Somewhere Over the Freaking Rainbow - By L.L. Muir Page 0,61
suggest you do something you wouldn't mind doing.”
He didn't like it, but there was something in her voice that warned him not to argue with her. Hell, she was probably using a suggestion on him right then, to keep him from arguing.
Well, he could wait and argue later. It wasn't as if she could erase the discussion from his memory; that wasn’t one of her personal tricks. It had been a long day and it wasn’t over yet. Jamison wouldn’t mind waiting.
He’d just helped spare two lives and he was anxious to see what God was ready to do for him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Jamison had never watched darkness fall so beautifully.
The Western horizon was a bright line of mustard that faded up into pink, and then to purple. The distant clouds smeared the colors together and stretched them north to south. The highway took Jamison and Skye straight west, keeping the light from getting out of reach.
The air changed. His ears popped.
The small distraction finally brought him out of his own world and he became aware of another change. It was Skye. That meeting with Lanny had changed her. She wasn't the girl, or the spirit she'd been on the way up the canyon. Something was missing, and he knew it was silly, but he wanted to go back up the canyon and get it, if he needed to.
He finally gave up chasing the setting sun and pulled into a wide turn out, a rest stop of sorts, a swath of gravel next to a creek. There were plenty of boulders to sit on and a small trail that started with a bridge and wound its way into the trees. Twenty feet away the hillside rose abruptly.
Skye got out when he did.
“You need a bathroom again?” She leaned back against the car, unimpressed with the scenery.
He walked around the car to stand in front of her.
“No, I need to talk to Skye again. The Skye I left Flat Springs with. The Skye from my English class. Not the version they gave back to me at the ranch.”
She looked away.
Guilty!
He'd only been exaggerating, but maybe he'd hit on something. Had they given him a replacement?
Only one way to tell, as far as he could see, but then again, he didn't want to look very hard for a better idea.
He kissed her. She felt the same in his arms, moved her lips the same...then stopped and straightened away from him. He didn't want to let her walk away, but he did; he'd held her against her will enough lately. He had no right to even touch her now.
When he finally had himself under control, at least to the point where he wouldn't chase her up the hill and grab her, he turned.
She was seated on a boulder with her feet pulled up, as if the crack in the rock was designed with her in mind. A mermaid draped in white, she stared into the bubbling water as if it were speaking to her. A mermaid. Painfully beautiful. Untouchable. Destined to get away.
And selfish jerk that he was, he didn't want to let her.
***
Skye perched on the large rock and tried to absorb its chill into her. She had to be cold, distant. She had to be the nothingness she'd been before Jamison came to town. She'd keep just a little acorn of warmth in her heart, for Kenneth. He deserved her comfort and he only needed it a short while longer.
But she had to remain cold for Jamison. It would be easier for him that way. He and his mother would have each other for comfort. He didn't need Skye. He would need a real girlfriend soon, and it couldn't be her. No matter what her options, it could never be her.
If Jamison came with one of those choices, it would be so easy!
Pulling away from his kiss had been anything but, since her sensations seemed to mature every hour they spent together. But Lanny’s explanation for those sensations gave her the strength to resist them.
If she hadn’t come to Lanny when she had, she might have ended up just another Gabriella Somerled—wicked, damned, and the only danger to Somerleds on Earth.
She had no idea what she’d tell Lucas and Jonathan when she got home. For now, she just had to change back to the old Skye—not the one Jamison was asking for, but the one before that. There was a reason people didn't want to leave their comfort zones. She'd left hers, somehow,