Chapter 12 Mariella #3
“I…” My gaze pivots between Rose and Parker. It’s not that simple. Trust is earned. It took me months to open up to Silas. Even Anna is unaware of the details of my past. “I can’t.”
“I told you this would be a fucking waste of time,” Rose growls in Parker’s direction. She slams her palms against the tabletop and abruptly stands.
“Wait.” Parker gets off the couch and closes the distance between us, his amber eyes piercing my soul.
“Ella, you can trust me.” His warm voice is like a calming wave drenching my skin.
He’s right. I feel as though I’ve known him for years, and it makes no sense, but I trust him.
“I hate to ask you to do anything for us, but we—I need a sample of your blood. And I promise we’ll stay away from you after this. I don’t want to meddle in your life.”
But I want him to meddle in my life. My dreams may explain the familiarity I feel toward him, but they don’t negate this burning need to know him.
I turn back to Rose, now hacking at her nails. If time travel’s making her sick and I don’t help them, she’ll get worse. “How much blood do you need?”
“A few vials,” she says.
It’s not as if I’ll miss it. And if my blood will help them—help Parker—I can’t say no. But maybe they can give me something in return. “You said your precision was always poor with time traveling.” I incline my head toward Parker, who’s now standing behind Rose. “What about his?”
Rose tilts her head, her eyes narrowed as she takes me in. “Why do you want to know?”
“I’ll give you my blood. But once Parker has his powers back, I want him to take me into the past. To see my mother.”
“Absolutely not,” Rose says.
I lean back in my chair. “Then you can’t have my blood.”
Rose grits her teeth. “You don’t even know what you’re asking. Wait until you’re recruited and understand the implications of interacting with your past before you do it. By then, you’ll have the skills to time travel and visit your mother yourself.”
My throat constricts. “I’m not going to Neurovida.”
“What?” Parker says, staring at me like I’ve wounded him.
I avert my gaze to my hands. “I’m not going. I don’t want to be a time traveler, and I don’t want any special skills. I just want to see my mother and move on with my life.”
“You can’t change it,” Rose says, scolding me like I’m a child demanding a different toy. “It’s already done.”
“Do they force you to go?” I ask.
“No,” Parker says. “We went by choice.”
“Then I choose not to go. I’ll only give you my blood if you promise to take me to see my mother.”
Rose opens her mouth to argue but Parker cuts her off. “I’ll do it,” he says.
“Parker,” Rose says.
“Do you promise?” I ask him.
He dips his head, and his golden eyes lock with mine. “Yes,” he says, as if Rose isn’t here. As if we’re the only two people in the world.
I tear my gaze to Rose, who’s gritting her teeth. “Then you can take my blood,” I say.
Muttering under her breath, she pulls a small case from the front pocket of her hoodie.
“You—want to do it right now?”
“No time like the present,” she says dryly, unloading the contents of the case onto the wooden dining table. Parker steps away, content to study Silas’s record collection.
“Okay.” I pull up my sleeve and hesitate. “You’ve done this before, right?”
“Yeah.” An evil grin breezes across her face. “I’ve been practicing on Parker.”
I hesitate, recalling Parker’s arms covered in plasters at Tilly’s, before extending my exposed arm toward Rose. She secures a tourniquet around my biceps and my pulse spikes. She rips open a packet and rubs an antiseptic wipe over my skin. I scrunch my eyes shut.
The sting of the needle is brief, a dull pain remaining as Rose takes the vials of my blood. Before long, she removes the needle and I wince, pressing a cotton bud over my punctured skin.
Rose packs away her supplies and gets to her feet. “Where’s the washroom?”
“By the front door,” I say, pointing down the hallway.
Her head snaps to Parker, her thick plait swinging down her back. “Keep your mouth shut, Jimmy,” she says, leaving Parker and me in silence.
It’s surreal. Parker, standing here in Silas’s cottage. It feels wrong. The man before me is nothing like the man in my dreams. Where’s the man who was dying to get me alone?
“Did you mean it?” I say before I lose my nerve.
He’s still perusing Silas’s records with his back to me. He doesn’t turn. “Mean what?”
“That nothing memorable happened?”
“No.” I wait for him to elaborate, but he’s silent, the muscles in his neck tense.
“Is it because of Rose?” I ask, rising from the table.
Parker runs a hand over his head. “I don’t want to get into it right now.”
He can’t even turn to look at me. I suppress the urge to cry, scolding myself for getting caught up in a fantasy. Regardless of the inexplicable way I feel about him, he’s a stranger.
He finally turns, and something like pain flashes across his face. He strolls toward me, slipping his hands into his pockets. “Sometimes the past is better kept in the past, you know?”
I nod, but I don’t know. How can I? It may have been his past, but it’s still my future. Or would’ve been, if I went to Neurovida.
The sternness in his face softens and, for a fleeting moment, I think he might reach out and touch me. “Ella, there are so many things I want to tell you, but I—”
“Parker, let’s go.” Rose’s heavy footsteps echo along the hallway.
She appears behind us with her hands tucked into the pouch of her hoodie, and her sharp, onyx gaze snaps to mine.
“Remember, not a word to anyone about us, or that you’ve ever met us before.
” She hesitates. “And thank you,” she spits out before striding away, boots thumping toward the front door.
Parker releases a deep breath, his dark blond brows creased together. His lips twitch as if he wants to tell me something but can’t find the right words.
“Jimmy, come on,” Rose yells.
“Take care, Ella,” he says, and with one final glance, he follows Rose outside.
I wait for the front door to close and scamper after him, peeking through the narrow window beside the front door.
Rose’s quick strides have taken her halfway down the street, a trail of vapor billowing in her wake.
Parker strolls after her, hands still tucked into his pockets as if he has all the time in the world.
Their retreating figures disappear beyond the street corner, and I slump against the wall beside Silas’s door. The past hour feels like a surreal dream. I’ve just exchanged my blood for a chance to time travel into the past to visit my dead mother.
And yet my mind can’t seem to stop swinging back to the same thought.
Everything in my dream was real, for Parker at least, and he’d acted as if it meant nothing.