Watch Me: Teen Paranormal Romance (A Touched Trilogy Book 3) (11 page)

“It doesn’t always need to be a happy experience to be worth loving someone,” I said. “Sometimes it’s enough to love them for a little while. To know that for even a short time, they meant the world to you and you would have done anything for their happiness.”

“And when it’s over?”

“When it’s over, it’s okay to let them go.”

Bastian didn’t say anything for a long moment, staring at me. His head tipped to the side with audible cracks. When he finally spoke, the seriousness disappeared, and he was back to the Bastian who could annoy me in a single sentence.

“Such a scenario seems to be fairly depressing and, while you may be able to find a few exceptions, it further exemplifies my point that nothing good comes from love.”

“There’s something seriously wrong with you,” I said, tired of whatever game he seemed to be playing.

“You judge me as odd because I expect to get something in return for loving someone? Shouldn’t you expect something back? Love? Happiness?”

“Love doesn’t guarantee happiness. If you truly love someone giving them happiness should be enough.”

“I find your continued arguing to be very revealing. I wonder if you would feel such conviction if this love you believed in failed to live up to your expectations. Would you still believe in its worth?”

His words pierced me. I would always believe. For Phoebe and Lily and our dad. For all of my friends and the people around me, I knew they would love and it would always be worth the pain they felt.

But for me, love would end and when it did, I wouldn't let myself love again. What did that say about my convictions? How could I continue arguing with him if deep down I knew I would never open my heart again?

“Shall I take your silence for acquiescence?”

“I find it sad that not only have you never experienced love, but that you never wish to. Or maybe it’s that you’re just some robot who is incapable of feeling love.”

He stared at me with eyes gone hard. “I didn’t say I’d never felt love, only that I don’t dream of it being in my future. Perhaps the real issue is I’m not capable of being loved.”

Chapter 12

Bastian walked away, his back poker straight. Okay, so I’d been a little rough on him. Why had I bothered to argue with him again? Other than frustrating me, it never got me anywhere with him, yet for some reason I couldn’t help myself. We just rubbed each other the wrong way.

“Bastian!” I called as I followed him through the house. I caught up to him right at the front door, grabbing his hand to pull him to a stop. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed…”

“You’re correct. You shouldn’t have assumed I ended the conversation because of your harsh examination of my loveless future. I simply decided to see if Daniela is here yet.”

“Who’s Daniela?”

“The girl you plowed down as you stalked me through the halls the other day. Much like you are now.”

“I am not stalking you.” I smiled and gave a slight laugh. “Even if all evidence points to it.”

“The evidence is fairly overwhelming, but I suppose we could attribute some instances to chance.” He returned my smile.

“Why is it we can never have a normal conversation?” I asked.

“Why would we want to? I find the oddities in life to be much more interesting. If our conversations were normal, I suspect I’d be less inclined to want to converse with you.”

It felt weird to realize I agreed with him. If he weren’t so strange, he wouldn’t be friends with Phoebe or Bianca, and the two of us would never have a reason to talk. Most of all, if our conversations were normal, I don’t think I’d even remember them. And as annoying as he was to talk to, I always felt alive after. That wrong way rubbing seemed to spark something in me.

“It might help if you didn’t keep trying to prove me wrong,” I said.

Sebastian’s gaze grew intense and I tried to read his eyes, but in the darkened room, it was impossible. He shifted, the movement tugging at my hand and I realized it still clasped his. Letting go, I dropped my hand to my side, curling my fingers in at the tingles running through it.

“Perhaps I’m not trying to prove you wrong so much as I’m trying to get you to prove me wrong.”

“So you do believe in love.”

“No, I don’t, but I wish I did.”

“I…” My words drifted away as a thick haze gathered around him.

I stepped back reluctant to enter his future and risk seeing something other than what I wanted to. My retreat halted. I’d completely forgotten my whole purpose in being at the party, or getting Bastian to be here.

Andrew.

I turned and ran through the living room, pushing people out of my way. Once outside, I searched the backyard, but he was no longer by the fire. I quickly made my way over to Travis and Javier.

“Hey, have you seen Andrew?” I asked, my heart thundering in fear.

“He went back inside a while ago,” Travis said.

“Like how long?”

He shrugged and tossed a handful of grass into the flames. “I don’t know. You and that guy were talking.”

“Bastian?”

“Sure. Whatever. Maybe two or three songs ago.”

Great. That meant Andrew had been gone five minutes, possibly more. A few minutes didn’t seem like much time when you considered the number of minutes the average person would live through in their lifetime. But I knew how five minutes was enough time for everything you knew or dreamed of could end.

“Why didn’t he come get me?”

Travis snorted. “I’m not his nanny. The guy went to take a leak. Were ya gonna hold his hand?”

“You’re gross.” I swatted at his arm as he and Javier laughed.

I went back in, searching for Andrew in the mass of bodies moving around the rooms. Going into the kitchen, I ran into Owen and Bianca, both of whom looked way too serious.

“Where’s Nadine?” I asked, my instincts and suspicions going into hyper drive.

Owen shrugged and walked off.

“That was weird,” I said to Bianca, who gave me an apologetic smile.

“He and Nadine broke up. So, we’re gonna take off and try to catch the last half of the derby.” She moved to go around me, but stopped when I put my hand on her arm.

“What about Nadine? Have you seen her?” I asked.

“After she and Owen broke up, she disappeared out upstairs,” Bianca said. “Holy crap, do you think she and Andrew are…? I totally forgot about that.”

My stomach heaved as I turned away from Bianca and headed for the stairs. Every step I took came with a prayer that everything I did worked. As easy as it would be to check my future, I needed to see this with my own eyes.

I’d never been upstairs in Javier’s place, but the wallpaper was unmistakable. The hideous floral pattern looked even more garish than in my visions. Each door I passed was open and empty. I turned a corner and there at the end of the hall was the only closed door.

I stopped outside of it, unsure if I wanted to confront what- who was behind it. If the vision was true then all of my efforts to change it had been for nothing and the tiny ray of hope I held of my gift being more than simply a tool to torture me with would die. As would the possibility of a future with love.

The possibility of something other than the future I expected was equally terrifying. If I succeeded in changing this event, then I had no clue what would come next.

“Are you gonna stand there forever?” Bianca whispered behind me.

I glared at her over my shoulder, giving her a quiet shush. I wasn’t ready to face it yet, but she wasn’t willing to wait. She reached past me and swung the door open. My heart jumped into my throat. Someone lay on the bed and the sparkly fabric covering that body was, without a doubt, Nadine’s new dress.

“Yo, Nadine!” Bianca said loud enough to wake the dead.

Nadine sat up and I braced myself for Andrew to appear next to her, but he didn’t. She was alone.

In my visions, she always looked sexy, flirting with him. What she didn’t look like was this. Puffy, red-rimmed eyes and tear stained cheeks were about as far from the images I’d had as she could get.

“Owen dumped me,” she said. Her words carried a mix of sadness and confusion. Her head dropped into her hands, blond curls bouncing as she struggled to hold in her muffled sobs. “He dumped me.”

I couldn’t even figure out how I felt. It was like being numb from shock. I went over to sit next to her and wrapped an arm around her.

“I’m so sorry. He’s an idiot.”

Over Nadine’s lowered head, Bianca made a face and I gave her a ‘what else could I say’ look.

“No, he’s not. What’s so stupid is I’m not even really sad about him dumping me.” Nadine sniffled and drew away from me. “I mean, I already knew that’s where we were headed. I just thought he’d at least wait until after New Year’s. Now I don’t even have a date for my own party.”

“Gee, Nada, how ever will you stand the loss?” Bianca asked. Nadine glanced up at her.

“I know. I’m a horrible person to even be thinking about that. I should be upset because he doesn’t want to be with me, but I don’t think I wanted to be with him anymore either.” She sighed, and wiped her hands across her cheeks. “How crappy do I look?”

“You look fine,” I lied.

“Yeah, right.”

“Here.” Bianca held out her purse. “I’ve got some makeup. Your skin’s a bit pasty compared to mine, so the foundation isn’t going to work, but some powder might help.”

“Thanks.” Nadine took the bag and went to the mirror hanging above the dresser. “What are you guys doing up here anyway? I thought you would have left with Owen.” She directed the last part at Bianca.

“He wasn’t ready to leave yet,” Bianca lied. Luckily, Nadine was a trusting person. She didn’t even question the likelihood of him wanting to hang out at a party he never wanted to come to in the first place.

“I was looking for Andrew,” I said, trying to gauge her reaction to his name. She didn’t even blink an eye. “We couldn’t find him downstairs so we thought he might be up here.”

“I saw him in the living room right before I came up here.” She focused on applying a new coat of mascara. When she finished, she turned toward us with a giant fake smile. “Better?”

“Much,” I answered before Bianca could come up with a snarky reply. “Come on, let’s go back down.”

The three of us turned to the door just as Andrew appeared.

“Whoa! Girl power powwow,” he said as he took a step back into the hall.

“What are you doing up here?” Bianca demanded, eyes narrowing. I wanted to hug her for her loyalty.

“Looking for the can,” he said. I noticed then his little shuffle dance. “The one downstairs has a huge ass line, but Javier said there was one off the master bedroom.”

“Not in here, maybe across the hall.”

Andrew pushed at the partially closed doors on the other side of the hallway and sure enough, it was the master bedroom. He rushed in and through a door on the far side of the room.

“Go ahead, I’m gonna wait for him,” I said to Nadine and Bianca.

Bianca wiggled her eyebrows. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

She and Nadine went downstairs, their giggles fading quickly into the thumping music from below. I leaned back against the wall, chuckling. Bianca’s words left me with very few options since she’d be a virgin all the way up until her third year in college primarily because she continued dating guys her parents didn’t approve of and who she wasn’t into anyway.

Andrew came out a minute later, wiping his damp hand along the side of his legs. “Dang, you’d think in a place this size they’d have more than two bathrooms. What were you doing up here?”

“Looking for you. I couldn’t find you downstairs.”

“I was waiting for the can then I ran into that guy you were talking to.”

“Bastian?” My heart jumped.

“Yeah, I asked him what you were talking about and he went into this really long story. I kinda tuned him out until he stopped talk.” He took my hand as we went down to the main floor. “How do you even have a conversation with the guy?”

For some reason, I felt the need to defend Bastian, but considering I wondered the same thing only a few minutes ago, it was hard to find a defense.

“It’s not easy.”

Andrew laughed and for the first time that evening, I felt like actually having fun. I tugged him toward the living room where a mass of people bounced in time to the beat.

“Let’s dance,” I shouted over the music.

“You know I can’t dance,” he protested.

“All you have to do is bounce and shuffle.” I didn’t give him a chance to argue. I pushed him into the center of the crowd and started dancing.

He was a terrible dancer, but it didn’t matter. I was free. Free of the constant sense of betrayal I’d carried for months, of a future where my best friend and boyfriend humiliated me.

Free.

The rest of the night passed in a blur. For so long now, this night represented the end of my love life, of my closest friendship. But that hadn’t happened and I reveled in the idea that maybe I wouldn’t become the crazy cat lady.

It wasn’t until I got home and was half-asleep that it hit me.

If Bastian hadn’t been at the party, Andrew probably would have made it upstairs before I did. He would have been with Nadine by the time I got there.

It was all because of Bastian, and the only reason he went was because of me.

I had changed the future.

Not a little thing like the color of pants Phoebe wore or the way Nadine spilled her nail polish. I had stopped an event that would have created massive ripples in the lives of Nadine, Andrew, and me.

What did that mean? What would my life be?

I stared up at the ceiling, suddenly wide awake, a knot forming deep in my chest as the unknown hit me hard. Fear was not an emotion I felt often. Fear of pain was one thing, but fear of the unknown was paralyzing.

My eyes squeezed shut and I focused on my inner vision. There were flashes of me, but they were so fleeting I couldn’t grasp onto them. It wouldn’t have mattered much if I had anyway. The cloudiness that had taken over Sebastian’s future had settled over mine. Gradually the vision became clearer.

That’s when I saw it. Something I had never seen before. It wasn’t much, only a handful of images, but it was happy and there was love. It was a future I never dared to dream of.