Fated: Karma Series, Book Three (22 page)

“I tried all the way up to your ribs. Whatever is going on, it isn’t something I can get at.”

Fate grabbed my hand. “It’s going to be okay.”

“Sure.” I nodded.

His hand wrapped around my nape, as if trying to impart his own conviction in a belief that was looking hazier and hazier. “It’s going to be okay.”

“Okay,” I said, more for his benefit.

I got up and started to right my clothes as Fate and his guys seemed to have been answering some silent invitation I hadn’t received to gather, one by one, into the office. Faith was minding her own business on the other side of the room, looking over something by the register, clearly trying to give me my space.

I sat on the bench and Paddy sat down beside me.

“You know I care for you,” Paddy said.

“I do.” As much as someone like him could but there wasn’t any need to get insulting. I’d already stolen a chunk out of him, might as well leave the feelings intact if possible.

So wrapped up in my own thoughts, it took me a moment for the way he’d said the words to hit home. This wasn’t a let’s chat about our feelings because it’s looking a little ugly right now type thing but something altogether different. It was an apology. The prospect of what he was apologizing for put a golf ball sized lump in my throat.

Paddy started speaking again. “The others, they would’ve done something immediately at any hint.”

I nodded, listening and letting him do the talking. I didn’t want to jump to conclusions but the more he talked, the worse the feeling became.

“If it were just I…” Paddy shrugged. “I’m tired. I’ve been around long enough to have lost the thrills of being alive in the typical sense. I could let it all go tomorrow. But there’s certain things that can’t happen.”

“But it’s not so just say it.”

“If this continues, it’s going to be too dangerous for you to…remain.”

We sat, staring at each other. I got it. I understood on a larger level why he felt this was necessary. But it didn’t stop sharp claws of hurt from shredding through me. I’d known for a while that I could only trust Paddy to a point, but having now reached that limit still felt like a betrayal.

“I didn’t ask for this. And whatever it is that’s happening, I can’t even use it,” I said, pleading my case and trying to buy time until I figured something out.

“I’m sorry, but if we can’t stop this,” he motioned to the chunk in his arm, concealed by clothing, “even if I didn’t, they would.”

“Do they know what is happening?”

“Yes. I felt I had to tell them. I know this was my idea in the first place and I’m trying to fix it.”

“I understand.” But I wouldn’t go down meekly. I’d let him think I was fine with playing the sacrificial lamb. I wasn’t but he didn’t need to know that.

We fell into silence again but not the calm companionship of friends. No, this was a silence born of regrets and fear. The fear was mostly me. He’d kill me. I had no doubts about that. I’d like to think he was the one with regrets but that might’ve been wishful thinking.

Fate walked over and stopped in front of where we sat in silence. His eyes flitted between the two of us and I knew he was picking up on the tension. You would’ve had to have been deaf, dumb and blind not to, and Fate was none of those things.

“You ready?” he asked, probably sensing my desire to leave.

I nodded.

I didn’t say another word until we were several miles from the tattoo shop and I knew Paddy was gone. Even then I hesitated. What if in some small way Fate felt the same? That maybe it would be better to get rid of me than jeopardize the long time establishment?

No. I wouldn’t think like that. For all the faults I could lay at Fate’s feet, he’d been loyal, more loyal than perhaps I’d deserved.

Finally, when I knew we’d be at his house soon, I managed to get the words out. “If we can’t stop what’s happening to me, they’re going to kill me. I got the sense that Paddy will do it himself if needed.”

His knuckles turned white where he gripped the wheel. “Why didn’t you tell me back there?”

“I thought it would be better if I didn’t. We aren’t at that point yet.”

“The point where I kill him?”

“Or he kills you.”

“I wouldn’t have been the one that died.”

God, how I hoped that was true. “He’s strong, even with me draining him.”

“I don’t make idle promises. I wouldn’t have died.” He slammed a fist against the steering wheel. “Fuck. You know he won’t show his face again now. If I see him I will kill him.”

We pulled up to the house, three thirteen year old looking boys walking on the roof with rifles in hand.

Fate slammed the gears into park in the garage and I thought the car door was going to fly off the hinges from the force of him closing it. I watched him walk into the house, too mad to speak.

I got the anger part. It had been growing in me since we’d left Lars’s shop, and I was starting to wish I’d had it out with Paddy there.

I looked upward. I didn’t know who I was talking to anymore, whether it was God, the four, or some other universal power. I wasn’t sure it mattered.

“You think you’ve got me beat? That I’ll walk softly into death? Throw my body on the top of some heap reserved for martyrs and saints?” I let out a cross between a sigh and a laugh. “Shows what you people know. You’ve got me pegged wrong then. Go ahead. Try and take me.” I held out my hands as I stood alone in the garage. “Go ahead. I know you hear me."

One of the stockpiled guns fell off the shelf and landed pointing directly at my chest.

“What? Can’t do it?” I said, not budging a hair as I stared down the barrel. “Come on. Give it your best shot!”

“What the hell you doing?” Bobby stood in the doorway.

I watched as he walked in and wondered how much he’d seen.

“And what crawled up Fate’s ass? He’s shooting arrows at anyone that even goes near him.”

He crossed the room and walked over to the gun that was aimed right at me. He picked it up and looked at the clip. “It’s fully loaded. Strange for stock not being used. Also looks like it’s jammed.” His sweet innocent eyes looked right at me and I saw a glimpse of the real age before his chin went up a hair. “Looks like I’m betting on the right horse.” He winked as he tossed the gun back on the bench.

“I wouldn’t bet too big. Not sure there’s going to be a winner in the bunch.”

“Not much left to hold onto then for a rainy day.”

The kid had a point.

We’d been home for hours. Fate was silent the majority of the time. As tired as I was, rest didn’t want to come. I’d finally decided to give up and watch another day turn to night.

The sand was moist under my feet as I walked to the water’s edge, letting the breaking waves lap at my ankles. The telltale signs of the universe at work swirled in dark shadows on the horizon and I wondered at its plan—or lack thereof.

The shadows over the ocean seemed to swell as I stood there. “I don’t know what to do,” I mumbled to myself, not caring if any of the four heard. Not caring if Paddy appeared. Not caring about anything but figuring out how to save the only world I’d ever known from descending into utter chaos forever and not being destroyed as I did it.

A stronger breeze pushed the hair back from my face and I looked up as the black mist was building about thirty feet in, right above the surface of the water. Something was different though. It wasn’t swirls forming but what looked like the shadowy outline of a person. It didn’t look male or female but was something that could’ve been either. It didn’t have features and I could see the hint of clouds behind. It slowly started walking toward me, gliding above the water and I couldn’t figure out whether I should run or not.

It stopped ten feet away.

“Who are you?” I asked.

It didn’t respond but dropped its head. Its shadowy body dissipated back into swirls and then was gone.

“Holy shit! What was that crap?” Buddy asked, slurring and staggering as he made his way across the beach, Billy and Bobby tailing him.

I threw my hands up in the air. “Not sure.”

Billy looked like he was going to say something but it was ambushed by a belch before he could continue. “You get this type of visitor a lot?”

“No,” I said, leaving them on the beach, staring at where the shadow person had stood, and headed back to the house.

Fate was in the kitchen when I walked in. We hadn’t discussed last night yet, or, more accurately, the failure it had turned out to be. I wasn’t sure what to say and guessed he had the same problem.

I poured myself a coffee as I watched him transfer the sugar from one bowl to another. I’d known more than a few people in my life who did housekeeping when they were stressed but I’d never pegged Fate as one of them. “Why are you doing that?”

“What? The sugar?” he asked, holding the bowl up.

“Yes.”

“You didn’t like the old bowl,” he said.

He was right. I didn’t. I’d never said anything but I’d hated the shape of it and how hard it was to get my spoon in easily after it was halfway empty. He put the new bowl in its spot and walked into the living room.

I followed him, something stuck in my craw now. “Why did you buy that new comforter on your bed? That wasn’t the one you used to have before I moved in.”

“It’s a heavier down. You get cold when you sleep.”

I froze as it truly hit me for the first time. My mind ran back over the last several weeks. The sugar, the shampoo, the throw blanket on the couch that looked just like my favorite one I’d had in the condo before it burned down. Every time I turned around, there was another little mark or sign.

Fate loved me. He never said the words but he told me over and over again. I’d been too busy listening for something to be bothered with what his actions were screaming. I fell onto the couch, stunned.

He stopped moving around to look at me. “How is it that you see everything else so clearly but not this?”

“But you never say...” I couldn’t bring myself to say the word love to him.

He stood in place, the moon casting a glow around him. “I’ve seen countless wars, upheaval, the worst atrocities. I’ve known hundreds of thousands of people and watched them suffer. And yet the thought of anything happening to you brings me to my knees. Label that however you want.”

He didn’t sound like Fate anymore and that thing, that indescribable essence I’d felt before, was pouring off of him.

“You seem different somehow.”

“Sometimes I mute myself slightly around others. I’m not doing it now but I’m still me.”

“And I still don’t know what that is exactly.”

“Does it matter?”

“Don’t you think I should know who you are?”

“You do know me.”

He was right. I didn’t need a name or label for him. I did know who he was, and I loved him.

I stood, needing to be near him more than I’d ever needed anything in my life. I took several steps closer before I launched myself at him. He caught me as I wrapped my legs around him.

I was kissing him before he could speak and then he was pressing against me, a wall at my back. Then we were moving again.

“Where are we going?”

“The bedroom.”

“Why?”

“Because there are too many people in this house? And although I’m not overly modest, I can’t help but feel that you might get shy if they were to walk in on us.”

“Walk in on us making love?”

“Something along those lines.”

“You don’t like that word.”

He laughed. “That word isn’t a good fit for what we’re about to do,” he said and then he was kissing me again and I was oblivious to the surroundings.

I didn’t realize we’d made it to the bedroom until I heard the door slam and I was falling onto the bed. My hips were lifting as he tugged my pants off; my shirt was yanked over my head next.

“What about you?” I asked, breathless but wanting to see him as well. I leaned up and grabbed his shirt, pushing it upward and he quickly tugged it the rest of the way. He made haste with his pants and his erection sprang free. I only caught the quickest glimpse before he pushed me back down on the bed, following.

His mouth covered mine, his tongue plunging as his fingers plunged below.

“And I was worried you wouldn’t be ready,” he said, clearly pleased by just how ready I was.

I pushed him onto his back before I straddled him, my hands pressing his shoulders to the bed and slowly lowered myself onto him.

I rose up, holding him tight to me even shallow as he was. He groaned as his hands clenched on my hips pulling me downward and driving deep inside.

His hands held me flush to him before he drove deeper. Minutes or hours, I lost all concept of time as my senses were driven down to the pure sensation of where we connected.

Then he was over me and I was arching into him, throwing my head back as he thrust harder within me and waves of pleasure were coming so close together I didn’t know if it was one massive orgasm or I was coming repeatedly.

He rolled over as we both caught our breath. I felt like a well-used rag doll that had lost its bones as I lay there beside him.

“Was I too rough?” he asked, as his palm grazed my breast before trailing down my stomach, still slick with sweat.

“Not even a little. I should probably be asking you that question.”

His hand drifted lower still and then his finger was slipping into me as his thumb pressed against the hood of my clitoris.

I threw my head back, letting out a sigh of pleasure as I arched into him.

“Good, because I was afraid you were going to tell me you needed a break.” He rolled on top of me and was filling me again.

“How many times can you do this?”

“Let’s just say it might be a really long night.”