The Space Beyond (The Book of Phoenix) (22 page)

I turned away from him to look out the back window as I pulled out of the parking space. I threw the car into drive. Mason ran after me in his bare feet and meat-juice-stained shirt, crossing the grassy areas as I made the turns through the parking lot. He ran in front of me, forcing me to stop. Standing in my headlights, he held up his hands. A bluish-white object was in one of them.

“At least take this,” he said as he rushed for my door. “For your face.”

He held up an ice pack. I rolled down my window, snatched it out of his hand, and drove off. As I glanced in the rearview mirror, Mason fell to his knees in the middle of the lane. I told myself not to feel sorry for him.

I held the ice pack against my jaw as I drove, not sure where to go at first. I really didn’t want to see Sissy. If my face was bruising as I thought it would be, she’d ask questions I didn’t have the desire to answer right now or make snide remarks I didn’t have the energy to deal with. But I had nowhere else to go. I knew nobody else here. Tears began streaming so quickly, I couldn’t see, so I pulled into a strip mall and parked in the nearly empty lot. I leaned over the steering wheel and sobbed. My phone kept ringing and then dinging with voicemails and texts. All Mason. All ignored.

Not knowing what else to do, I followed where my heart took me, and that was back to Lake Haven. Back to home. I slowed as I passed the RV park, noticing that Leni’s camper was dark. She might have been working, and I wasn’t going to bother her anyway. A heavy feeling of darkness pressed down on me as I kept on driving into town, not stopping the car until I reached Elizabeth’s house, but obviously nobody was home there either. In fact, the house looked empty, and a For Sale sign was stuck in the yard. She’d actually moved away. All those times she had talked about it, but I never thought she would. If I felt the eeriness of a cemetery at midnight covering the whole town, though, I could only imagine what she felt. Putting the car back into drive, I continued out of town to where my heart and soul were really pulling me.

The trees hanging over the driveway with their dripping Spanish moss blocked out the moonlight, enveloping me in near blackness as I crept the car to the cabin. My already heavy heart fell when the cabin came into view with its little yellow porch light no brighter than a firefly. Ty’s truck wasn’t there. The windows were all black. He obviously wasn’t hanging at home, pining over me.

My chest constricted with more despair as I sat there for a while, hoping he’d come home. I pulled out my compact mirror while I waited and peeked at my cheek as best as I could in the dim light of my car’s overhead lamp. Either the ice pack had worked or Mason hadn’t hit me as hard as I’d thought because no bruise or swelling showed. Only a slight redness that would probably be gone by morning. Thank God and sweet baby Jesus for that.

After an hour of waiting and still no Ty, I was exhausted from the emotions of the day. Had I really been bored out of my mind only hours ago? I drove back to the trailer park, not even checking to see who was at Sullivan’s. I had no energy to deal with a crowd. I’d just needed someone to talk to, maybe to hold me. Unfortunately, Leni’s camper was still dark. I was grateful Uncle Troy had given me a month, after all. Not enough to thank him personally, though. I went straight to my trailer to be alone.

As I lay down on the bare mattress with only a towel from my car to wrap around me, I couldn’t help but think about how my heart, maybe even my actual soul, had brought me here. When shit hit the fan, I’d been drawn here, to Ty, to Elizabeth, even to Leni, who I’d only known for a few weeks, but sometimes felt like forever. My sister and my mama, any of my family, had been the last people I’d wanted to see when I needed someone. In fact, I’d rather be completely and utterly alone like I was now than be with them. The grief of that fact, more than anything that happened today, overwhelmed me.

When the sobs slowed to only sniffles, my phone sounded off again. With a sigh, I pulled it out of my purse, rolled on my back and held the phone above me as I scrolled through Mason’s text messages and then listened to his voicemails. Thirty-seven total, in a little over two hours. Pretty much the same thing over and over: “It was an accident, Bex. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to touch you, just the stupid pork chop. Please, precious, believe me. I’d never hurt you.” Desperation filled his voice. The last message ended on what sounded like a sob. “Please don’t leave me, Bex. I love you and need you too much.”

I dropped my arm over my face and closed my eyes as more tears seeped down my temples. The scene in the kitchen instantly replayed behind my eyelids. And damn if I couldn’t be sure whether he really was grabbing for the pork chop or if he’d intentionally hit me. Either way, things had gone way too far tonight, and coming here was the right thing to do. We’d both needed cooling off. I’d thrown raw, dripping meat at him like I was a damn five-year-old, for heaven’s sake. He wasn’t the only one who should be apologizing, but I couldn’t decide if he deserved to hear it from me. Had it been an accident? I couldn’t think straight about it now, and calling him tonight would be a mistake. Hopefully, morning would bring clearer thoughts. I kept my eyes closed and tried to sleep.

I dreamt about the man who often showed up in my dreams, although he hadn’t for a few months. I’d thought he’d come to life in Mason, but I could no longer be sure. The beautiful man who captivated my unconscious mind was nothing but kind and loving. I could feel his love flowing through my veins, reaching all the way to my soul. A cocoon of warmth surrounded my entire body when he embraced me with his strong arms. His features changed every time I looked up at him, but the love in his eyes never did. Nothing had ever felt so right. So complete. So much like home.

First Ty, then Mason tried to intrude on my dream. Each were full of love, too. Each began morphing into my dream man. But then he’d shake his head and become someone else entirely. Faces that seemed somewhat familiar, although I didn’t know who they belonged to. And as the dream went on, his expression turned to concern. Dark shadows flew over us, closing in on us, pressing in as though to crush us. He screamed out a plea, becoming desperate and then urgent.

“Please come back to me,” he called out with such grief, my heart hurt as I drifted back to consciousness. The forlorn words echoed in my head as I blinked at the bright daylight flooding into the window. And then I gasped. A monstrous figure loomed over me.

I bolted upright, the fog of the dream clearing. Mason stood next to the bed, his face almost completely blocked with the biggest bouquet of flowers I’d ever seen.

“Please come back to me,” he begged.

Chapter 20

I lay on my stomach in bed wearing only a cami and panties, flipping through the Book of Phoenix pages—again—instead of getting my butt up and ready for the day. Jeric had been awake for hours already and had gone to see why Ty wasn’t answering his phone. I took the opportunity to once again study the Book. A thought had awoken me in the middle of the night, and the more I dwelled on it, the stronger it felt true: Jacquelena had created the Book in a past life long ago. All night I kept telling myself it was a dream, but now I didn’t think so. My soul told me I created the Book for us, the Sacred Seven. Well, we weren’t Seven then either, but for those of us who were on Earth at the time—Jeremicah and me, Broderick and Anastasia, and Rebethannah and Nathayden. Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember any more than that—not what the Book was supposed to do for us or the clues we might have left in it.

The Book obviously could communicate with us, leaving us short, cryptic messages. But where did they come from? From the Space Between? From another world? Or from us, either from the past or the present? Had I, or all of us, somehow given the Book special … powers?

Huh. I hadn’t considered the Book as having powers—not in a paranormal way—but maybe that was exactly what we’d done to make it exceptional. Not too long ago, I would have thought any of these ideas to be a bit out there, a little too woo-woo for me, but a lot had changed in the past few months. Our lives were full of woo-woo. So thinking a book that had already given mysterious messages as being supernatural no longer exceeded the realm of possibilities in my mind. And if it had the one power of communicating with us, what else could it do?

I closed the Book and studied the cover even harder than I’d already done, running my fingers over the image embossed into the leather: a weeping willow tree with a phoenix branded into its trunk, which stood on a tiny island with a sea surrounding it and dolphins and other marine creatures swimming in the water. An image of the island over the Gate in Tampa Bay. I vaguely remember stretching the leather over the metal plate to create the embossment. The whole image was enclosed in a large circle and tiny, unfamiliar symbol-like markings surrounded the circle, so faint, they weren’t even noticeable on first glance. Had I put those there, too? I couldn’t remember. Were any of these clues we’d left for ourselves? If so, I hadn’t the slightest idea what they meant.

Sometimes, I wanted to hurl the Book across the room or toss it into the fire. Not being able to remember anything about it was quite infuriating. But not this time. Right now, I was bound and determined to figure something out if it was the only thing I did today.

So, I opened the Book and starting from the inside cover, I reconsidered each page individually, the leaves of paper themselves rather than the words written on them. A watermark of a phoenix like the one on the front cover, which was similar to those branded on our arms, decorated the corners of each page. I saw a flash of a memory of me putting them there, but I didn’t remember why. Did they mean something, or were they just for decoration? Was I supposed to do something to them? With them? On them? Memories dangled on the edge of my mind, out of reach, taunting, like when a word hovers on the tip of your tongue. I felt that the Book was to be used more than to simply write and draw in, but how? Frustration returned with each turn of the page as I found nothing to help me along.

When I reached them, the words, “You know the rest. Remember.” glared brightly at me. Had they meant more than remembering that Jeric and I were Jacey and Micah? I hadn’t realized it before, but I thought so now. Then came “Save Rebethannah.” Scratched onto the page, like a prisoner would etch on a wall.

Theo’s instructions echoed in my mind:

“Believe.”

“Follow your instinct.”

“Trust your intuition.”

“Believe in yourself, little bird.”

I rolled over onto my back and closed my eyes, listening to the words bounce around my skull. If only my instinct wasn’t broken. Even when I reminded Jeric that he was supposed to follow my intuition, I couldn’t believe in it myself. I didn’t exactly have the best track record in understanding my gut, most recently proved by being wrong about Bex. In fact, following my soul’s pull to the manor and thinking we should have listened to Theo and Mira instead of jumping out of the window our first night there had probably been the only two times my intuition had been right. Well … and inviting Jeric to the lake with me. Trusting him …

Besides those, I had a history of making poor decisions. Something my mama never let me forget.

I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling as my thoughts transitioned to my mother and father and my multiple discussions with Theo about them and our familial status. I hadn’t been surprised when he called our relationships temporal, as much as I didn’t want to believe it. I knew deep down we hadn’t been a close-knit family. In fact, I didn’t tell Theo, but I’d always had an underlying suspicion that my dad cheated on my mother. During those times she’d treated me like a puppet and no more, I even fantasized about Daddy having another family and we’d run off and live with them. Since he worked so much, I always thought we’d had a good relationship, just that we didn’t get to spend much time together. But reconsidering now, I saw that we’d been little more than two people who lived in the same house. Judging by my lack of reaction at the moment, I supposed I’d also known that deep down all along.

The sound of my truck’s engine rumbled across the park, and my soul felt Jeric’s approaching. I smiled to myself, always pleased to have him near, and rolled back over onto my stomach. As I reached for the Book to close it, my breath caught for a moment. In huge letters, “HELP HER” scrawled across the page that only a few minutes ago had been blank. “SAVE HER” scrolled across the opposite leaf. I turned to the next page, and the word “BELIEVE” repeated across the left side and “INSTINCT” filled the right.

“You’re still right where I left you,” Jeric said, his footsteps coming down the short hallway and into the bedroom.

I didn’t know why, but I didn’t want him to see the words. Maybe because I knew they were specifically for me? Or because I didn’t want him to know how much I doubted myself? Either way, I slammed the Book shut, pushed it to the side of the bed, and turned to face him. “Yeah, I was just getting up.”

He leaned over and placed a hand on each side of my shoulders so that his torso hovered over me, effectively trapping me with his body.

“But you’re in my favorite place,” he murmured before brushing his lips across mine. His bright blue eyes skimmed over my face, and then his gaze lowered over my skimpily clad body. He gave me a sexy half-smile. “And dressed perfectly.”

He delivered a more proper kiss, his lips lingering on mine for a good long time before moving to my chin and jaw.

“Did you see Ty?” I asked as I rolled my head to the side, giving him better access.

“No,” he said, his lips not moving away from their path down my neck.

“It’s been almost a week.”

“I know.” His breath fluttered over my skin in a sigh. “He’s a grown man, though. Not much I can do.”

“I hope he’s okay.”

“I’m sure he is. The Lakari are still hanging around here, so they haven’t gone after him.”

“Unless they’ve already done something to him and left his body in the woods like they did Bex.” I paused, my heart contracting at the thought. “I mean, Jacey’s Bex.”

Jeric lifted his head to look at me. “You’re the one who doesn’t think he’s going Dark. Do you think they’re after Ty now?”

I frowned. “No. I’m worried about him, though.”

“He probably just needs time away from this town and its memories again, now that Bex has moved away.”

“He could have at least called you. You’re like his boss, aren’t you?”

Jeric dropped one arm to his elbow, shifting his weight to the side of me. “More like he’s my boss. If he doesn’t want to fight, I can’t make him. He’s his own manager. He’s a big boy, Leni, and probably doesn’t want to feel like he has to check in with anyone. I’m definitely not his mother.”

With one arm free from holding himself up now, he used that hand to play with the strap of my cami.

“Speaking of Bex, did you know she was coming home?” he asked.

I tilted my head on the pillow and gazed up at him. His eyes followed his finger as it pushed the strap over my shoulder. “I had no idea.”

“I saw her car at her trailer early this morning when I went for a run. Just hers, as if she’d spent the night there. But as I was headed home a few minutes ago, I passed both her car and Mason’s headed for the interstate.”

I gave a little shrug, enough to move my cami to expose the rise of my breast. “She didn’t call me. She probably decided to move something else down there.”

Jeric lowered his head to press his lips on the skin I’d just bared, nudging the fabric down farther with his mouth. His hand moved to my waist, and his thumb slid up and down along the sensitive skin over my hip.

“I’d like to move something down there,” he murmured as he pushed the waistband of my panties down.

I giggled and rolled onto my side to face him, pulling him away from my breast. I cupped my hand to his cheek and directed his mouth toward mine. Our lips parted almost immediately, and our tongues reintroduced themselves, although it always felt like the first time they met. Kissing Jeric sent chills across my skin every single time. As the kiss deepened and we explored each other’s mouths, his hand slid down my thigh, over my knee and to my calf. He hitched my leg up over his hip, causing his pelvis to press against mine. His erection grew between us. His hand moved back upward, to my butt, where it stopped and squeezed and caressed, his fingers often grazing the tiny piece of material between my legs, teasing the area underneath. I moaned into his mouth and moved my hips against him.

“Damn, Leni,” he gasped against my mouth. “You have no idea what hearing you moan like that does to me.”

I did have an inkling of an idea, feeling it pulse against the thin fabric of his running shorts as his lips traveled over my jaw again, heading southward once more. I leaned away enough to pull the cami over my head.

“Mmm ….” I moaned, louder this time, as he trailed kisses over my breast. His thumb dug into my hip, his fingers splayed over my ass, and he squeezed at the same time his tongue traced a circle around my areola. Then he jerked me harder against him, his lower head pressing into me right as he flicked my nipple then clamped his mouth over it and sucked. I arched my back, trying to thrust my tit further into his mouth while rocking my hips so our most sensitive areas felt the friction through the clothing. “Oh, God, Jeric.”

His tongue ran a circle around my nipple as he gazed up at me before he pulled away and smiled. “I like hearing that even more.”

I grasped at the bottom of his shirt and yanked it upward, pulling it over his head. I reached for his nipples and pinched and tugged on the rings until he leaned out of reach. He backed up, onto his knees, his bare chest a beautiful sight to behold as it rose and fell with his heavy breaths. Slowly, my eyes lifted to his face, questioning. That smile—mischievous and daring—lingered on his lips as his blue eyes pierced me to my soul.

“You know what I love to hear more than anything?” he asked.

I propped myself up on my elbows and stared back at him. “I love you, Jeric.”

His smile faltered. “Well, besides that.”

“Um …” My head fell back, though my eyes remained glued to his. He circled his hand around one of my ankles and moved my leg to other side of him, and his fingers trailed lightly over and between my breasts, down to my belly button, making my tummy quiver. “Make love to me?”

Both hands were on me now, sliding over my hips and under my panties, pushing them down. I lifted my butt up so he could continue, and the lock of our gaze broke. His eyes jumped lower, watching as I lifted one leg and then the other, allowing him to free my panties from my body. His hands clamped onto my bent knees and pushed them apart. His tongue slid over his lips as he stared hungrily at my center. I couldn’t help but wriggle under his gaze. The corners of his lips tilted into that teasing smile again. His eyes traveled up my body, leaving a trail of tingles as though he’d actually touched me, and back to my face.

“I love to hear you beg,” he said huskily before he crashed down on top of me, his mouth pulling on my tit and his fingers digging into my thighs.

“Please, Jeric,” I said as I arched against him. “Make love to me.”

He pulled my nipple between his teeth, then said, “Nuh-uh. Not like that,” before diving after the other one. His hands continued squeezing and kneading my thighs as they made their way toward my butt. Toward the area that throbbed with an aching need. His thumb barely grazed me.

“Touch me,” I whimpered.

He released my breast, my nipple standing hard and long, and moved his mouth downward, while his hands pushed my thighs further outward.

“That’s better,” he said, his breath hot on my stomach. “But not quite.”

His lips and tongue left a trail as they moved around my belly button and side to side across my pelvis. He clutched my thighs, now spread wide, and his thumbs stroked and massaged an outer circle, not touching the normal sweet spot, but still sending shockwaves over me. His eyes held mine as he stretched his legs out behind him, hovering his face right over me.

“Oh, God, please, Jeric,” I moaned, and I reached down and grasped his head. “Lick me, baby.”