Lightning In My Wake (The Lightning Series) (8 page)

“Says the woman who continues to break my heart and push me away.”

We were at a standstill. He’d never been so blatant in demanding an emotional response from me in words. He’d never demanded anything of me.
I squirmed under his stare. Blue eyes bore down upon me, pleading for a piece of me. It ripped me open.

This was the moment I’d dreaded forever. It was like reaching inside myself without anesthesia and plucking an organ out to give to him. That’s what it would feel like.

Right?

But my heart wanted to reach out to his and soothe it.

“Theo.” The tears formed in my eyes, “You know I love you. I always have.”

He buried his head in the crook of my neck the way I had the night before.

“I didn’t expect that,” he murmured, his voice reverberating against the sensitive skin at my neck.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. That may be the best thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”

My unemotional soul wished he would just forget he ever heard it so I could tally up how many bricks were lost in that small battle and replace them—quickly.

“What now?” I questioned.

“We go looking for whatever I am.”

“What about the bonding ceremony?”

“I don’t care what they think.
I know what we are. And I know who you are. I’m going to be sealed to you heart and soul one day. If they don’t like our travelling unbonded, they can just suck it.”

The man I loved was a sly, sneaky rat.

I smacked his bicep as hard as I could, “You ass. All that crap and you don’t even care.”

“
Meu coração está completo.”

A shiver tore through me at his chosen speech. I didn’t even care what the hell he was saying. I just wanted him to say more of it.

“Speak English.”

“Doesn’t work as well on you
,” he quipped back.

Ass.

Chapter Nine

Theo

The Resin are no longer considered Lucent.

I had to admit, forcing Colby to say that she loved me wasn’t what I expected to come from her

I’d almost settled myself in for a lifetime of not hearing it.

She got up from the bed, leaving me there wanting so much more. We wouldn’t bond. I wouldn’t force her hand just because the Synod expected her to. She never was much for rule following anyway.

“Where are we going first? I need to speak to my mother and Ari. I should tell Sway. How long will we be gone?”

I hopped down from the bed. Realizing I was only in boxers, I quickly grabbed a pair of jeans from the chair and threw them on.

“I think Tibet is the best place to start after we finish in New Zealand. Collin knows a good deal
about Eivan. But Sevella’s handwritten journals are in Tibet.”

She said nothing, so I turned around, buttoning my pants, to see what was going on. She was mulling something around in that pretty head of hers, I could tell.

“What?”

“We’re going to one of those monasteries?”

“Yes.”

“With the shaved heads and the gongs and the orangey robes?”

“Yes.”

She sighed really loud and dramatic
ally. It made me chuckle. I couldn’t pin down exactly what part she had an aversion to.

“What is it? You can flash back home if you don’t want to stay the night or you don’t want to be there. I can still do this alone.”

Her worrisome pout turned in an instant into one of credible anger, “I’m not backing out. I’m just not really good at being quiet.”

I couldn’t help myself. I broke out into a doubled over, stomach cramping laugh. She so nailed it. She could never be quiet
—church, tests, you name it, Colby was going to talk. She got kicked out of the SATs twice for talking to the person next to her—who she didn’t even know.

“That’s it. I’m leaving if you’re just gonna laugh all day.
When are we beginning our journey?”

“Friday,” I answered, trying to compose myself.

“I’ll see you then.”

“Wait,” I grew serious. I couldn’t let her remember this night like that. I closed the gap between us with a few steps. Pressing my forehead to hers, I placed one chaste kiss on her still surprised lips. Then I popped her backside with my hand, “Now let’s see what color your wake is.”

“No color whatsoever.”

She flashed out of my room and I chuckled at the wake she left behind. It shimmered in pale notes of pink.

“Yep,” I said to myself in the mirror. “I still got it.”

I skipped out Sunday afternoon after spending more time with my parents. I got back to my rented cottage in the backwoods of New Zealand. I spent some time observing my shadow. That’s what I called him. From a distance, he looked like just that—my shadow. He carried out meaningless tasks and even turned out the lights when he was done. It was like having a zombie for a twin without all the intestine chewing.

Then I simply said the words and his image swished back into me.

It was weird, to say the least.

I called Collin and made arrangements to come back on Friday, noting that I would have someone with me. He seemed excited as Collin could get—which meant he didn’t yell at me.

Colby had stayed pretty silent the past few days. I supposed she was juggling her business around and prep
ping for whatever we were heading into.

I didn’t worry about it. Colby’s word was solid.

But I was nervous as hell for whatever would happen next. Specifically, how everything would hash out with Colby and me being together again. Not together-together, but in the same proximity. I tried—God help me I tried to keep cool around her. Holding up that façade of ambiguity was exhausting.

Cool and unattached just wasn’t who I was.

Sharing my feelings toward Colby was like second nature to me. I couldn’t imagine being in her presence and not commenting on how beautiful she was or not letting her know how much I loved her. It came as easy to me as breathing. Mostly, because she was my very breath.

I simply couldn’t survive without her.

Colby was the opposite. She was the opposite of me in so many ways. She was beach when I was mountain retreat. She listened to Moby while my earbuds played Roy Orbison. Colby was defense while I was always on the offense.

On the surface, nothing about us made sense.

Until you got down to the core of things.

I’d lost my brother only three months after she lost her dad. Just like she never spoke of her dad, except on his birthday, I never spoke of my brother.

Torrent hadn’t died. In some ways, I thought maybe I would be better if he had died. He’d simply disappeared. One day he went to bed on a normal school night, seven weeks before his graduation from high school and the next morning he was gone. We shrugged it off at first. Torrent was a track runner and a Varsity swimmer. He went to practice and workouts early on a regular basis. Even when the school called to report his absence midday, my mother thought it was an oversight. We assumed because his car was still in the driveway that he’d caught a ride with one of his many friends. But that night, the official search began. He was a good bit older than me, six years. Our family had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on private investigators, Lucent and human alike, trying to find him. It killed my mother and nearly demolished my father.

They still kept his room
as he left it and his car unmoved from its spot. I knew they missed him and I did too, but I couldn’t imagine Torrent would want their lives to stay still. It’s horrible to say, but I was almost glad for the distraction when I discovered that I could flash. It became a distraction from the funeral home that was my house.

The depths of what could be for their now only son kicked my parents out of grief and into protection mode.

It happened on accident. And as if the Almighty wanted me to be perfectly camouflaged when I discovered the gift—I flashed for the first time in the middle of a particularly noisy Louisiana thunderstorm. I was on the phone with Colby, one of our never ending phone conversations though we had been together in school and most of the afternoon, when I closed my eyes and imagined being on the roof opposite her room so I could see her through a window as she talked to me. Clutching my phone as my only float through the waves of space, I suddenly landed in a sloppy, bumbling mess on the roof I had imagined, and was then watching her through her open window.

She continued speaking to me as if the most shocking and powerful moment
of my life hadn’t just occurred. I had patted myself down, expecting to lose body parts or some of the depth of my form—something. But my body was just fine and my balance finally was regained in seconds.

Of course, I walked home that night, afraid to try it again.

Eventually, curiosity got the better of me and I tried somewhere a little further away—and a little further from that.

The first time I landed in Israel, I nearly shit my pants right there in the Holy Land.

That was the day before my birthday, three days before Colby had made me wonder if it had really been a gift after all.

I hadn’t expected her until Frid
ay morning but Thursday night, as I studied as much computer research as I could from the digital records the Synod would let me see, I felt the atmosphere shift around me. A bubble had popped somewhere near in the time it took for lightning to strike. Lightning had struck. I knew for sure when Colby knocked on my door, my conscience and my gift alerting me to her identity.

Agitated nerves flared to life, knowing this was the beginning of the end. Many things could happen with Colby and me, with me and the Synod, with us and the Resin. Things that didn’t even take into account the government or everyday worries.

Hell, I didn’t even know if the place in Tibet would allow me access to Sevella’s journals without permission from the Synod.

I tried like hell to open the door
without a beaming smile on my face. My senses were already on overload with her on the other side of the door. What would happen when we were constantly in such close proximity?

The door creaked as it opened. It was a small cottage of a place. I’d never meant for it to house more than just me. But it was only for one more day until we headed to Tibet.

“Hey.” She shielded her eyes against the light pouring from the tiny abode.

“Come in,” I bid her. She carried only a small bag, but somehow I knew that small
, almost weightless bag carried a mall’s worth of clothes, even though we could flash into any store, anytime of the night and get whatever she needed. I knew for a fact that she went into H&M, her favorite store, and got what she wanted in the night, grabbed the surveillance videos and then left a wad of cash on the counter as she left.

Colby shivered as she stepped into the cottage and looked around.

“It’s so cute—like a Hobbit house.”

I chuckled and took the bag from her.
I was right. Her bag was light as could be. She flounced onto the loveseat and picked up my notebook where I’d been taking notes. Without a second thought, she plucked her sandals off one by one and bent her legs under herself and settled into the couch as she read.

Who did she think she was kidding? Nothing had changed between us but a shallow relationship status. Colby was just as comfortable around me as she always had been—as she always would be.

“Can I make you some tea?” I offered. She thought about it for a second then opened her mouth to say something out, but decided, last minute, to squelch whatever it was.

“Just say it,” I said.

“I was going to ask you to get me something else, but I don’t know what we are anymore. I don’t know what you are to me.”

“I’m a man the last time I checked,” I provided, patting my clothes in the obvious region proving my male status.

She snickered. “Shut up. You know what I mean.”

“
I think I know what you want.”

I flashed to the back of a gas stat
ion in Southern Mississippi where I knew they had exactly what she craved. Going inside, I spotted the machine and chuckled at my love’s love of such a kiddie thing.

I paid for two, since I knew one would never suffice and flashed back to the cottage, holding on tight to the priceless treasure.

She looked up at me, desperate not to smile. “What flavor?”

“I got one cotton candy and one strawberry. I knew you couldn’t just have one.” I bent down to give it to her unable to resist jabbing her one more time. Hovering just over her shoulder, I whispered into her ear, “I know all the things you are insatiable for.”

She shivered again, the second time in such a short period of time and looked up at me with those almost golden light brown eyes. I backed off and offered her both of the drinks.