In My Dreams (First Tracks Book 2) (10 page)

Jasmine

 “Hey, Jasmine,” a voice said behind me. I looked back and
waved at a Justin from my calculus class, then tried to add a friendly smile. I
didn’t feel like talking. I was on a mission to find coffee. Before he could
start my way, I turned around and kept going, joining the flow of students.

I covered a yawn as I walked. It was bad enough that it was
Monday morning, but I was extra tired from waking up during the night. Avery
didn’t come home before I went to bed at eleven, so every noise woke me up
until she got back around one thirty.

That wasn’t the only thing keeping me up. Nash and I
exchanged a few texts over the weekend. First he checked in to see if I needed
any notes or anything, which seemed pretty transparent. He could have simply
asked Avery if she needed more help. Then he asked if I was feeling better. And
after that he said I could talk to him if I needed a friend. But did he really
mean friend only?

This had turned into a weird week, but “weird” was becoming
a relative term. Adding to the weirdness, that strange feeling came over me
again. Knowing I’d see him somewhere close by, I glanced ahead and spotted Nash.
I wanted to turn around and avoid him but he was staring at me.

Was I ready to talk to him in person again?

As he came closer, I felt everything tilt. My vision faded.

“Jasmine.”

I thought about responding but instead I reached out a hand
to steady myself.

“Woah!” He wrapped both arms around me right as my knees
buckled. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

And he did. I clung to him, not caring about anything else.

Nash helped me over to a low stone wall and sank down with
me so we were side by side, his arms around me still like we were together. One
hand rubbed a circle on my back while the other rested on my waist. It’d been a
while since I’d felt a gentle caress like that. At the same time, his touch was
firm, reassuring. I let my head rest against his arm. He smelled fantastic. He
was warm and strong, offering me support that felt way too nice.

Slowly, the dizziness lifted and I noticed how many passing
people were staring. I straightened quickly.

“Wow, I’m sorry.” I blinked hard.

“What is going on with you? Have you been to the clinic? You
could be anemic or diabetic.” He stopped so quickly I looked up at him. The
green in his eyes stood out in this lighting. I’d really have to paint them. Or
tattoo them—oh, my god, that would make an awesome tattoo.

“Jazz? Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“No, it’s fine.” I dropped my face and let my hair fall
between us. It wasn’t fine, and I might have turned a pretty shade of rose.

He brushed my hair back and tucked it behind my ear in a
strangely intimate touch. It almost seemed like I felt his touch on my neck but
I couldn’t have. I finally peeked at him. With his face so close, I studied his
eyes more and saw little flecks of brown and darker green.

“Jazz, how are you fine? You were too dizzy to stand up last
time I saw you, and this time you actually fell over.”

“No, I did not fall over.” I tried to glare at him but those
greenish eyes looked so concerned.

He scoffed playfully, a small smile teasing the corners of
his mouth. God damn that was a nice mouth too. Raising an eyebrow, he said in a
low voice, “You didn’t fall over because I caught you.”

“I just need some caffeine,” I said. “I was up waiting for
Avery to get home…” Dang it, why did I mention her?

His eyes and entire expression darkened. Was he still torn
up over Avery? I understood that after my experience with Corbin, and I couldn’t
tell you why I fell in love like I did then. I could see why someone would feel
that for Avery. He didn’t answer right away so I jumped right back into
talking.

“Sorry, I know things have been tough.”

“Do you really think caffeine is going to fix what’s going
on?” Nash asked, and I realized he hadn’t heard me. He was just thinking about
me.

“No… I, uh—It only happens when I see you.” I almost clamped
my hand over my mouth. Did I say that out loud? I bit my lip to keep any other
random comments from bursting out. Nash stared into my eyes, but he didn’t act
surprised. His face hardly changed until his gaze dropped down to my mouth.

Oh, my fucking god, that look totally turned me on. My lungs
pulled in air, suddenly, sharply, and I had to straighten because I felt a
horrible urge to bump into him or wiggle closer or something crazy.

“Want to go get coffee together?” he asked out of the blue,
but maybe it wasn’t. I’m starting to follow how his mind works, and how he
makes jumps in conversation and expects me to follow.

I nodded and we got up together. The dizziness was
completely gone as we started off walking side by side.

“Does it feel strange to have her back?” he asked, and I’m
not sure I wanted to talk about Avery. We needed to, though.

“At first I was worried she’d be mad at me still.”

Nash looked over suddenly, surprised, and I remember that he
didn’t know about Avery going to the Portland hospital or how I called to warn
them. We arrived at the student center and went inside to the coffee shop. One
person was ordering and another waiting, but I didn’t try to explain while we
stood in line. Nash watched me for a minute before reading the menu. When our
turn came, he extended his hand for me to go first.

“Just a house coffee,” I told the young barista. She looked Swedish
to me due to her straw blond hair and round face, but that’s probably a
stereotype from cartoons I saw as a kid.

“Make that two.”

“That’s just two dollars,” she said with a perky smile. Nash
handed her a five and shook his head at my protest. She poured our coffees and
set them on the counter by the creamers. Both Nash and I poured in half and
half but no sugar. When we sat down by the windows, I held my cup close and
breathed in the reviving aroma. It was so nice, I closed my eyes for a few
seconds.

“So what happened? Why was Avery mad at you? I can’t imagine
anyone getting mad at you.”

I opened my eyes and found Nash completely focused on me
with those multicolored forest eyes. He’s so mysterious and sexy. His dark hair
is so thick and shiny. I bet it’d feel silky.

“That whole thing was actually real, in some sense,” I said,
making a leap.

His gaze stayed on me, but his focused turned inward. A
minute later he nodded. “The whole thing between Avery and that snowboarder?
And it was real in some sense, but not real like what you and I think is real?”

I liked this guy. I liked how he thought and analyzed. And
it seemed he knew some of the backstory.

“They really did have some strange connection. She was
hearing him before they met. I thought she lost it, like completely lost her
marbles. She drove up to Portland and I called the hospital to warn them. I
betrayed her.”

He sipped his coffee and leaned back to lean against the
wall. I relaxed a bit too, and didn’t look away as he studied me.

“She was angry?”

“She might have been without telling me. We didn’t talk for
a while. When we did… he had woken up and remembered her.”

I could see him working through things, but somewhere along
the line his eyes began roaming around my face, pausing on my mouth. His hand
touched mine then, surprising me because I was watching his face so intently. The
touch sizzled up my arm and through me.

She’s telling the truth.

“What?” As I spoke the word, I realized Nash hadn’t said
anything. Had that been a thought? I’ve heard of people sometimes hearing
other’s thoughts, but I didn’t buy into it. Not until now. But it had been so
clear and real.

Did he know I heard him?

“So how did it work? And when? Was she stringing me along?”

I shook my head, swallowing hard because I didn’t want to
tell him the truth here.

“She really liked you, and then you finally liked her back,
and then she hit her head on the snowboarding trip—remember that?”

“Yeah. So that’s when it happened? That’s the connection
between them?”

“Wow, I actually didn’t connect that. I wonder if all of
this is because we talked her into snowboarding that day! Crazy. She started
hearing him in the hospital, I think she said. She thought she’d gone crazy. I
mean, who wouldn’t? So she didn’t tell us anything strange was going on. But he
was constantly talking to her, driving her nuts.”

I couldn’t even imagine having a connection like that or how
I’d deal with it. Someone talking in your head?

This was the moment it hit me. Oh. My. God. It hit me so
hard I couldn’t breathe. Nash and I…

“Jasmine?”

What did I just do?

“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head both to clear it and to
put him at ease. Oh, fuck, I just answered his thought. Our eyes met because we
both knew it.

“Nothing?” he asked, puzzled, but he wasn’t completed
puzzled. More like…more like he was feeling what I was feeling and wondering
too.

“Maybe we should get to class.” I stood up and pulled on my
bag strap, but I had to adjust it three times to get it to stay on my shoulder.
My hand shook and he saw it too. I felt like a floppy rag doll.

“Jazz?” He reached for my wrist.

What else could I say? This didn’t make any sense. His hand
felt so warm wrapped around gently my wrist, and I just couldn’t make myself
move while he held onto me. His gaze was on my arm too, and I realized my
sleeve had come up. Nash was studying my latest henna design on my inner arm.

Finally he met my gaze and, a minute later, released my arm.

“I have to go.” I took several steps before looking back.

Nash was staring at me, completely openly staring at me
without any kind of apology in his look. When I reached the corner and checked
again, he was still staring after me. This gaze kept me there for a minute,
until someone walked between us, and I all but took off running to get away.

Nash

I watched Jasmine walk away and then sat at that table for
my entire next period. I can’t even tell you what class I missed.

I only knew the universe just shifted. Something happened
that I couldn’t explain, and everything felt different.

For starters, and this wasn’t the big thing, but I had the
sense that Avery hadn’t meant to hurt me, and that Marcus really had come into
her life after we started dating, just like she said. The first few minutes
that knowledge popped into my head, it
was
a huge deal. It changed my
perspective and attitude and all the hard emotions I’ve been feeling toward
Avery. Then that information faded in importance as something happened with
Jasmine.

Strangely, I felt like I knew her…and didn’t. I knew
something personal, or hidden, or secret, but I didn’t know what it was. At the
same time, I felt like I knew nothing about her and I wanted to know
everything.

How did I miss this all this time? Because I was focused on
Avery? I thought back through the school year and tried to bring Jasmine into
focus. Sure, she’d been there, but in the background. So why did everything
change so drastically today, with one look?

It wasn’t just a weird emotional thing and it wasn’t just
me. Jazz felt it too, and it shook her up so bad she had to run away.

And somehow I had missed how shockingly beautiful she was
until today—the gaze I couldn’t tear away from, the softness to her voice, the
seriousness in her words. She had the longest, darkest hair that glistened in
the sun. I wasn’t one to write romantic things, but she could inspire me. This
was unlike anything I’d ever felt before, even way beyond what I ever felt for
Avery, and that was saying a lot.  

I chased these thoughts and feelings around in circles until
a stream of passing people made me check the time. I wasn’t worried about my
classes or anything else except Jasmine. I wanted to catch her again…and there
she was, just starting to turn her head my way.  

Her mouth popped open. She stopped, causing a big football-player-size
guy to stutter stop behind her, trying not to knock her over. She didn’t
notice, and suddenly she was in front of me, looking at me with those dark,
dark eyes…eyes that went on forever, like deep pools of secrets. 

“Nash.” She glanced at the bench and back at me. “Did you
just sit here all this time?”

“I wanted to talk to you more.”

It’s okay.

I thought that and I could tell she heard me. She slowly
shook her head in disbelief, moving to one side and then very slowly to the
other. In contrast, her brain was clearly running in overdrive. I waited it out
a few minutes, somehow feeling all that activity inside her head, and then she
finally took two steps toward me.

“Maybe we can talk later.”

It was too much for her right now. I felt that. And I
nodded. She kept her gaze on me as she started to walk away. I wasn’t upset
that she needed time. She could tell that too. She stopped down the path, turning
and staring at me for another minute, before turning around and walking away.

It didn’t make any sense to her, and that terrified her. It
didn’t make sense to me either but I grabbed onto it.

While thinking about, I realized I was scratching my arm. It
itched like crazy. I pulled my sleeve up to check why, and did a double take.

What the hell?

There was some kind of blue drawing on my inner forearm,
like a long vine. If I went to parties, I might have wondered if I got drunk or
drugged or something and someone did this as a joke, but I don’t party. So where
could it have come from?

I grabbed my phone and googled blue skin stains and found
some information about jagua ink, something similar to henna, which is more
popular.

Jazz had a henna drawing on her arm. Curious.

This was getting bigger and stranger by the second. It
wasn’t like anything I had ever heard about, not even on one of those
paranormal shows.

I sat down again, trying to wrap my brain around all of it. I
jumped to a few conclusions before, involving Avery, and what really happened, but
it would have been beyond human understanding for me to accept what she told
me. With a flutter of nerves in my stomach, I texted her.

Hi Avery, I’m sorry about the other day. Friends?

A few seconds later, she texted back,
YES!

A minute later, another text said,
What changed? Or
should I ask?

I had anticipated this and still wasn’t sure how much to
share, so I simply said,
I talked to Jasmine.

Hopefully Jasmine wouldn’t mind. Avery didn’t text back, so
she might have sent something right off to Jasmine. I finally got up and
started back toward my dorm. At least a dozen times, I pulled up my sleeve and
looked at that vine.