Geez. Mom is seething, pissed to high heaven that Demetri had the nerve to ask his girlfriend to marry him in such a quasi-romantic way and with a hood ornament to grace her finger no less.
“We’re just taking a break,” Gage corrects, and my stomach pinches when he says it. I hate this. I hate breaks. And I hate the fact I can feel the marathon kissing session about to come to a close because I so badly want to press my lips against his.
“Considering your options, I see.” Demetri bows into me like a geisha. “Perhaps you’re wishing you had a glimpse into the impending years ahead?” He gives a little wink.
My body explodes with a bite of perspiration.
He so knows I’m dying to sneak a glimpse into the future.
“Perhaps a little alone time is all the two of you need to figure things out?” He waves a finger in the air just past my shoulder. “There’s a viewing room in the basement. Rumor has it it’s a personal favorite of yours, Skyla.”
I suck in a quick breath. There
is
a viewing room down in the basement. It’s the same room in which Chloe saw her future dissolve to nothing. The same room that Logan and I saw a future for Gage and me last spring. My heart oscillates unnaturally. God, maybe that’s what’s playing on a loop down in the paranormal playhouse?
I shake my head at the idea.
“We’ll see you later,” I say, taking Gage by the hand and leading him toward the hall.
I bump into Bree.
“Hey, you!” I say, pulling her back by the hatchet embedded in her back. “Would you mind hanging out with Emerson?”
“No, why?” Brielle glances past me at the aquatic siren.
“Just—she looks lonely,” I whisper, gliding past her.
Lonely has been a foreign concept to me this entire last year on Paragon. Ironic because all of this indecision has made me exactly that—lonely.
***
I offer Gage a tour of the basement, or at least of the wing I’ve traversed through a time or two. It’s cold down here, damp, the scent of fresh popcorn infiltrates the air. It’s as if Demetri is still trying to mask an odor, as if death lurked here,
lived
here.
A large framed picture of a necrotic looking tree hangs outside of the viewing room, right beside a giant red popcorn stand filled to the brim and steaming with scrumptious golden kernels.
“That tree…” I examine the navy sky, the dark, floor of the forest, snaking with roots. “That’s the Tenebrous Woods.” I huff a dry laugh. “Figures. Leave it to Demetri to have a picture of the Celestra tunnels decorating his home.”
“So that’s it, huh?” Gage leans in and examines it. His face bleaches out at the sight as if just this myopic view made him sick to his stomach. He takes a deep breath before opening the door for me.
It’s pitch black inside—a darkness so thick you could ax your way through it if you had to. Then, like a shooting star, a gentle light glimmers at the far end of the hall.
“You’re such an gentleman, Gage Oliver. That’s what I like about you best.”
“Really?” He ticks his head back as if I had just shot him down. “Sounds vanilla.” He pulls his lips to the side. “I promise to give you something other than being
nice
to like about me.”
Gage says
nice
like it’s a four letter word, and, technically, I guess it is.
I pull him in before we hit the other side of the narrow hall and witness whatever’s playing on the silver screen.
“Please don’t ever change,” I say, slipping my hand under his T-shirt. His skin sears against my open palm, and a groan gets locked in my throat. Gage is warm as a heater. I want nothing more than to curl up with him for an entire eternity. “I love you just the way you are.”
“I’m not enough for you, Skyla.” He shakes his head as his features spray with a wash of blue light. “If I was, there would be no decision to be made.”
And there it is—the knife in my gut he unwittingly lunged because it must be true.
Fuck.
How can I have a heart for three people? And a tiny part of me is appalled that Marshall is in the equation to begin with.
“Hey.” I slip in front of him and halt us from moving another inch forward. “I swear to all that is holy, on the throne itself, you, Gage Oliver, are more than enough.” I swallow down the heartache ready to stream out in tears. “But I’m afraid no matter how much I say it, you’ll never believe me because of my actions.” I glance down. I can’t even face him with this truth. “I’m a terrible person. I deserve to be alone, forever.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” Gage cups my face and gently holds my gaze. “You’re nowhere near a terrible person, and I know for a fact you will never be alone.” He wraps his arm tight around my waist as he leads me down the long-necked partition, and the wall-sized screen appears with nothing but blotches of blue and purple over it like a bruise.
Figures. Same crappy film he showed Chloe.
I lead Gage to the center, and we take a seat and give Demetri the honor of our time and attention by gazing at the monument to fake futures a moment too long.
“This is stupid,” I bleat. “I can’t believe we fell for this.”
“Maybe he just wanted us to be alone?” Gage pulls me onto his lap, and I wrap my arms around his neck.
“I like where this is going.” I blow it in his ear like a promise. “Although, knowing my least favorite Fem, we’re probably being filmed, so he can blackmail us later.”
“I don’t know.” Gage pans the vicinity with suspicion. “He doesn’t strike me as the blackmailing type.”
The speakers overhead snap and pop. An image appears on the screen, and I tuck myself further in Gage’s lap, half afraid of whatever the hell Demetri has managed to conjure.
God
, what if it’s Marshall and me getting it on? Or Logan? We did share a heated kiss right here on Demetri’s property just a little while ago. Shit. I bet that’s exactly what this is. The perfect set up to
kill
my future with Gage. Demetri is so team Chloe.
A scene emerges. Daylight brims over the top of a series of evergreens.
“Great. He probably tricked us into watching his old home movies,” I quip, fully relieved this has nothing to do with what transpired earlier. “We’d better settle in. I think he’s starting with the dawn of time.”
“I don’t think so.” Gage points up at the unfamiliar strip mall displayed on the screen. “That’s Host.”
Host is the neighboring island that’s apparently overrun with college kids and .98 cent stores. I have a trip planned with Mom and my sisters coming up.
The camera pans in on a post office, then a municipal building next to that with its gilded address, a dark metal plaque that reads Host County Courthouse.
“Shit,” Gage whispers, completely amazed as if he were more than aware of what might come next.
A dark paneled wall appears, a judge sits high above two people, a guy and girl around my age. The judge is speaking, but not a sound emits from the speakers. His hair is so white it almost looks translucent. He says something in earnest before smiling down at the couple.
“Skyla,” Gage whispers as the couple turns to face one another.
“Oh my, God.” My stomach bottoms out.
It’s Gage and me. My hair has ballooned out from the weather with rain droplets still locked in my curls. Gage is impeccable. His hair is slicked back, his eyes wide with wonder as he takes a deep breath.
I love you
, I mouth before hiking up on my toes and landing my lips over his. Gage holds me by the back of the neck as we indulge in a kiss that goes on forever.
The screen fades to a night sky with ethereal blue clouds nesting up above, and the moon brightens the room like a spotlight.
I cover my mouth with my hand, closing my eyes as I try to comprehend what just happened.
“Skyla, do you know what that was?” Gage strokes the back of my neck in tender, warm circles. “That was the vision I had, the one I shared with you. How do you think he did that?”
Gage. His features are washed a pale shade of sky, his eyes as bright as the ocean. Someway, somehow Demetri tapped into our very private vision and replicated it with stunning accuracy.
“I don’t know how he did it.” I shake my head. “But I know one thing. That was our future.” A smile starts to break on my lips, and my heart breaks right along with it. Something is not right. You can’t have visions with three different people, and now Demetri just blew things out to a whole new level.
“I’m going to marry you one day, Skyla Messenger.” He cups the sides of my face and gently draws me into a kiss.
I twist until I’m straddling him, landing a knee on either side of his waist as we indulge in a kiss so achingly sweet I let out a guttural groan.
I miss Gage in acres. I miss his body, those mouthwash-fresh kisses that span time and memoriam.
“I love you, Gage Oliver,” I whisper in his ear and mean every word.
We kiss for what feels like hours, far longer than those stolen bleats of time I shared with Marshall, with far more breadth and depth than the quick release of passion I shared with Logan. Gage is a marathon all unto himself, and according to the visions and Demetri’s sneak preview of the future, Gage gets far more than my kisses for the long haul—and I’m so very glad.
***
Instead of calling out Marshall’s name and letting him zap me over to his seventeenth-century soiree, I let Gage drive me home. We head to the butterfly room and finish our oral explorations, thorough and necessary, like cartographers mapping out a foreign landscape.
“I guess we’re forever,” I muse, flexing my fingers over his.
“You sound resigned to the fact.” He presses a kiss over the top of my head.
“Are you kidding?” I give his ribs a quick pinch.
“OK, I give.” He tightens his grip around my waist. “You’re ecstatic.”
“I am so
very
ecstatic.”
“But you don’t know if you believe it.” He gives a soft nod. “It’s OK. I have a nagging doubt myself. I’ve had other visions, Skyla. I’m not going to lie, we get to that courthouse…” He lets his words hang there like a sickle waiting to drop. “I don’t have all the answers. The important part is that it happens. And you know what I’m looking forward to just as much as meeting up with that judge?” A smile twitches on his lips.
“Our wedding night?” I bite the air, and he belts out a laugh.
“Exactly.” His expression grows all together serious as the wonder returns to his eyes. “Skyla, I have dreamed both in and out of my sleep about loving you that way.” He shakes his head just barely. “We’re going to have the most unproductive lives because I don’t think I’ll ever want us to get out of bed.”
I press my finger to his lips and trace down, slowly to his chest.
“That sounds mighty productive to me,” I whisper.
“Maybe we’ll roll out of bed for the holidays.” He catches my finger and bites down gently over the tip.
“Who says I’m letting you out of bed for the holidays?” I laugh into him.
The room gives a violent quake. The butterflies blow off the walls like a bomb, and I bury my face into Gage’s chest.
Ms. Messenger. It’s time
.
“Marshall?” I dart my gaze around the room in a fervor. My body starts to dissolve. My hands grow altogether translucent.
“Skyla!” Gage’s voice resonates through my bones, through each molecule I’m comprised of, until I land square in front of the shifty Sector in the Transfer.
“You’re not funny,” I say, moving past Marshall in the glossy white hall of the Transfer while on the lookout for the hatchet queen herself.
“I believe the words you used as you entered my home this evening were
trick or treat.
” His caramel hair glows in the light, and I’m not sure if that has anything to do with the price of tea in the ethereal plane.
“Oh, so you decide to go for the
trick
just as Gage and I were about to indulge in a little
treat
.” I poke my head in the lab, but there’s nary a sign of Ezrina’s dowager’s hump.
“It seems the entire exercise was lost upon you.
I,
my love, am the treat.”
“Ha!” I yelp in his face a little louder than anticipated. “By the way, how was your party?” I pause from my hunt and peck efforts a moment to take him in. He looks no worse for wear. There’s no sign of external trauma, no bedhead, no claw marks—at least anywhere I can see—not one hickey to sexually incriminate him.
“You think I slept with her.” His cheek rides up the side as if he were relishing this.
“Did you?” I stop breathing in the event he paints a picture that I’ll need to grate out of my mind with a razor.
“No, Skyla. I’m perfectly chaste. The only place these lips have been this evening is on your person. And you, Ms. Messenger? Can you say the same?” He tips into me, ready to roll his eyes if I deny it. “I thought so.”
“All right, so I’m not perfect. But I do know something about that kiss you gave me tonight felt final. It’s like what you said seeped into my brain, and I innately knew everything would change.” I fan my arms out. “But, I feel fantastically normal. Weird huh?”
He shakes his head, not amused in the least by my fantastical weirdness.
“Come, let’s get this journey underway. I’ve guests lingering in secret places.”
“If by ‘secret places’ you mean Demetri’s then you’re right. Your entire pussy cat posse escaped the asylum for the night.”
“No, love, those were his. To each his own or something to that effect. He’s got another mirror, another century all together.” He picks up his pace, and I struggle to stay by his side.
“Those
things
were crawling out of that mirror in your living room. I saw them myself.” I pull him back by the elbow before he leads us out of Ezrina’s lair and into the dark armpit of the Transfer itself. “Marshall, my mother said the only things you could pull out were things you feared. Are you afraid of those ladies?” Their scantily clad bodies rush to mind, and I’m quick to blink them away.