Destiny Gift (The Everlast Trilogy) - By Juliana Haygert Page 0,45
only did it because you were super drunk, which doesn’t happen often.”
With reddening cheeks, he held up his hands. “All right, all right.” He was visibly shaken by my knowledge. “Give me a minute. I need to process all this.” I started to get up, but he held my wrist, the warm shock startling me. Was he in need of my touch? “I didn’t mean it like that. You don’t need to leave.”
“No, it’s fine.” I pulled my arm from his grip. Perhaps, I also needed a minute. “I should check on my orders.”
I left him just as Adam was coming toward me with fuming eyes. I wasn’t up to listen to his complaints. I raised my hand to prevent him from speaking and hurried to the back, where the strong smell of coffee beans wrapped around me. I started pacing.
Oh my God! So it was true. Everything! The facts the Victor from my dream had told me, the in-the-flesh Victor had confirmed. Oh, I knew many more facts and I was certain they were all true too. How could it be? Did it mean my other recently bizarre visions about Imha and Omi and Ceris were true too? But they weren’t real, were they? Of course not.
Making me jump, Adam showed up at the back door with an indifferent look on his face. “Your friend is calling for you.”
“Th-thanks.” Like an idiot, I stopped by the restroom and, in front of the mirror, made sure my hair and my clothes looked okay. What was I doing?
Shaking my head, I went back work. For more than twenty minutes, I waited tables and served coffee. When everyone at the café seemed content, I returned to Victor and sat in the same chair from before.
“So,” he said, running a hand over his disheveled golden hair. “What other embarrassing facts do you know about me?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably some.” I realized I was still twining my hair and stopped, then put my hands under my butt and sat on them. “Aren’t you mad at me?”
“These visions you have—can you control them?”
“No.”
“Then I have no right to be mad at you.” He placed his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his hand. “But I confess, none of this makes sense. Your visions and my pains. You see, I had a checkup three months ago when the pains intensified. I’m as healthy as a person can be.”
“I know. I feel like I’m losing my mind. In fact, there are days I’m certain I’m going to end up in a psychiatric hospital for the rest of my life.”
His eyes met mine, and the air was taken out of me.
“Well,” he said, “losing your mind or not, I’m grateful for you. The pain had grown so bad, I’m sure I would be dead by now if it weren’t for you.”
I froze. That struck a chord, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
As if pulled by a string, my head turned toward the TV near the ceiling on the opposite corner of the cafe. The reporters delivered news: in Australia, hundreds of dolphins had been found dead on the beach; in Argentina, sick people robbed drugstores at gunpoint; in a public park in the Netherlands, a terrorist blew himself and a bunch of families apart; and in Russia, a pack of giant bats attacked and killed a group of teenagers.
But what blew my mind away was what came next. The reporters showed aerial images of a small town in Switzerland, totally destroyed. Everything was either black or still on fire. There were no survivors, because, as the reporter at the site said, it had happened too fast. And, while hovering over the town, they showed the images of the mountains around it and the precipice with the lake, now polluted. The precipice where I had been in my vision.
My stomach lurched. I shot up and ran to the bathroom in the back, where I threw up what little food I had eaten today. My body went limp, and I fell on the floor, shuddering.
After a few minutes, a knock startled me. My mind didn’t connect the dots and I couldn’t find my voice to answer.
“Nadine, are you okay?” Victor asked.
What was he doing here? I tried sitting up and speaking to him, but my body wouldn’t cooperate. I wanted to tell him the door was unlocked, but he’d figured that out because, a second later, he kneeled beside me.