The Keepers Book Two of the Holding Kate Series (17 page)

“She’s gone, Corey.” Trip collapsed back into place, the fight gone out of him.

“Trip.” Corey scorched Trip with his charisma. “I know you’re grieving. I know you think you saw her die. Your heart is broken right now, but I need you and Dirk to try to listen to me.”

Donnie squatted down beside the fire and added another log to it. He looked at Trip and Dirk. “We know Corey. We lived with him for one hundred and fifty years. Our spiritual leader and most trusted advisor, he knew things. He proved himself to us over and over.” He leaned toward Dirk. “He is the most accurate team leader I have ever seen.”

This seemed to get Dirk’s attention. Team Leaders were chosen in the Scriptorium. Each jump team descended into the caverns in the middle of the lake at Heartwork Village and team leaders were chosen to enter first. Historically, they were chosen because of their unique intuition and ability to sense things on the jumps. Kate and Corey had been chosen as team leaders and they had proven to be uncannily accurate in their direction of the jumps.

“I spent another fifty years with Corey as the Cianti Todura,” Pinky added. “If he says Kate is alive, then I believe him.”

Trip turned to Dirk. Surely he didn’t buy into this bull crap notion of Corey as this psychic guru. His expression spoke otherwise.

Trip split the air open with a string of curses that would embarrass a sailor and stormed off into the woods.

QUANTUM PERSPECTIVE SOURCE (QPS): TRIP CARSON

Trip hankered for a fight. Punching someone in the face would feel really good. Anger hadn’t consumed him like this since Kate released him from his self-hatred in his jump. Obviously not gone, here it raised its ugly head again.

I lost her! I failed again. One more time I had been too late, too weak, too slow, and too inadequate to save the one I loved. First my sister, I hadn’t been able to protect her from my stepdad until too late. Then Kate had been manipulated by that stinkin’ dragon cat, and I almost lost her then. Gregory, I couldn’t hold onto him when he had been snatched away, swallowed up in the tornado. Finally, Kate, the girl I needed, the girl I loved, the girl who opened herself up to me in ways that no one else ever did, I lost her, too.

“Auuugggggghhhhh!” he bellowed and slammed his fist into the nearest tree. His knuckles shattered, and he welcomed the pain. Anything would be better than this gaping wound in his chest. It didn’t dull the grief, just increased the misery.

He couldn’t even grieve her properly for fear that he would step on Corey’s toes. “He’s not even grieving her!” Trip shouted.

“No, Trip, I’m not.” Corey stepped into the clearing behind him.

The bright moon glinted off of his white blond hair, giving a halo effect.

“Corey, man, don’t mess with me right now.” Trip held out his palm. He wanted to break something, and Corey’s face looked like the perfect target for his anger.

“Trip.” Corey stepped toward him. “I know you love her. She loves you. I have never stood in the way of that.”

Trip just stared at him. What could he say? True. All of it. Anger puddled at his feet. Corey had that effect on people. Just so pure hearted, he made it impossible to stay angry at him for long.

“She told me about the tornado jump. She told me that you convinced Dirk to listen to her because of her position as the team leader.”

Trip nodded.

“She was right, wasn’t she?”

“She was always right,” Trip whispered.

“I am asking you to think of it this way. If it were me you saw dragged into the tar pit, and Kate insisted that I still lived, would you believe her?”

“Of course,” Trip sighed. “Yes, I would believe her.”

“Then I am begging you, believe me. Hang onto hope just a bit longer, Trip. She is alive and we cannot abandon her to those creatures.”

Trip jerked his head up.
Kate still needs me?

“I need you to help me rescue her. She needs you, Trip.”

Trip studied him. He seriously believed she still lived. Confidence poured off of the man like stench from a cow patty. Trip couldn’t abandon her to those animals.

Trip nodded and when Corey shook his hand, he winced. Corey assessed Trip’s swollen knuckles and sighed. He reached up, tore his other sleeve off, and wrapped Trip’s hand tightly. It felt better almost immediately.

“Thanks,” Trip muttered.

“Don’t mention it.”

They trekked back to the camp in silence. Donnie, Mel, and Dirk were head to head discussing plans to rescue Kate. Corey joined the planning session. Trip needed to face another challenge and this one he dreaded above all others. He leaned against a tree and watched Tara as Pinky ministered to her wounds.

The firelight danced across Tara’s perfectly golden skin and sent Trip’s mind back into the arena when they would slather her in gold dust, drape a thong around her and send her out to fight mostly naked. Of course Trip fought in the same garb, but Tara’s perfect body, spinning around in the arena, barely escaping death and injury, drove the crowd into a frenzy.

I am an idiot. Even then, in the arena I knew how she felt about me. So blinded by my need to rescue Kate, I refused to let myself feel what I felt for Tara. No man in his right mind could resist her perfection, more evidence that I’m not in my right mind. Here I am doing it again. Drawn into Kate’s neediness over and over, I’ve been unfaithful to the feelings I have for Tara. I cheated on her repeatedly with my best friend’s wife. When did I become such a monster?

Trip watched the woman of his dreams as she brushed her long golden hair. Her lean muscles rippled in perfection, meticulously cut each one. He had to make things right. For her. For Corey. For Kate.

“The theory of the multiverse says there are infinite parallel universes containing every possible situation. It makes me happy because I know, somewhere, you love me back.” ~ Unknown

QUANTUM PERSPECTIVE SOURCE (QPS): TARA JOHNSON

Tara ran a brush through her hair like she did every night. She had taken off her jacket and cut her pants legs off into shorts, and Eunavae rubbed some bactericidal ointment into the bite marks on her leg.

Sensing someone watching her, she focused on the shadows. Trip leaned against a tree at the perimeter of camp, face drawn into forlorn angles. A pain stabbed her heart, temporarily stealing her breath. With shaking hands, she returned to brushing her hair and refused to be drawn into his pity party.
I’m not going to let this one pass.

When Eunavae finished her first aid and moved over to the planning session, Trip strode over to Tara and sat down beside her. She stiffened but didn’t turn away.

“Can we talk?” he asked.

Schooling her expression into frozen apathy, she gave a terse nod.

“I won’t disrespect you with lies or excuses.”

She raised a brow and studied him.
Is he playing me?
For the first time ever, she and Trip were on opposite sides of a battle. She hated sizing him up as she would an enemy, but that is where he had placed himself, across enemy lines.

He gulped. “I’ve been unfaithful. You, you know.”

She just pierced him with the same unwavering gaze she had given many opponents in the arena and in Jewel City.

“Not just today. I let myself get distracted by Kate’s needs. I’ve ignored yours.” He slumped his shoulders, seemingly defeated before the fight even started. “I don’t deserve you.”

“No, you don’t.” Her heart wrenched out of place. She straightened her spine and squeezed the hair brush so tightly she heard it snap.

“I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.” His voice cracked out of him like a squeaky screen door. Tara kept her eyes glued to his, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing how deeply his apology affected her. Regret scored his face. Her heart broke all over again, but she squeezed her fingers together, refusing them permission to reach out in forgiveness.

She sighed. Why did she fight herself? She couldn’t deny her feelings, but she could maintain her dignity.

“Trip, I do forgive you. I know how it is with you and Kate. You just can’t seem to help yourself around her.” She flipped a strand of hair over her shoulders, and felt his scrutiny follow her movements. Hope lifted his brows and he stared at her lips. She wavered, drawing a hitched breath.
Best to rip this bandage off now.

“You need to know something, though.”

Now he flinched at the steel in her resolve.

“I am not Corey. I don’t have his patience, and I will not be your consolation prize. Whatever we had, is over.”

Trip’s mouth fell open. Shocked as though she had run him through with her spear, he huffed.

“We will go back to being battle partners. Only.”

“Tara, I love you.”

“No you don’t,” she snapped and leaned away from him. “You have never loved me. You took me as your girlfriend only because Kate chose Corey.” She huffed an incredulous laugh, and hated the sound of it. “I see that so clearly now. Blind, so blind by my feelings for you before, even though I suspected you and Kate were—” Her voice deepened as she repressed tears. Clamping her lips together, she turned her face so he couldn’t see.

“Tara,” Trip reached for her but she jerked away.