Endless (25 page)

She saw the truth in his eyes. The love for all the people she’d been through time and for her soul that had gone on and on, always looking for him.

She dropped the towel on the floor, running her bare palms along the plane of his chest. She closed her eyes, letting the images come, not of Russia, but of something else. A man racing through the woods, pulling a girl with long black hair behind him. In the distance, she heard dogs and horses and knew the man who both was and wasn’t Nikolai was being chased.

He closed his eyes, swaying a little as she moved her hands to the back of his neck. His wet hair brushed the skin of her wrists.

He opened his eyes, his gaze locking onto hers in the moment before his arms slid around her waist. When he pulled her to him, he held her so tight she felt every inch of his body, every peak settling into every fall of her own. She wanted to inhale his breath and make it her own.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” he whispered, looking into her eyes. “That I’d lost you forever.”

She shook her head. “I belong with you.”

He moved his arms from her waist, cupping her face in his hands, staring into her eyes as if she were something precious and rare. “I’ll never let someone take you from me again.”

And then his mouth was on hers, his kiss tentative at first, careful, like he was afraid he would scare or break her. It set something loose inside her, a wildfire catching the wind, setting everything ablaze in its path. She opened herself to him, felt his tongue slide against her own as she returned his kiss with a building passion that both terrified and exhilarated her.

She couldn’t get enough of him, was hardly aware of his body guiding hers backward until finally, he broke their kiss just long enough to lift her into his arms. She kissed him again, urgent, trying to learn all of him at once, as if some kind of clock were ticking. As if she only had so much time and needed to know him completely before he was taken from her again.

He laid her gently on the sofa in front of the fire, scooting next to her and half covering her body with his own. She ran her hands over his back, damp and cool, as he traced a line on her face with his fingertip.

“Jenny,” he whispered. “My Jenny.”

His finger continued its path down her neck to the skin on her chest, rising and falling with her heavy breathing. He stopped at the place where her bare skin ended and the cotton of her damp tank top began. Fire licked at her insides, igniting all the cold places, illuminating the dark ones.

He slid an arm under her body, pulling her against him so that her head rested against his chest. She could hear the beat of his heart, fast but steady. Familiar, like a childhood lullaby once forgotten and only just remembered.

She was suspended in a pleasant kind of fog, the fire crackling somewhere in the background, Nikolai’s chest against her cheek, when the sound of her vibrating phone pulled her back to consciousness.

She sat up, pulling the phone from her still-damp jeans pocket. She expected it to be her dad, checking up on her. Instead, the screen told her she had two texts from Ben.

In the first one, Ben said he’d dropped off his mom and was going to swing by. The second was just three words.

Where are you?

I’m next door
, she typed, trying to clear the haze in her brain.
Where are you?

At your house.

“Damn,” she muttered.

Nikolai sat up, his dark hair tousled, chest still bare over his jeans. “What is it?”

She sighed. “A friend of mine is at my house. I told him to call first, but I guess he was in the neighborhood or something.”

Nikolai raised one dark eyebrow. “He?”

She nodded. “My friend, Ben.”

Be right there
, she typed into the keypad of her phone.

“Do you have to go?" Nikolai asked.

She didn’t want to, but there was no point pretending. “Unfortunately.”

He stood up, crossing the room to get his shirt. “I’ll walk you.”

She nodded, knowing he didn’t want to be apart any more than she did. She heard it in the catch in his voice, felt it in the way he gripped her hand as they left the house and headed for the pathway between their houses.

They stopped at the end of forest. A couple feet more, and Jenny would be in the big, wide field leading to her house. She could see Ben sitting on her front porch. His truck was the only vehicle in the driveway, which meant that her dad wasn’t home yet.

She looked up at Nikolai. “I miss you already.”

He nodded. “I know what you mean,” he said. “It seems we never have enough time together.”

“Will I see you tomorrow?”

He pulled her into an embrace. “Tonight, tomorrow, as soon as you can get back here. Until then, I’m going to make some inquiries of my own about Morgan.”

“Inquiries from who?”

“I have contacts in the underground. If Morgan’s connected to the Order, someone should know about her.”

“What about the book? The full moon is tomorrow.”

“I’m betting that the more we find out about Morgan, the more we find out about your mother,” he said. “And we know she had the book at one time. It’s the best place to start. I’ll work fast, start reaching out tonight. We should know more by tomorrow morning.”

“Okay.”

She stood on tiptoe, kissing him one last time, not wanting to say goodbye.

She forced herself to take a step away from him even though the idea of being separated for even a few hours made it hard to breathe. What if the Order came for him? What if she never saw him again?

She tried to beat back the fear. They’d found each other against all odds, across time and space. They could beat the Order. They just had to find the book before tomorrow night.

She stepped into the clearing, surprised to see Ben watching her. She felt a moment’s panic. Had he seen her kiss Nikolai?

She continued across the lawn, forcing a smile and a wave as she got closer, stepping onto the gravel drive and crossing to the porch.

“Hey!” She tried to sound cheerful, like that would somehow deter Ben from asking questions she hoped he wouldn’t ask. “I’m sorry. I thought you were going to call first.”

But as soon as she looked into Ben’s eyes, she knew he had seen her with Nikolai. Ben’s face was too still. Like a mask set on top of his own face, the features the same but without the animation of expression.

“Who was that?” He tipped his head in the direction of the woods between her house and Nikolai’s.

“That?” She knew who he was talking about, but she turned anyway, looking back in the direction from which she’d come in an effort to buy some time. “Oh! That was … our new neighbor. I was just … you know, welcoming him. My dad told me to go, actually. Just to be polite.”

She cringed inwardly at the lie, both on principle and because if Ben mentioned it to her dad, the whole story would start to unravel, both with Ben and her dad.

Ben nodded, then analyzed her face like he was studying a cryptic map.

Jenny nodded, stepping onto the porch. “Wanna come in?”

“Sure.” He followed her hesitantly up the steps.

Jenny breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe he’d let it go for now.

She unlocked the door and stepped into the foyer. “Come in.”

He stepped through the doorway, but not before looking back toward the forest in the moment before she shut the door behind him.

“Did your dad build this house?” Ben asked as he followed her through the house and up the stairs.

“He might as well have,” Jenny laughed. “He renovated it down to the studs. It’s his dream house. It took him over five years to finish it.”

“He obviously knows what he’s doing,” Ben said from behind her.

She led him down the upstairs hallway to her room. “He does. He’s an amazing architect. I just wish he could understand that it’s not my thing, you know?”

She opened the door to her bedroom, and Ben followed her into the room, stopping just across the threshold. He let out a low whistle.

“I take it your thing is painting?”

She followed his eyes to the canvases lining the walls. “You could say that.”

He crossed the room, studying her paintings. “Wow … These are good.”

She felt exposed, vulnerable, despite his praise. “You think so?”

“I do.” He straightened, his eyes falling on all the other canvases. “Who’s the guy? He’s in every one.”

She was relieved the features of the man in the painting were so blurry. No way would Ben connect him with an across-the-field view of Nikolai. At the same time, she didn’t want to keep Ben from knowing about Nikolai. Not forever. She and Ben were supposed to be friends, and she was finally starting to understand that friends were friends all the time, even when you were being weird or crazy or telling stories about a guy from a past life.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I … see him sometimes.”

“In your visions?” There was no teasing in his voice, no skepticism.

She nodded.

“Do you think he’s from the past?” Ben asked.

She hesitated, wondering if this was the moment. If she should just spill it all.

“I don’t know,” she finally said.

“Fine. Whatever.” Something cold dropped over his features. “So are you going to show me the pictures or what?”

“Ben, wait.” She touched his arm, trying to get rid of that look in his eyes. The one that seemed like anger and hurt all rolled into one. “Why are you mad?”

“Why would I be mad?” He tried to laugh, but it sounded more like he was choking. He crossed his arms over his chest and glared at her like a little boy about to throw a tantrum. “Just because you’re hanging out with some guy I’ve never seen before, keeping secrets after I’ve told you
everything
…
Why would I be mad?”

Anger rippled through her. “Who I see is really none of your business.”

“I thought we were friends.” His voice was wounded.

“We are.” She wanted to take away his hurt, but somehow she knew that telling him about Nikolai wasn’t going to do that. “But that doesn’t mean you have the right to know everything I do, everyone I see.”

He turned around. She couldn’t see his eyes from where she stood, but he seemed to be studying one of her canvases, the old train station with Nikolai at the edge of the platform. He faced her, his expression slightly less stormy. “You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s just … ”

“Just what?”

He worried the ring at his lip between two graceful fingers. “I feel like you’re keeping something from me. Like we were in it together—the music box and your mom and even that weird monastery—and all of a sudden, you’re just … gone. Then I come over and I see you with that guy, and I can’t help feeling like something’s changed.” There was no bravado in his voice. The wall that had stood between them since they first met was gone completely, his face open and vulnerable in a very un-Ben-like way.

The silence was heavy between them as she thought about what he said. When she got right down to it, the question of telling Ben about Nikolai was simple.

They’d become friends.

The other stuff—the way Ben might feel about her and the way she couldn’t feel about him as long as Nikolai was in her life—didn’t matter.

She sat on the edge of her bed. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I owe you an explanation. Everything just happened so fast.”

“What do you mean?”

She took a deep breath. “The guy next door isn’t just a new neighbor. It’s … stranger than that.”

“Well, strange is kind of a hallmark of our friendship at this point, don’t you think?”

“Yeah.” She smiled up at him. “You could say that.”

He sat next to her, the bed dipping with his weight. “So tell me.”

She took a deep breath, nodding. “Remember the dream we shared in the attic that first day? The one where we were both in a palace and I told you there was another guy there? One you hadn’t seen?”

“Yeah?”

“After thinking about it, I figured out that it was like my visions. A kind of … past-life memory. Only this one was yours and mine.”

He didn’t flinch. “You think we were together in a past life?”

“I think we were connected in some way. I just haven’t figured out exactly how.”

“How can you be sure it wasn’t just a dream?” he asked.

“I can’t. Not really. But it … I don’t know, it feels different, like a memory. And it ties in with a lot of other things that have been happening. I think the music box is some kind of doorway to the past. That’s probably what the mesmerization instructions were for—a way to bring about some kind of regression with the help of the music and the words put together.”

He thought about it before speaking. “Assuming I buy that, what does it have to do with your neighbor?”

“He was the other guy.” She said it in a rush, not giving herself time to change her mind. “I was with someone in the dream before I saw you playing piano. His name was Nikolai, and I was one of the Romanovs, the Russian family that was—”

“I know who the Romanovs were,” Ben interrupted.

“Right. Anyway, before I came across you playing the piano, Nikolai was warning me about the possible execution of my family.”