Authors: Linda Lamberson
“And believe me, I have yet to accept the idea of Dylan being your new go-to guy,” I freely admitted.
“Yeah, this whole switching Shepherds thing is going to be a little strange,” agreed Quinn.
“By the way, when did the little bromance between you two begin to brew?”
“‘Bromance,’ huh?” Quinn laughed. “Is that a spark of jealousy I see in those beautiful green eyes of yours?” he asked with raised eyebrows.
“Maybe,” I conceded, shrugging my shoulders.
“Don’t worry, he’s not my type.” Quinn grinned and sat down on the grass, pulling me down onto his lap, facing him.
“And what is your type?”
“Let’s see,” he drew the words out, teasing me. “Long brown hair, golden-green eyes, a cute little nose—” He broke off to kiss the tip of my nose. “Kissable lips.” He bit my lower lip playfully.
“And to think I was worried I’d become the third wheel,” I joked.
“Never.” Quinn kissed me. “Besides, it sounds like Dylan has found a wheel of his own.”
“Oh, yeah.” I smiled. “Your Watcher. I wonder how they met.”
“It was probably when Dylan found me about a month or so ago, although I’m still not exactly sure how he did it. Two weeks into my trip, he just showed up one night while I was camping.” Quinn smiled and shook his head. “He really scared the crap out of me.”
“That sounds like Dylan.” After what we’d been through, I could only imagine how Dylan popping in unannounced on Quinn would’ve freaked him out. “Subtlety isn’t really his strong suit.”
“Yeah, well, once the initial shock wore off, I was glad he’d showed up. We talked a lot … about you.” Quinn paused, and I could feel the intensity of his eyes on me. “And,” he said in a lighter tone, casting his eyes over the water, breaking the spell of his gaze, “I must admit, the guy knows a lot about camping.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“And animals. Man, this one time we ran into one pissed off black bear. I mean, I thought we were
goners
—but Dylan, he just calmed it down somehow. He’s like the Bear Whisperer or something.” Quinn chuckled.
“Remind me some day to tell you about the time he got a raging bull to eat right out my hand,” I said. “Well, first he pissed it off, and then he got it to eat out of my hand.”
“That was the same night you first brought me here.” Quinn grinned.
“Ah, so he already told you the story.”
“Yup.” He chuckled again.
“Any other stories about me he shared with you?” I asked with raised eyebrows.
“
Anyway,”
Quinn said in an exaggerated tone, letting me know he wasn’t about to go down that road. “We camped in and around Yellowstone and then made our way down to the Grand Tetons. I was actually in Jackson Hole when Dylan transported me up here so I could plan your homecoming.”
“Thank you for that.” I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Hey,” I added, my mind shifting focus. “Whatever happened to the semester abroad program? I thought you were going to work this summer to earn some money for the trip? Aren’t you going?”
“I’m going, but my parents insisted on paying for the whole thing. They didn’t want me spending my savings, especially when my swim scholarship has taken care of my tuition for the past three years.”
“That was nice of them.” It didn’t surprise me in the least that his parents would offer to pay for his semester abroad. They knew how hard Quinn had worked these last few years in school.
“Yeah, it was. I actually feel kind of bad about it all.”
“Why?” I could see the guilt in Quinn’s eyes, and it concerned me.
“Well, for one thing, I barely thanked them before dumping my stuff at home and taking off. And now I’m not even sure I want to go to London next semester.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not so sure this is the best time for me to be away from my family.”
“Is everyone all right? Mary, is she okay?”
“Yeah, Mary’s great, thanks to you,” he said in a reassuring voice. “And don’t worry, Tommy and Sam still have no clue what you did to save her that night. In fact, your friends up there made sure those two don’t remember anything about you. Tommy doesn’t even remember me talking about you—
ever
.”
“How do you know?”
“He never once asked me about you after you saved Mary’s life. So one day, a couple weeks after you left, I told him my girlfriend left me for her job. He just laughed, saying he didn’t even know I’d had a girlfriend, much less one smart enough to pick her career over me.”
“Quinn—” I wanted to apologize. I wanted to say something to justify his brother’s and sister-in-law’s memory loss, but I couldn’t think of anything that would make the situation any better.
“I keep telling myself it’s for the best, but it doesn’t change the fact that it still sucks big time. Tommy and Sam are trustworthy. They would’ve kept your secret.”
“I know. But it wasn’t up to you or me to let them because it wasn’t only my secret to keep. And that entire ordeal with Mary should prove to you this is
not
the best time to stick close to your family. The more you interact with them, the more you risk involving them in all of this.”
“And what about Brady? Is it too late for him?”
“I don’t know. But I promise I’ll do everything I can to find out.”
Quinn smiled at me—that beautiful, heart-stopping smile. That’s when I noticed it—my heart had stopped beating. I gasped at how hollow my chest suddenly felt. I’d forgotten that this was part of the package deal. Only Shepherds can feel the heartbeats of their assigned charges—and Quinn was no longer technically mine.
“What is it?” Quinn asked in alarm.
“My heart—
your
heart—I can’t feel it anymore. It’s
gone.
”
“Evie, it’s right here.” He took my hand and placed it over his chest.
“But it’s not
here
.” I placed my other hand over my chest. “Not anymore,” I said sadly. “It’s official. I’m no longer your Shepherd.” My chest heaved upon feeling the unexpected vacancy within. It was a different kind of emptiness from what I’d experienced up in the Archives. This time it was my choice to give up the familiar, comforting rhythm of my true soul mate reverberating inside me.
“Dylan,” I muttered, choking on the words forming in the base of my throat. “Only he can feel your heart beating now.”
“
Dylan
?” Quinn visibly shuddered at the thought. “That’s messed up and twisted on so many levels.”
“I know it may seem that way to you right now, but as your Shepherd, Dylan has to be able to know where you are and how you’re doing.”
“And you? You don’t need to know those things anymore?”
“I do, but I’m not your Shepherd anymore.” Fear stirred within me as I clutched my chest with both hands. “Crap. How am I supposed to protect you if I can’t even find you anymore?” I was on the verge of hyperventilating as I second-guessed my decision. “Quinn, I think I screwed up. I—I didn’t think the whole thing through.” I gasped. “I didn’t realize I’d be giving up the one thing that connects you to me.”
“It’s not the
one
thing, Evie. It’s just
a
thing.” He cupped my face with his hands and looked into my eyes. “Hey, you may not be able to
feel
my heart beating anymore, but you still have it, and it’s yours to keep.” He wiped a tear from my eye. “We’re true soul mates, remember?”
“Yeah, but your
soul
has never led me to you when I didn’t know where you were.”
“Hasn’t it? How did you know I was up here? I mean, isn’t this place supposed to be some vacuum in time and space?”
“Yeah, but that was different. In my mind, there weren’t that many places where you’d be.”
“Still, wasn’t this the first place you checked?”
“Actually, it was the third.”
“The
third
? Wow! It took that long, huh?” he teased.
“Thanks. Kick me while I’m down,” I mumbled, not wanting to bother getting into the reasons for the roundabout way I searched for him.
“Evie, relax. I have the perfect solution to our little problem. All you need is a cell phone.” He smiled triumphantly at me.
I laughed. The answer was so simple and yet it’d completely escaped me. I used to
live
on my cell phone when I was alive. “You know, if it weren’t for you, I probably would’ve tortured myself all day trying to come up with some supernatural way to keep track of you.”
“Evie, when are you finally going to accept I’m here to help—that you
need
my help?”
“Well, I definitely need your help with one thing.” I smiled seductively and kissed him as I pushed him down onto the grass and straddled him.
“So you really can’t feel my pulse speeding up right now?”
“No, not at all.”
“That’s too bad.” He kissed me back but then moaned and pulled away.
“What is it?” I asked in alarm.
“Nothing, really.” He pulled me back down to kiss me again, but I resisted him.
“Tell me.”
“It’s just kind of twisted to think Dylan is running around with my pulse now.”
“It’s not like he’s borrowing your toothbrush or underwear. Think of it like you’ve got your own personal ringtone on his cell phone.”
“That does make it sound a little less disturbing,” he noted with approval. “Can he really feel it every time my heart rate accelerates?”
“And every time it slows down,” I added. “As long as you’re both in the same realm.”
“So if he should drop by up here right now …”
“He’d know exactly what we were up to before he even saw us,” I said, completing Quinn’s thought.
“Well, at least now he’ll always have a heads up.” Quinn smiled wickedly. “It’s better than hanging a towel outside the door.”
“Ugh, only a guy would think like that.”
That night, Quinn filled me in on his friends and the details of what I’d missed the past two months. Apparently, Adam was keeping the apartment and one of his fraternity brothers took over Quinn’s lease. Adam was taking a couple summer school classes so he could graduate on time, while Lisa went home to work for the summer. She and Adam were on an “unofficial break,” which meant that they were still dating but could see other people since they were spending the summer apart. It was Lisa’s idea. She was going to Europe for a month with her family at the end of the summer, which, if I had to guess, was the impetus for their break. I’m sure she wanted to be free to guiltlessly flirt and hook up with whomever she wanted while abroad.
Marlin and Jayden graduated and moved in together in Indianapolis. Marlin was working for some insurance company, while Jayden worked as a pharmaceutical rep.
Coop and Rachel were still going strong. Coop also graduated, but chose to get his graduate degree in education at IU. If all went as planned, he’d graduate the same time Rachel finished undergrad.
And Mark and Stewie were still up to their old tricks. They were sticking around Bloomington for the summer bartending, no doubt counting down the days until the new wave of freshman girls arrived on campus.
As for Quinn, after the Incident in April, he’d holed himself up in the apartment and focused solely on his finals. The day exams were over, he packed up the Defender and took off for Chicago. At some point prior to leaving, he’d told his coach and friends he was going abroad for the first semester of next year and would have to quit the swim team.
“When you left, and with everything that had happened—” He sighed. “Let’s just say I wasn’t in the mood to stick around Bloomington. So once the semester ended, I took off. I felt claustrophobic, like everyone was watching my every move, and I wanted to get away. I wanted to be alone. I wanted to feel lost, so I headed out west.”
“Did it work?”
Quinn chuckled. “Yeah, for about two days.” He ran his hand though his hair and looked at me. “No one can really run away, can they? I mean, you can never really escape who you are and what’s going on inside your head. I guess it’s true what they say—sometimes, you’re your own worst enemy.”
“Yeah, I like to refer to that as College Boy’s ‘Dark Period,’” Dylan stated from behind me. He phased into view and dropped down on the grass beside us. “That’s when I realized our friend over here was in desperate need of my intervention.”
“Whatever, man,” Quinn jumped in. “You weren’t even around then.”
“Actually, I’d been keeping tabs on you ever since K.C. left. I just didn’t let you see me in the beginning.”
“Why not?” Quinn asked.
“Because I knew you’d ask about her and up until about a month ago, I didn’t have any answers for you—none that you wanted to hear anyway.”
“Are you sure that’s the only reason you were keeping tabs on me?” Quinn asked curiously. “I want to hear more about this Watcher of mine.”
“Yeah, so maybe my motives for hanging out with you were a little mixed once I saw her,” Dylan admitted.
“So, what, you’re a one woman guy now?” I teased.
“I guess so.” The tone of Dylan’s voice and the look on his face made me think he’d just come to that realization.
“Seriously?” Quinn asked in surprise.
He sighed. “Let’s just say that it’s been a while since I visited the Manhattan penthouse, and I have no plans on going back anytime soon.”
“Wow!” I exclaimed in complete shock. “Now I really want to meet her!”
Dylan laughed. “You will. When the time is right.”
The next morning, Quinn and I left the portal to go to Chicago and buy me a cell phone. Afterwards, we stopped by Quinn’s old West Loop neighborhood so he could grab a quick bite. We’d hoped to run into Ronald, but not surprisingly he was nowhere to be found. Before heading back to the Falls, we took a quick detour to the woods just behind Adam’s fraternity in Bloomington, but still no Ronald.
Feeling somewhat discouraged, we returned to the portal. Quinn used the downtime to catch up on some much needed sleep.
“You’ve been gone a while,” I remarked when Dylan returned to the Falls later that day. He hadn’t checked in on Quinn since he’d left the Falls last night, and I was beginning to wonder if Tara’s concerns about Dylan were well founded.