He couldn’t answer her. Not in words and not with his mind. His head was spinning as he backed up, bumping into the wall and pressing his shoulders against the vertical surface to keep his balance.
She took a step toward him, but he managed to raise one hand to ward her away.
“Don’t.” His voice was a harsh croak.
Her face had turned pale. Another woman would have asked what had gone wrong. But she didn’t have to ask because she knew what had happened.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Not your fault.” He might have shaken his head, but the pain in his skull had flared to killer proportions.
Killer?
The thought had formed unbidden, but he knew it was close to the truth.
“You should sit down,” she murmured.
He staggered back to the chair and flopped into the seat, throwing his head back and closing his eyes. For long moments he struggled for equilibrium.
When he opened his eyes, he saw that she was watching him.
“You came here thinking you knew what to expect,” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
“You were always looking for what you had with Sam.”
Again he answered in the affirmative.
“You and Sam were young.” She paused, then went on, “And there was no sexual pull between you.”
The statement hung in the air.
“Is it the sexual pull that brought us together?” she asked.
“It’s obviously part of it,” he answered, struggling to think clearly in the aftermath of the emotions that had churned through him.
“What was different about you and Sam?”
He fought to ground himself, to think about his relationship with his brother in a new way. It was a long time ago. Maybe he didn’t remember it exactly as it had been.
Slowly, thinking as he spoke, he said, “We talked with thoughts, but there were other things we could do. Like if we worked together, we could move things with our minds.”
“What do you mean?”
He glanced around the room and settled on the shelves along the opposite wall. “If we wanted to, we could pull a book out of the shelves and drop it on the floor, without touching it.”
“You and I could try that,” she said, and he wondered if she was trying to get them on a different track.
“We just met today.”
“No—a couple of days ago at the reception,” she reminded him.
He made a huffing sound. “Yeah. There’s that. But we just danced around each other there.”
“Even so, we knew . . . something.”
“True. But I don’t think we’re . . . bonded tightly enough to do any . . . tricks.”
