had never felt like this before. Not ever, not once. And that was terrifying. And, he still didn’t know. What if he found out after we slept together, after we both knew, with clarity, what we were to each other?
It would be cataclysmic.
“I have to tell him,” I muttered to the silent woman sitting beside me.
She belonged to the melancholy man across the aisle, who had been mourning her sudden and tragic passing for three long and lonely years. Caught in the middle of an avoidable turning point in their relationship, an argument he’d started, neither of them had seen the car as it ran through a red light. Neither of them had said goodbye, not realizing that they had to, not so soon, and he’d blamed himself ever since.
“What? Are you talking to me?” he asked, turning from the window across from mine.
Startled, I shook my head. I’d never learned to not talk to them. “N-No, sorry. Just thinking out loud.”
“Oh,” he muttered, nodding. “Okay.”
He turned back to the window with a forlorn sigh and I felt the push to say something, to make him feel the slightest bit better. It weighed me down, pressing against my shoulders with an invisible grip, and I wished for it to go away. I had my own problems to deal with, my own life, but the longer I willed it away, the more force was added. By the time he had reached his stop, I was sweating and drowning under the pressure, while her merciful eyes pleaded and begged amid the images of their sweet and happy relationship that had ended far, far too soon.
“Wait.”
The man paused, frozen with his hand on the back of his seat. “Huh?”
“She forgives you.”
His brow furrowed, his lips frowned. “What—”
“The argument and the accident. You were having a bad day, and she forgives you for that.”
Against the seat, his fist clenched and beneath the layer of stubble along his jaw, his muscles tightened. “Who the fuck are—”
“She loves you, she always will, but she wants you to be happy. She worries about you, and if that woman from the office will put a smile back on your face, she wants you to go for it.”
His eyes flooded, then blinked rapidly as he furiously tried to keep himself from crying in front of a mysteriously meddling stranger. “How the hell do you—”
“You’re keeping her here.” I gestured toward the seat beside mine. He couldn’t see her, but it was occupied. “When you feel the bed move late at night? When you’re trying to sleep but can’t? That’s her laying down, trying to comfort you.”
His broken face crumpled and the battle against his tears was lost. They spilled over his cheeks and onto the dirty train floor. I hated this part, when people realized I was telling the truth, when they knew I had it; the sixth sense, the third eye, something they were desperate to possess themselves. They always had more questions I couldn’t answer, always wanting more from me than I could give. And this man was now preparing to miss his stop, but I had my own life to deal with.
“What is she—”
“You have to go.”
He made a move to sit down. “I can miss my—”
“Please, I have nothing else for you.”
The broken heart he unsuccessfully tried to hide, was displayed in the never-ending stream of tears on his face and the defeat was reflected in the shallow sigh that passed through his nose. He nodded once and thanked me profusely as he collected his things and ran for the door. The woman across from me smiled and bowed her head, grateful that I had done what I did, probably assuming, like him, that there was nothing more I could do. But the truth was, I had lied to them both. It was simply that I hadn’t wanted to. Because for once, my life had been more important to me.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
VINNIE
“It should be illegal for a sky to look like that,” I commented, shaking my head in utter amazement at the sheer volume of stars speckling the backdrop of crisp darkness.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Greyson’s dad, Sebastian, agreed. “I don’t even miss the city most of the time.”
“You’re full of crap,” Greyson laughed, pointing across the pool at his lookalike father, his other arm wrapped around my brother’s shoulders. Then, he turned to me and said, “He’s always talking about how much he hates being up here in this shit-hole town.”
Sebastian sent a splash of water