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“This is where the visceral thing comes in.” He took my hands in his. “Either you trust me or you don’t.”
I didn’t know about trusting him. I did know I didn’t want him to stop touching me. I was getting used to the intensity. He leaned closer. I lost myself in the depths of his warm brown eyes, wondering if his lips would be warm, too …
Michael slowly inched forward before losing his balance and tipping to one side. He uttered a low curse under his breath and stepped away.
“You … You rule breaker!” My mouth dropped open, and I propelled myself up and out of the chair, poking him in the chest. “You almost kissed me!”
Michael backed up into the wrought-iron fence. “No, I didn’t.”
He didn’t mean it. I took a step closer and spoke in a whisper. “Liar.”
Running his hand over his face, he groaned in defeat. In one movement he turned so I was the one with my back pressed against the cold metal. The benefit was that my front was pressed against Michael.
He bent down, burying his face in my neck. I reached back to grab onto the iron bars behind me to hold myself up. My jacket slipped off my shoulders. I was pretty sure I was on fire, and at that moment I would have sworn that bursting into flame was a glorious way to go.
I’d never touched alcohol—doesn’t mix too well with crazy pills—but I knew at that moment what it must feel like to be drunk. Everything in my world shifted, and I knew I would trade every breath I’d ever taken for more of him. In a heartbeat.
Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw a red blinking light.
Security camera.
Chapter 15
I don’t think it will make a difference if you destroy it.”
I’d pulled a table umbrella from its stand and was using it, rather ineffectively, to knock the camera off the side of the building.
o;Doctor Who had a police box.” He kept his gaze level. “But I’m glad to hear it’s not a foreign concept.”
“Holy crap. You really expect me to just buy this?” I leaned over to put my head between my knees, shaking so hard my chair rattled. I vaguely wondered if I saved any of my medication or if I’d flushed it all. Michael could put it to good use.
“You asked me the question—”
“I know!” I sat up, closing my eyes. Before I spoke again, I lowered my voice. “Can you do me a favor and lay all the information on me now? I don’t need any bonus material to throw me over the edge later.”
Or down a flight of stairs, under a bus, and straight back to the mental ward.
“Okay. I know it sounds impossible—” he began.
My eyes flew open. “Time travel? Yes, it does! How? Why me?”
Michael frowned. “It’s kind of … genetic.”
“Like a disease?”
I could tell he didn’t like the analogy. “If you want to go the disease route, you could compare it to addiction. Addiction is genetic. What each person is addicted to might be different, kind of like one son is an alcoholic, the next son is a drug addict, the next is addicted to gambling, and so on.” He pressed the heels of his hands to his forehead. “None of that sounds good.”
“Nope.”
“Look at it this way. You have a special ability. Seeing ripples is like a symptom.” He growled in frustration. “I mean, an indicator. The fact that you’ve only seen people from the past so far indicates you’re able to travel to the past.”
“Mmm-hmm. So if I want to go somewhere in the past, I can? What do I have to do? Close my eyes and picture where I want to go? Click my heels together three times and say, ‘Neolithic Age’?”
“It’s a little more—”
“If you say ‘a little more complicated than that,’ I will scream. What about you? Can you go to the past?” Was I having this conversation? I pinched my thigh, really hard. I was having this conversation. “Or can you go to the future because you can see people from the future?”
“I can go to the future on my own and travel back to the present. You can go to the past on your own and travel back to the present. But if we travel together, we can go anywhere on the timeline. We’re sort of … two halves of one whole.”
