Page 180 of In Somnis

He watches me and nods to himself as if I confirmed it anyway. “I’m not telling you what to do. I’m saying that the cards are not ambiguous. About you. And him… and what you could be for each other.”

The afternoon light comes through the window and reflects off the crystal where it hangs still between his fingers. I look at it instead of at him.

“Although.” He leans forward. “There is more in your cards. Quite a lot more, actually.” He looks up. “I really need your moon sign to get the full picture.”

My stomach does a flip. “What kind of more?”

“What time were you born? And where?”

“Jasper. What kind of more?”

“There are multiple significant energies in your chart. Three to be exact. Connections that don’t cancel each other out. They… run parallel.”

Three.

Parallel.

I sit with those two words and feel them do uncomfortable things to my insides.

Because that’s the thing I have been carefully not thinking about, the thing I have been filing under temporary situation, not real life, you are here for Tessa.

There are three of them.

That isn’t the revelation. The revelation is how little of me wants to argue with it.

I know there are three of them. I am not confused about the number. I am also not in a place where I can do anything useful with that information, so I have been keeping it in a box in the back of my head with the lid pressed down and both hands flat on top. I make a firm decision to think about this later, at a time when I am not being read for filth by an eighteen-year-old with a pendulum and a chart I never consented to.

“I need at least two more data points before I can say anything definitive,” he continues. “Which is why I need the moon signs. Yours and…” another pause, very casual, looking at his nails, “… theirs. Ideally.”

“Theirs,” I repeat.

“I’ve already clocked Spencer.” He wrinkles his nose. “Checked his cards out of curiosity, fully not part of the alignment, very reassuring. But the others…” He tilts his head. “Have they already shown themselves? Could you get me their birth details? Even approximate?”

The others.

The alignment.

I open my mouth, only to quickly close it, because what can I say?

There is a version of me, a very sensible, very reasonable version, that wants to say, “Jasper, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but I am an adult. I have been in this town for less than a month, and I am not whatever you think I am.” That version of me would say it kindly, Jasper would nod, and we would move on.

That version of me is currently being held hostage by the part of me that sat on Paul’s lap and didn’t want to move. That fell asleep against Nevan’s chest as if it were the most natural thing I’d ever done. That let Ridge do unspeakable things to our subconscious and enjoyed it.

Connections that don’t cancel each other out.

The lid on the box shifts slightly against my hands.

Partly because Jasper is looking at me with those enormous, guileless eyes, and partly because somewhere in the back of my mind, something is being infuriatingly quiet in a way that feels a lot like agreement.

“Hey, I’m not saying anything. I’m just a guy with a pendulum and some cards who needs your moon sign.” He holds the crystal up and lets it spin slowly in the light. “The universe, on the other hand, is saying quite a lot.”

I look at the little amethyst point turning at the end of its chain.

My little punk fairy with smudged eyeliner and the floor full of pillows might be the only person in this town who is looking directly at my situation without flinching.

“Boston,” I say finally. “Four forty-four in the morning.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT