His voice shocked me upright. Despite the flood of students rushing to their weekend plans, Ollie hadn’t moved. I rolled his question around, cocking my head.
“You mean my boyfriend?”
A muscle in his jaw flexed. He rose and pushed a hand through his hair, exhaling sharply. I shoved my laptop in my bag, my hidden phone finally revealing itself before leaping off the desk-
It never hit the floor. I didn’t have time to question it as his body curved over mine.
“I hope for your sake that you’re not lying, but either way, Iwillfind out how you’re blocking me.”
And we were back to that nonsense. I shook my head, a hundred questions rattling in my brain. “I’m not lying, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I insisted, reaching for my phone-
The second our hands touched, an electric shock spurred the strange reel in my chest to unravel fast and out of control. He gasped, his pupils blown wide. We stared at each other, both open mouthed.
He recovered first and bent to my ear. “No secrets can be kept from me, Courtney.”
Every sore muscle in my exhausted body locked up as he slinked away. I barely noticed the door slam shut behind him.
4
Ollie
Iwasconsumedbythe enigma of Courtney Whitewood. Basic internet searches gave me an overview- talented dancer and daughter of a discarded debutante and neurologist, who abandoned his practice after their nasty divorce. He sparked a few red flags by falling off the face of the earth, but fathers did worse things to children they no longer wanted.
I would know.
Like a freight train, I steamrolled through the throngs of students laughing and discussing plans for the weekend. That strange electric shock at her touch threw me off. I hadn’t meant to be so aggressive with her, but the barricade behind her eyes locking me out drove me fucking insane.
“You can’t seriously be brooding over her again,” Jack scoffed. He discovered me scowling at Courtney with her roommate and dragged me out to smoke a joint.
“She’s a threat.”
“She can’t possibly be like you, I’ve seen her eyes, they’re not freaky like yours,” he insisted. I raised a brow at him. He grinned. “I mean… no one does creepy-sexy like you, my friend.”
Even when I wanted to punch him, he made me laugh. I hadn’t intended on him finding out about me, but when he caught me levitating a toaster prior to launching it out a window in a drunken rage, it’d been impossible to deny. As if reeled together by fate, he had a strange gift of his own.
It’d be cute if I believed in fate, but I didn’t.
And I had good reason not to.
Jack could accept telekinesis, but when I revealed the telepathy, he screamed bloody murder. He took a few shots before agreeing to let me dig around in his brain for answers. Piecing together fragments of memories, I hit gold. Child-Jack overheard an argument about him compared to his twin- how he acted delusional talking to pets and animals all the time. They didn’t want a defect- he and Miranda had been chosen in particular for their superior genetics and fertilized in a lab. The lab name: Merit Institute, a front from the same one I was sent to for fertilization.
Coincidences were fiction.
Explaining it all to my best friend ended up in many more shots and a full blown panic attack about how to tell Miranda. By the time he calmed down, I was half asleep on the floor, drunk off my ass.
Jack may have been a happy accident or an inevitable puzzle piece in my life, but Courtney was not.
“I’ve never met someone who could block me.”
Jack pinched the joint, sucking greedily. “I wish I could block you, but you’re an intrusive dick.” He smirked. I caught his eye and a tunnel yawned open to a flood of noise.
Jack’s brain was very different from most. A cacophony of voices, sounds and strange languages tangled over each other- none originating from him. I grimaced against the onslaught of chatty animals.
Your mind is the definition of my hell.
Retreating through the tunnel, his booming laugh echoed in my ears. “Trust me, if I could silence these overfed squirrels, I would,” he sighed. “But having them steal all of Marty’s boxers last week made it worth it.” I coughed a laugh around the thick marijuana smoke. Jack bumped my shoulder. “You know what they say, you trap more bees with honey. You’d probably find out more if you cozy up to her.”
I’d taken his faulty advice and I’d revealed my cards like a fucking rookie. I wasn’t used to getting information the hard way. Slick as a computer hacker, I slipped in and out of people’s minds, tweaking here and there as needed.
