The sting of the needle is brief, a dull pain remaining as Rose takes the vials of my blood. Before long, she removesthe needle and I wince, pressing a cotton bud over my punctured skin.
Rose packs away her supplies and gets to her feet. “Where’s the washroom?”
“By the front door,” I say, pointing down the hallway.
Her head snaps to Parker, her thick plait swinging down her back. “Keep your mouth shut, Jimmy,” she says, leaving Parker and me in silence.
It’s surreal. Parker, standing here in Silas’s cottage.It feels wrong.The man before me is nothing like the man in my dreams. Where’s the man who was dying to get me alone?
“Did you mean it?” I say before I lose my nerve.
He’s still perusing Silas’s records with his back to me. He doesn’t turn. “Mean what?”
“That nothingmemorablehappened?”
“No.” I wait for him to elaborate, but he’s silent, the muscles in his neck tense.
“Is it because of Rose?” I ask, rising from the table.
Parker runs a hand over his head. “I don’t want to get into it right now.”
He can’t even turn to look at me. I suppress the urge to cry, scolding myself for getting caught up in a fantasy. Regardless of the inexplicable way I feel about him, he’s a stranger.
He finally turns, and something like pain flashes across his face. He strolls toward me, slipping his hands into his pockets. “Sometimes the past is better kept in the past, you know?”
I nod, but Idon’tknow. How can I? It may have been his past, but it’s still my future. Or would’ve been, if I went to Neurovida.
The sternness in his face softens and, for a fleeting moment, I think he might reach out and touch me. “Ella, there aresomany things I want to tell you, but I—”
“Parker, let’s go.” Rose’s heavy footsteps echo along the hallway. She appears behind us with her hands tucked into the pouch of her hoodie, and her sharp, onyx gaze snaps to mine. “Remember, not a word to anyone about us, or that you’ve ever met us before.” She hesitates. “And thank you,” she spits out before striding away, boots thumping toward the front door.
Parker releases a deep breath, his dark blond brows creased together. His lips twitch as if he wants to tell me something but can’t find the right words.
“Jimmy, come on,” Rose yells.
“Take care, Ella,” he says, and with one final glance, he follows Rose outside.
I wait for the front door to close and scamper after him, peeking through the narrow window beside the front door. Rose’s quick strides have taken her halfway down the street, a trail of vapor billowing in her wake. Parker strolls after her, hands still tucked into his pockets as if he has all the time in the world.
Their retreating figures disappear beyond the street corner, and I slump against the wall beside Silas’s door. The past hour feels like a surreal dream. I’ve just exchanged my blood for a chance to time travel into the past to visit my dead mother.
And yet my mind can’t seem to stop swinging back to the same thought.
Everything in my dream was real, for Parker at least, and he’d acted as if it meant nothing.
13Mariella
“There she is,” Anna yells over the upbeat music blaring through her apartment. She struts toward me in a minidress and black thigh-high boots, swigging champagne straight from the bottle.
“Hey,” I say, slipping off my shoes. “Are you going out?”
“No. I just got home from anothercharmingfamily dinner.” She tugs my satchel off my shoulder and pulls me toward her living area. “Soweare going out, and we’re getting lit.” She tips the bottle toward me in a toast and takes another mouthful of champagne. “You must’ve made an impression on Parker and Rose, because they were here this morning looking for you. Did they find you?”
“I wanted to mention that,” I say, collapsing onto her sofa. “Please do not give Silas’s address to strangers.”
Anna snorts, perching beside me. “Pfft, with that face? Parker’s not a stranger, he’s a God. Plus, I’ve seen the way you stare at him.”Am I that transparent?“I think the words you’re looking for arethank you.”
“Thank God Silas wasn’t there,” I mutter.
