She closed her eyes, willed herself not to think about it. “I—I don’t know exactly. I would have—”
Run? Swam?
“—gotten away.”
Died.
Tripp’s eyes reflected the moonlight bouncing from the waves.
She stared into them as they faced each other, a wash of guilt flowing through her.
You owe him the truth for saving your ass.
“I didn’t tell you my real name.” Her hands slid to his, covering them but not removing them.
“I know,” he said.
She forced herself not to jerk, should have guessed he’d admit it. “I’m not a florist.” Cold inched its way up her legs, from the water or her own emotions—perhaps both.
“I know that, too.”
Lexi closed her eyes as a war brewed inside her. To pursue a relationship with Tripp would be akin to forcing the backs of two magnets together. They would have no chance of success. If he understood what the star on his neck meant, he’d know the consequences of a connection between the two of them.
“We aren’t meant to be together,” she said.
Tripp laid his forehead against hers. “You don’t know that.”
“You have a fiancée.”
One short breath of air burst from him. “Trust me when I say she’s an inconvenience, but one I can get out of.” He inched closer, splashing water against her.
Lexi moved her hands to her collar, tugged and exposed what lay hidden inside. “Look.”
Tripp angled his head down.
Her birthmark, one that matched his, lay just above her breast and burned with an intense heat—it had since the moment she’d met him.
He drew in a breath but kept his hold on her. “You.” His eyes met hers again.
“Yes. Your exact but diametrically opposite match.”
No matter the start, their outcome had been predestined— a set of celestially designed antagonists never meant even to meet.
“Fuck.”
Lexi snorted a laugh. “My sentiments exactly. It’ll never work, Tripp.”
Their abilities came direct from Zeus himself. The fox who could never be caught and the dog who could always catch her prey existed in more than childhood bedtime stories. An un-winnable game.
He let go.
An absolute paradox in human form.
The stars confirmed it.
They stood a foot from each other.
Tripp stepped away.
Lexi swallowed the sigh.
I’m doomed to single-hood.
“It was good to meet you … Karen Jones … the florist.” His tone suggested he agreed with Lexi’s assessment of any relationship they might pursue.
She wanted to swear to the heavens on the unfairness of it all but reminded herself that those with supernatural gifts often had a greater purpose in life.
That she hadn’t found hers yet left her torn between fury and depression.
“Marry your girl, Tripp Fox. I’ll see you in another life.” Lexi walked backward, away from him, into the shadows of the night. Once he disappeared from view, she dashed down the beach but didn’t stop until she reached her deck.
Lexi tucked a hair behind her ear as she unlocked her door. Her hand grazed her neck, rubbing along a sliver of string she hadn’t had when she left for dinner.
She ran to the downstairs bathroom, flicked the light on after a number of frantic attempts and stared at the pendant nestled against her chest.
“He gave it back,” she said to her reflection. With her hands on the edge of the sink’s basin, she slouched forward. Her hair fell around her face as tears threatened.
After a few deep breaths, she took in the tangle of matted hair, flushed cheeks and dark eyes. She tugged at the collar of her shirt, pulling it low. The mark—a star that matched Tripp’s—branded her into in the world of the paranormal.
Alone.
4
Tripp waited until Lexi disappeared before he followed her. Once she made it within the confines of her home, he moved in the direction of his own. The walk gave him time to brood and curse without Jill’s commentary to watch his language.
“Why’d she show me the star?”
He kicked a shell into the ocean; the waves consumed it with one crash.
Of all people.
A woman he met in the middle of the night would be his antithesis while holding the allure of a hundred-carat diamond.
“Dammit all to hell. We’re not even supposed to meet!” Tripp picked up another shell and threw it toward the sky.
As he reached his own house, the four stories owned by Jill’s father waited.
Can I live without it?
His job, and the methods by which he remained employed, provided well in a financial sense. He didn’t need Jill—she just made life easier.
Tripp took measured steps along the planks of the pier, stopping in the middle. He fell onto one of the benches and pulled out his cell.
On the third ring, Ian answered. “Yeah?” Disco music played in the background.
“It’s Tripp.”
“Got it from the display. Otherwise, I woulda said ‘hey, mom’.”
A smile took hold of Tripp’s lips. “Need advice.”
“Oh, man!” Ian’s voice pitched up. “Dammit, you finally agreed. Shit. I should’ve stayed. Hang on a sec.”
Tripp leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. Under normal circumstances, the beach gave him time to ponder life. At that moment, the incessant crashes left him edgy.
“Okay, I’m back.” The sounds around Ian’s voice quieted. “Went outside.”
“Where are you?”
“At Michael’s. Does it matter? It’s near eleven, I have a woman with me, and you on the phone. Please tell me you and Jill didn’t elope.”
“We didn’t elope.”
“Fuck. You got married in a ceremony with just family and ditched—”
Tripp chuckled. Ian had an unpredictable effect. “This has nothing to do with Jill.”
A whoop and laughter filled the earpiece. “Praise-alujah. Now that that’s settled, do you have a job for us? Something fun?”
“No—”
“Well then, what?”
Tripp grinned into the nothingness of the dark beach. “I met a woman.”
“Awesome. Get your ass out o’ Jill’s house then.”
“But she told me to marry Jill.”
“Well, fuck, man. You can’t do that. If you found someone else, you can’t just marry Jill. That would be—” An inhale came through the line. “—insane!”
“She’s my celestial nemesis. My Canis Major … or Minor, depending on how you look at it.”
“No shit.”
Tripp nearly burst out with laughter at Ian’s quiet response. Since their friendship extended back to their eighth birthday, Ian knew about Tripp’s gift.
“Seriously?”
The single question caused Tripp to nod his head at no one. “Yeah. Showed me the star. And you know mine’s visible as hell.”
“Where’s hers?” Ian would want more than just a ‘she jerked down the collar of her neckline.’
“It’s just above her left breast, but—”
“Hot damn! You got jiggy with a new girl.” The slap of a hand against jeans accompanied Ian’s
whoop!
again.
“No, you moron, I did not. But there is a connection.”
Ian sighed—a long, drawn out ‘I can’t believe you’re telling me this’ sound. “You with her now?”
“No, she went home.”
“Then go get her.”
Tripp shook his head, forgetting again that no one would see. “Pointless. We’re not even supposed to meet, you know. That’s part of the cosmic rule. According to everything I’ve learned, the fox and the hound never meet.”
“Fuck the rules, Tripp. You’re ‘the man’ when it comes to this kind of shit. Why do you, all of a sudden I must add, believe the girl you got the hots for won’t go for you? You succeed at everything you do.”
“That’s the problem, Ian. She will succeed at everything she does, too, but that does not mean win-win is a win. It’s a lose in our case.”
“Success is a problem? How was it going to work with Jill? And let me add, before you answer that, that I’m all for seeing where this other thing goes.”
“You know Jill doesn’t know what I can do, so she isn’t going to use it against me at every step of a relationship. She might think I’m cheating on her if I spend a night at a bar, but she’s never going to catch me doing it if I don’t want her to. Not that I would, by the way.”
“Yeah, yeah. Other girl wouldn’t catch you either,” Ian said. “That’s your gift. Uncatchable.”
“No, but she, of all people, would be able to work around it because she knows what I can do—just like I know she could find me if I wasn’t keeping my guard up. It would eat her alive—or it would me. I’d always have to be prepared on the off chance I did something she shouldn’t know about. I need breaks sometimes, you know, to just let it all hang out. I can’t spend my entire day trying not to get caught.”
“Well, when you put it like that—”
“Even the simplest thing could infect the relationship, bury and dig in until both of us go insane from not being able to make it stop. But, in Jill’s case, I’ll win whether she wants me to or not.”
“So you settle to prevent yourself a challenge? That’s not like you, Tripp. Just because this other woman could use it to her benefit … how do you know she would?”
Tripp sighed. “Can I give up a game? Can I step away from an opportunity to test my skills? Do I ever lose?”
“No,” Ian said. “No and no.”
“According to the mythology, Zeus had to send the original fox and dog to the sky as stars, remember? All because at each step, when one or the other
should
succeed, they failed. A never-ending game isn’t any fun. A never-ending fight isn’t either. Who wants to go that route if it will end up that way, no matter what?”
Ian snorted. “Nasty little gift you got there.”
“Two celestially-tied, must-succeed-always people means the potential for war all the time.”
“Then why didn’t you permanently tie yourself to Jill a long time ago?”
Tripp asked himself the question all the time—whether to Jill or any past woman that he’d met. “I don’t know. It never felt right.”
“And I’m guessing, somehow, this one does, and it’s going to eat at you like a festering sore because you think you can’t hack it.”
“It’s age-old, Ian. For me and … Karen … the ultimate find is each other, but it’s also too much of a challenge.”
“Jill is not ‘good enough’ for you, and you know it.” Ian’s tone took on a rare note of seriousness. “You never give up, Tripp. Ever. If ever there was a man who would best the gods in their own match, it would be you. Where’s she staying?”
Tripp leaned back against the seat. “She’s got a house a few down from us here at the beach.”
“Gimme the address, I’ll look her up. Then you’re going to get your ass over there, ’cause you will find a way through this.”
• • •
“Hello!” Emma’s voice rang through the entry. “Anyone home?” Her bag dropped to the ceramic floor with a clunk. “Lexi?”
“Yeah, over here.”
The swish of sandals against the tile disappeared. Lexi assumed Emma moved across the carpet. Rather than look, Lexi stretched out along the cushions, one arm flung across her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Emma always saw through the veils of emotion.
She kept her arm in place. “Bad night.”
“Well, I can see that. You look like shit.”
Lexi smiled. “Such nice endearing terms from my best friend and sister. Maybe I need a new one.”
After a moment of silence, the couch cushions shifted under Lexi. She peeked over the edge of her arm. Emma sat at the end—would do so like a well trained dog until she got her treat: answers.
“It’s a pointless exercise. I just need time to get over it.”
Emma patted Lexi’s ankles. “This is about that guy you met.”
Lexi nodded.
“And you caught up with him again and …”
Lexi kept mum.
“Okay, a guessing game. I’m not as good at this as you, but here goes.” The couch shifted up again. “You met up on the beach, found out he’s not only engaged but married, has two kids, is dirt poor but she’s rich as hell thus he will never leave her, drives a shoddy car and …”
Lexi imagined Emma ticked off each of her points as she said them.
“Oh, I got it! He’s unemployed, too. That covers all the major faults.”
“No. It’s worse.” Lexi continued to hide behind her arm.
The couch smooshed down again.
“Oh!” Emma’s excited response caused Lexi to jump. “The necklace! You found it!”
The light caress of Emma’s fingers against Lexi’s skin, where the pendant lay, tickled.
“I didn’t find it. It found me.”
The chain tugged at the back of her neck as Emma moved it around, twisted and spun it. “It’s beautiful. She said it was costume jewelry? Seriously? ’Cause it looks a lot more valuable than that.”
“I don’t know. I’m not a jeweler. I only took the job to try my hand at something more exciting than real estate and the occasional stolen vehicle.”
“Yeah, yeah. So what’s worse than all those things combined about the man?”
Lexi dropped her arm, stared into the depths of her sister’s eyes. “You don’t care about my work life anymore? Just this Tripp, guy?”
Emma nodded. “Men. It’s always about the men.”
“He gave me back the pendant.”
Emma’s brows drew together. “How’d he get it?”
“I don’t know exactly. He somehow slipped it back around my neck tonight, too, and I didn’t feel a damn thing.”
Emma waved a hand in the air. “That’s kinda freaky. The only person that could pull a sleight of hand on you is—” Her eyes grew wide. A hand slapped to her mouth. “Oh, my—”
“Therein lies the problem.”
“You actually found him? I thought that wasn’t supposed to be possible?” She stood, paced to the kitchen counter and back. “Do you know what this means?” Soft footsteps made their way across the carpet.
Of course I do. That’s why I’m lying here in a funk.
“Lex, this is awesome! This is—” Emma’s hands wagged in the air, slapped the legs of her pants and went still. “This means you’ve broken the cycle, right? If you guys have actually met, then there is no game, no challenge, no—”
Lexi sat upright, shaking her head. “No, Em. That’s not what it means. Think through it a little more.”
Instead of an ‘aha’, Emma knelt at Lexi’s feet. “You’re looking at this all wrong.” She laid a hand on Lexi’s knee. “Every previous guy in your life screwed you over, right?”
“If I had the energy, I’d pull your hair and stick gum all through it,” Lexi said.
“Hear me out.”
Lexi waved her forward.
“Zeus created the paradox because he was trying to be nice to two separate people. It backfired, big time. What if this is your chance to break the never-ending cycle? What if you were meant to have all those bad past relationships so the right one could be
the
ultimate find?”
“It’s not possible—”
Emma shook her head. “You don’t know that. Not for sure, anyway. Just because the mythological versions of yourselves didn’t cut it doesn’t mean you won’t. Stories are stories for a reason, Lex. For all we know, that’s
all
they were.”
“Emma.” Lexi’s mom-tone rivaled their mother’s.
“Let’s presume there were others like you two. For all you know, each person could have passed by the other but never met. Like shooting stars in the night that no one sees.” She patted Lexi’s knee. “You have a chance to do what previous pairs didn’t.”
“He’s got people in his life, Em. I even told him to go marry his girl so he’d walk away. He did. He didn’t come after me—”
“Did you go after him?” Her voice turned accusatory. “You’re here fighting against an instinct. Stop living in logic and theory, and take a chance in this very real but illogical world. Move forward. It’s like your gift. You imagine where something is, and you can find it. Can you find him? Have you tried?”
“I don’t search for people, Em. You know that. I’m not going to change my mind.” Had he been her visual blind spot in her attempts to locate the pendant? “I’m pretty sure I couldn’t see him anyway since he can hide from me.”
Emma’s grin shot out. “Let’s find out.” She bounced on the couch.
“I won’t search for peop—”
“Just do it!” The shrill came out a command.
Rather than fight her sister, Lexi closed her eyes, brought Tripp’s face to mind—the hoop, the star, his dark hair, rugged cheeks, brilliant blue eyes. The image faded into the recesses of her mind. She saw him on a pier, elbows on knees, a cell phone to his ear. She backed out from it and found his beach house.
Her body wavered as she opened her eyes again.
“You okay? Did you find him?” Emma wrapped her arms around Lexi’s shoulders.
Waves of nausea took hold of her stomach. “I don’t … search for people.” She breathed deep. “It’s useless—a never-ending chase, with no victor, no loser, only futility and, eventually, bitter animosity and pain.”
“Love lost, Lexi, love lost.”
“Been there, done that. Remember? And as everyone with a lost love says, that quote is the worst combination of words ever put together … in any language.” Lexi dropped her head to her knees. “I don’t even know him, Em. He could use his gift in a way I would never condone. I mean, I’m damn sure he swiped my pendant in the first place.”
“So what? He gave it back. He was probably showing off. You know … manufacturing a reason to see you again. The part of life where you
get
to know people, and learn whether you like them or not, is important. You can’t make a decision based on the whims of Zeus. Hell, he doesn’t even exist anymore.”
“Then neither should the conundrum.”
“The stars themselves aren’t even permanent, they just last a really long time. We can’t change those because we can’t control them. This is different. Don’t let a silly little assumption force you to look away. You actually found each other. If you are right for each other, then you deserve as much happiness as the next girl.”
“This bites, Em.”
She ran a hand over Lexi’s hair. “Do you want to learn more about him?”