“For now,” I finally agreed.
“Hey,” Jericho turned me toward him and I stared into those deep hazel eyes and stifled a shiver of paranoia. I hated that he seemed to see too much, as if my thoughts and emotions were laid bare for him to browse through and manipulate in any way he wanted. He promised he couldn’t read minds- although he said there was some of his kind that could. I didn’t really believe him. He always seemed to see more of me than I wanted him to. “We’re going to get her through this, Olivia. I’m not going to let anything happen to her, I promise.”
I looked away from him, afraid he would see just how much that promise meant to me- just how much I couldn’t allow myself to trust him.
“And you’re the guy that keeps his promises, aren’t you?” I stood up and put space between us. I ignored the confused look that crossed his face and changed the subject before he could ask me any questions. I didn’t exactly resent him for being a good guy- although sometimes I wished I could. He was too good. Too perfect. I wanted to hate everything about this place, as much as I hated getting abducted, as much as I detested what those men did to my sister and me and as much as I hated the foreign entity now living in my blood. I wanted to hate everything and everyone that represented the horror of the last several weeks. But then there was Jericho with all his thoughtful gestures and concerned authenticity.
He screwed with my angsty, die-hard obsession with revenge.
He made it impossible to continue hating the mutants with that stalwart bitterness I’d worked so hard for.
Damn him.
“Her color looks better today,” I gestured with a shrug of my shoulder. “She seems…. pinker.”
“I agree.” He looked down at my sister with the affection of a human being that actually knew her. He didn’t though; she’d been unconscious ever since he picked us up in Peru. But this wasn’t the first time I’d seen him look at her like that… like he’d do anything for her… like she was his responsibility. He continued on after a few moments of staring down at my gorgeous-even-on-her-death-bed sister. “I’ll have Syl look in on her in a little bit.”
“Don’t bother,” I answered quickly. “We’ve been here before. I don’t want to get my hopes up. It’s just her color. We’ll call the good doctor in when something really happens.”
He frowned down at me, and the corners of his eyes lost that happy crinkle I was kind of obsessed with. “Alright,” he nodded. “But a change in her color is something really happening.”
I rolled my eyes. “For all we know she could be on her way to turning purple.”
He chuckled at my joke but quickly narrowed his eyes and grew serious. “You know none of us are purple, right?”
I raised my eyebrows at him, and met that hazel gaze. “I am not ruling out anything at this point.”
Jericho stalked over to me- a feral animal on the hunt for his prey. He was two parts refined gentleman, one part primal savage. I wondered what happened in his life to make his nice, clean edges so ragged and frayed. Most of the time he was the kind of guy that always came through for his friends, the one that treated women with respect and obeyed traffic laws. And then something would slip from his meticulous veneer and I would catch glimpses of a man on a ledge- a lost, wild barbarian that stared down the side of a rocky cliff debating his chances of surviving the jump, knowing he would free fall anyway.
I didn’t know how to explain it, but I knew something floated beneath his sophisticated surface. Something I wanted to discover, investigate, explore in depth until he was no longer a mystery to me, until I could reconcile the feelings of absolute safety that ballooned inside me whenever he was near and the contrasting feelings of nervous energy that always seemed to buzz back and forth in my blood like bumble bees.
Jericho laid his hands down on my shoulders, cupping the bone with his strong, masculine fingers. A current of hot, electrified energy hummed just below my skin and I forced myself not to flinch at the contact. I was steadily growing used to this whenever another one of Jericho’s kind touched me; but the unpleasant feeling seemed to shock me first and then settle into a tolerable vibration.
“Not all of us are scary, Olivia,” he murmured in a low, rumbling voice. “Not all of us want to hurt you.”
I met his hazel gaze and tilted my chin defiantly. “It’s enough that some of you want to hurt me.” I shook my head quickly when he opened his mouth to argue. My blonde bob bounced around my face and stuck to my lips. “Some of them already have, Jericho. Or, er, not me. But they’ve hurt my sister and that’s enough for me. “
“I wouldn’t hurt you,” he promised. “Or your sister.”
I walked away from him again. I couldn’t take it anymore. “Ok, seriously, Jericho, stop with the good guy stuff.”
I felt his scowl all over my back, since I refused to look at him and because it was so palpably strong. Was this another one of his super powers? Scowling people to death?
“What is this? Trust issues?” he scoffed from O’s bedside.
I barked out a bitter laugh and spun around to face him, “Are you kidding me? Of course these are trust issues! I was abducted, Jericho! Lunatics ran experiments on me! And now you want me to believe, that even while you can do everything those monsters could, you are the good guy! Can you even imagine what this is like for me? You’re basically an alien! And you’re holding my little sister’s life in your hands. The smartest thing I can do right now, is not trust you. Stop asking me to.” My enthusiasm dwindled to a helpless plea and I hated the irony that I was essentially trusting him with my emotions whilst asking him not to make me trust him.
Gah!
Boys were confusing no matter what species they were.
“I’m nothing like the men that kidnapped you, Olivia,” he growled back and took three steps towards me. “And I’m not asking you to trust me, I’m telling you to. I’m the only thing you got, woman. And I have been nothing but generous and accommodating! Do you think I like staying here? That my long-term goals include this godforsaken castle and playing nurse? There are other things I should be doing. At least you’re alive! At least Ophelia is alive! I have loved ones out there too right now. People I care about that have been kidnapped and are undergoing exactly what you went through or worse. Only, I don’t know if they will survive or not! I should be out there! I should be hunting them down! Not here, trapped in the exact place I never wanted to be again, listening to some human scream all her daddy issues at me!”
Probably I should have listened to everything he said and cooled down. Instead, I lost my mind just a little bit. “These are not daddy issues! My dad is perfectly fine and normal and my childhood was fine and normal. And my adult life until four months ago was fine and normal! It is you I have issues with! You!”
And then I dissolved into a heap of tears on the floor. My hunched over my knees, curling them to my chest as if I could pull my body inside an invisible protective shell. My usually-voluminous short hair hung limp in front of my face, plastered to my skin with snot and tears. I covered my face with my hands in order to shield myself from Jericho’s angry eyes, but I couldn’t shake my awareness of him, of my body’s constant acknowledgment of his presence.
My chest heaved and stuttered with racking sobs, my shoulders convulsed, my body trembled.
Let’s be honest, I was a hot mess with an audience.
This was officially the lowest point in my two decades of life so far.
“Don’t do that,” Jericho groaned exasperatedly. “I’m trying to stay pissed at you! Stop crying.”
Which, of course, only made me cry harder.
“Don’t fight me,” he bit out at the same time he swooped me up into his ridiculously muscled arms.
The thing was, I wanted to fight him. I really wanted to punch him. But I was crying too hard to have complete control of my motor functions. I’d turned into a human-sized puddle and I didn’t know how to solidify my body again.
He stomped over to the co
uch on the far wall. Through the cracks in my fingers and blurry vision I watched him kick away the blankets and sheets that usually made up my make-shift bed. There was some cursing involved when his motorcycle-booted foot got caught in the tangle of linens; there was some definite Magic as he flung them across the room and extracted his foot with careless ease. He slumped down to the springy seat with the temperament of a three-year-old child having a tantrum and fitted me against his chest like a mother bird.
This boy, so full of contradictions, so at odds with everything in himself, was pissed at me- and yet he was comforting me.
His hand tangled into the back of my hair and stayed there, forcefully keeping my head against his rapidly beating heart. His thumb traced soothing patterns on the nape of my neck and his other hand gripped my waist with two parts out-of-place possession and one part fear.
My tears slowly subsided as I tried to make sense of the boy humming softly next to me, the vibrations of his body pulsating under me. I sniffled into the sleeve of my long-sleeved t-shirt and unashamedly wiped away the dripping snot.
“Who are you Jericho Bentley ?” I whispered against the thump-thump of his heart.
A derisive laugh pushed against my body and I fought the strongest but most irrational urge to wrap my arms around his neck and comfort him this time.
“I’m not the good guy you think I am.” He turned his head to the side and swallowed loudly.
I thought that over for a few silent moments, knowing he was wrong, but not all that anxious to change his mind. It didn’t really matter to me how he saw himself or what his self-esteem charted at. He was a stranger. He would remain a stranger. And I was so out of here as soon as O was better.
Still… I asked, “Why? Because you want to go find your friends? Because you don’t want to be stuck here with a bitchy girl you don’t even know?”
I slid off his lap, feeling the moment lapsing into oblivion, leaving only awkwardness in its wake. I crawled to the other side of the couch and when I turned back around to face him, I propped my feet in between us, putting up a very tangible wall.
“Olivia, I didn’t mean all that.” He stared down at his empty hands and then back at O. “I am happy to be here. Happy to help. I can’t help but feel responsible for what happened to you and your sister and I want to help make it right. But I am anxious to get back in the field. I’m anxious to get some justice for my friends, for O…. for you.”
“Then why don’t you just go?” I asked sincerely. Holding him back here caused nothing but frustration and depression.
His gaze swung to mine where it proceeded to paralyze me and turn me into an entirely different kind of puddle than before. “Justice starts with Ophelia’s recovery- with your recovery.”
I gulped.
And then managed a very sarcastic, “See? Good guy.”
A soft smile tilted his lips and he shook his head slowly. “It’s only because you don’t know me that you think that.”
“You’re probably right,” I agreed and then quickly flashed him a cheeky grin.
We fell into a kind of uncomfortable silence then, neither of us sure whether to go back to the sarcastic-argumentative relationship we usually shared, or if we had moved into something more serious and profound.
Was this the beginning of a friendship?
Or had we simply both lashed out because of the high-stress situation.
“I hate to lose,” Jericho confessed in a low rumble.
“Excuse me?”
“I hate to lose. Loathe it. In fact, I’m such a sore loser that unless I know I’ll win the game, I won’t play.” He paused for a moment and then explained, “I know you don’t feel like you know me, but that’s something important. I hate losing.”
“Truly?” I laughed and relaxed a little at his attempt to open up. “You only ever play games you know you’re going to win?”
“Most of the time.” He nodded but something about his far off look made it seem like there was a reason for his obsession with winning- possibly a very good reason he hated to lose.
“That’s so…. boring!” I bounced forward on the couch until we were only three inches apart. He sat normally, with his outside arm slung over the arm rest and I hovered over him on my knees.
“It’s not boring,” he grumbled. “It’s safe. Safety is important. Safety first.”
“First of all, I highly doubt you were ever a Boy Scout. Unless aliens have something similar like… Alien Scouts?”
“I’m not an alien!”
“Shush,” I reprimanded him. “I’m speaking.” Okay, that was just to get under his skin. I hid my smirk and continued, “Second of all, safe is boring. Duh. Present circumstances excluded, of course.”
“Of course,” he nodded. “That still doesn’t change anything. I like to win.”
I wiped at the left over snot hanging at the end of my nose and shrugged, “Oh, well that’s too bad.”
“And why’s that?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Because I’m about to kick your ass in a thumb war and I just know it’s going to ruin the rest of your day.”
He laughed before he could stop himself. “I’m afraid to even ask what that is,” he drawled.
“Are you kidding me? You don’t know what a thumb war is? Oh my gosh, you’re so lucky you met me!” Sure, there were all kinds of stinging barbs that dug in nice and hard with those words and the implications of why we had to meet in the first place, but I pushed them all into the deep pit of emotional trauma I would deal with later. Right now I needed distraction; and not even Magic could help the big, bad Immortal win this game.
Chapter Three
Jericho
“Does she do that often?” Eden asked in a hushed tone. She was sitting across the room from me on the window sill, swinging her feet nervously and letting heels bounce against the wall.
I looked down at Ophelia from where I sat on the couch, with Liv tucked in against me. Ophelia had been still for a while; her eyes were moving rapidly behind her closed lids, but her body had stopped thrashing. She’d made it through another night, and a feeling of unbelievable relief settled over me. Every long night was like this. I just kept hoping she would make it one more night, just one more- and then the same thing the following night.
There had to be some kind of cure for her, some kind of help we could find.
“Yeah,” I answered in a whisper. Olivia was finally asleep and I didn’t want to wake her. After our intense thumb….war she deserved a few hours of peace. “Almost every night.”
“Her sister has to be freaking out,” Eden sighed, true sympathy brightening her black eyes with tears.
I remembered what it was like for Eden when Avalon was held in captivity without Magic. She knew exactly what it was like to be the sibling forced to watch someone they love suffer. “You would know,” I offered. I rubbed a hand over my face in an effort to step out of those memories. When Avalon was being held by Lucan it was one of the darkest stretches of my life, but it was also the only period of time I could call Eden mine.
Eden made a wincing sound of agreement and then stood up. Her hands went subconsciously to her slowly-swelling stomach and I smiled before I could stop myself.
“Congratulations, Eden,” I said sincerely. “That’s amazing.” I nodded to her stomach where she rubbed at it self-consciously.
“Thank you, Jericho,” she smiled. She looked around the room a little suspiciously and then in a whispered hush she said, “It’s twins.”
I felt my mouth drop open in shock. Holy hell. “What?”
“It’s twins!” She was beaming now, Magic floating excitedly around her, filling up the room with her overflowing joy. “Syl did an ultrasound last week, and we could see the babies. I’m having twins! She had suspected it at the beginning because of the heart beats. But when the ultrasound machine arrived, she could finally confirm it.”
“Eden, that’s…. that’s-”
“It’s alright, J
ericho. You don’t have to say anything,” she laughed lightly at me. “I was just dying to tell someone. Kiran thinks it might be best to keep the entire pregnancy quiet, especially now that we know we’re having twins. It’s just that you and I used to be so close, and I know I can trust you. I probably shouldn’t have said anything, I just-“
“Eden, seriously, stop.” I smiled up at her as she stood over me. I didn’t make a move to join her, in fact my arm tightened around Olivia and I adjusted her a little so that she was draped even further over my body. She was probably going to be pissed when she woke up. I was pretty sure falling asleep had been an accident. We played game after game, tangling our thumbs together and laughing at stupid things. Eventually her head had dropped to the back of the couch and her eyes slowly closed. I drifted off too then and while we were both out we’d become connected. I woke up when Eden stepped in to check on Ophelia, but I hadn’t found the willpower to move Liv off me just yet. “I’m really happy for you. And of course, I won’t tell anyone. I’m glad you still think of us as… friends.”
Eden’s entire expression turned emotionally serious, “Of course, Jericho.”
“You’re going to be a great mom, E,” I confessed before I could think about it. She was right, at one time we were really good friends and it was stupid that our relationship had to suffer just because she’d given in to her destiny.
A tear slipped from the corner of her eye and she blushed bright red. This was the Eden I knew and remembered, not the regal queen she had turned into, but the emotional, unpredictable girl just trying to figure her life out.
“Thank you,” she whispered. She swiped at the tear, seeming embarrassed by her loss of control. After a moment, she pulled herself together and said, “Avalon’s coming home in a few days. He wants to get Mimi back here, and safe. I think he’s staying this time. For good.”
“He wouldn’t leave Mimi behind. I know that,” I sighed. “Good for him.” Avalon belonged here, especially since he was so newly married. Hunting down the sick bastard that was trying to rip our Kingdom apart was no way to spend his honeymoon. Besides, he’d spent enough of his life on a similar mission. He deserved rest. He deserved happiness.