“I don’t think I can, V. You have to know. Fuck, I feel it from you. This… between us… It’s real, it’s raw, and it’s deep inside our souls. It’s not going anywhere.” I felt it, and it felt like my gut had a python squeezing the fuck out of it. I turned my focus back to her, and her green eyes stared into mine. I wanted to lose myself in her. I breathed deeply, ready to say those few damning words, but she saved me.
“Wait. You can tell me after this. I need you to know. Like really know that no matter what, I’m not going anywhere. Ok?” I nodded and she graced me with a soft smile. The python in my gut eased just a bit. “I spoke with Draco last night. My powers come from Rhea. A Titan, like yours. Like some crazy predestined fate or something. You are my balance, and I am yours. I ached without you, and I know you felt it. It’s why you’re here now. But more than the draw of those ancient powers, is this.” She grabbed my hand and placed it over her chest. Her heart beat steadily beneath my palm.
“Every beat of my heart belongs to my person. My safe person. You.” I gaped. She didn’t say love, but I knew. I mean, I’d known the trajectory of us and chose to ignore it. She…
She loved me… This perfect, beautiful woman, who I’d secretly loved from the future, loved me. My heart pounded, and I couldn’t do this anymore. That fucking gut python squeezed and squeezed until the words pushed out of me.
“Chasity is my wife in the future.”
Chapter Twenty
Emily
All thoughts, heartbeats, and breaths stopped. Somehow, I didn’t know how he did it, but Vincent must have frozen time and hell in the same moment. That’s the power of Kronos, good ole Father Time, right there for ya. Because I thought he said Chasity was his future wife and, yeah, time and hell being frozen over felt way more realistic.
I vaguely noticed his lips saying more, but there were no sounds. Darn Kronos time powers taking away my hearing too. Wild. His mouth kept moving as he cupped my cheeks. The warmth in his touch thawed it all. Time sped, my heart sped up, and air raced out of my lungs. He did say Chasity was his wife in the future.
“That bitch,” I said.
“Uh, what?” I nudged his hands off my cheeks and stood only to start pacing beside the bed.
“I said, that bitch.”
“You don’t hate me?” His voice cracked. Instantly, I rushed back to the bed to cup his cheeks like he had mine. Those brown eyes, so deep, yet the pain rested on the surface. I couldn’t imagine everything he’d felt and gone through likely alone.
“I don’t hate you. Chastine is horrid. Straight abusive when you get down to it. I’ve heard your stories and have experienced her in real life. She’s a nightmare. I don’t blame you or hate you for being ensnared in her glittering yet poisonous web. I’ve seen boys get trapped, and she ruins their lives. She’s only a teenager right now. I can’t imagine older Chastine who’s had more time to hone her manipulation skills.” Even as I said the words, I felt them deep in my bones. Chastine, or Chasity, or whatever name she called herself, was rotten to her core. Did I want to think about him and her together in the future? Hell no. But I understood it.
“You’re too good for me. I’m fucked up. This… You deserve better than this.” He shook his head as those big hands of his gently lowered mine to my sides. His head dropped, and I saw the intent to jump time or leave.
“I don’t care that you’re married to my sister in the future. If you were with her now in my time, then I’d say you’re a creep and I deserved better.” I tried joking, but maybe it was too soon for sister jokes. I grabbed his wrist, and his gaze darted up to mine.
“If you jump, then I’m jumping with you.”
“E. This situation. What are we going to do?” He shook his hand, but my grip remained firm.
“I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. We care for each other. We’re both a balance power-wise. We are each other’s safe person. This is rare and I know it’s because we are supposed to be together. Maybe I was out of town in the future and you were drawn to the closest thing to me. I don’t know.” His chest moved up and down slowly. No orange magic surrounded us, so I kept going.
“I do know this. We’re both being abused by the same person. If we give up each other because of her, then she wins. She officially takes the one good thing we have in this life. Each other.” I pleaded for him to hear my words, to feel them deeply. This story was wild. My best friend and chosen for my heart was a time traveling superhero who was married to my sister in the future. It’s like a bad soap opera or some taboo romance novel. But here we were, in this real-life, fucking crazy scenario.
“I can’t change things. My parents. It just…” Whether he meant to or not, his powers surrounded us. My grip tightened, and no amount of power on earth could rip me from him. I closed my eyes, and when a summer breeze tickled the hair on my neck, I opened them.
“My dad left my mom and me when I was young.” Vincent led me to the ground as we looked over pre-Seahill Seahill. The same spot he showed me his cool power.
“She was never the same after that.” He breathed, and I slithered my hand from his wrist to lace our fingers. We weren’t going anywhere, and he needed the comfort.
“She didn’t hit me, but everything affected me as if she did. Her voice, her steps, the way she moved. My life was hell.” His head faced the bay, and a knot formed in my throat. I worked with enough people who struggled from emotional abuse, and knew the effects.
“On my sixteenth birthday, my powers showed up and transported me back to a time when my parents were together.” He inhaled deeply, then released slowly. “I begged my dad not to leave. I thought that if he stayed, then everything would be ok in the future. Mom wouldn’t blame everything on me.”Deep breaths, Emily.
“When I came back to my time, everything had changed. My dad stayed, and since they were both toxic to each other, they became addicts. They both abandoned me and died of overdoses.” I opened my mouth to say something, but I had nothing. That knot in my gut tightened, but with my free hand, I touched the grass on my side in attempts to soothe the need to jump in and fix.
“My whole life changed, and ever since, I try not to change the past.”
“But doesn’t you being in the past change things? Our dates at the restaurant? I’m sure you changed other things.” I felt like this timeline thing was very fragile. If I spit gum on the sidewalk, it could cause a chain of events that led to World War III and I wouldn’t know it. Or at least that’s the way it sounded to me.
“The zoo. I saved two keepers, although I shouldn’t have helped. It did change things, but as far as I can find, the two keepers that previously died got married and live as retirees with a house on the bay. They haven’t made big ripples that changed the lives of mankind. However, I wasn’t thinking. I can’t do it again. What if everything is worse?” I shook my head. No wonder my sister was able to dig her nails in deep.
“A valid question, and powers like yours are great enough to change the lives of every person. However, the what-if games will drive you mad. Especially when the what-ifs are all the bad situations. There are good possibilities too. That couple you saved died originally. That’s as bad as it gets for them. Now they are living a happy life together. It changed for the better.” I needed him to see that good and bad both existed and that we could choose which we focus on.
