The Holders

22



The flimsy wall he’d put up around himself collapsed like a tower of building blocks on a crooked table, and I was suddenly surrounded by swirling clouds of pure feeling. Every emotion that he was experiencing became visible, intertwining around us like billowing transparent waves of color – each wave representing a different emotion, and each emotion flowing with a different intensity. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before – like seeing into the soul.

The waves of joy and relief were two of the most prominent, and were laced with bright ribbons of contentment and trust. His confusion and skepticism were still there, as well as the remnants of grief and loneliness from the past few days. But happily, those darker emotional strands were quickly being swallowed up by the lighter colored positive waves of excitement and bliss. There were wispy curls of surprised delight, humored amusement, and peaceful submission, all dancing along the surface of the larger feelings like salty spray on the sea. But as much as there was to see, I had to admit, the wave ringing the loudest and shining the brightest was the one I was focused on, drinking it in like blessed water after a marathon.

It was his love.

Min had told me that he was bound to me, and how much he had suffered thinking we could never be together. The information had subconsciously led me to believe that he loved me, but assuming was nothing compared to knowing.

After a long, languid moment, our lips parted, and Alex rested his forehead against mine, shaking his head, causing mine to wobble.

“This can’t be,” he whispered, his voice not quite steady. “You shouldn’t…”

“Don’t let Min hear you say that,” I teased, taking advantage of his pause. “She’ll smack you.”

“Min knows about this?” He pulled his head back, looking at me.

“Sure, she’s the one who told me what actually happened to me yesterday.”

“Yesterday?”

I nodded. “In the Inner Chamber, when you touched my hand on your way out.”

“I… I don’t remember… and that’s when you…” he stammered, looking through me for a second.

I stood quietly, allowing him to think, and I watched in amazement as his internal pondering turned the bluish-gray wave of confusion that was still mingling in and out of his other emotions to lighten in color, turning to comprehension and finally, elation.

“So, this is real then?” he asked me, with so much joy in his eyes it made my throat tight. “You are really meant for me? We’re meant… for each other?”

“Well, all I know for sure is that you are meant for me,” I said, wrapping my arms around his waist, feeling my stomach give an excited squeeze, “but if you want me, I am all yours.”

His eyes sparkled as he gently cupped my neck, tipping my chin up and capturing my lips again, giving me a very welcome non-verbal answer.

A minute later – or thereabouts, as I’d lost track of time, but whatever the actual total was, it wasn’t long enough – Alex stepped back, but not before placing one last kiss on the hollow under my ear where my neck met my jaw. “Come on,” he said, taking my hand and leading me over to a wide window seat.

We sat silently for a moment, neither of us sure what to say, when suddenly Alex started to laugh – a bit hysterically, actually – rubbing his hands over his face.

“How can this have happened? This is impossible!” He laughed, leaning back looking so relieved, he was almost slaphappy. “I’m not complaining or anything, it’s just…” He looked over at me with unabashed wonder. “I would never in a thousand lifetimes have thought that this could ever happen.”

“Yeah,” I said, giving him a wry sideways glance “About all that ‘thinking’ you did – did it ever occur to you to just come out and tell me about all this?”

“Well, that depends,” he said, grinning. “Do you mean before or after the Iris test debacle?”

“Either,” I said, loving the playful smile on his face simply for the fact that it was there again.

“If we are talking about after, then no, there was no way I was going to tell you.” I noticed some of the sadder strands of emotion flow back in to the cloudy cocktail floating around him. He must have seen my eyes wondering, because all of a sudden his ears turned red and a huge wave of embarrassment came billowing out into the mix.

“Right,” he said with an awkward laugh, rubbing his neck where his Sciath should be. “I forgot you had that.”

“You forgot? So, you can’t see all this?”

“Nope.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out his Sciath, handing it over to him, fully expecting him to put it back on. He took it from me and looked at it a moment before laying it down on the bench between us.

“No.” He shook his head. “I don’t need it. I have nothing to hide. Not from you.”

I picked up the necklace and reached around his neck, putting it back in its place. “I know you don’t,” I assured him, touched that he was willing to knowingly make himself so vulnerable. “But it doesn’t need to happen all at once. We can work up to it.”

Much as I loved being able to see what was going on inside him, I wanted him to be comfortable. I would never force him to go without it, and simply the fact that he was willing to was more than enough for me. I gave him a kiss on the cheek as I fastened the clip, and watched as all the wispy clouds vanished instantly.

“Now then, you were saying something about how you’ve spent the last few days lying to me…” I prompted with a smirk.

“I wasn’t lying, I was…” The grin he started out with sunk as he trailed off, appearing at a loss for words. He sighed and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, hands dangling between his legs. “I was in hell.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” I said, when he stopped again. “It’s OK.”

“No.” He looked up. “I want to. I want you to understand. I feel horrible for treating you the way I did – deliberately avoiding you, and pushing you off. I didn’t mean to hurt you, but I didn’t know what else to do. I had to keep you away until I could find a way to… cope.”

He turned his head toward the opposite window looking at the landscape, but seeing only memories.

“When you activated the Iris, I didn’t know what to think. After it was all over I lapsed into something like a trance. As if my mind couldn’t process what had happened. Or maybe I wasn’t letting my mind process it, I don’t know. In any event, I was basically in a stupor until Min came to check on me that night, which is when my,” he hesitated with an embarrassed wince, “somewhat hysterical meltdown occurred.”

My hand found its way over to his arm, rubbing gently, my chest aching at what he must have gone through. He lifted my hand to his lips kissing my knuckles appreciatively, then brought it down, holding it between both of his hands.

“Min actually told me to try being with you anyway,” he continued. “To act as though nothing had happened and see how things worked out.”

“But you didn’t want to do that?”

He shook his head slowly. “There was no way that would have ended well for me. Yes, I would have had you, but I would also have had to live in fear that on any given day you could meet your own Anam. Standing by and watching you bond to someone else isn’t something I’d have ever been strong enough to do. But even if that day never came, I would still have to live my whole life knowing that you weren’t as happy with me as I was with you. Whether you knew it or not, for you, I would have never been more than second best.”

I nodded, silently agreeing with him. I’d once considered if Alex could be happy enough with me even though I wasn’t – or, had assumed I wasn’t – his Anam. Even at the time I could tell the idea, while tempting, would lead to nowhere good, and I wasn’t even bonded to him then. I couldn’t imagine how horrible the idea had seemed to him.

“Before she left that night Min tried to give me something to put me to sleep, but I wouldn’t take it. I don’t know, for some reason I was afraid to sleep, so I sat up all night long just thinking. The only conclusion I could come to was that it had all been a mistake. That you weren’t truly my Anam, that I shouldn’t have bonded with you, and that my feelings would go away – but somehow, deep down, I knew they wouldn’t. The only shred of hope I had was that maybe the mistake had been with you. Maybe the Iris had reacted to something else entirely and when Cormac went to read you, he wouldn’t find anything. Slim chance or no, it was all I had to hold onto. But then, the next morning, it turned out I didn’t even need Cormac to tell me. The moment Min took your Sciath off, I knew. The way your face lit up when you felt the changing within you… it broke my heart.”

“You looked so terrible that day,” I murmured more to myself than to him, finally knowing why.

“Thank you,” he said, throwing me a glance.

“You know what I mean.” I nudged him with my shoulder.

He gave my hand an affectionate squeeze and continued. “After that, I did my best to keep you at a distance. It was just too hard. I was waiting for… I don’t even know what. For my feelings to go away, maybe. For something to just make sense again.” He paused, giving me a sneaky grin, “Though I will say, if I’d have known how things were going to work out, I’d have touched you that first day and saved myself some sleepless nights.”

“Last night wasn’t so bad.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them, and I immediately looked away, biting my tongue.

He sat up, ending any hope I had of him having missed the comment. “How did you know that?” Before I could think up an excuse, he figured it out. “That was you? How did you do that?” he asked, turning to face me.

“I connected with you,” I admitted, seeing there would be no way around it. “When I’d done it with Mr Anderson in training that afternoon, he’d said it was comforting, so I thought I’d see if I could help.”

“But didn’t Min replace the Block after your session?”

“She did, so I took the whole thing off.”

“Becca! You shouldn’t have done that, it’s dangerous!”

“But, you were upset.”

The anger in his eyes softened, and then melted into something that made my skin warm and my stomach tight.

He leaned toward me with embers burning behind his gray eyes. “Well,” he said, his lips just barely brushing mine as he spoke, “I promise you I will sleep very, very well tonight.”

Just before he moved in – and I lost my focus completely – I leaned away. “Hold on now, you’re not off the hook yet.” I pressed my finger to his lips, pushing him back a bit. “I get why you didn’t tell me after the test, and I can even see why you wouldn’t have told me in the beginning, but that still doesn’t explain why you didn’t bring it up at any point in between. You had a good two weeks at your disposal, why didn’t you just tell me?”

He looked away again, his ears turning red. “I…” He paused, clearing his throat and scratching the back of his neck. “I didn’t want to tell you until…”

“What?”

He took a breath and looked up sheepishly. “I wanted you to love me.” He held my eyes for a second then looked back down, his ears on fire. “But on your own, because you wanted to, not because you felt like you had to.”

“You know I’m not the type to be pressured into anything.”

“You mean to tell me,” he eyed me skeptically, “that if I had told you that I was, not only hopelessly in love, but also irreversibly bound to you for the rest of my life, that you wouldn’t have felt the slightest bit obligated to at least try to be with me? Then felt guilty if you couldn’t make it work?”

“Maybe a little,” I allowed.

“See? That’s not what I wanted. I wanted you to be with me because it’s what you wanted, and I thought maybe if we spent time together…” He cleared his throat again. “Anyway, I couldn’t wait any longer, so I’d planned to tell you the night after the test, and hope for the best.”

“Alex,” I said, leaning over and forcing him to look at me, “I did love you. I may not have realized it at first, but I knew that before–”

“No,” he said, holding a hand up to stop me. “It’s OK, really.”

“I’m serious,” I insisted, not about to let him think that I was only trying to tell him what he wanted to hear.

“I know it may seem that way now, but really, it’s all right.” He brought his hand up, resting it on the side of my neck, grazing his thumb across my cheek. “What we’ve ended up with is more than I’d ever even imagined, that’s all that matters.”

As opposed to arguing with him, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the woven cross, holding it up for him to see. “Remember this?” I asked, though the look on his face told me he did.

“You kept that?” he breathed.

“I kept it, and it has been either in my pocket or on my bedside table every moment since that afternoon,” I said. “So, don’t you tell me that I didn’t love you.”

The next thing I knew he was kissing me with so much zeal that I actually had a hard time staying upright. His hands laced into my hair, and his throaty groan echoed in my chest, sending goosebumps up my arms and my eyes rolling back. Hours before I was ready, he released me, once again placing a kiss on that same spot under my ear, this time murmuring something against my skin that I didn’t quite catch – though I was also fairly certain it wasn’t in English.

He stood, pulling me up with him, taking my hand and leading me into the building, while I slid my cross safely back into my pocket. “I have to go down to Cormac’s office, he’s expecting me,” he said, as we made our way hand in hand down the hall, stopping when we reached the top of the stairs. “It shouldn’t take long, and then can we get dinner?”

“Sure,” I said, so happy to be getting back to our old routine. “I should go check on Ryland anyway. Meet you in the lounge?”

“I’ll be there,” he said, rubbing his thumb across the back of my hand, then skipping off down the stairs.

I greeted my good buddies the stomach butterflies as they returned, carrying me down the steps to the first landing. They were around so much lately I was starting to think of them as pets, and idly wondered if I should consider naming them. However, my fluffy haze cleared somewhat as I rounded the banister and saw the agitated figure of Jocelyn coming up the stairs. He stopped as he saw me, looking me straight in the eye, his mouth a hard line.

“I need to have a word with you,” he stated with no inflection whatsoever.

His words might not have given much away, but his expression told me one thing for sure…

I was in trouble.