Chapter Nine
We sat at the pond until the sun dipped low and the temperature dropped, leaving us to navigate back with the light of the moon as a guide. When we reached his truck, James pulled open the passenger door and the overhead light flicked on, casting a feeble yellow glow into the black night.
I stared at the interior of the truck, but didn’t move to sit inside. I hadn’t told James about my drifts, and the weight of it felt heavier now that I knew about his past. I needed to tell him before we left because things would change when we got back to the city. Out here, everything was simple. Black and white. Believable. At least, that’s what I hoped.
“Come on, it’s getting cold,” James said, urging me forward and into the truck.
The sharp contours of his face swallowed the light and created shadows that lent an air of authority to his words. I was ready to pull myself in, when this unnamed thing that bonded our souls nearly a century ago swelled and kicked. I couldn’t ignore it, and from the way James leaned toward me, I suspected he felt it, too.
“What if I don’t want to go,” I said.
He blinked, not once but twice as he considered my words. “It’s late. We should get back.”
I stepped toward him until our chests were inches apart. “Please,” I said. “Just for the night. We’ll head back in the morning.”
James looked at the house and back to me with indecision written on every line of his face. “If you don’t want to go home, we can find something better. This house—”
But I didn’t need better. I needed him. “It’s perfect.”
His hand tightened on the car door before he gave it a shove. The light snapped off, and for a moment I was blind, until my eyes adjusted to the moonlight. James took my hand in his, and we walked toward the house.
The inside was cold and smelled of mold and dust. He rummaged in a drawer and pulled out an ancient box of matches. We brought wood in from outside, and he had a fire blazing in the hearth in a matter of minutes. The furniture, which was plentiful, considering this home was all but abandoned, was covered in mismatched sheets. Careful not to disturb the fine layer of dust and grime, James folded back the sheet that covered the sofa. The upholstery was worn but clean, and the cushions had permanent divots, making it look as if an invisible weight sat on them now.
“It’ll warm up soon,” James said, and gestured at the couch.
“When was the last time you were here?” I asked to prevent my teeth from chattering.
“About a month ago. I come every few weeks to check on the place, make repairs, that sort of thing.”
“Are you planning on keeping it?” The house hadn’t been updated since the seventies. The walls were covered in wood paneling, and the carpet was dark brown shag, but everything was well kept.
He looked around, and his shoulders lifted. “I’m not sure. It’s the last thing I have that was my mother’s. Everything—every picture, every memento —it all went up in flames the night she died.”
I ran my hand over the back of the sofa, feeling the rough texture. “Have you talked to your father since you were released?”
A chill settled over the room. “No, and I don’t plan on it.” He turned to the fire and poked at the wood, stoking it to burn hotter.
I sank into the sofa watching him. “I’m sorry, it’s none of my business.”
He stepped toward me, his footfalls slow and thoughtful. “Don’t be. It’s just—” He sat next to me, and the heat from his body warmed me in an instant. “He’s a part of my past. I don’t want him anywhere near my future.”
His hand traced the length of my arm, and as he wound his fingers through mine, they brushed the top of my thigh. Shivers flitted across my skin, and I shifted against the tingling in my lower belly.
James’s gaze, dark with desire, connected with mine. He brushed his palm against my cheek, and his lips parted. He was going to kiss me, but the moment before was like being suspended in mid-air. My muscles tensed until they trembled, and I prepared for the fall.
He pushed forward, and his lips, warm and tender, pressed against mine. My eyes rolled closed as some kind of firework ripped through my body and exploded in my gut. Everything wrong with us, every reason why I shouldn’t be with him, vanished because in that moment, everything was right.
The kiss deepened, and as his tongue swept mine, I melted against him—into him and around him. My hands wrapped around his waist and pulled at the hem of his shirt until I was able to splay my fingers against his scalding flesh. His muscles flexed, and with one swift move, he flipped me down and onto my back, his body, heavy and strong, draped over mine.
I arched my neck and his lips landed at my throat, tracing a hot line up to my jaw. I kissed the base of his ear, and on the next breath, pulled his lobe into my mouth. With a groan, he pushed his hips into mine while I pulled at his shirt, frantic to feel his skin with more than just my hands.
I shimmied it to his shoulders, but before I was able to remove it, James resisted, pushing up on his hands to look me in the eyes. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
He twisted his face away and squeezed his eyes closed before he pushed himself to a seated position. “I’m sorry,” he said, but wouldn’t look me in the eye.
I sat up and straightened my clothes, feeling as if somehow I’d done something wrong. Staring at the floor, I tried to calm the erratic beat of my heart.
“I—it’s just that no one’s…seen me since the fire.”
I looked at him, all at once understanding. “James,” I said, my heart breaking at the fear in his eyes.
“I know,” he said. “It’s just that I don’t want you to regret this. Or me.”
“You think your appearance makes a difference to me?”
He flinched. “No. Maybe. I don’t know, but I do know how people react when they see my hands, and this goes—beyond that.” He swallowed and fell back against the sofa.
I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to tell him it didn’t matter, but somehow that sounded insincere. I inched toward him and watched his body stiffen with my every move. When I straddled his thighs and settled myself in his lap, James sucked in a breath, and his hands gripped my hips. I ran my fingers through his hair and pulled his body to mine. He didn’t hesitate, and his arms wrapped around me. I traced the scruff on his jaw with my palm before leaning forward. His lips met mine, but there was a hesitancy that wasn’t there before. When we broke apart, I sat back and played with the fabric of his shirt.
“Show me,” I whispered. “I’m not going anywhere.”
His jaw worked from side to side for several moments before he grabbed his shirt and pulled it over his head. He expelled a harsh breath before he tossed it to the floor. His eyes were wary and his unease palpable as his muscles tightened and his chest swelled. He was arming himself against me—against my rejection.
But what I saw didn’t scare or repulse me. He was beautiful in the most imperfect way. I placed my fingers at his wrists and traced the scars up his arms. The marks were heavier on his right side, where they warped the skin all the way to his shoulder and across his pectoral, while the scars on his left ended at his bicep.
He jumped with every touch, but after a minute, the fear faded from his eyes. The flickering firelight cast dancing shadows across his skin while my fingers curled through the smattering of black hair that covered one side of his chest.
“What’s this?” I asked, noticing a spot above his heart, near the center of his chest, where his skin darkened in a lopsided circle.
I placed my fingers against the mark, and a burst of images flashed before my eyes. Shaking my head, I looked up at James and watched in horror as his concerned face morphed into something else—something lifeless. His eyes grew blank, and his skin paled and turned grey.
“I’ll get my shirt,” James said as he shifted to reach his discarded clothing.
“Stop,” I whispered and pressed my hands to his shoulders.
I stared at the birthmark that marred his skin, and my stomach liquefied with fright. Blood, so dark it could’ve been black, bubbled from the hole, and when I covered it with my hand, it oozed between my fingers and dripped from my wrists.
I flung myself away from him. “No, no, no. This isn’t real.” I ran to the opposite side of the room where the fire blazed hot, and extended my hands to warm them near the flames. The blood was gone, and my hands were clean. I turned toward James as he stood; his bare chest was completely whole, and the birthmark that lay just above his heart was hardly a shadow.
“What happened just now?” he asked.
I dropped to sit on the hearth with my back to the fireplace. The heat burned through my clothes but did little to ward off the chill inside my bones. James grabbed his shirt and moved to kneel in front of me, his steps careful and silent.
His question still hovered in the air, but I didn’t answer. Too many things occupied my thoughts, each vying for my attention. Running, gunshots, blood, tears, whispers, death. Colin.
I shut my eyes and was transported back to that alleyway where I hovered over James’s bloody body, knowing he was gone forever.
Colin carried me away and didn’t ask a single question. Not that I could’ve answered. I clenched my eyes closed and wrapped my arms around his neck, hanging on for more than just balance. It was several minutes before he stopped. He shifted me in his arms, and I heard the unmistakable sound of a car door being opened.
Leaning forward, he sat me on the button-tufted leather seat. He was gentle and kind, but I couldn’t muster the courage to look at him or thank him. I focused on my blood-soaked fingers and choked on emotions that were thick with guilt and despair. How could I have left him? How could I let another man help me? My throat constricted. I opened my mouth to gasp, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t suck in a breath. I was suffocating.
A moment later, Colin rested his palm on my back. “Just relax,” he said, his voice whisper-soft. I buried my face in my bloody hands and leaned forward until my elbows touched my knees. “Breathe,” he soothed. “Take it slow. Everything’s going to be okay now. I promise.”
My lungs expanded, but the hiccupping gasps that shuddered through my body made it difficult to breathe.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No,” I said, remembering James’s last request. “I need to get out of here. Somewhere far.”
“Do you want to go to the police?” he asked.
A chill shot down my spine. “I can’t. Those men that killed—” I sucked in a breath, unable to say his name, and held it for several seconds. “They’ll expect me there.”
“Home?”
I shook my head. “I can’t go home.”
“Then where?”
“Just take me somewhere quiet. I need to think.”
I leaned my head against the doorframe and closed my eyes. The warm night air blew against my face as Colin twisted and turned through Galveston’s narrow streets. When the car stopped, I didn’t have to open my eyes. I knew where we were from the smell of salt and the roar of the ocean.
I opened the door, and with only one shoe, walked with uneven steps through the sand. The surf was slow, and the waves broke against the beach in careless intervals like it was any other ordinary night. As if James’s life hadn’t been taken from him—from me.
I toed the edge of the water. It was warm, bordering on hot. I took a step, and then another, and watched as it lapped against my ankles. Without thinking much about it, I sank to my knees and let the water run over me. Placing my hands under the surf, I rubbed at the blood that caked my palms and forearms. I splashed water over my face and neck and felt the burn of salt in my eyes.
But I didn’t care. Something was broken inside my chest, and it floated like a shard of glass, piercing me from the inside out. The water, endless and black, swirled against me as if beckoning me to move farther into its depths. A part of me wanted to answer its call because a part of me wanted to die.
I pulled my handbag from the water and retrieved the necklace. It was a clear night, and the diamonds sparkled under the light of the moon. Thomas’s words came back to me. Don’t let them find it. But what was I supposed to do with it? What was James supposed to have done with it?
I wanted to hurl it into the ocean and watch it disappear, but instead, I clasped it against my chest. James had died because of it. He’d died to protect me. He’d died to honor his brother’s last wish.
I shoved the necklace into my purse and trudged from the water. In the distance, I watched Colin remove his jacket, but before I could get close enough to really see his face, he turned his back and held the coat in my direction. I wasn’t cold, and I stared in confusion until I looked down at my dress and saw that the fabric was glued to my body and nearly see-through.
If I’d had any emotion left to display, I’m sure my face would’ve burned red, but as it was, the most I felt was a vague gratitude as I pulled the jacket from his hand and slipped into its warmth. Wrapping the sides tightly around my middle, I turned away from him and toward the ocean.
“Thank you,” I said.
“You’re welcome.” The hiss of a struck match was followed by the sting of smoke as it filled the air. The paper crackled as he took a drag from a cigarette. “Would you like one?”
My gaze flicked to the open box of Luckies he offered, and reaching inside, I pulled one out. As soon as I placed it between my lips, a flame appeared, and I lit the end with a single inhale. My hand shook so hard that I wrapped my left around my right wrist just to keep myself still.
“How did you find me?” I asked. The moonlight flickered over the restless water, and I rolled the cigarette between my thumb and forefinger.
“I was leaving town. I am leaving town. I heard you screaming and came to help.”
I nodded but didn’t take my eyes away from the ocean. Had I been screaming? The events of the last few hours were muddled with only a handful of moments I could recall clearly. “Where’re you going?”
He took a long drag as if he were stalling—unsure of whether he wanted to tell me. In the end, he spoke only one word. “Houston.” He took another drag and exhaled slowly. “For now, at least.”
The smoke burned my throat, but I couldn’t say I didn’t like it. It was like fire cauterizing an open wound. Houston. I turned his answer around in my head. I’d never been there, but I knew it was a big city, one I could easily get lost in. But could I? Could I leave just like that? Could I even ask?
“I don’t know what happened back there,” he said. “But I’m assuming you’re in a bit of trouble.”
A vicious laugh trickled from my lips, and my stomach tightened. Seconds later, the laughter turned to tears, and I bowed forward. Colin dropped his cigarette and stubbed it out in the sand with the toe of his two-tone lace-up oxford shoe.
“Would it be too bold—” He knelt behind me and placed his hand on my shoulder. “Come with me.”
My body jerked with suppressed sobs. “I don’t know.”
“You said yourself you can’t go home, and you won’t go to the police. I don’t see what option you have left.”
I stared at the glow of my cigarette. “You saw what happened to my…friend. Those people won’t stop until they find me, too. Why would you want to have anything to do with me?”
There was a long pause where the only sound was the crushing surf. “Can it be as simple as wanting to help you?”
“No.” No one was that generous, especially to a stranger.
“I didn’t think so. I told you I was leaving town. It would be better if I were leaving with a companion. It would be less suspicious.”
“Do I want to know what you’re running from?”
“Probably not.”
My heart seized and shot pain from my chest all the way through to my fingertips. I’d never felt so helpless, so at the mercy of a stranger. And not just any stranger, but a potentially dangerous one, who might be in as much trouble as me. I’m not sure how that would make anything better, but a part of me reasoned it couldn’t make it worse.
“If you want to come with me, now is the time.” His hand appeared to my left. I glanced at the thousands of shimmering stars overhead and prayed I was making the right decision.
His fingers tightened around mine when I placed my hand in his. I looked one last time at the ocean and said a quick good-bye to my past. When I looked ahead at Colin’s black Model T, I saw my future. Or what was left of it. This was my only chance, and holding my hand was my only hope.
I surfaced from the beach. The smell of wood smoke replaced the briny ocean air, and the sound of crackling flames replaced the crashing waves.
“You’ve got to tell me what’s happening,” James said. “I’ve tried to be patient, to wait until you were ready, but I can’t wait any longer.”
He was right; he needed to know. “Do you know why you paint my image?”
His expression was unreadable. “I have an idea.”
“Will you tell me?”
James sucked in a breath and ran a nervous hand through his hair. “No.” His answer left no room for argument. “Not until you tell me what’s going on.”
I nodded, unsure where to start. “This isn’t going to be easy to understand.”
He stood in front of me. “Just start from the beginning.”
I turned to the fire and stared into the flames. “My mother committed suicide after battling schizophrenia for years.”
He released a heavy breath. “I’m sorry.”
I acknowledged his condolence before I shrugged. “The thing is, my father lied to me.”
He crossed his arms. “It wasn’t schizophrenia?”
I shook my head.
“Then what was it?”
I took a deep breath and exhaled my words. “My mother could move through time in something called a drift.” James didn’t move or speak, and his face remained impossible to read. “She could remember parts of her past life. She could relive, for lack of a better word, a life that no longer existed. I thought she was crazy. Everyone, my father included, let me think she was crazy.”
The silence lengthened and grew heavy. “It wasn’t until yesterday that I knew any different.”
James shifted and took a breath. “What are you saying?”
“You remember the visions I told you about?”
James nodded. “You saw the necklace, the one from my painting.”
“It’s more than the necklace. I see other things.” I inhaled, trying to force some kind of confidence into my words, but my heart was pounding too hard to feel it. “About you. Me. Us. Awful things I wish I’d never seen.”
My words were fragile, and they hung like breakable things in the air.
“So, your visions are pieces of a past life?”
“Not just any past life—our past life.”
James rubbed his jaw and paced the room. “How did you find out? When?”
“Mack.” James stopped moving. I could feel his animosity even though he hadn’t spoken a word. “He finds people like me—like my mom—people who can drift.”
“I thought he worked for the FBI.”
“He does. This is his job within the FBI, to protect people like me.”
“Protect you? From who?”
I explained it as best I could, but there were questions I didn’t have answers to. James was frustrated, and I couldn’t blame him.
“So, what does this mean for us?”
I wrung my hands, twisting my fingers until the pain was real. “Mack seems to think that being with you increases the chance that I’ll drift.”
“We already kind of knew that. And why would that be a problem anyway?”
“Right. It’s just that Mack also believes that if I relive my death, the one from my past life, I won’t be able to return to my body here.”
He sighed. “That’s why he was so angry this morning.” He dropped his head back and stared at the ceiling. “I thought it was because of what happened with my father.”
“No. He thinks that if I go back in time, sooner or later I’ll die.”
He swallowed heavily. “Is that a possibility? Has that ever happened before?” I couldn’t respond fast enough before he asked another question. “Is there a way to stop drifting?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you pull yourself back? Do you have control over any of it?”
He was firing the questions at me fast, and I didn’t have the answers. “I said I don’t know.” My voice was loud and echoed in the tiny room.
James turned away from me and continued to pace. “I’m sorry,” he said when he turned back to me. “It’s just the thought of you dying is unacceptable to me.”
“Believe me, the idea isn’t pleasant for me, either.”
He grabbed the back of his neck and squeezed. “I’m sorry. I know this can’t be easy.” There was a pause, but when he spoke again, his voice was kind. “What else did McCormack say?”
“He told me about the necklace you painted. It’s real.” I took a breath and ran my hands over my knees. “It was stolen in 1922. The drifts where I’ve seen the necklace coincide with that time period. I was there, holding that necklace after you—”
I shut my mouth and covered it with my hand. I couldn’t say the words out loud.
“After I what?”
My hands shook. The vibrations spread to my arms, legs, and finally my shoulders. “Died.” There was a long pause where we stared at each other. “You were murdered.”
“You saw it?”
“Not the actual moment you were shot, but I was there at the end. I watched you die.”
He sat quiet for a minute. “I want you to tell me everything, and I don’t want you to leave anything out. I need to know.”
The story poured out all at once and in a rush. Every drift I’d had, I explained in detail. The chase, his murder, Thomas, Colin, the beach, Roselli—
I held nothing back, and by the time I finished, I was exhausted and drained. James had questions, I could feel them buzzing around us, but he didn’t ask. Instead, he pulled me to the sofa where he stretched out and tucked me into his side.
“I’ll figure this out.” He pulled me tighter against him when he wrapped his arms around me. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
I didn’t know if there was anything he could do, but I believed he’d try. I watched the fire flicker and fade, and sometime before it turned to smoke and ash, I fell asleep.