A Taste of Ice (21 page)

By the time she washed her face clean of last night’s makeup and padded out to the kitchen wearing one of his plain black T-shirts, Xavier had set the table and was at the range, hair tied back in a bandanna like he did at Shed, flipping pancakes that smelled like apples and cinnamon.

He looked at her over his shoulder, pancake balanced on a spatula. His eyes drew a hot line from her face to her bare legs, and back again. “Hope you don’t have a lunch meeting.”

“Nope,” she lied, because she wasn’t about to miss this.

Breakfast was, as with everything he cooked, careful and wonderful and all the more delicious because he’d made it for her. She ate until she was full, and then she kept eating because he’d rocked back in his chair and was studying her, and she loved the way it felt. She made him talk more about Shed, about the daily grind and a bit about Pam. He told her how Pam wanted him to be her competition, to have a kitchen of his own, but that he was comfortable where he was.

“Too much responsibility?” she asked.

“Yeah. I guess.”

“Wouldn’t the money be better, though?”

He swept a gaze around his house and frowned, then started to pick at the edge of the kitchen table where the veneer was peeling away. “Maybe. But I don’t really need any more than I already have.”

She liked that. He was never going to use her to make more money, or to get what he wanted, like Michael.

She pushed aside the plate and took a long drink of water. Setting the glass down, she stroked its sides. Xavier looked at the motion of her hand, and the way his expression heated, the way his chair slowly came back down to rest on all four legs, told her he, too, was remembering how she’d stroked him like that last night.

“I loved being with you,” she murmured.

One of her fingers dipped into the water, started to swirl it around, the clinking ice cubes the only sound in the kitchen.

“I, uh, loved it, too.”

He’d trusted her with something last night. That much was wonderfully clear. He’d let go of something menacing—even if only for a little while.

She’d never done this before: this prolonged, mutual stare, lips twitching in dazed smiles, completely lost in the other person.

The water churning around her finger in a good, swift hurricane added something else to the experience. An undercurrent of heightened sensation, a feeling of exposure. It buzzed through her blood, making it pulse harder, warming her. This was nothing new; it was what she felt every time she nudged a toe into the surf or trailed her fingers over the side of a boat.
Except that she’d never felt it while with Xavier, and the experience very nearly unhinged her.

The water had always filled her soul, but with Xavier now consuming her vision and most of her heart, the water was getting some stiff competition. His lips parted, as though he’d just come to the same conclusion. As though he, too, felt that swelling in his chest, the need racing across his skin. He stretched a hand across the table to touch her and she automatically leaned into him. She removed her finger from the water glass to take his hand.

He glanced down. Gasped.

“What?” she asked, confused.

Xavier jumped up like she’d drawn a gun on him. His chair tipped backward, clattering to the tile. He stared at her water. The little hurricane she’d created inside the glass had turned itself inside out. A tiny funnel of water spiraled above the lip of the glass, stretching for her finger that now hovered just above.

“Holy shit.” He stumbled away, stopping only when his back struck the wall next to the phone.

She didn’t know which shocked her more: the way the water spun toward her, or Xavier’s dramatic reaction. “Wow,” she breathed, and the water collapsed back into the glass with a
gloop
. It looked like any old glass of water now, leaving her to wonder if she’d imagined it all. Except that Xavier’s pale skin, unblinking eyes, and horrified expression left no doubt that it most certainly
had
happened.

“What did you do?” His voice was hoarse. “How did you…”

“I don’t—”

The phone rang, a scream cutting through the tense room. He startled, his shoulder jostling the phone from its receiver. It crashed to the linoleum, dangling from an honest to gosh cord.

“Xavier?” A woman’s desperate voice crackled in the receiver. “Xavier? Are you there?”

Cat might have asked him the same thing. He looked beyond spooked; he didn’t even look present. What the hell was going on?

“Hey.” She rose from the chair, started to circle around the table to him.

“It’s…you’re…” he stammered. He threw out a hand to ward her off.

“Xavier, oh thank the stars you’re there,” came the disembodied woman’s voice from the phone on the floor. “I can hear you. Can you hear me?”

He crouched, snatched up the phone, and slammed it back into the cradle. His hand remained clenched around it, his stare fierce on the hunk of red plastic.

“That sounded important,” Cat said. “She sounded scared.”

Emotions warred on his face. One second he looked ready to punch the wall, upper lip curling. The next second he looked lost. The next on the verge of tears.

This was the hardened, hurting man who’d shoved her away on the steps after their first kiss. He was alive and well, thank you very much. And now she knew for sure that girls were the least of his problems. Everything they’d gone through together last night disappeared. Vanished into thin air like a stupid rabbit pulled out of a hat.

Her frustration started to morph into anger. “I’m trying to understand. You don’t just snap like this and not tell me why. Or if I can fix it. It’s unfair. And immature.” Still nothing. “Xavier, what on earth—”

His scared eyes found her. “Just. Go.”

Screw you
, she thought as she backed out of the kitchen. You didn’t sleep with a woman and treat her like this the next morning. Not after what they’d shared.

But she didn’t say any of that, because instinctively she knew that Xavier’s reaction had nothing to do with them as a couple. Something had triggered a terrified—and terrifying—response in him, and whether it was that weird water thing or the phone call from the scared woman, she couldn’t be sure. She just knew she had to get away, to give him space right now. Or maybe forever.

That last thought made her ill. Was this enough for her to walk away for good? Could she handle this manic behavior, if it kept going on? And really, their “forever” was only a week more. Until she went back to Florida.

Except that she’d already seen the beauty inside him and she couldn’t, in all faith, abandon him. Still, if he wanted her to leave, she would.

She turned, giving the kitchen, and Xavier, her back. There, still crumpled on the living room floor, lay her fabulous orange dress. Sitting there, mocking her. She snatched it up and went into his bedroom.

The mess of the sheets, his jeans still lying in a puddle, her shoes perfectly aligned at the foot of the bed, made her heart twist and her gut ache. What the heck was going on? He didn’t get to wrap himself around her, kiss her senseless, ignite something intense inside her, then shove her away. What gave him the right? Who taught him it was okay to treat people like that?

What kind of pain made him
do
something like that?

She ripped off his T-shirt, meaning to throw it in the corner, but instead folded it neatly and placed it on the dresser, because that’s what she knew he’d like. She couldn’t find her underwear and stepped into the orange dress anyway. The sequins felt cold on her skin and she broke out in goose bumps. Hissing with pain, she slid her swollen feet back into the ridiculous shoes, trying not to remember how they’d looked at the ends of her legs, wrapped around Xavier’s head as he buried his tongue in her.

No, she couldn’t give up on him. There was something there—in the air between them, in the way they connected and touched. The way they made each other smile, the way they could talk. Forget the fact she didn’t live in Colorado, that she was supposed to leave in a week. She wasn’t a coward. She didn’t run away. She ran toward problems, and she sure as hell tried to fix them before they grew into something out of control.

It was very clear that he’d taken a chance on getting involved with her. She couldn’t call him a jerk and just walk out. One, that was what he expected, to be left alone again. And two, she wasn’t built that way. That was what a teenager would do. Not someone who cared for the other person.

She went to the front hall closet where he’d hung her coat. There were only two other coats inside, and when she pulled hers down, the metal hangers rattled, awful and lonely.

Standing in the middle of the living room, where he’d undressed her so carefully and, yes, so lovingly, she pulled on her coat over her dress. He hadn’t moved an inch. His hand still clutched the phone, his arm straight out from his body.

“When you’re ready to talk,” she told him gently, “I’m here for you. Anytime.”

His forehead dropped to his biceps. His eyes squeezed tightly shut.

She left.

Going on midnight, lonely as fuck. Xavier didn’t remember
trudging home after work. Hell, he didn’t even remember working. If it weren’t for the preps and dishes he’d done a thousand times, he probably wouldn’t have survived.

Now he slouched in the beige recliner in his living room. House completely dark. The streetlight on the corner outside cast pallid light through the picture window and draped him in weird shadows. He thought about Cat because he couldn’t
not
think about her. Not when she’d become the center of his world after mere days.

Ofarian. If what he’d seen that morning was true, Cat was a fucking
Ofarian
.

The easiest way to deal with this would be to go about his life until she left town. Then he’d never have to see her again. Except…he’d never see her again. And wasn’t it screwed up that that prospect sickened him more than the source of her blood?

Three years ago he’d fled San Francisco, the hotbed of Ofarian culture, and he managed to run right back into their arms. He’d never get away.

Elbows perched on the worn armrests, he buried his face in his hands. They smelled faintly of garlic, though he’d scrubbed them until they stung.

For the first time ever, he hated the silence of this house he’d bought with Gwen Carroway’s money. The money she’d earned from the lives of his kinsmen and lovers and children. The money she’d given Xavier to clear her conscience. He
didn’t like spending it, which is why his place was decked out like a time warp, but he’d always loved the refuge it provided.

Now it felt like his cell in the Plant. Cold, dark, the loneliest place in the universe.

When he took his hands away from his face, the Burned Man was perched on the arm of Xavier’s brown velour sofa, one boot propped up on the cushions. He wore the old blue Plant guard uniform, and the shadows from the streetlamp settled into the twisted webbing of his melted skin. The acrid odor of cigarettes filled the small room. Xavier had always found that disturbing, that the man covered in fire damage always smelled like smoke.

Interesting turn of events.

“Fuck you,” Xavier said aloud.

No, thanks. Though I never knew you liked to fuck
my
kind.
The Burned Man peered down the hall to the bedroom.

“She’s not Ofarian. She can’t be.”

Yes, she is. She’s messed with your head so much you don’t believe your own eyes.

For once the Burned Man was right. Xavier had lost perspective.

He shoved from the chair and stalked into the kitchen, flipping on the weak bulb over the stove, because it was all the light he could stand at the moment. He yanked out the junk drawer, found the tiny scrap of paper taped to the very back. He stared at the ten numbers for a long while, then picked up the phone and dialed.

Love it,
the Burned Man scoffed at his back.
After all this time, all this effort trying to escape, and you just come running back to us. Say hi to Ms. Carroway for me.

Xavier whipped around, but the Burned Man had vanished from the couch.

The phone rang on the other end of the line. The waiting made him nauseous.

Gwen answered, out of breath. “Hello?”

Years since they’d talked. Even longer since she’d stood with him on the Lake Tahoe dock as he chose to stay behind on Earth. He’d been the one to use his glamour to help send every other Tedran safely and secretly back to the stars.

“Uh, yeah.” He ground the heel of one palm into his eyelid. “I just realized it’s after one in Chicago.”

“I don’t care, Xavier. It doesn’t matter. I’m just glad you’re there.”

The relief in her voice was palpable and it terrified him. He sidled back to the stove, clicked off the light. Darkness drew around him again.

“That Xavier?” came Reed’s groggy voice close to Gwen’s phone.

“Yeah,” Gwen told her lover—husband? Had they ever gotten married? Then she asked Xavier, “Are you all right?”

“You didn’t call just to check up on me. What’s going on.” He was fully aware of the flatness of his voice, and that Gwen’s concern was very real. She didn’t have a false bone in her body.

“I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for days.” Her voice shook. “Two Ofarians have gone missing.”

He rubbed absently at his temple. “Sorry to hear that.” Not really. “What does that have to do with me?”

“Because the first one vanished last month from Denver. The second one seven days ago. From Vail. That’s not far from you, is it?”

“Less than an hour away.” Suddenly his mouth went sticky-dry. “Why are there Ofarians in Colorado? I thought you were the only one to leave California.”
Please, please say that’s true
.

“When the Board was in control, they deliberately contained us there. Griffin stopped that. We can live anywhere we want now. We even work in the Primary world. You’re not going to believe this, but we hired Adine to help us transition in smoothly. Identities and paperwork, and the like.”

But all Xavier heard was the part about them living anywhere. “Why did you call to tell me about this?”