Vengeance (2 page)

Chelsea picked up a napkin and wiped her mouth and hands. “He’s going to be so happy when you speak to him again.” She smiled.

“Until he hears what I’ve got to say.”

“You’ve got to try to work things out with him. You can’t just walk away.”

“Whatever happens tomorrow, I know things will never be the same again. We won’t be able to go back.”

Chapter 3

I barely slept all night because I couldn’t stop thinking about what was going to happen when I finally saw Aiden. And by the time we had to go to the hospital, I was a nervous wreck.

“You ready?” Chelsea asked, standing in the doorway with her bag.

Ready? Yeah, I’d been ready since five a.m. when I had showered, gotten dressed and sat outside on the balcony, watching the waves roll in while I waited for ten o’clock. I stood up and went back inside. “No.”

“Come here,” she said, holding out her arms. When I didn’t step into them, she came over to me and pulled me into a hug. “You’ll be okay.”

I sighed. “Yep. Time to put on my big girl panties.”

She laughed, and I transported us to the same spot where we had run into Aiden the previous day. When my body became aware of my surroundings I froze, unable to breathe, as a familiar feeling washed over me.

“He’s here,” I whispered into Chelsea’s ear.

“I know. He’s behind you.”

“Jade,” he called, walking closer to us.

My heart was racing as I turned around. I stopped breathing when I laid eyes on him. The desperate look in his eyes alone could’ve killed me, but his thoughts were killing me over and over again.

“Can we talk?” he asked, hoping I wasn’t going to disappear again.

Unable to speak, I nodded. He smiled, but even that was heartbreaking. He knew that whatever I had to say wasn’t good. But I needed to tell him.

“I’ll leave you guys to it,” Chelsea said, backing away.

Not taking his eyes off me, he said to Chelsea, “Lucas is upstairs waiting for you.” He had asked Lucas to come and fill in for him just in case I showed up again.

“Thanks,” she said, then turned around and jogged up to the hospital’s main entrance.

“Want to go for a walk?” he asked.

I nodded. “But not here. Can we go someplace where we know no one is listening?”

“Sure.”

He was about to suggest going to the Currumbin rock pools, but I realised that Nathan could have planted that suggestion in his mind, so I said, “I know a place.”

We stepped behind the tree, and I transported us to Burleigh Heads. We landed in a discreet section off the walking track. Neither of us said a thing as I led the way, taking us down to the beach.

Being so close to him without touching him was almost too much. My entire body was hyper-aware of how close we were. It felt as if some magnetic force was pulling us together, which I had to continuously fight.

Aiden dropped his hand to his side, hoping I would put my hand in his, but at the same time thinking it would never happen. I sat down on the edge of the boardwalk, letting my legs dangle above the sand. Aiden moved to sit beside me and waited patiently for me to speak. I was glad I had picked that spot because somehow watching the waves rolling in gave me the distraction I needed to tell him the truth.

“I’ve thought so hard about how to say this.” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

Aiden put his arm around my shoulders but quickly removed it when I tensed. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. He didn’t understand why or how I could react that way to his touch.

I shook my head. “Don’t be sorry. You don’t know any better.”

What I said confused him more, but he didn’t want to say anything just in case it upset me.

“Oh, my God! This is hard.” Tears formed in my eyes.

“Just start with why you left me. Everything was going good, and then all of a sudden, something happened, and you left… without any explanation.”

“I know, I know. And I’m sorry. I really am. It’s just… I needed time to process something.” Actually, I needed time to grieve, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.

“Process what?” Aiden asked.

I took a deep breath. “Okay. Remember how Harry asked me to come see him just after we sat down at lunch the other day?”

“Yeah,” he said softly, thinking Harry had something to do with it. And if that were true, Aiden was already planning the ways he would make Harry pay for whatever he had done.

“Well, you know Harry found out I’d been drugged and he gave me something to counteract what I’d been given? Well… oh, God. How am I going to say this?”

He put his arm around me but didn’t pull back when I flinched. “Whatever it is you have to tell me, it’s okay. I’m here for you, and I always will be.”

I hadn’t wanted to look at him, but after he said that, I did. My lip began quivering, and my vision became blurry from the tears.
“You don’t know how much I wish that were true,”
I said silently, afraid my voice would fail me.

“Jade, you’re killing me with this. Could you please just tell me what’s wrong?”

I looked into his green eyes, wanting so badly to see them happy again, but I knew that what I was about to say would only make them sadder. “When the stuff Harry gave me counteracted the drug my father gave me, it changed me.”

Aiden pulled his eyebrows together. “Changed you how?”

“I could hear things I shouldn’t. I know things I shouldn’t. And something I heard made me realise we couldn’t be together anymore.” Tears spilled down my cheeks.

Running his hand down my arm, he turned his body to face me. “What did you hear?” The sickness in his gut rivalled mine.

“I know this is going to sound crazy, but it’s true.” I paused to settle my heart rate enough for me to continue. “I can hear your thoughts. And not just yours, but everyone’s.”

“Yeah?” he said, wondering what the big deal was.

“It’s a big deal because I can hear your thoughts right now, and I know you still have your mind block up.”

Aiden’s eyes widened in surprise. “Okay, that’s like some major shit and all. And if you told me any other time, I’d be all over it. But right now, I don’t get what that has to do with why you left me.”

“I know who my father is.”

“Something tells me that’s not as good news as what we’d hoped it would be.”

“No, it’s not.” There was no easy way to say it so I just blurted, “Nathan’s my father.”

“That can’t be. There’s no way Nathan’s your dad.” Aiden laughed.

I looked him in the eye, waiting for him to stop his panicked laughter. “It’s true. I heard his thoughts. And that’s the reason why I left you.”

“You left me because you think Nathan’s your father? That doesn’t even make sense.” He looked down and shook his head as he thought about it. He’d known Nathan ever since he could remember.

“I know it sounds crazy, and I’d be thinking the same thing if I hadn’t heard his thoughts, but I did. And I know it’s true. He’s my father.”

“Say all this is true… what does Nathan being your father have to do with why you can’t be with me?”

I sighed. “We were only together because of him.”

Aiden snapped his head up. He didn’t know what to say. Too many things were running through his head, and he thought if I really could hear his thoughts, then speaking wouldn’t matter.

“Think about it,” I said, ready to answer his unspoken questions. “Your parents didn’t meet Nathan until after you were born, because up until then, he was with my mother. Nathan has a lot of medical knowledge, but we don’t really know where or how he picked it up. He knows how to fix whatever it was that DD does. He was constantly interested in where my mother was. We always wondered how my father knew where we were and what was going on in our lives. That’s because he had inside knowledge. He was playing us while he pretended to be helping us. It’s him.”

The more he thought about everything I said, the more it started to make sense to him. And soon alarm bells were ringing. “Holy shit,” he said when his mind had wrapped around the truth. He cupped my face in his hands, kissed me, then pulled back, leaving me speechless.

“So we’re okay then?” he asked, relief filling his soul. The smile in his eyes vanished when he saw my expression. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”

I nodded. “We’re together because of him.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. He wasn’t even there the day we met.”

“I know. But I heard him thinking about how he made you meet me that day at the beach. He made you fall in love with me. It was all part of his master plan to bring me closer to him.”

He shook his head. “No, that can’t be.”

“It’s true. I’ve seen it for myself. I know he’s been in there,” I said, looking at his forehead. “You don’t love me.”

Aiden picked up my hands and held them tightly. “Yes, I do love you.”

“But that’s only because he made you! You never made the conscious decision on your own. You can’t know if you’d even like me if it wasn’t for his interference.”

“How do you know it was Nathan’s doing, and I don’t
really
feel like this?”

“Because I can see inside your mind. “

“If you can see inside my mind, you’d know I don’t care what he’s done. I love you, and even if it’s all because of him, I don’t care.” He tucked a piece of my hair behind my ear and put his hand on my cheek. “I’m happy. You make me happy.” He honestly couldn’t see a problem with our situation.

That was what scared me the most. “You might be okay with it—even if it’s because of him—but I’m not.” When he started to object, I added, “You may think you love me, but you don’t.”

“Shit, Jade,” he said as he stood up. “What do you expect me to do? I can’t just sit back and watch you throw us away like this.”

I got to my feet. “I’ve gone over and over this with Chelsea, but I can’t find a way to make it work.”

“Chelsea knows about this?” He wondered why he hadn’t been able to get anything from her thoughts.

I answered his unspoken question. “I’ve been wiping her mind clean of everything we’ve discussed every time she goes to the hospital. And then when she comes to the hotel, I put her memories back again.”

Aiden stared at me, unable to believe I could do that so easily.

“I told you I can do things I never could before.”

“Jade, I don’t get what I’m supposed to do. How am I supposed to prove to you that I love you, when as far as I’m concerned, I do and always have?” He took a step closer and picked up my hand. “I don’t want this to be the end of us.”

“I don’t want that either,” I whispered.

“Then there has to be a way to make this work. I can’t spend the rest of forever missing you.”

“You won’t have to,” I said. “I can take your hurt away.”

His hurt and frustration disappeared instantly as an idea popped into his head. He thought that if I could take Chelsea’s memories away so easily, then I could do the same to him.

“You want me to make you forget you love me?” I asked in surprise. But as soon as I said it, I realised how ingenious it was.

“Think about it,” he said, taking my other hand. “You can’t be with me because you don’t know if I really love you. But if you take it away and I fall in love with you again, which I will, you’ll know for sure it’s all me.”

I had to admit that the idea was a good one. But there were other factors involved. “If we do this, then it’s going to get a little tricky.”

“How so?”

“Well, if there’s any chance for us, then I still need to be in your life.”

“And the problem with that is?”

“Nathan.”

He stood there thinking for a moment. His thoughts mirrored mine, but he seemed a little more eager about the idea. “Then we’ll have to keep up the façade that we’re together in front of him and everyone else,” he said.

“What if you don’t want that after I take away your feelings?”

He smiled. “Then you’ll know I won’t ever love you again. But—and this is a big
but
—that’s
never
going to happen.” He pulled me into his arms and kissed me on the top of my head. “You’ll see. I’ll be loving you all over again before you know it.”

I leaned my head against his chest, wondering if it would be the last time I would be in his arms because he wanted me there. “I hope you’re right.”

Chapter 4

“When do you want to do this?” I asked Aiden as we walked along the shoreline.

We had been discussing the logistics. I would take away the love he felt for me, but I would have to leave all the memories he had of us together. Otherwise, someone might get suspicious, and Nathan could figure out that I knew his secret. We were going to have to pretend that nothing had changed between us.

“Well, are you ready to face Nathan again?”

“No. But I know I have to. If there’s any way I can beat him, then I need to
know
him and what he’s planning. I need to know what he’s done. And I have to go back before he gets any more suspicious about why I left.”

“What are you going to tell everyone about why you were gone?”

“I don’t know. PMS?” I said with a laugh.

He laughed. “You girls will blame anything on that, won’t you?”

I shrugged. “Well, it works.” We strolled onto the sand as we both tried to think of a good reason for my unexpected absence.

“What about a mini melt-down?” Aiden suggested.

“So you think they’ll go for the crazy girl reason?”

He smirked. “Something tells me it won’t be that hard to convince them.”

“You know that won’t work anymore. Remember, I know what you’re really thinking.”

“And so the tables have turned.” He put his arm around my shoulders.

I laughed. “Welcome to my life before I learned to block you guys.”

We walked on in silence, both of us wanting to make the most of the time we had before he would forget.

He stopped walking and turned me into his arms. “I love you. I know you don’t believe it, but it’s true.”

I looked up into his eyes, tears welling in my own. “I love you, too.”

He leaned down and kissed me softly on the lips. He didn’t want to break away, but he knew he had to.