soared us through the water toward the rock embankment. With me in his arms, we flew out of the water, only to land softly on the edge of another fall.

He said
something to me, but it was even more muffled with the water crashing down around us.

“
It’s slippery here. It makes the next jump harder.”

Next
one? He wanted me to go down further? I couldn’t even fathom how far down this jump was; all I could see was white water washing down at an insane speed. I adjusted my feet between a few rocks, trying to give myself some kind of anchor.

I stared up at him with wide eyes. I could feel the adrenaline
pumping through my body, the tepid bliss of it easing me. The high that was taking over my mind.

Then again
, that high could have been Landen himself. I’m not sure if it was because I had never laid eyes on his body basking in the sun or because he was soaking wet or the yet-to-be-explained tattoo down the center of his chest, but as he raised his arms to sway his wet, dark hair out of his face and every lean, sculpted muscle of his body flexed and shined in the sun, I simply lost my ability to breathe. His eyes, which were enchantingly blue under this pure sun, glanced over me once as an audacious grin consumed him, amplifying the dimples I loved so much. Every day, I discovered something more about him. Another reason to love him. Another reason to fight to keep him forevermore mine.

A few days ago
, I was scared that I had lost the Landen I fell in love with. That The Realm or the past of a Phoenix had forevermore changed him. It may have been the silence, the beauty around us, but I felt like I was lost in a blissful dream with him. No one else existed at this moment.

“
You have to jump out on this one.”

I glanced
warily from him to the bottom that I could not possibly see beneath this raging water, feeling that horrid fear consuming me again.

“
You have to brace yourself, then jump out. There are rocks under that water. You have to clear them before you can fall.”

“I can’t see past the fall.”

“But you trust me when I tell you that it’s a pool just like this one,”
he said with a nod behind him.

“I can’t see it.”

“That’s what makes it fun,”
he said, grinning even wider as he rolled his shoulders then leaned forward and made it seem as if he were looking down at an insane depth. He raised his brow as if to say this was harder than he remembered.

“That’s what makes it terrifying.” I still wasn’t over the shock factor that apparently at one time h
e and Drake were BFFs. The idea of them jumping off this for the hell of it when they were kids was not sitting well with me. None of this was sitting well with me. I wanted to ask a million questions. I wanted to be mad. I wanted to understand, but all of that, all those rambling thoughts that always led to erratic emotions, were stifled by the moment.

All I wanted was to be right here. Right now. At his side.

He reached for my hand. I felt the calm he was giving me, but every rational cell in my body told me this was wrong, so wrong.

“
I won’t let anything hurt you. I’ll never make you do anything you don’t want to do. You have to choose. Either you let fear win, or you grab the high of adrenaline.”

I wa
nted to feel that high again. The adrenaline had made me feel weightless. Made me feel invincible.

I glanced down and measured
the rapid water once more. I couldn’t see the rocks. The danger. But I knew it was there. Just under that beauty of white water. I crouched down, and then pushed myself up. I flew through the air. I missed the fall by at least three feet, but to my surprise the pool of water was no less than five feet from where I’d jumped. I fell hard into that pool, feeling Landen crash in beside me.

I shook my finger at him with a playful glare as I went to swim up
, but he pulled my body to his, wrapping himself around me, letting his smiling lips connect with mine, slowly letting us rise to the air that we should breathe in but didn’t bother to notice was available as we surfaced and our kiss fell deeper.

He pinched my
sides, which caused me to laugh out loud. He floated in the deep pool, pulling me against him.

“I was convinced it was
a hundred foot drop, that I would be falling for days. That’s why I used that much force.”

“
And how did you feel when you figured out it wasn’t that bad?”

“Like a fool for fearing it.”

He nodded once as he laughed out loud, telling me that was exactly what he wanted me to feel. I could have stared at him in that water, under that bright sun and pristine blue sky that could not dream to match the addictive color of his eyes, for lifetimes.

I rarely saw him at ‘play.’ I mean
, I had seen him joke around with his family, play football, laugh at the random nonsense I would say, but it was almost like right now…he was free. There were no chains holding him to any curse or past, or future for that matter. It gave me hope that something like this could be in our future. That we could spontaneously run away to a private getaway, one where I would learn even more about him, discover every inch of his mind, body, and soul.

I swam closer to
him, wanting to feel his lips on mine, his body next to mine. But he kept swimming backward. His long legs hooked around my waist as his powerful arms pulled us through the water.

“
One more.”

“
How can there be another?”

He just laughed as I felt the current begin to pull us to a
silent edge. I wasn’t sure I liked how still everything seemed to become. A second later, I could feel rocks on my feet. He stood, helping me up.

“
Watch your balance, the rocks are slippery,”
he warned.

We had
reached the silent fall, and I could see the bottom of this one. It was easily twice the size of the fall that started this nonsense.

“No way
,” I breathed as I looked behind us and realized how far I had fallen in the first place. There was no way up, and the only way off what we were on was to jump. “Point of no return,” I mumbled.

“
The point of no return began when we decided to jump, not when we realized how far we’ve come or how far we have yet to go.”

“Deep.”

“The water, very.”

I threw
him a playful glare. He knew I was talking about him, but he was keeping my focus on what was in front of me—or rather, what was below me.

I felt my heart hammering. Even though there was nothing but fresh air to breath
e, I felt the Earth closing in around me. No way out. Now or never. I was voting for never.

“
You know, if you really don’t want to do this, or anything else, I will move heaven and hell itself to protect you from it.”

My eyes locked on his. I knew with my gifts of moving my body
, I could propel myself up that cliff. With his Phoenix powers, he could whisk us back to our living room. That was common knowledge. So, I knew his words were weighed, that he had something even more revealing to tell me or show me, and I was sure it had everything to do with Justus’ outlandish claims—or maybe something more.

“The only way to make my demons go away is to face them. Fear is that to me now
,” I asserted.

His smile was a proud one.
One that I wasn’t sure I was reading right. If I could figure out how to turn my insights on to where I could only feel him, I would gladly do so. But what I feared right now, more than anything, was being as out of control as I was before. I dreaded that fear would kill me if I were able to feel it on a higher vibration than what I was feeling now.

I edged my feet closer
, now seeing that this was a straight drop, one so far that I doubted even if I could hear, would I hear the water falling at the other end. Trusting that I would find that rush once more, that I would land in a basking pool of water, I jumped. At first, I didn’t even mock a dive; I just stepped off. Somewhere halfway down, right when I felt that kick of adrenaline, I used my energy and moved my body in the air, forming a dive. One that was so on point that I doubted the water even made a splash as I fell beneath it. I fell so deep, so fast that I heard my ears pop.

I thought for sure I had broken whatever barrier I’d been behind with my hearing.  I turned and soared to the top of the water
, only barely kicking my way up. I felt Landen reach for my hand seconds before we broke the surface.

Nothing. I
still could not hear the way I wanted to. There was still a muffled barricade between myself and the rest of the world, but I didn’t care. I leaned back in the water and gazed up at the path I had just taken. Even from here, it looked dangerous, foolish to even try. It was one of those impossible moments that filled you with such an insane amount of joy that you never wanted to come down from the high you had found. Every part of me felt energized, alive.

Landen’s gaze was serious as he swam closer to me. His hand cupped my face as his thumb traced the bottom of my eye. The way he was looking
at me was ineffable…he hadn’t gazed at me like this since I was sixteen and we met in our dreams.  Sometime after that point, my nightmares became more violent. They hurt more. I drew inward. He was the only thing I looked forward to each day.

“
You’re winning this war.”

“Blue?” I questioned
, still not understanding what he meant about this lacking connection he thought we had. Logic was telling me that if my body didn’t hum or whatever and it didn’t glow, then that just meant we were different. We’ve always been different from the others. Neither of us sought to be the same.

“
Blue for an instant…”
His hands moved across my body. “
I feel you reaching out for me.”

I pulled his chin closer to me and slowly framed his lips with mine.
“
You save me every day.”
I wrapped my arms around his shoulders.

I couldn’t believe that I woke up terrified and sobbing today
, and he had brought me to this point.

“Y
ou did this as a kid—do you understand how dangerous this is?” I asked, pulling away from his kiss.

He leaned back and nodded to a distant cliff
, where I could see a tattered shirt hanging from a branch, maybe fifty feet down. That cliff was higher than the one we had traversed.

“
That’s Drake’s,”
he thought with a boyish laugh as his powerful arms started to pull us to the shore.

I moved my head
from side to side. I still could not understand this past friendship. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I felt bad enough standing between them when I thought they hated each other. Knowing they had a kinship was almost painful. Then again, knowing the two of them, how they saw the world, it almost made sense, or at least it was just as jacked up as everything else was.

“Did you fight because of me?”

He moved his head from side to side as he pulled us up on the bank. “
We grew apart long ago. He fell into his role, and I fell into mine. I checked on him a lot, but we said our goodbyes.”

I
stared at him endlessly, thinking back over the last few months, everything the three of us have been through.

“
Is that why no one gave you grief over having him around?”

He furrowed his brow at me
, playfully telling me two things: one, he was wondering if I was in the same room with him when his family
did
give him hell about Drake; and two, he was telling me he didn’t really care what they said.

“
Only Brady knew. My dad would have killed me if he knew I was hanging out with anyone from Esterious. Brady understood my leeway. He understood that Drake and I had gotten each other through a wicked adolescence. Everyone else just trusted our love.”