The Beckoning (Entangled Series Book 2) Page 5

  “Yeah.” Ethan turned back to the fireplace.

  “Maybe we should go. It looks like Ethan could use some rest.” Xtina stood and handed Mike his cane.

  After they left, Brea turned back to Ethan, who was standing over the fire, staring into it deeply. Suddenly, he turned towards her.

  “Have you met him?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She reached over and took her wine glass from the coffee table.

  “And?”

  She chuckled. “What? He’s nice. Actually, I met him before I met Mike.” His eyes stayed on her for a while, then he walked over and sat across from her.

  “You said you’ve had dreams too.” She nodded slightly, then slowly wet her lips. He watched the movement.

  “In them, were we…” She didn’t wait for him to finish the question, but nodded her head again. “Yeah.” His eyes went back to the fire. “Talk about feeling the pressure.”

  She chuckled, then stood up. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m tired.” She set her wine glass in the sink. “I don’t know if your brother mentioned it, but the guest room isn’t quite done yet. And, since I’ve been here for a few days, I took over the master—”

  “I’ll be okay,” he broke in.

  “You haven’t seen it yet.”

  He shrugged. “Then I’ll take the sofa.”

  She smiled. “It would probably be more comfortable. Good night, Ethan.”

  “Night, Brea.” Just hearing him say her name did something to her insides.

  Chapter 6

  Ethan stayed awake most of the night. His mind kept playing over and over what his brother had told him. They had another brother. An older brother. He didn’t know what hurt worse, the fact that his parents had kept this a secret from them or the fact that he’d spent two nights at their house and they had left it up to Mike to tell him.

  Around one in the morning, he pulled out his cell phone and punched an angry message to his folks. He wrote it and deleted it several times before finally sending a simple, “Call me in the morning” text.

  Shortly after that, he drifted off to sleep. He wasn’t like most guys who almost got killed fighting to protect his country. He didn’t have nightmares where he relived the moment when he almost died over and over. Instead, all of his dreams were filled with her. Breanna. Every single dream he’d had for the past few months had been about Breanna.

  He got a few hours of sleep before the dreams took over. Suddenly, he was up again, tossing and turning as images of her consumed him.

  “You okay?” Her voice came from a few feet away. Peeling his eyes open, he watched her walk towards him.

  He rolled towards her and ended up on the ground, his shoulder screaming at him when he landed directly on it.

  “Woah.” She rushed forward and helped him sit up. “Easy.”

  He chuckled through the pain. “Forgot where I was for a moment.” He sat with his back against the sofa. Her hands were still on his bare shoulders.

  Her eyes were glued to the bandage.

  “You’re bleeding.” He heard the concern in her voice.

  “I’m okay.” He finally got his breath back, but her fingers were still running over his skin.

  His skin burned where she touched him. Ached was more like it. His entire body ached for her to run her hands all over him. Just like she’d been doing in his dreams.

  “I’ll go get some new bandages.” She left the room, then quickly returned with a box of bandages.

  “Come.” She motioned to him to sit back on the sofa.

  He slowly sat down next to her, his entire body aching with each move. Her eyes moved over him as her hands got busy removing his bandages.

  He remained still, almost holding his breath as her fingers brushed his skin.

  “You know, you should really be more careful.” She frowned as she continued working. He could tell she was being gentle, but still, the fall was causing the pain to spike. “You look like you’re in pain.” Her hands stilled as she frowned up at him. “Didn’t you get some pills?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded over to the bottle of pills on the kitchen table. “Can’t stand pills.” He knew it sounded like he was whining, but he didn’t care. The pain was slowly growing.

  She grabbed the bottle and read the label and then dumped two pills into her hand. She went to get a glass of water.

  When she walked over to him, he frowned up at her. “Listen…”

  “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” She cocked her hip out and he laughed.

  “Really, what’s the hard way? You hold me down”—images of her doing just that flashed in his mind and his smile grew— “and force me to swallow them?”

  Her eyes narrowed. Reaching down, she ran a finger over his forehead. Her finger moved slowly down his face, until it rested over his lips. He felt his heart skip several beats as her eyes focused on his lips.

  She shifted slightly, until she was standing between his legs. His hands moved up, wrapped around her thighs, and pulled her a step closer as her finger brushed against his bottom lip several times.

  She bent down towards him, her lips hovering inches from his as her finger dipped into his mouth and he got his first taste of her.

  Her eyes moved up to his and she smiled, just as she dropped the pills into his mouth. She held the glass up to him and backed off. Her eyebrows rose as she challenged him to spit the pills out.

  He swallowed the pills and laughed until his sides hurt.

  Brea’s breath was knocked from her when she saw Ethan’s smile. It was the first time since she’d actually met him—physically, for real—that he looked relaxed.

  Sitting back down, she went back to work wrapping his upper shoulder and arm in fresh bandages.

  “Where’d you learn to do this?” He nodded to his shoulder.

  “School,” she answered, then stopped. “First aid. Didn’t you take first aid in school?”

  He shrugged. “Sure, and again in training.”

  She finished cleaning and wrapping his shoulder. The fact that his muscles bulged under her fingers told her there wasn’t permanent damage. She wasn’t a doctor but hoped that she was right at least on this small point.

  “So, has my brother…” He paused. “Have Mike or Xtina talked to you yet about why we would be having these… visions?”

  “Not yet.” She finished taping the bandage in place and leaned back.

  He touched the fresh bandage and moved his arm slightly

  “This is just some sort of crazy. I mean, I can’t believe crazy stuff like this actually exists. Dreams that come true. People who can read minds. Like for real read minds. Is there anything else crazy like this going on?” He sighed and leaned back, rubbing his shoulder.

  Brea sat forward. She’d told Xtina and Mike what she was capable of doing, but telling her dream guy that she believed she could teleport was just nuts. But she didn’t want to keep things from him. Especially not this.

  “I sometimes end up in places, without any memory of how I got there.”

  “What?” He glanced over at her, a strange look on his face. “Like sleepwalking?”

  She took a deep breath. “I’m not sure. I’ve missed some time too.”

  “Missed…?” Ethan frowned.

  “Two whole days. One minute I was standing in my apartment, then the next I was on Xtina’s front porch, two nights later.”

  “You don’t remember anything?” he asked, sitting forward.

  “Other than my skin tingling, no.” She looked down. “I… They believe that I didn’t sleepwalk, but… teleported.” She held her breath as he watched her.

  To his credit, he didn’t look at her like she was crazy. Instead, he looked like he was trying to solve a problem.

  “What else happens to you when you… end up in other places?”

  He got up and grabbed a bottle of beer for Breanna and a bottle of water for himself. He sat back down and took a big swig of his water.

&n
bsp; “I don’t really remember. Just that my skin tingles, then I appear somewhere else.”

  “Where else have you appeared?”

  She took a sip of her beer, the coolness soothing her throat. It was strange to be sitting here, in a place she didn’t want to be, talking to her dream man about teleporting.

  “Well, um, the grocery store, the library, and Xtina’s front porch. That’s it so far.”

  “Nowhere else?” he asked after a moment.

  She thought quickly about her dream and the tunnel, but then shook off the memory. It had been just a dream. She was sure of it now.

  “No, nowhere else.”

  “Well, how about we finish this conversation in the morning.” He stretched his good arm over his head. “I just can’t seem to wrap my mind around much right now.” He set the bottle down and kicked his feet back onto the sofa.

  She set her half-empty beer down and got up. “You must be exhausted.” She glanced over at his shoulder again, pleased that the bandages looked clean. “Good night.”

  “Night.” His eyes met hers.

  For a moment, she felt her heart kick.

  “You okay?” he asked after a moment.

  “Yeah, sure.” She faked a smile. “Night.” She went back into her room, closed the door, and leaned against the door.

  What was she doing? Talking about all this craziness with Ethan. Then again, she’d told Xtina and Mike everything and hadn’t felt weird about it.

  But she hadn’t dreamed about them the way she’d dreamed about Ethan.

  Just remembering some of the dreams she’d had about him caused her entire body to heat.

  She glanced at her clock and sighed. Two more hours until dawn. She knew there was no way she was going to get any more sleep, so she flipped open her laptop and wrote down everything that had happened to her that day—her feelings towards Ethan, some of the dreams she’d had that night, and what she’d told him.

  When she was done, she climbed into the shower. It still got to her, standing in the same shower that she’d dreamed of being with Ethan in.

  Did that mean those dreams would come true too?

  It was beginning to be too much, with all the visions in her head. It was hard to know what was real. What was now.

  Since she’d returned to Hidden Creek, things had changed. She’d changed. She found her mind slipping between the two realms, visions versus reality. And now that Ethan was there, she was finding it even harder to be grounded.

  She needed to talk with her father again. She had even more questions than the last time she’d talked to him.

  Her research had only added to her confusion. Hours and hours in the library and she had almost too many questions. But now, she itched to add the others into her research.

  She’d researched Xtina and her family. Her parents and Brea’s had been friends in school. From what she could tell, shortly into their junior year of high school, their friendship dissolved.

  Maybe she should open up to the others and ask them to help her. Then they could all find out why this was happening to them.

  But the way that Xtina and the others talked, it was like they had just accepted their fates. They had asked her why she thought this was happening, but so far, no one had talked to her about anything deeper.

  When she walked into the living room, Ethan stood at the stove, cooking eggs.

  “Morning.” She leaned on the bar. “Did you get any sleep?”

  He shook his head. “You?”

  “No. I’ve been doing some thinking.”

  “And?” He piled a spoonful of eggs onto a plate and set it in front of her, along with some toast and a glass of juice.

  “What do you know about your parents?” she said, scooping up some eggs.

  He laughed. “Apparently, not a lot. Why?”

  “Because I think that what’s happening to us, all of us, now, is our parents’ fault.”

  Chapter 7

  Ethan leaned on Xtina’s front porch, watching Brea pace as they waited for Xtina and Mike to return home.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” he asked, earning himself a glare. “Funny, somehow I just knew that you had a temper.”

  Her eyes narrowed even further. “You know…”

  Just then, a car turned down the long drive.

  “Hey,” Xtina said, jumping out of the hybrid car and helping his brother out of the passenger side.

  It was still a shock to see Mike using a cane. It was one thing for him to be hurt, but seeing Mike suffer was a lot harder.

  When Mike had been on the police force in Atlanta, he’d always worried about him. But it was Atlanta, not Afghanistan, or some of the other places he’d visited himself.

  “Sorry, we had to go into town to the doctor,” Xtina said, helping Mike to the porch.

  “Is everything okay?” Instant worry shot through him.

  “Yeah, great. Fine,” Mike added between clenched teeth.

  “It was my fault.” Ethan could see the worry in Xtina’s eyes. “I should have tied him to the bedpost.”

  Mike laughed. “Then we still would have had a visit to the doctor this morning.” His brother’s eyes caught Xtina’s and for the first time, he could tell that his brother was in love.

  “First of all… Ew, gross. TMI. Second, are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said after Xtina helped him sit down on the swing. “Could use some iced tea.” He glanced over at Xtina.

  “I’ll be right back.” Xtina disappeared, and Ethan was happy when Brea followed her into the house.

  “Okay, spill.” Ethan sat across from Mike. “What happened?”

  He glanced down at the new bandages on his brother’s leg.

  “You first.” He nodded to his own fresh bandages. Ethan reached up and rubbed his shoulder.

  “Fell off the sofa.”

  “Fell out of bed,” Mike said, chuckling. “Looks like we both should have been tied down.”

  Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “I was sleeping on that thing you call a sofa. I’ll wager your bed was a lot bigger and”—his eyes moved to the doorway— “that you weren’t alone.”

  “Yeah, so. Still…” Mike rubbed his hand through his hair, much like Ethan did when he was troubled. “Shit happens.”

  Ethan’s eyebrows rose. “Spill.”

  Mike sighed. “So, remember my ghost?”

  “Yeah, the one I couldn’t see.” Mike nodded. “What about her?”

  “She made an appearance last night.”

  “And?”

  “Something’s changed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s… different.”

  “How?” Ethan still didn’t know if he believed in his brother’s visions, but with all the other crazy things going on, he was more open to the idea than he had been a year ago.

  Mike shook his head. “Later,” he said in a low voice as Xtina and Brea walked out followed by a dog, who ran up to him and demanded to be petted.

  “This is Rose,” Mike said, catching the dog’s attention. The border collie walked over and plopped herself down at Mike’s feet.

  Xtina held a tray full of iced tea and a plate of crackers and cheese.

  “Here.” She sat down and handed Mike two pills, making him remember his own meds were on the countertop. He had no plans to take them. Mike swallowed his down, and Ethan realized that he must be in pain.

  “What brings you two over here?” Xtina asked as she poured four glasses of tea.

  “It was my idea.” Brea sat forward. “I told you I’d been doing some research, but I didn’t get a chance to tell you on what. Or more to the point, on whom.”

  “Okay.” Mike shifted slightly. “Want to tell us?”

  “Actually, I think we should wait for the others to get here.” Brea shifted her eyes to Ethan.

  “You called Jessie and Jacob?” Mike’s eyes moved to his.

  “Shit,” Ethan said, running his hands through his hair and glaring towards
Brea. “You could have given me some warning.”

  “So you could talk me out of it? No. This had to happen sooner or later.” She stopped as another car came up the drive.

  “Yeah, just wish it was later,” he said under his breath.

  He watched as the brother he’d never met got out of a patrol car and walked towards them.

  The second his eyes landed on him, he knew he was family. He looked just like their dad. More pain surfaced as he watched the man move towards them.

  Then Jacob’s gaze landed on his and he could see the same emotions behind the familiar eyes. He stopped at the base of the steps, so Ethan set his glass down and stood up.

  “Ethan.” He held out his good hand.

  “Jacob St. Clair.” He climbed the three steps and took his hand in his. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “Funny, I just found out about you last night.” His eyes landed on Mike, who looked a little sad and tired now.

  “I wanted to tell you the second I found out,” Mike said. “But you were…” He shrugged.

  “Yeah, right.” Ethan sat back down.

  “So, what’s this all about?” he asked Brea.

  “First, we’re waiting for Jessie.” She sat down and Jacob sat next to her. Xtina poured him a glass of tea.

  “No hints?” Xtina asked.

  “No,” Brea said, shaking her head.

  “Jessie’s shift doesn’t end for about an hour,” Xtina added.

  “She said she was going to leave early,” Jacob supplied. Everyone looked over at him.

  “I stopped there for breakfast.” Ethan could tell there was something he was hiding.

  “Okay, so while we’re waiting, why don’t you tell me about…all of this.” Ethan waved his hands between the five of them.

  Xtina and Mike filled Ethan in on everything they knew as they waited for Jessie. Brea had heard their stories before. How they had seen the same things and how being together had affected them.

  She still found it all a little… too much to grasp.

  “Wait.” Jacob sat forward, interrupting Xtina’s story.

  “You’re telling me she can teleport and time travel?” Jacob leaned forward.