Lightning Kissed (8 page)

“Of course. Whatever you want.”

Whatever you want—those words were like a
dream to me. Theo and I were so similar. He and I pretended to be
so strong and solid to the outside world. We almost prided
ourselves on being the ones who stood in strength as others
faltered.

But when we were like this—one on one—shut
out from the world—this was when we were real, raw, and allowed to
be weak.

Anything I’d ever mentioned in passing or
called a faint desire for, he got me. We went to a parish fair one
time and I saw some cheap silver turtle necklace. I hadn’t even
wanted the damned thing, it just caught my eye. Theo and I were
thirteen at the time, and he bought it for me. The next week, I
found out he’d spent the last of his allowance money on me. I
cornered him by the lockers at school and tried to pay him back. I
asked him why he would do that.

“
Anything for you.” His pimply self
shuffled his shoes. Then he shrugged and added, “Whatever you
want.”

Theo touched my arm, bringing me back to the
present. “Talk to me.”

“Why don’t you want me to come with
you?”

He blew out a breath, causing his cheeks to
bubble out. He was thinking again—way too much for my taste.

“It’s dangerous.”

“If something happens, we flash.”

“The Synod will not look well on our
traveling together at our age without being bonded.”

He turned away from me as he said it. I knew
we would come to that subject, but I’d hoped to avoid it.

“We are just friends. There’s no
problem.”

His shoulders slumped.

“Don’t kid yourself, Colby. No matter what
you do, you and I will never just be friends.”

“So let’s do the bonding thing. We can go
together without anyone meddling and I can help you.”

Silence filled the space between us. I
realized the sharpness of my words after they came out—typical me.
Theo asked me to marry him when we were sixteen, and in the middle
of a heady kissing session, I’d agreed.

I tended to blame everything on Theo’s
talented tongue.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“You ended it with me because I’m some
fluke. I understand that now. But I can’t just pretend I’m only
your friend.”

“You’re not a fluke. Well, you are. I ended
it because I’m already in everyone’s spotlight. Our being together
is like taking out an ad on a billboard. Is that what you
thought?”

Theo turned on me, battling something so
vicious inside him that he shook as he spoke.

“What was I supposed to think? You wouldn’t
talk to me. You never talk to me—good or bad.”

I threw myself backwards on the bed. He was
right. It was completely purposeful. I could barely look him in the
eye after I’d broken it off between us, because I knew if he
muttered one damned Portuguese word or even touched me that I would
be done for.

I felt a depression on the bed and then
before I knew what was happening, his weight was on top of me, his
arms pinning mine above my head.

“Why must you break me?” He breathed into my
face. His hair danced along my forehead.

“I’m not.” I defied him.

“Yes, you do. Every time I’m in a room with
you and I can’t touch you—you break me. Every time you pretend that
we are only friends—you break me. Does it make you happy to break
me,
Querida
?”

“No.”

“Do you remember when you agreed to bond
with me all those years ago?”

Another nod. My throat was constricting
because I knew that tonight, Theo was going to break me.

“Why?” He phantomed kisses along the line of
my jaw. He knew it was my undoing.

“You know why.”

He shifted, letting my wrists go. His
expression changed back to the gentler, less Alpha Theo that I was
used to. “Just once, Colby,” he begged.

“Must you break me?” I mimicked his earlier
sentiment.

“Ahh,
Querida
.” He pushed some
miscreant hair behind my ear. “I’m not trying to break you—just
your walls. When are you going to let me in?”

“When you can promise not to hurt me or
leave me.”

“Says the woman who continues to break my
heart and push me away.”

We were at a standstill. He’d never been so
blatant in demanding an emotional response from me in words. He’d
never demanded anything of me. I squirmed under his stare. Gray
eyes bore down upon me, pleading for a piece of me. It ripped me
open.

This was the moment I’d dreaded forever. It
was like reaching inside myself without anesthesia and plucking an
organ out to give to him. That’s what it would feel like.

Right?

But my heart wanted to reach out to his and
soothe it.

“Theo.” The tears formed in my eyes. “You
know I love you. I always have.”

He buried his head in the crook of my neck
the way I had done to him the night before.

“I didn’t expect that,” he murmured, his
voice reverberating against the sensitive skin at my neck.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. That may be the best thing
I’ve ever heard in my life.”

My unemotional soul wished he would just
forget he ever heard it so I could tally up how many bricks were
lost in that small battle and replace them—quickly.

“What now?” I questioned.

“We go looking for whatever I am.”

“What about the bonding ceremony?”

“I don’t care what they think. I know what
we are. And I know who you are. I’m going to be sealed to you heart
and soul one day. If they don’t like our traveling unbonded, they
can just suck it.”

The man I loved was a sly, sneaky rat.

I smacked his bicep as hard as I could. “You
ass. All that crap and you don’t even care.”

“
Meu coração, está completo
.”

A shiver tore through me at his chosen
speech. I didn’t even care what the hell he was saying. I just
wanted him to say more of it.

“Speak English.”

“Doesn’t work as well on you,” he quipped
back.

Ass.

THE RESIN ARE NO LONGER
CONSIDERED LUCENT.

I had to admit, hearing Colby say she loved
me wasn’t what I expected to come from her.

I’d almost settled myself in for a lifetime
of not hearing it.

She got up from the bed, leaving me there
wanting so much more. We wouldn’t bond. I wouldn’t force her hand
just because the Synod expected her to. She never was much for rule
following anyway.

“Where are we going first? I need to speak
to my mother and Ari. I should tell Sway. How long will we be
gone?”

I hopped down from the bed. Realizing I was
only in boxers, I quickly grabbed a pair of jeans from the chair
and threw them on.

“I think Tibet is the best place to start
after we finish in New Zealand. Collin knows a good deal about
Eivan. But Sevella’s handwritten journals are in Tibet.”

She said nothing, so I turned around,
buttoning my pants, to see what was going on. She was mulling
something around in that pretty head of hers, I could tell.

“What?”

“We’re going to one of those
monasteries?”

“Yes.”

“With the shaved heads and the gongs and the
orangey robes?”

“Yes.”

She sighed really loud and dramatically. It
made me chuckle. I couldn’t pin down exactly what part she had an
aversion to.

“What is it? You can flash back home if you
don’t want to stay the night or you don’t want to be there. I can
still do this alone.”

Her worrisome pout turned in an instant into
one of credible anger. “I’m not backing out. I’m just not really
good at being quiet.”

I couldn’t help myself. I broke out into a
doubled over, stomach- cramping laugh. She so nailed it. She could
never be quiet—church, tests… you name it, Colby was going to talk.
She got kicked out of the SATs twice for talking to the person next
to her—who she didn’t even know.

“That’s it. I’m leaving if you’re just gonna
laugh all day. When are we beginning our journey?”

“Friday,” I answered, trying to compose
myself.

“I’ll see you then.”

“Wait.” I grew serious. I couldn’t let her
remember this night like that. I closed the gap between us with a
few steps. Pressing my forehead to hers, I placed one chaste kiss
on her still surprised lips. Then I popped her backside with my
hand. “Now let’s see what color your wake is.”

“No color whatsoever.”

She flashed out of my room and I chuckled at
the wake she left behind. It shimmered in pale notes of pink.

“Yep,” I said to myself in the mirror. “I
still got it.”

***

I skipped out Sunday afternoon after
spending more time with my parents. I got back to my rented cottage
in the backwoods of New Zealand. I spent some time observing my
shadow. That’s what I called him. From a distance, he looked like
just that—my shadow. He carried out meaningless tasks and even
turned out the lights when he was done. It was like having a zombie
for a twin without all the intestine chewing.

Then I simply said the words and his image
swished back into me.

It was weird, to say the least.

I called Collin and made arrangements to
come back on Friday, noting that I would have someone with me. He
seemed excited as Collin could get—which meant he didn’t yell at
me.

Colby had stayed pretty silent the past few
days. I supposed she was juggling her business around and prepping
for whatever we were heading into.

I didn’t worry about it. Colby’s word was
solid.

But I was nervous as hell for whatever would
happen next. Specifically, how everything would hash out with Colby
and me being together again. Not together-together, but in the same
proximity. I tried—God help me I tried to keep cool around her.
Holding up that façade of ambiguity was exhausting.

Cool and unattached just wasn’t who I
was.

Sharing my feelings with Colby was like
second nature to me. I couldn’t imagine being in her presence and
not commenting on how beautiful she was or not letting her know how
much I loved her. It came as easy to me as breathing. Mostly,
because she was my very breath.

I simply couldn’t survive without her.

Colby was the opposite. She was the opposite
of me in so many ways. She was beach when I was mountain retreat.
She listened to Moby while my earbuds blasted Roy Orbison. Colby
was defense, and I was always on the offense.

On the surface, nothing about us made
sense.

Until you got down to the core of
things.

I’d lost my brother only three months after
she lost her dad. Just like she never spoke of her dad, except on
his birthday, I never spoke of my brother.

Torrent hadn’t died. In some ways, it would
be better if he had. He’d simply disappeared. One day, he went to
bed on a normal school night, seven weeks before his high school
graduation. The next morning, he was gone. We shrugged it off at
first. Torrent was a track runner and a Varsity swimmer. He went to
practice and workouts early on a regular basis. Even when the
school called to report his absence midday, my mother thought it
was an oversight. We assumed because his car was still in the
driveway that he’d caught a ride with one of his many friends. But
that night, the official search began. He was a good bit older than
me, six years. Our family had spent hundreds of thousands of
dollars on private investigators, Lucent and human alike, trying to
find him. It killed my mother and nearly demolished my father.

They still kept his room as he left it and
his car unmoved from its spot. I knew they missed him and I did
too, but I couldn’t imagine Torrent would want their lives to stay
still. It was horrible to say, but I was almost glad for the
distraction when I discovered that I could flash. It became an
escape from the funeral home that was my house.

The depths of what could be for their now
only son kicked my parents out of grief and into protection
mode.

It happened on accident. And as if the
Almighty wanted me to be perfectly camouflaged when I discovered
the gift—I flashed for the first time in the middle of a
particularly noisy Louisiana thunderstorm. I was on the phone with
Colby, one of our never-ending phone conversations though we had
been together in school and most of the afternoon. When I closed my
eyes, I imagined being on the roof opposite her room so I could see
her through a window as she talked to me. Clutching my phone as my
only float through the waves of space, I suddenly landed in a
sloppy, bumbling mess on the roof I had imagined, watching her
through her open window.

She continued speaking to me as if the most
shocking and powerful moment of my life hadn’t just occurred. I had
patted myself down, expecting to lose body parts or some of the
depth of my form—something. But my body was just fine, and I
regained my balance in seconds.