“Well, seeing as though you’re not answering your phone, I’m gonna come over to yours, ’cause I’ve got some gossip for you…,” she sung before trailing off, probably daydreaming over Ben—I still had no clue how that happened. “Anyway, I’ll see ya soon. Oh, and you two better have your clothes on by the time I get there.” She snickered and disconnected. I was too sick with worry to care about Chelsea’s comments about Aiden and me in the sack.
Nobody spoke straight away, but that didn’t mean much with Aiden, Anna, and Dave. For all I knew, the three of them were having a telepathic conversation with each other, trying to work out what to say to me.
“You’re so paranoid.” Aiden squeezed my arm before leaning down and kissing the top of my head. “They’re just trying to work out what to do next. It’s much quicker if they don’t have to speak their thoughts out loud.”
“He’s right, sweetie,” Anna said. “Do you mind if the two of us have a look at the vision you had this morning?”
“Go for it,” I said. I pulled my legs up and wrapped my arms around them. I knew it didn’t hurt when they went looking through my thoughts, but it still made me nervous. I mean, as natural as it was for everyone else in this room, it was still in the freakish science fiction category for me.
Within seconds, I felt them enter my mind. It was a little more intrusive than the first time, probably because I had two people inside my head. By the time I came to that conclusion, they were finished and out of my head.
I looked from Anna to Dave, waiting, hoping that they would say it was just a coincidence, and I had only dreamed Chelsea had come over to mine this morning. “Well?” I finally asked.
“It’s not that easy.” For the first time since I had met Anna, she sounded unsure of herself. She looked to Dave for help.
“You see, what you saw this morning wasn’t like a normal vision. Normally, a vision is more like what you saw when you were with Chelsea at Baxter’s yesterday. You were just observing what was going on. But this last one…” he paused, shaking his head as if he was still trying to work something out.
“In a way, you seemed to be partially there,” Anna said, picking up where Dave left off.
“And that’s not how it’s supposed to be.” Dave slumped back against the sofa.
I was dumbfounded. If they couldn’t work out what was going on, then how the hell was I supposed to?
“Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out,” Aiden said.
I looked up into his eyes. They were filled with such optimism. I wished I had even half as much belief that we would find Chelsea before anything bad happened to her.
Dave cleared his throat. “Anna and I are going to see if any of the others know anything that might help us figure this out.”
“Others?” I asked.
“Aiden can fill you in after we leave. We will be in touch as soon as we know anything more,” Dave said, placing his hand on Anna’s knee.
“And if you need to speak to us for anything at all, call at any time,” Anna added before they both disappeared into thin air.
As soon as they left, I turned to Aiden, waiting for him to explain.
Aiden sighed. “Okay. Do you want the short version or the
long
version?”
“The short one will be fine.”
“They have gone home to talk with a couple of their friends, who are also like us. And Anna and Dave are hoping they might have heard of someone being able to do whatever it is you did when you saw Chelsea get taken in front of your house.”
“Hang on. Did you just say gone home?” I must have heard wrong. They had just
left
their home. They had all lived here for the last couple of years.
Aiden looked at me without saying a word. I wished that I was able to read his mind, because whatever it was that he was trying to decide on telling me must be big.
He turned in his seat so that he was facing me. “And right now, I wish I had the ability to see into the future, so I would know whether I should be telling you this or not. But I don’t, so here it goes,” he said, picking up my hands.
“We don’t really live here,” he confessed.
My eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. “What?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper. My throat felt like it was closing up on me.
Aiden continued, “Well, that’s not entirely true. I pretty much live here now, but Anna and Dave still live over in England.”
“You live in England!” I had found my voice once again, and I was ready to use it in its full glory. “What the hell is all this?” I stood up, waving my hands at the house. “And what am I? Am I just someone you hook up with when you’re in Australia?”
Aiden burst out laughing, which only made me more upset. “See, you don’t even take me serious. Here I am finding out that my boyfriend isn’t real. For all I know, you have your real girlfriend tucked away back in England.”
“Calm down, will you?” Aiden got to his feet.
“Don’t you tell me to calm down! And don’t you do any of that calming shit on me either.” He reached for my hands, but I quickly pulled them away.
Aiden flopped back on the sofa without saying anything more.
I looked at him, waiting for him to say something, anything to explain this, but he didn’t say a word.
“You’re not even going to try to fix this? Do I really mean that little to you?” My throat started to close up on me again. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I felt like my whole world was falling apart.
Reaching up, Aiden pulled me down so that I was sitting on his lap. “There is no one else,” he said as he wrapped his arms around me. “If you would have just waited until I had finished explaining, instead of chucking a hissy fit, you wouldn’t be feeling like this.”
I opened my mouth to say something in my defence, but Aiden closed my lips with his fingers. “Just listen, okay?”
I nodded, and Aiden removed his fingers from my lips.
“Before we came here, we lived in England. Dave had some business on the Gold Coast that he needed to take care of, which was going to take a couple of months to finalise. So Anna and I came with him to get away from the cold weather. Anyway, we were about to head back home, to England that is, and then I met you.” A mischievous smile spread across his face, making me think that there was an inside joke I was missing.
I thought back to the time we first met. A group of us from school were playing a game of beach footy when I spotted a drop-dead gorgeous guy coming out of the surf. There was water dripping down his body that was clinging in all the right places, leaving me unable to tear my eyes away from him. I was floored by how hot he was—jaw-dropping hot.
Aiden, of course, noticed me looking at him all googly-eyed, and flashed his mind-blowing smile, bringing me to a halt. That was worse than it sounded, because I was the one with the ball, and we were playing a game of tackle. And wouldn’t you know it, I was slammed down into the sand. When I got up, there he was, right in front of me. I’d had to swallow the sand in my mouth because I hadn’t wanted him to see me looking like a slag as I spat out the sand – yeah that would have been a real turn on – not.
“How’s a guy supposed to leave a girl who’s prepared to eat sand for him?” Aiden said, laughing.
My cheeks flushed in embarrassment. I hadn’t realised that he knew I swallowed sand that day.
“It’s just part of the reason why I fell in love with you.”
Every time I heard him say those three little words, my heart erupted with elation. And this time was no different. I swung myself around so that I was facing him. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was. He was everything I could dream of, and more. And best of all, he was mine.
Chapter 8
Tyson started howling as soon as he caught sight of his lead. Feeling guilty about neglecting him the last couple of days, I decided to take the big fella for a much deserved walk. Plus, it served as a distraction from continuously thinking about Chelsea while I waited for my mum to come home.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” I mockingly asked Aiden before I slipped out the back door.
“Nah, you go ahead, I wanna watch the end of this game,” he said, turning the volume up on the football game he had just flicked on.
“Yeah, right.” I closed the door behind me. It was a girls’ touch football game on one of the local networks. There was no way that he would rather watch a bunch of girls running around in oversized clothing than stare at my ass for the next twenty minutes while I built up a sweat—which I happen to know he finds very sexy—if it wasn’t for the devil dog running beside me.
After wrestling with Tyson to get the halter over his head, we headed out the side gate, where I caught a glimpse of the nosy Mrs. Carson peeking out from behind the curtain on her front window. I waved at her, more to let her know that I caught her snooping than to say hello. She didn’t reciprocate. Instead, she shifted her gaze upwards, as if she was checking for any rain clouds in the clear blue sky, but I wasn’t fooled. She was spying on me.
Lately, I had been getting a feeling of what people were thinking about. That morning when Aiden had said I was pretty much spot on with what Ben was thinking convinced me that I was developing my ability to hear people’s thoughts.
“Come on, boy,” I said to Tyson.
Ignoring Mrs. Carson’s blatant attempt at deception, I started jogging down the street. Tyson trotted beside me with his tongue hanging out, panting like he was about to have a heart attack. I probably should have waited until a little later in the evening before taking him out, rather than submitting him to the treacherous, midday heat.
I was about to turn back to head home when the stupid cat that poops in our front yard jumped from behind the bushes and snarled at us. Here we were, a human and a giant Rottweiler who would scare the crap out of anyone in their right mind, and this cat was baring its fangs and getting ready to jump us. “Dumbass cat,” I muttered under my breath.
Tyson was startled for only a second before he decided to show the stupid cat the size of
his
teeth. He let out a deep growl that sent my blood curdling—and he was my dog.
Before I knew it, the cat took off, and so did Tyson, dragging me behind him. I tried desperately to pull him up, but it was no use; Tyson was set on teaching that cat a lesson. How was it that I was able to punch Chrissy with such force to send her flying into the next table, yet I couldn’t even seem to restrain the dog?
The only choice I had was to let go of the lead, otherwise I would be flat on my face, being dragged by a fifty-kilo killer on a mission. So I let go and watched the cat run for its life, Tyson right on its tail.
Pain seared through the upper right side of my body when I pressed gently on my shoulder. My arm felt like it had been ripped from its socket, which it probably had, considering the speed at which Tyson took off after that cat.
I gently supported my hurt arm with my uninjured one and trudged back home, dog-less.
Aiden was waiting for me on my front porch. “I’m sure you had that devil of yours on a lead when you left,” he said, getting up from the step.
“Aren’t you even the least bit concerned about my arm?” I whined. I was sure that he would have swept me up in his arms and carried me inside to look after me.
“You hurt your arm, not your legs, but if you insist.” He swept me up into his arms and planted a kiss on my lips, making me forget all about the pain that should have been radiating from my arm.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the old prude next door shaking her head at us through the window. I pulled my lips away just enough to mutter, “I think we better take this inside.”
“
You didn’t have to stop kissing me to tell me that,”
he reminded me telepathically.
I had completely forgotten that we could do that. I had been communicating by talking for the last seventeen years, and it was going to take some time to change that.
“So, how’s the arm?” Aiden sat down on the sofa, still holding me in his arms.
I jerked myself up into a sitting position when I realised that the pain was no longer there. I prodded and probed my shoulder with my left hand. Nothing. I couldn’t believe it. My body was
seriously
capable of healing itself. I wondered how far that would go. If I jumped off a cliff, would I walk away unharmed?
“Promise me you’re never going to test that one out.” Aiden wore a seriously concerned look on his face.
“Of course I’m not. Do you really think that I would do something like that?”
“No, but…” He paused, his facial expression contorted as if remembering something bad. “People do some crazy things when they think they’re invincible.”
“What is it? What were you just thinking of?” I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to know.
He sat there looking at me for a moment, probably considering whether he should tell me or not. “When I was younger, my parents told me about how our bodies are able to heal themselves quickly. Well, I decided to see for myself. Most of the kids in my neighbourhood were going through their superhero stage, where the really daring—and stupid—ones would jump off the roof of their single story houses. Well, I thought that I could do one better, considering I was invincible and all. So I climbed out of a window of the top floor of our home and jumped off.”