Feel
Authors: Karen-Anne Stewart
Feel
The one whose emotions I can't feel is the one who makes me feel the most.
DEDICATION
Feel is dedicated to the BEST betas a girl could have! My sincere gratitude and love to Diane Maxwell, Chantelle Cunningham, Honey Warren, Karen Galloway, Pam Riddle, Tara Ansari, Heather Lindall, Shannon Ropp, Karla Crescioni, Sherry Long, Valeria Gardin, Vernon Gardin, Bret Stewart, and Tichelle Williams. Your feedback, encouragement, and time are most appreciated and loved!
Feel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges that the trademarked status and the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
Cover photo was purchased from fotolia.com. Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Fotolia are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only. Certain stock imagery © Fotolia.
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher herby disclaims any responsibility for them.
Due to strong language, mature scenes, and some violence, Feel is recommended for readers 18 and older.
Copyright © 2014 Karen-Anne Stewart
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-1502757746
ISBN-10: 1502757745
Table of Contents
To my husband, thank you for being there every step of the way on this amazingly wild ride. I love you!
To the most amazing Beta readers, ever! Diane Maxwell, Chantelle Cunningham, Pam Riddle, Tara Ansari, Karen Galloway, Heather Lindall, Shannon Ropp, Honey Warren, Karla Crescioni, Valeria Gardin, Vernon Gardin, Sherry Long, Bret Stewart, and Tichelle Williams.
To Bret Stewart, thank you for your professional editing services with Feel.
To the Rain Makers, you girls still rock! I appreciate each and every one of you, Jovon Tucker, Heather Pfingsten, Chantelle Cunningham, Karla Crescioni, Honey Warren, Danielle Cury, Jackie Parker, and Kim Rector.
To Gillian Felix, you are a wealth of encouragement that I appreciate more than you know.
To all of the authors who still amaze me with your support and encouragement, I have been truly blessed to have been given the chance to get to know you. Thank you!
To the bloggers and reviewers, your support has been beyond amazing, and I’m thrilled to have connected with each of you. Thank you!
A huge thank you to all the readers! I’ve said it from the beginning and it’s still true; you guys ROCK! I look forward to hearing from you about Jensen and Saige’s story.
The wet trails are warmer than I imagined they would be and tickle as they run down my forehead and knees. The bright red of my blood is beautiful as it makes the voices scaring me disappear. Warm, happy tears fall down my cheeks because the blood makes everything they feel for me go away. For a few seconds, I have calm…the only thing I feel is the pain,
my
pain.
Ace’s foot kicks dirt in my eyes, bringing everything else rushing back, and I lose my breath from the hard rush and the dust going into my chest.
“You’re such a stupid freak!” he yells, his orange converse shoe kicking more dirt in my mouth and eyes. “Cry baby,” Ace teases, pointing and laughing at my tears.
I want to scream at him that my tears aren’t from his being a big bully. I would never let someone so mean know he hurt me, so I just stop crying instead, not sharing my happy tears with him, with any of them! Several of the kids in my class circle around me as I sit on my knees in the middle of them. My knees hurt as I stand, but it makes me laugh and that feels so good.
Ace pushes me, and I fall against Allison, who jumps back like she’s afraid to touch me.
“I don’t want her
freak
germs rubbing off on me, Ace,” Allison shrieks.
Ace laughs, but his laugh isn’t like mine; it’s cold and mean, like his hands, as he pushes me back to the ground. The sounds of them laughing hurts my ears as they kick more dirt in my face. The dust makes me cough and choke. My eyes hurt as they turn blurry and tears fill them again, but I rub them away before everyone can see as they continue to call me names and push me back and forth on the dirty playground.
“Leave her alone!” I hear a boy yell, and the mean laughing stops.
My eyes burn and feel scratched as I look up into his green eyes. He looks mad, but, for some reason, I’m not scared of him like I am of the others. The boy punches Ace in the mouth and blood runs down his lip. I don’t think his blood is pretty at all.
Ace falls to the ground next to me and starts to cry. I feel sorry for him before I feel his emotions stabbing me again, hurting everything inside. His eyes meet mine and I feel how he hates me, how he’s scared of me. I look away, praying for the calm I felt a few minutes ago, but it doesn’t come.
My teacher is yelling at the boy who hit Ace, telling him she’s going to call his father. She doesn’t look at me. She never looks at me.
The boy jerks his arm away from my teacher and kneels in the dirt in front of me. His eyes are so bright as he takes my hands, “Are you okay?”
I feel shy as I nod at the boy who looks a little older than me. I keep waiting for him to jerk his hands away from me like everyone else, but he never does. The calm comes back, making more tears fall from my eyes.
“Don’t cry. He won’t hurt you again. I won’t let him,” he promises as I wonder why I can’t feel anything from him when I want so badly to for the first time in my life. He wipes my tears with his thumbs, then pulls me up, never letting go of my hand, “I won’t let any of them hurt you.” He brushes his blonde hair out of his eye and smiles.
I like how he smiles. It makes me feel like I do when the sun shines on my face. “Thank you,” I say quietly, feeling nothing but just what’s inside of me, and I smile back at him for that. My smile disappears when the teacher pulls him away. I don’t want him to go and my lips start to shake as she pulls him further towards the school.
He rolls his eyes at her before smiling at me again. His smile gets bigger and he jerks his hand from hers before running back and taking mine. “C’mon,” he laughs, pulling me behind him.
My teacher is yelling so loud, and I can feel how mad she is at us as we run away. I know what I’m doing is bad, really, really bad, but I don’t care. The calm is still in my tummy, and I feel happy. I hardly ever feel happy, and I don’t want this feeling to end.
My feet are tired and it’s hard to breathe when we finally stop. The boy still has my hand and he uses it to pull me onto the tall grass, next to him. His eyes are as green as the soft grass surrounding me. I can hear how loudly he’s breathing, but I still can’t feel anything from him. It’s what I don’t feel that makes me confused.
“You okay?” he asks, “you’re not scared are you?”
“No,” I say, slowly shaking my head.
He smiles at me again. “I’m Jensen. What’s your name?”
“Saige,” I whisper, suddenly not sure what I should feel when I can’t tell what he thinks of me.
He sits up and looks down at me laying in the grass. He’s still holding my hand and gently squeezes it, “Don’t worry, Saige, I won’t leave you alone with them. I’ll never leave you alone.”
Saige
Thirteen years later
“Help me! Oh, God! Help me, please. I don’t want to die,” Riah pleads as she crawls across the floor, smearing her blood with what’s already splattered on the tile.
Her hysteria smothers me more than the smoke burning like acid in my lungs. Desperately grappling for control, I make my way towards the girl I share a couple of classes with and reach for her hand. Glass shatters in splintering rainbows as the stained glass windows burst, exploding, imploding, and propelling through the air. Shards slice into my arms as I cradle Riah’s and my head protectively. The sounds of the injured students are deafening, but mostly they’re sickening, and I have to force myself not to vomit. Screams rip through my soul and acidic air burns my nose all the way down my throat to my stomach and I can’t stop the bile from spilling onto the floor any longer.
Riah’s cries are weakening. Taking shallow breaths, I pull myself together. “You’re going to be okay, Riah,” I lie, choking on the tears I’m fighting like hell to hide when I see the life slipping from her eyes as blood leaks from her neck and abdomen.
The grip from her hand weakens as she tries to cling to me a little longer. A tear rolls down her cheek as she looks at me with terror and sorrow dimming her eyes, “I don’t want to die, Saige…please, don’t let me die.”
Squeezing her hand, my soul drowns in her fear and despair. “It’s going to be okay,” I barely manage to whisper, my voice raw as the light fades from her eyes.
The loss of her emotions when they vacate my body and hers leaves me filled with dark, ugly rage. “
NOOOOO,
” I scream so forcefully, my chest feels like it’s going to explode. It only takes seconds before the rage is mixed with a poisonous concoction of the fear and shock radiating from the few survivors close enough to affect me. Their emotions are overwhelming and I want to curl in a ball and make them go away, make everything go away, but I can’t. I have to find the bastard before he hurts someone else…
“Wake up, Saige,” Bailey grumbles, throwing a pillow at my head. “Get some help for your nightmares or find another roommate. I’m tired of your screams waking me up every night.”
Blinking slowly, relief fills me as I realize I’m in my room, in my bed. “Sorry,” I mumble, trying to slow the frenzied pounding of my heart.
Bailey grabs her bag and shoves clothes inside, “I’m crashing with Kim for the rest of the night.”
The door slams shut before I can respond. There’s really nothing I could’ve said anyway. I have no control over the premonitions. They are getting stronger, which means the nightmares, or whatever in the hell they are, will only get worse.
Damn
. Closing my eyes, I pray for sleep and am granted a few fitful hours before the sun creeps through the tiny dorm window, beckoning my eyes to open.
The thought of a long, hot shower followed by a tall cup of iced coffee are the only things making me drag myself from bed. A yawn escapes as I grab a towel and my clothes. Not wanting to, I open the door, immediately bracing myself for the rush of emotions. Dammit, I hate that rush, and it doesn’t take long before it comes.
Apparently, Stacey’s still pissed at her ex for banging the first girl he saw after they broke up, and Erin is the same as the past few months, depressed and bitchy. I don’t know Erin’s deal and trying to be nice to her only produces massive doses of bitch overload so I’ve reduced my attempts to a smile, which I direct at both of them as they walk by. I get nothing in return. Why can’t people be happier? It would make my life a helluva lot more bearable. Theirs, too.
Thoughts turn towards a time in my life when I was happy and my heart aches. I’m astounded by how much it still hurts. My happiness is gone. He is gone. Now, I thrive on bits of other people’s joy. Pathetic, I know, but I’ll take that emotion any way I can, even secondhand.
Whispers pull me from unwanted thoughts of Jensen and the agony in my soul. I don’t have to hear what the group of passing girls is saying to know it’s about me, even though I hear it anyway. That feeling a person gets when they hear that someone doesn’t like them, for me, it’s multiplied a thousand times when I actually
feel
how much they dislike me. Hearing you’re a screw up, just a waste of breath, sucks enough, but hearing it from the person’s mouth and actually feeling it radiating off him does something deeper, something darker, something permanent that never really goes away, no matter how damn hard I try to scrape the contagion from my soul. To say I’m damaged would be a lie; I’m unbelievably fucked up….but I’m okay with that because, really, who isn’t?
I’m granted a reprieve with the showers being empty. The steam is engulfing as I let the hot water spill down my skin. Relishing in the solitude, I let myself relax, enjoying the rare moment, until thoughts of Jensen blow my serenity all to shit. That godawful pain stabs me in the heart again. Normally I would welcome the pain, since it’s my emotions, my pain I’m feeling, but not when it’s from him. That pain nearly destroyed me.
Letting my wet locks hang freely, I dress quickly and head towards the quad, needing to find the lover’s corner to get my fix. I need it more today than I’d like to admit. The sun sparkles on the dusting of dew left on the grass as I make my way down the brick walkway to the couples who like to gather there. The warmth of their emotions seeping inside me challenges the rays of the morning sun as I sit on the rock ledge, as close to the love birds as possible without seeming like a total creeper. A smile spreads across my lips; there’s nothing like the feeling of love, or how it wraps around you, making you feel…safe. I felt safe once. Hating myself, I brush my fingers across the leather band of my bracelet, remembering a love that consumed me. It still does.
Closing my eyes, I allow myself a few seconds to savor the memories before I shut myself down, wondering why in the hell I torture myself? I know that wearing the bracelet Jensen gave me on my fifteenth birthday isn’t what keeps the memories alive, but it sure as hell doesn’t help, either. Taking one last look at the couples snuggled tightly in each other’s arms before they have to rush to class, I breathe it in before I walk towards the café for much-needed caffeine.
“There’s the roommate from hell,” Kim cracks as I make my way down the hall to Psychology class.
Bailey rolls her eyes, “Shut-up, Kim. It’s just her keeping me up all hours that’s a pain in the ass. Other than that, I barely know she’s there.”
Not knowing if that should be comforting or not, I just offer Bailey a smile, ignoring her crabby friend. Dr. Parsons is uploading his morning notes as I slip into my seat and glance around for Riah. Another dose of relief sweeps over me when I see Riah in a different outfit than the sapphire tank I saw her wearing in my dream. Whatever the hell is going to happen, it isn’t going to happen today.
Wes enters the room with a giggling brunette on his arm, and I shrink a little in my seat. Having to see my ex-boyfriend every Tuesday and Thursday morning in Psych class is enough to make me need a good dose of therapy…among other things. It’s not like I loved Wes; I didn’t. We only dated a few months, but knowing I gave myself to him in a moment of weakness hurts more than how I didn’t see that he was only using me to get some. I could feel he didn’t love me either, but I felt his desire and his interest in me. I was the only girl he paid attention to when I was around and I needed that. Attention isn’t something I get often, at least not the good kind. I allowed his attention to cloud my vision because I wanted,
needed
, to believe someone wanted me.
Wes was my first time, my only time, and he pretty much screwed me from wanting sex ever again. Jensen slips back inside my head and my heart throbs.
Dammit!
He was supposed to be my first, my only, but he sent me away, and I didn’t see that coming either. I guess I’m pretty proficient at being blind and getting screwed.
The brunette leans in for a kiss, not wasting time to stick her tongue inside Wes’ mouth. I almost gag, not knowing if it’s from the scene I’m witnessing or the rancid lust radiating from Wes.
“Saige,” Wes clicks his chin in my direction as he leaves the bimbo at her seat to make his way to his own chair, two seats away from mine. Propping his hands on the edge of my desk, he winks.
Cocky bastard
.
“I’m moving into a new apartment, off campus,” he lowers his voice, giving me that lopsided grin I used to think was cute, “you should come over and we can break it in right.”
“That implies you know how to do it right,” I retort, turning my attention to the front of the room.
Wes gives a little snort, “That’s alright, be a bitch now, but you’ll be looking for more of me soon.”
The really sad part is that I feel Wes actually believes it. He must’ve slept through the class discussion on delusions last Thursday. Refusing to waste any more time on the jerk who treated me like Prince Charming until the second he got me out of my pants, I busy myself pulling my notebook and pen from my backpack.
“Take a seat, Mr. Rollins,” Dr. Parsons calls to Wes, reaffirming my opinion of him being my favorite professor. “Today we are going to discuss Parapsychology. Can anyone tell me what that is?”
I can’t help the smirk tilting the corners of my lips. Yep, this should be interesting.
“Isn’t that like those people who say they can read minds?” Riah asks.
“Telepathy is one of the claimed paranormal abilities, yes. Clairvoyance, reincarnation, and telekinesis are a few more.” Dr. Parsons looks around the room, “There have been a multitude of studies on people who have stated they have supernatural abilities but no validated proof has ever been established. That could be because these so-called abilities, or powers, if you will, are only scams, or maybe it’s because the scientific community hasn’t yet developed a way to effectively evaluate these abilities in a controlled environment.” Taking a sip of his coffee, Dr. Parsons studies the room, his eyes twinkling like they always do before a debate begins, “So, what do you think?”
It doesn’t take long for the debate to start as Jake lets out a laugh, “I think it’s like those people who believe in Bigfoot. They’re all total whack jobs.”
“Hey,” Brian, the football team’s star kicker, calls out, “Bigfoot exists; he’s Kyle’s dad.”
The room erupts in laughter as Kyle, who is particularly hairy, throws a waded piece of paper at Brian, “Not funny, smartass.”
“Alright,” Dr. Parsons holds his hands up, failing miserably at hiding his smile, “no expletives allowed, and what have I said about calling people ‘whack jobs’, Jake?”
“Sorry, Doc,” Jake quips, still laughing.
“How many of you have ever had déjà vu?” Dr. Parsons asks, walking up the aisle as he raises his own hand, “I have.”
He stops a few rows in front of me, and I smile at how he scans the crowded classroom. It’s obvious he enjoys teaching and his excitement is contagious.
“Come on,” he teases, “I know I’m the epitome of awesomeness, but I can’t be the only one in here who has had that feeling of experiencing something before when you know you haven’t.”
Laughter echoes through the room again and a few more hands are raised.
“Ah, some fellow supernaturals are joining me,” Dr. Parsons grins. “Seriously, most everyone has had a freaky moment or two when something you can’t rationally explain has happened. Do you chalk that up to a paranormal event or simply a state when your intuition was more sensitive?”
“There’s a difference between having a few déjà vu moments and claiming you have the ability to see the future,” the brunette bimbo scoffs.
“You’re right, Avery, but many influential psychologists argue that we all have the ability to tap into paranormal powers.”
“If that were true, none of us would be here today. We’d all be using our powers to teleport to the beach or get rich,” Jake argues playfully, holding up his wallet, “at least that’s what I’d be doing.”
Dr. Parsons clutches his chest, “That hurts, Jake. And I thought my class was the highlight of everyone’s week.” He chuckles before continuing, “One argument is that only the ones sensitive enough to their bodies and minds have figured out how to utilize the part of their brain that gives them these special abilities.” Pointing around the room, he asks, “What about near-death experiences or ghosts?” He cocks his brow, whispering, “Do you see dead people?”
The rest of the room bursts into laughter again at Dr. Parsons’ Sixth Sense parody, but a thin sheen of perspiration breaks out at the nape of my neck. This shit is getting way too close to home.
“Avery touched on my favorite topic of parapsychology, precognition,” Dr. Parsons rubs his hands together excitedly as I shift uncomfortably in my seat. “Seeing the future, now that’s my idea of a supernatural power.”
Riah shrugs her shoulder, “I don’t know, seeing the future seems like it could suck pretty heavily.”
Welcome to my world
. Swallowing hard, I can’t shake the visions in last night’s dream. My ‘abilities’ or ‘gifts’ do suck. I don’t want them. I’ve never wanted them. What in the hell can be good about sensing death, anyway? I realize that seeing the future has its advantages, but every single time I’ve stepped in to try to help or warn someone, it’s never ended well for me. My preventing tragedies from happening has been rewarded with nothing but pain. My palms begin to sweat and it becomes harder for me to breathe as agonizing memories slam into me. Closing my eyes, I desperately try to focus on pushing those memories back to the dark abyss I’ve tried to bury them in.