Chapter 6 #2
He narrows his eyes distrustfully. “How will you know?”
“I’ll know.”
“How really?”
“You’re mine. If you need me, truly need me, I’ll know.”
“You could just give me your phone number,” he grumbles, not believing me for a moment.
“Do you have a phone?”
He shrugs. “I’ll get one.”
“I have an easier, more reliable way,” I say.
“You can’t remember your own phone number?”
“It’s not …” I shake my head, then gesture around us. “Sometimes I don’t have my phone on me.”
“Then how?”
“What’s my name?”
“Zaya …”
“Zaya what?” I know he heard Jewels and Lou discussing me, so he knows my full name.
“Zaya … Gage.”
I reach for the whisper-thin bond between us, the connection already strengthening with our short conversation. Though the sharing of the meal is likely more important to that strengthening than the actual words we’ve exchanged. “Yes. Say it again.”
He huffs. “Zaya Gage.”
I trace the bond between us, sending another whisper of power through the connection. He shudders, eyes widening.
“Imagine picking up the phone and saying my name.”
“This is stupid,” he grumbles under his breath. But he pretends to pick up a phone and press it to his ear. “Zaya Gage?”
Essence shifts again — this time from him to me.
“What … what was that?” he asks, a little shaky. And a little gleeful.
“That was you reaching through our bond.”
He goes still. Wary again but with an edge of desperately wanting to believe. To believe me.
I take another long, slow sip of my milkshake, then eat a few bites of my salad.
Cal looks out the window. His shoulders slump, and he falls back against the bench seat, the rest of his fries and half his milkshake abandoned. “I can’t leave Lou.”
“I know.”
“She needs me.”
“I understand.”
His breathing becomes heavy, as if he’s fighting back a well of emotion.
I give him time, space.
“Do you … do my brothers live with you?”
“Yes,” I say, simplifying the extraordinarily complicated answer. “And your sister, Presh. I have an estate up the coast of Oregon, just past Newport.”
“Newport,” he echoes. “What’s an estate? A big house? Like the plantations?”
“The plantations in the Federation have a different context, but yes. A large piece of land with multiple buildings, including a main house with plenty of bedrooms.” I’m not going to push, but I need to make it clear that he’s wanted. “I think your siblings would love a chance to get to know you.”
“They never bothered before,” he says, clinging to the narrative I’m fairly certain Lou has fed him. Maybe because she thought it was the truth.
“Rath and Rought, for certain, haven’t been back to the Federation since you were born,” I say. “And I think … well, Presh ran away just earlier this year. She hasn’t mentioned you. Which makes me fairly certain she doesn’t know you exist.”
“Those are MC handles,” Cal says, throwing up the walls he had just started to lower. As I expected.
“They were,” I say, thinking of Rath tossing his cut at the Outcast’s feet.
“Not interested,” Cal says, gaze fixed out the window again.
I turn my head just enough to see Lou waving at him impatiently. When I look back, Cal is watching me.
“Okay,” I whisper past the clog in my throat that feels a lot like my heart.
His lower lip quivers.
This is way too much responsibility for someone his age. He shouldn’t have to make decisions like this — between Lou and his future.
“What if …” He swallows the question. The one I know he truly needs to ask.
“What if Lou looks at you like she looks at me?” I say as gently as possible.
Cal’s expression shuts down hard. “She loves me, takes care of me.”
“I know.”
He grabs a handful of fries, sliding out of the booth and trying to walk past me, out of the diner.
Twisting in my seat, but not standing, not chasing after him no matter how desperately I want to, I touch his shoulder lightly. His step hitches.
“We’ll meet again,” I say, essence threading through my words. “Fate, not luck, will bring us together again. Call for me if you need me.”
“I won’t.”
I drop my hand from his shoulder and nod. Then I let him walk away. Painful tears spike behind my eyes as the bond between us thins so much I fear it might snap.
It doesn’t.
I turn my head again to watch through the window as Cal heads to the trucks, rebuffing Lou as he passes her.
The server scoops up Cal’s plate and half-empty milkshake as she makes a pass by the table. Then the space is truly empty across from me.
I take another sip of my own milkshake, hand trembling as I pointedly don’t watch the two trucks pull away.
It might be a mistake to let Cal go.
He might hate me for it. Forever.
But I’ve had too many choices stripped from me. I couldn’t take this one from him.
I don’t feel like eating, but I force myself to sip the chocolate shake and not reach for the thread between Cal and me as he drives farther and farther away.
The aching thought that Presh will be disappointed in me also weighs heavy in my chest. The younger awry wouldn’t have to even open her mouth to convince Cal that she was the best choice. That would have been obvious.
But I remind myself that Presh walks a different path than I do.
I glance up at the camera tucked in the corner, hoping again that Coda has eyes on me — but also knowing it’s not time for that yet.
Three or so years ago, I was sitting in a thatched-roof cafe somewhere in Indonesia with no phone and no money, when the ancient landline had trilled on the wall — shocking the owner and servers more than me. It had taken Coda less than thirty minutes to track me down and get me sorted that time.
Before I was the Conduit.
The younger woman fussing over the older man in the corner booth gets up.
After fixing his collar — which wasn’t askew — she crosses through the side hall toward the bathrooms. She clutches her purse to her chest as if it holds the only other precious thing in her life other than the man who I’m now quite certain is her grandfather.
The moment her back is turned, he heaves himself out of the booth and starts toward the front door. Toward me.
Various people, most of them nulls, track him as he moves, but out of concern, not malice.
He rests his hand on the tops of the short walls between the booths as he goes, though he’s not unsteady on his feet.
He exudes a calm confidence that has nothing, and maybe also everything, to do with the robust essence he wields.
Given his talents, I have no doubt that he felt my energy before I even entered the cafe.
“You need me,” he says with a huff of effort as he lowers himself onto the bench seat across from me. I can’t immediately place his accent. Eastern United States?
“You need me,” I say, smiling at him.
He chuckles, peers at me closely, then nods. “I’m guessing I do. I’m Isaiah.”
“Meaning ‘God is my savior,’ ” I murmur. Because yes, I do on occasion study other religions.
He hums thoughtfully, still smiling at me. “A believer, are you?”
“I believe in a higher power,” I say, in no way prepared for a theological discussion even though I started this one.
He chuckles again, quieter this time. “You’d have to, to be you. Wouldn’t you?”
He watches me for a long while, and I him. No tension between us. He’s not remotely scared of me, nor does he appear just a moment away from falling to his knees in worship. Thankfully.
“What can I do for you?” he finally asks, the smile falling away.
“What can I do for you?” I tease back.
He lays his hand on the table, palm up. “You are gravely wounded, child. Let me help.”
“I fear it is beyond your abilities, grandfather,” I say softly.
He clucks his tongue. “Would we be here in this moment if I couldn’t ease some of your pain?”
I hesitate. But I can’t figure out if it’s because I don’t want to disappoint him when it turns out he can’t actually do anything about the aching wound on my shoulder? Or do I not want to disappoint myself when he can’t heal me?
A softer version of his grin reappears. “Maybe you aren’t the wisest person in this particular room …”
“Zaya,” I say. Essence shifts between us as if my name is offered, and then immediately accepted by Isaiah, as a gift. “And I never think I’m the wisest, just … I accept. I accept this is my path to walk.”
“Over broken glass and through hurricanes,” he says. And for a moment, I think he might be mocking me. “You endure as if there are no other options. No possible respites that you leave at the roadside, striding past, ever forward, because you believe that you must always endure.”
I stare at him, suddenly shaky deep in my core. As if he’s speaking to, and of, the fundamental essence that fuels me. Me, the vessel for the Conduit. “I … that is my role in this world.”
He tilts his head thoughtfully. “I hold out my hand to you, child. Take it with graciousness.”
I slide my hand into his. His fingers flex under my touch, under the touch of my essence, but he doesn’t pull away. He keeps his hold light. His skin is warm in a way that tells me I’m too cold.
The woman, Isaiah’s granddaughter, exits the hall to the bathroom, stumbling to a stop when she sees their booth is empty.
Her head swivels frantically. Dark curls tumble around her face with the abrupt motion, and her dark eyes widen in utter terror when she spots me.
And she can’t even see that I’m touching her grandfather. Yet.
“Aniyah?” Isaiah asks, without turning around. “Good. We’ll need her too.”
Aniyah — ‘God is gracious,’ though I don’t voice that out loud — almost stumbles in her haste to get to us. Careful to not meet my gaze, she actually chokes as she notes Isaiah holding my hand.
“Pops,” she cries. Then, as if catching the terror tied up in that one word, she glances around and composes herself.
“Ani,” her grandfather says with that seemingly unshakeable confidence, that pure goodness. “Zaya needs us, and we need her.”