Undeniably Chosen

  “You don’t think I wanted you, too?” He gave me a disbelieving look. “I did. Even after all that stuff with your uncle at my house. I wanted you, in my veins,” I whispered, “in my gut, in my chest. Even if I didn’t know why exactly, or want to want you yet. I’m glad you came to my dreams. I’m glad you’re an…echoling?” I tested. He smiled and nodded. “It’s a gift. You may not think so, but it is.”

  “I never thought it was a gift until the moment I was able to go to your dreams and have hope of salvaging the train wreck of what was started of us. And then when you didn’t remember anything and you wanted to actually spend time with me there—see I thought I was going there to talk, to convince you that I wasn’t the monster you thought I was, and instead you wanted me to take you on walks and talk about robins and blueberry bagels.” He smiled, but then it drained away. “But I felt like I was cheating somehow, like you were angry with me in real life and you were supposed to be angry with me in the echoling. We were supposed to be working things out, not taking walks and talking about—” He sighed harshly. “But you said it was to learn you and I should trust and not feel guilty.”

  “And you shouldn’t have felt guilty. You were pulled there. I gave you permission. You’re my soulmate. You didn’t do anything wrong.” He still didn’t look satisfied.

  His eyes looked up to meet mine. “You always begged me to kiss you. You said you were the same person, that it didn’t matter, that you wanted me even if the real you didn’t.”

  I felt my lips part a little. “And did you?” I barely heard myself ask.

  His hand moved into my hair, bunching and rubbing it in his fingers. “No.” I don’t know why it mattered, but it did. I was relieved. “No, I told you that I couldn’t kiss you in your dreams. That I had to save that for when you were awake, to make sure you remembered.” He leaned forward and barely let his lips brush mine. “That was only for this you.”

  “You really can read my soul like a book, can’t you?”

  He leaned back a little to see my face full on. His eyes roamed my face and he smiled just enough to make me happy. “Yeah, I think I can, little bird. Is that all right, with you?”

  “Yeah,” I replied and leaned back against him content to settle in for the night, “it’s all right with me if I can do the same one day.”

  “I’m begging for you to,” he said into my hair.

  He sighed all of a sudden, shifting in the chair slightly. “I forgot, Bill, the fireman who died?” I nodded. “His funeral is tomorrow.”

  I rubbed his chest with my curled fingers. “I’m sorry.”

  “Will you come with me?”

  “You don’t even have to ask.”

  I closed my eyes, content to let Seth take me away to another dream, when I heard the door shut to the back door, and turned to see Mom and Dad coming across the back lawn with a couple thick blankets in hand.

  I gave them as curious a look as I could. I was sure I didn’t have to say anything to get my point across. It was almost one in the morning.

  “We’re coming with you,” Mom explained and let Dad sit down first in the Adirondack next to us before she sat in his lap, mimicking our pose, “in the echoling.”

  She tossed a blanket over us and then pulled one over her and Dad. She then snuggled against his cheek and held her hand out to me.

  “Okay, Seth, take us to la, la land.”

  “Uh…” Seth looked at me and back to her. “What exactly are you going to do in the echoling with us?”

  “I have a theory,” she said and left it that. “I’m the Visionary for a reason. Let’s go. What does it hurt for you to take us one time, anyway?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he muttered and rubbed his head. He looked at our hands and I reached out to take Mom’s hand between the chairs and shook his head. “That won’t hold. You’ll just let go when you fall asleep.”

  “Oh,” Mom said quickly and pulled the scarf from her neck, “I’ve taken care of that.” She leaned forward and tied our wrists together gently with it. Daddy was rubbing her back as she leaned forward and I noticed for the first time how uptight he seemed. “There,” she said as she leaned back.

  “How did you know you had to be touching?”

  “I didn’t, but I figured.”

  “Daddy,” I whispered before anybody else could speak or do anything.

  He looked at me, knowing I was checking on him. He looked at Seth. “The last time my wife was in an echoling, she was tortured.” Seth and Dad stared at each other. “I can’t talk her out of this so this is all in your hands.”

  Seth scoffed just a little. I felt the hurt coming off of him and sat up on his lap enough to turn to him. Daggumit, Daddy. All my family ever managed to do was make Seth feel like crap. I wrapped my hand around Seth’s neck, hearing his breath hiss as my calm hit his skin.

  He looked at me and rubbed my arm. “Thank you, sweetheart. It’s okay.” He looked back at my father. “Sir, how many times how I hugged your wife and not given her an offense mark? I understand the want to keep your significant safe and from harm. I have one. I think people in your family and mine keep forgetting that. And I think people keep forgetting that I wasn’t born a Watson, I never wanted to be one, and I’ve done things to try to prove myself already that I’m not one. So it would be great if everyone would stop treating me like the enemy.”

  Dad thankfully started doing that lip chewing thing he did when he was thinking things over instead of blowing up, which I would have blown right back up at him. And then Dad started to look a little guilty, thankfully.

  “It’s in the Virtuoso blood to protect his women, all of them,” Dad explained. “You’ll understand one day when you have a daughter.”

  “I can’t wait for that day,” Seth replied, not skipping a beat, making my heart do the two-step behind my ribs, “but when that day comes and she brings me her significant…I hope I’m more open to the idea that the universe and God might have chosen someone less conventional for her. And I hope I’ll understand for both their sakes.”

  Dad breathed in deep through his nose. “Touché, son.” He rubbed his head and looked at Mom, who was already looking at him. “We never really talked about everything that happened at the summit, Seth. We will, all right? And you’re right. You’re an echoling, that doesn’t mean you do the same things that a Watson echoling would do with his ability. I’m sorry.”

  Seth seemed taken aback that he actually got an apology out of Dad, and so quickly. “It’s all right.” He cleared his throat and rubbed my arm again. “If everyone is ready, you all have to go to sleep before me.”

  I leaned in and kissed Seth’s lips and then moved slowly to kiss the little scar under his chin. He closed his eyes and accepted that kiss without flinching. I opened my eyes to meet his. He rubbed the backs of his fingers down my cheek; his way to say ‘thank you’ without making a fuss.

  So I lay back down, turning on my side with my torso just a bit to snuggle my face into Seth’s neck, knowing that would end any struggle with alertness.

  “Goodnight, Ava,” he whispered and kissed my temple. “I’ll see you in your dreams.”

  “I’m sorry that I won’t remember this.”

  “One day you will,” he promised.

  _ _ _

  “Seth,” I sighed and hurried to him quickly. He wrapped his arms around me and lifted my feet off the floor. “Did it work? Did our plan work?” I asked in rushed whispers.

  “Yes. It worked.” He put me down, holding my sides in his easy grip. “And better than that, they didn’t have anything planned for the summit so there was no plan to thwart. Everyone was safe. And I told the real you about the echolings, all of it. She knows.”

  I gasped. “What did I say? Did I think it was romantic how you came and did all this for me?”

  He laughed. “How did you know?”

  I shrugged and put my arms around his shoulders. “I know myself, and I’m a romantic.”

  “You come
to her room every night?” We both turned to find Mom and Dad there. Mom continued, “Of all the places you could go?”

  “We’ve been to the palace a couple of times,” Seth explained, “but this is where Ava feels comfortable. I’m not trying to use this as vacation. Not until Ava remembers anyway. Then we’ll see. Right now, we’re just trying to figure out why Ava’s subconscious is separated.”

  “Seth,” I whispered, “why are my parents in my subconscious?”

  “Oh,” he laughed, “we brought them. Your Mom wanted to come.”

  “Take us to the palace,” Mom said and came my way. “Hey, honey.”

  “Hey…Mom.” I cocked a brow at her.

  “So…when’s the last time you saw me?”

  “This morning. When I left for school. Why?” I leaned back. “Why is everyone being so weird… Wait. Oh. Because you told me in my real life, so everyone knows. Now you think this me has been like stuck in some dream world motherless for weeks or something?”

  She stared and then said, “Yes. Actually.”

  I laughed. “Mom, this is just my subconscious. To me, this is the same night. I don’t feel like any time has really passed. When Seth comes leaves here, it feels like he was just here a few minutes ago when he leaves and comes back.”

  “Really,” she asked, clearly intrigued.

  I could see more questions coming, forming behind her eyes.

  “Mom, you said something about the palace? Why?”

  “Oh.” She glanced at Dad, who was borderline grouchy as he watched the whole thing, and then back to me. “I have a theory.”

  “What theory?”

  She huffed. “I am the Visionary! I don’t have to explain myself. Let’s go!”

  I held up my hands and rolled my eyes when I turned where she couldn’t see me. “Okay, yikes.” I gripped Seth’s forearm. “Too bad we can’t feel our calming touch in here because Mom clearly needs at hit,” I muttered my words almost into Seth’s shirt.

  Seth half snorted and then looked at Mom like she might turn him into a toad or something.

  “I heard that,” she tossed back at us saucily and smirked.

  I peeked at her over my shoulder and grinned as Seth put his arm around me and the palace came into view all around us.

  I let out a happy sigh as I looked out across the terrace to see the London skyline in the dark. “The last time we were here—”

  “I appeared.”

  We turned, jerked really, to find Ashlyn. “Ashlyn.”

  “I knew it,” Mom said. “See,” she said to us, but kept her eyes on the ghostly Visionary, “sometimes I know what I’m talking about.” She stepped toward Ashlyn, who was standing near the terrace door. “What’s going on with my daughter?”

  “That’s not the right question.”

  Mom clamped down on her jaw. “We’re not playing this game again. You made me play it with Seth when he was a boy and I was trying to find him. You wouldn’t help, you said not to go after him—”

  “And he turned out just fine, didn’t he?”

  Mom was about to boil over. She opened her mouth to lay into her, but Seth’s quiet, dangerous tone silenced them both.

  “You told her not to go after me?”

  I knew that my touch wouldn’t help him feel any better, but I touched him anyway. I gripped his forearm with both hands and looked up at him, but he was looking at her.

  “And you told her to leave me with them? Knowing that they had kidnapped me? Knowing that they tortured and then killed my mother? You don’t know what they did to me, do you?”

  I had actually leaned back a little, surprised at the level of his anger and the growled disgust coming from him. He always tried to say he wanted to find the best in them, that he was looking for goodness in them, that they were his family. I’d never seen him admit that they killed his mother before. We had avoided that. I guess he had avoided it…for as long as he could.

  She didn’t answer, just stoically stared at him.

  When he saw that I had leaned away, he looked at me, his expression changing. “I’m sorry.”

  “No,” I whispered. “You’re okay.”

  He shook, his head. “No, I’m not.” He looked down at me, looking probably the most broken, the most bleak, sad, and dejected he’d ever looked.

  I moved swiftly—swifter than I realized—and pulled him to me, even as I pressed against him. I wrapped my arms around his middle, my face in his neck. His arms engulfed me so tightly I could barely breathe. We lived in the small space between us and we existed on the air that was in each other’s lungs.

  I wrapped my hand around the back of his neck and looked up into his face, my brown eyes colliding with his blue, and tried to convey any sense of calm and love I had to him. I didn’t know if it was working. I hated that I couldn’t calm him with a touch here.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered and refused to look away.

  “You didn’t make them kidnap me,” was his sarcastic response, and his way of making me feel better.

  “No,” I insisted, “I’m sorry that I can’t make you feel better.”

  “I feel better already,” he promised as his arms tugged me closer, in a way of proving his point.

  “Don’t lie to me,” I whispered, scratching the hair at the base of his neck a little.

  He sighed, giving up, and looked over at Ashlyn.

  I started to feel so…cold. I shivered once with goosebumps.

  “I think it’s time for the truth, Ashlyn. For everyone.”

  Her smile wasn’t pleasant. “The truth. I don’t think even I know exactly what that is anymore.”

  He huffed. “What—”

  “Maybe it’s been so changed, so watered down, so burned down into the ashes that there is no truth left. There’s only what we perceive of it.”

  The cold that had begun crept inward, making it impossible to get warm. I began to shiver inside my sweater. Seth noticed and started to rub my arms with his impossibly warm palms. They felt like a balm to a sore, but I was still freezing.

  “Ashlyn,” Mom begged. “Please.”

  “It’s you,” she replied and then surprisingly looked up at me, locking her eyes in on mine. Seth pushed me behind him a little out of protectiveness, but she kept speaking. “You’re the one. You’re my truth, Ava.” She surprised me impossibly further by swiping a tear as it fell from her eye. “I’m not sorry it was you. There could be no one else. I am sorry if it was too much to bear, but it’s eased me over the years.” She smiled. “How it’s made me feel so much lighter.” She closed her eyes. “And now that you’re all here again, I can finally be free and go.”

  Seth’s hand on my wrist tightened in fear of her ominous message. “Go where? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Where do any of us go, Seth? I’m so sorry that you had to stay.” Her face crumpled and I stared, shocked that she would feel so much for him. “I saw it and if you had been rescued you, if she had rescued you, you wouldn’t have found your way back.”

  He huffed. “The fact that I was rescued or not doesn’t mean anything. We would have still been significants.” His anger grew by the second. “We would have been meant for each other regardless. I eventually would have made my way here subconsciously, somehow, to find her, so your argument—”

  “No, Seth.” She gulped. “I never said you weren’t significants. I said you wouldn’t have found your way back to Ava.” I waited for the punchline. “The foster care system isn’t always the prettiest place and sometimes the homes and the centers that the kids are placed in are…” She lowered her head. “You would have never found your way back to Ava…” She paused and I knew why before she even said the words. I gasped and was about to tell her not to say the words. Please, just no, no, no, don’t. “…because you weren’t there to—”

  A noise left my throat. I shook my head. I couldn’t hear this. “Stop.”

  “Stop,” Seth commanded at the same time.

&
nbsp; “Stop!” Dad yelled. “Can’t you see what you’re doing to her? You don’t tell someone their significant could have died.”

  “Would have died,” she corrected. “And it’s better than your significant actually dying, now isn’t it?” she finished softly, her eyes drifting off, her mind somewhere else, somewhere I didn’t want to think about, but I was sure I knew.

  Seth turned me to him, pressing my face gently into his chest.

  Don’t even think about it. And I would have found my way to you. Nothing would have stopped me.

  Mom started in, her Visionary voice that I was sure Ashlyn had used herself before was in full swing. “Ashlyn, we know your story. We know that they kept you separated from him and that they…” She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t say out loud that the Watsons killed him. “But what does that have to do with Ava and Seth? What do you mean that Ava is the one and…. What does any of this have to do with us? How does all this add up to us being here now?”

  Seth was barely listening to my mother as he rubbed my arms vigorously.

  Ashlyn watched us, a look passing over her face that I didn’t understand. I was so cold that I couldn’t even think anymore.

  He pulled my chin up and looked at my face. “Look at me, Ava.”

  “I am,” I barely managed as I finally made my eyes roll up to meet him. Something wasn’t right. I felt like I was draining away or something. I was so shaky, so cold, so strange. I clung to Seth’s shirt, but I didn’t need to. He was holding me to me so tightly. I knew he was scared.

  I could only imagine the glare he was sending her as he roared over my head, “What the hell did you do to her?”

  “You’re looking at this all wrong, Seth,” she said softly. I turned to see her. I had to. Her voice—something in her voice made me pause. She was looking at Seth with this look in her eyes, and then I realized she was looking at his—

  “Your eyes are just like his. So blue, like I’m lost in the ocean, but I don’t ever want to be rescued.”

  Seth tensed beside me, the muscles under his chest hard like stone. “What—”