“Because I wanted to.” He looks down at the book as he reads the spine then the front.
“What about you?” I ask. “What were you like?”
It takes him longer to respond. “An ass**le.”
“I’m sure you weren’t always an ass**le.” I give him a playful smile and he shakes his head, stifling a grin.
“I don’t know, Gemma,” he says, exhaling loudly. “I had a rough childhood, full of shitty memories of my father doing really shitty things to me, but I don’t want to talk about it with you, because it makes me more of an ass**le, complaining to you about stuff like that when you suffered the most.” His head tips down as he avoids eye contact with me.
“We all suffered,” I say. “One way or another and I don’t think you’re an ass**le for saying that—shit happened and we shouldn’t have to keep it a secret anymore.”
He glances up at me. “You sound very wise right now.”
I shrug. “I was just saying how it is.”
He inhales and then exhales, his gaze fastened with mine. The pull starts to arise and I find myself setting the book aside and scooting across the floor toward him. At first he stays still, as if welcoming my advance, but then he abruptly gets up and goes over to the bookshelf.
“Did I do something wrong?” I dare ask, feeling vulnerable at the moment.
He climbs up the ladder for the top shelf, shaking his head. “Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know.” I struggle for words I don’t want to say. “You’ve just… you’ve just seemed really uninterested since I got my Keeper’s mark.” Feeling stupid, I engulf my attention in the book on my lap.
I hear him moving around, then moments later his boots appear in my line of vision. “That’s not what it is,” he says. “I’m just trying to protect you.”
I look up at him. “From what?”
“From me.” He sits down in front of me and there’s sincerity in his eyes. “When you got the rush reality sort of slapped me in the face. It was so intense with you that I thought… that I thought you were going to die, which can happen sometimes. And that made me realize just how much I don’t want you to die.” He strokes my cheek with his finger. “I need you here and if that means keeping our distance, then that’s what I’ll do.”
The emotion flooding his eyes is so potent, so consuming that I momentarily stop breathing. “But do you ever think…. Ever think it might be for the best,” I whisper. “Because it’d put an end to all of this.”
He cups my chin in his hand. “I’m not going to go there,” he says forcefully, then pushes to his feet. “We’ll find another way.”
He goes back to searching through the book and I return to mine, but I can’t help but be aware of him. So aware that even when I shut my eyes, all I see is him.
***
We don’t say much to each other as we continue looking through books. It starts to get to me after a while. Surrounded by stacks, I take a look at the many left on the shelf and finally say, “What if it’s not on the shelf? The book has got to be important, right, if it has the history of the Foreseers in it. Why would he keep it out in the open?” I pause remembering something from my past. “I once went looking for my birth certificate in Marco and Sophia’s room.”
He glances up from the book he’s skimming through. “Did you find it?”
“Yeah, it was hidden in this secret compartment of this trunk they had.” I point at a trunk in the corner of the room. “Kind of like that one.”
Alex and I trade a curious look then we dash for the trunk, Alex swiping up the flashlight before winding around the stacks of books all over the floor. The trunk ends up being full of books and we take them out, checking the title of each one. When we reach the bottom, I push on the board, and just like the trunk at Marco and Sophia’s, the bottom pops up, and there is our book. A leather bound spine and an eye on the cover; the same kind of eye on the columns at the Room of Forbidden.
“So this is it.” I start to get to my feet, but Alex stays kneeling on the floor, staring into the trunk.
“What’s wrong?”
He reaches inside and removes another leather book with the initials A.A. engraved on the front of it.
“Is it yours?” I tuck the Foreseer book under my arm and sit down beside him
He swallows hard as he fans through the pages. “I think it’s my mother’s.” He looks lost as he pushes to his feet with the book in his hand. “I’m taking this with me.”
Nodding, I help him pile the books back into the trunk. “Should we clean up the rest of the mess?”
Alex shakes his head, his mood off from the discovery of the book. “There’s no point—”
The echo of a door slamming shut causes us to freeze.
“Shit,” Alex hisses and I can feel the fear pouring off him. “Someone’s here.”
Chapter 19
“Do you think its Stephan?” I whisper as Alex clicks the flashlight off and night smothers us, except for a thin trail of moonlight trickling though the window.
“I’m not sure.” He stuffs the flashlight into his pocket, laces his fingers through mine, the sparks crackling as he puts a finger to his lips. “Be as quiet as possible okay, no matter what happens.”
We tiptoe into the hallway and turn toward the stairway, but spin around when we hear Stephan’s voice drifting up the stairs, talking either on his phone or to someone else.
Alex tows me to the end of the hallway and into a room, softly shutting the door behind us. He turns the flashlight back on and scans it around. There are clothes on the floor, CD’s, but the bed is unmade. The décor screams that it’s a guy’s room and I’m betting it’s the room he grew up in.
He lets go of my hand, kicks some clothes out of the way, and then flips over a rug. Underneath it is a small trap door. He opens it and shines the light down into the small, narrow space.
“Are we both going to be able to fit?” I ask with a hint of doubt
He massages the back of his neck tensely. “We should be able to, but you get in first.”
I hurry and sit down and lower myself into the hole, laying on my side and scooting as far to the side as I possibly can. Then he puts his legs in and squeezes beside me, managing to pull the rug back down as he shuts the trapdoor. He turns off the flashlight, lies on his side, facing me and I have to put my leg over his hip just so we can fit. Our bodies are pressed so tightly together that I can feel his heart pounding in his chest against mine. The electricity rapidly starts to heat up the space and within a minute were both panting. But all we can do is wait.