Resistance (The Variant Series #2) (21 page)

Not exactly his finest moment.

Alex pushed against his chest, prompting Connor to release her as she took a step back down the aisle. She turned her face toward the rows of books, embarrassed.

“What happened, Lexie?” he asked again.

Connor braced himself for a multitude of responses.

Jessica had done something unforgivably cruel. Her asshole bodyguard had broken her heart. Masterson had returned…

Alex rubbed the back of her neck and looked skyward. “What do you know about a new guy in your class named Aaron Gale?”

Connor blinked in surprise. “
That’s
who this is about?” he asked, caught off guard. “
Gale
?”

“Yes,” she said, and then, “No. It’s… complicated. But this is really important, Connor. Do you know him? Do you know when, exactly, he moved here?”

Connor nodded. “He’s in a few of my classes. Showed up in Bay View about five or six months ago.”

Alex frowned as though she’d been expecting a different answer. “Six
months
ago?”

“Yeah,” he said. Without thinking, he added, “Right after we—”

Alex winced and he cut himself short. A rumble of thunder echoed through the library.

Broke up
, he finished to himself.

Connor rubbed his forehead.

Nice one, dumbass
, he thought.
Way to bring
that
up.

Any hint of vulnerability in Alex’s expression disappeared. She’d steeled herself, her mask sliding back into place.

“What can you tell me about him?” she asked.

“About Gale?” Connor shrugged. “What’s there to tell? He just
is
. Doesn’t talk much. Kind of keeps to himself. We don’t really run in the same circles, so I don’t know much about the guy.”

“Do you know where I can find him, outside of school?”

“No.” Connor frowned. “Lexie, what is this about? Did he…
do
something to you?”

When she grimaced in response to his question, he immediately jumped to his own conclusions.

“
I’ll kill him
.”

“No. Connor.” Alex shook her head. “It’s not like that.
At all.
I don’t even know for certain that he’s aware of what he did.”

Connor’s hands remained balled into fists at his sides.

“What
did
he do?” asked an angry voice from the end of the aisle.

Positioned mid-way between them, Alex spun on her heel to face the newcomer. “
Decks
,” she said, surprised. “What are you doing here?”

Instead of answering, Declan countered her question with one of his own. “Why did you run?”

Connor could read the rest of the question in Declan’s expression—
Why did you run to
him
instead of to me?

Connor held back a triumphant smirk.

That’s right, jackass
, he thought to himself.
She chose
me
this time.

Alex was silent a long moment. “I needed to find out more about a senior named Aaron Gale,” she said carefully. “Thought I’d ask a friend.”

Ouch
.

Sidelined to the friend zone.

Still. “Friend” was a lot better than some of the alternatives he probably deserved.

Declan’s gaze traveled back and forth between the two of them, his expression inscrutable. He held out a hand to Alex. “We should get you home, Lex.”

Connor bristled at Declan’s new nickname for Alex as he and the jumper continued to stare daggers at each other.

She’s not Lex,
he thought to himself.
She’s Lexie.

Alex hesitated before turning back toward Connor. Taking a few steps forward, she placed her hands against his chest, stepped up onto her tiptoes, and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

Stepping back again, she smiled up at him.

To look at her now, with that smile on her face, you’d never have guessed that she’d been on the verge of a breakdown not five minutes earlier.

“Thanks for… Thanks for your
help
, Connor. It means a lot.”

He nodded.

With that, she turned and walked back down the aisle toward Declan. Taking her hand in his, Declan sent Connor one last dark look before he and Alex disappeared in a ripple of violet light.

— 17 —

“T
his isn’t home,” said Alex, pressing a hand beneath her nose and trying valiantly
not
to inhale.

They’d reappeared in an alley between two buildings, right next to a dumpster overflowing with refuse turned soggy from the afternoon’s onslaught of rain. Add that to the smell of low tide, and you had a recipe for something truly foul.

The rain showers had let up, but Alex had a feeling the break would be short-lived.

“Your powers of deduction continue to shock and amaze,” said Declan, striding casually toward the promenade up ahead. “You want coffee? I want coffee.”

At the end of the alley, a trickle of foot traffic passed leisurely by, most of them clad in beach clothes and all of them oblivious to Alex and Declan’s sudden arrival. Just beyond the walkway, a shop window displayed a colorful array of bikinis and board shorts, promising a 20% discount through the end of the week.

Alex recognized the store—they were on the outskirts of the Boardwalk. The pedestrians passing by were all headed in the direction of the parking lot, their day at the shore ending prematurely on account of the unexpected storm.

Wind whipped through the alley, sending trash and debris shuffling past their feet.

Alex stared after his retreating form. Follow Declan? Or leave him behind and get back to her fact-finding mission?

Connor had only been her first stop. She was far from finished.

Declan turned the corner and Alex found herself jogging to catch up with him. Though, if pressed, she probably couldn’t have said why.

Coming clean to Declan about why she’d bolted from the art room earlier and run straight to
Connor
was the last thing she wanted to do. He would never believe her, anyway.

Declan was still convinced time travel was impossible for Variants. It may have happened to Alex twice now, but he hadn’t experienced it firsthand.

And she
definitely
didn’t want to explain anything he might have seen or overheard before he made his presence known to them in the library.

She blushed at the memory.

After Alex bolted from the art room, she’d done a quick telepathic scan to locate Aaron and came up empty. Wherever he was, it wasn’t on campus.

Unable to question the man himself, Alex decided to try the next best thing. She went looking for information about him from his fellow seniors… and wound up fighting back tears in the arms of her
ex
, instead.

Talk about an unexpected detour.

After leaving the library, Alex’s initial embarrassment slowly dissolved into anger—most of it directed at herself.

She flashed back to the sensation of Connor’s warm hands cupping her face.

“Are
you
okay, Lexie?”

It was his touch that did it, more than the question. At the sensation of skin-on-skin contact, Alex’s knee-jerk reaction had been nothing short of blind panic.

By the time memory caught up to instinct and Alex recognized that Connor’s touch held no threat, it was too late—she’d already come to an excruciating revelation. A horrible truth she’d known for
weeks
now, but simply hadn’t been able to accept.

From that moment until her dying breath, Alex Parker would never be able to just
touch
someone—or allow someone to touch her
—
without first worrying about the consequences.

Something so basic, so
innate
to the human experience as touch was forever, irrevocably altered for her.

When Connor took Alex in his arms, it was all she could do just to hold back the tears. Any other time she would have rebuffed Connor’s advances without a second thought. This time, she simply didn’t have it in her.

Instead, Alex allowed herself to indulge in a brief moment of surrender while Connor held her close, trying desperately to memorize the sensation while simultaneously struggling to steel herself—to reinforce the sudden cracks in her defenses.

She needed to be strong again.

By the time Connor released her, something inside Alex began to harden—and by the time Declan finally showed himself, Alex was struggling to control the anger welling up inside of her.

Suddenly, “
why me”
became “
never again
.”

Never again would she allow someone else to control her fate
.

Never again would she run and hide in the face of a new threat.

And never again would she just
roll over
and allow the hits to keep on coming.

Alex was done being fate’s bitch. It was time to take her life back. For good this time.

She’d felt this way once before, when she delivered her ultimatum to the Agency’s Director.

But soon after the dust settled, Alex returned home to Bay View and slipped right back into her old habits.

She allowed herself to become the
victim
again.

Masterson’s voice echoed through her thoughts, his words given new meaning in the wake of her acceptance.

You see, fear can be one of two things. Either a terrible enemy, or your greatest ally
.
The trouble is, Alexandra, you’ve allowed yourself to succumb to its power. You’ve chosen to fear this new world you’ve discovered. In truth, it is this world that should fear
you
.

Much as it pained her to admit it, the bastard had a point.

The time had come for Alex to face her fears.

Declan held the door open for her as they entered the warmly lit cafe, the sounds of Jason Mraz filling the otherwise unoccupied room.

Bayside Brews was empty for now, though it would get busy again as soon as Bay View High classes let out around two.

They walked past an eclectic assortment of furniture—a long stone counter, an array of overstuffed chairs and couches, and a handful of wrought-iron tables with glass tops—and approached the register.

A barista emerged from the back and greeted them with a smile.

From a step behind Declan, Alex eyed the brand new copper-plated espresso machine and grimaced. The last time she’d been in this Bayside Brews, she accidentally fried the original.

“Large black coffee,” said Declan, pulling a wallet from the back pocket of his jeans. “And one medium decaf chai latte.”

Alex quirked a brow, “Who’s the latte for?”

“You,” he said, handing a credit card to the barista. The dreadlocked girl smiled at Declan as she ran the card through, then moved off to make their drinks.

“Um. Thank you?” Alex was surprised that Declan remembered her preferred drink. Or at least, he’d
almost
remembered it. “I don’t usually drink decaf.”

“Yeah, well…” Declan thanked the barista as he collected their drinks, then handed the latte to Alex. “You do today.”

Alex didn’t bother to hide her confusion.

Declan nodded toward the picture window that looked out onto the promenade. The winds were still skipping their way across the boardwalk, the landscape turned to shadows beneath an army of black clouds. The steady rains from earlier had stopped, but the current color of the sky promised to put the previous downpour to shame.

It wasn’t just an afternoon shower that was moving ashore, it was a full-fledged storm.

“You think
I’m
causing the bad weather?”

“Aren’t you?”

Alex didn’t answer. She’d come to the same conclusion almost an hour ago. She’d just been hoping that once she found Aaron she could force him to talk and her assumption would be proven wrong.

What did affecting the
weather
have to do with slipping through time? A weather ability couldn’t explain what was happening to her, and it sure as heck didn’t help her prove that what she’d experienced was real.

“What you need,” said Declan, “is to stop
thinking
, before you accidentally level Bay View just because you’ve had a shitty day. The rains have let up for now, but if you start obsessing over it—something I know you’re just itching to do—then who knows what could happen?”

Alex took a seat beside him at the empty counter and stared out at the darkened boardwalk. With the black clouds hanging overhead, it looked more like early evening than late afternoon.

Declan furrowed a brow. “Also, we’re running low on tranquilizer darts after the last time.”

Alex sighed.

“So unless you want to be knocked out in a far less
enjoyable
way,” he continued, “I suggest you calm the hell down.”

She was silent a long moment, toying with the sleeve on her coffee cup as she processed the implications of Declan’s contingency plan. “What is it you think I absorbed?”

He shook his head, then sipped his coffee. “Something impossible.”

* * *

Aaron Gale was determined to stay conscious this time.

Water dripped from his nose and chin into the sink over which he was leaning, the chilly liquid doing little to cool the fever burning beneath his skin. He scooped up another handful of water from the tap and splashed it against his face, swallowing down the bile rising in the back of his throat.

Dammit
, he thought.
Not again.
Please
, not again
.

For the second time in two weeks, Aaron’s ability had spiraled out of his control.

He’d been standing outside the door to his seventh period class when it began.

Ten minutes later and he was back in his apartment, his attentions focused on lessening the affects of the torrential rains—something that would have been a bit difficult to accomplish while sitting in the middle of his English class.