“No,” she said with an inflection that insinuated he was ridiculous. “I just found a different way to get him to see the doctor, where I knew he’d be diagnosed.”
“Well, you’re obviously not together anymore. Why? Did you leave him too?”
And as soon as it was out of his mouth, he knew he’d lost control again.
She sat straight and looked him directly in the eye. “No, I didn’t leave him. I went to every doctor’s appointment with him, every chemo appointment, stayed with him while he puked all night; then I got up and worked all day, went grocery shopping, and cooked for him when he was too weak. When he finally found remission, our relationship had changed so drastically we both agreed to just stay friends.”
Okay, he was an ass. He was worse than an ass. He rubbed his eyes.
“Another man I was seeing was a bicyclist,” she said, rage burning in her words, “and I saw an accident on a bridge he always crossed with his team that crippled him. Instead of letting him go on the ride, I made love to him so he’d be late and miss their meeting point. He took a different route that day and stayed safe. Two of his buddies died on that ride.”
Like you made love to me all those years ago to keep me in the dark?
Oh, the words were so close to slipping out. He twisted the top off another beer and took a long drink to drown them.
His mind turned to the freeway accident. “Did you see the gray SUV last night? The one that caused the accident?”
“I just saw the accident. I saw—” Her gaze went dark and dropped away.
“Saw what?”
She picked up her empty juice glass and rolled it between her palms. “I saw us in the accident.”
“I thought you didn’t see your own future.”
“Essentially, it was your future. I just happened to be there.”
His stomach went cold with the sudden realization of how horrifying that had to be. “What . . . happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” her voice softened.
“Did we die?”
“It didn’t happen,” she murmured, “there’s no point—”
“Did we die?”
She set the glass down with a hard click and met his eyes. “You died. Okay?”
The horror in her bright eyes, the glaze of tears filling them halfway, made Mitch’s throat close. His mind grew curious about exactly what she’d seen, but he doubted he could stomach the answer. Wasn’t so sure she could handle giving it.
He let a moment of silence pass. Let her wipe the tears out of her eyes and her breathing settle before he asked, “So what about this bicyclist guy? How did you stop seeing his future?”
“I stopped seeing him.”
“You must have found some way of dealing with these visions, Hali.” His frustration came to a boiling point. “Or, what? Did you just go through a series of short relationships? Sleep with a guy, realize you saw his future like the others, and then break up? And what about friends? Do your friendships end this way too? Is it different with different guys, different friends? Does it happen with some guys and not others? I mean . . . how does your power work?”
She was shaking her head before he even stopped talking. His frustration finally boiled over. He pushed to his feet, pacing toward the back of the plane, hands laced behind his head.
“I don’t know how my visions work because I don’t get close enough to anyone to figure it out. It’s less painful to live alone than it is to see the futures of the people I care about, then feel responsible for keeping them safe or worrying that the great break or happiness that was coming their way could be changed by some decision they made in the meantime.
“I don’t have friends, Mitch. Not like your friends. I don’t have boyfriends. Or lovers. I tried it twice. That was enough to know I couldn’t do it.”
Mitch stopped walking. He stared at the wall, absorbing her words. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t fathom such an isolated existence. Yet, he didn’t doubt her words. The research confirmed that information. Making love to her—correction, fucking her . . . he ground his teeth . . . had confirmed her sexual inactivity, but . . .
He didn’t understand. His mind simply couldn’t work that puzzle. It went against human nature, even for someone on the run. She had the means to be comfortable. She could have sought out help for her powers, at least enough to find a way to allow a relationship and friends.
Mitch sensed more secrets. More lies.
That’s when something staring him in the face suddenly came into sharp focus—something he’d been looking right past all this time. “That bad dream last night . . .” An eerie crawl worked its way through his body. “That wasn’t a dream. It was a vision, wasn’t it?” He turned and dropped his arms. “You saw my future again.”
Her face slowly drained of color. She heaved a breath, but didn’t answer.
Mitch opened his mouth to ask what she’d seen, then remembered her fear as she’d woken, and wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Of course, given the situation, he had to know.
“Tell me, Halina. Was it the accident again?”
“No.” She returned her gaze to his, her eyes challenging, but the color in her face still absent. “It was a good glimpse of your future.”
Good? How good could it have been? “What was in it?”
Her lips pursed. A veil shielded the emotions in her eyes, making her seem impassive at best, annoyed at worst. “You have a nice future awaiting you, Mitch. Not much different from the life I imagine you’ve been living.”
“You mean the one you’ve been watching me live. Why would you do that?”
“I don’t stalk you, Mitch.” She laughed softly, but without humor. “Your handsome face is always popping up in the society pages. You’re a little hard to miss.”
“My face does not come up in a Washington—”
“My coworker has a subscription to the San Francisco Examiner, ” she said, her whole disposition changing as if the exhaustion had finally hit her. “I’m lucky enough to get the paper delivered to work every . . . single . . . morning.”
No wonder she knew so much about his life. Not a particularly pretty picture when he thought about it viewed from her perspective.
“What did you see?” he asked. “In the vision last night?”
A dry smile lifted the edges of her mouth and she leaned back in the chair, her gaze distant, her mood subdued. “Just you, at some highbrow event, looking every bit San Francisco’s most eligible bachelor in your designer tuxedo as you were seduced by one of your gorgeous women.”
His brows fell.
“And you were so . . . happy.” Her gaze had gone distant, like she was remembering. “Just . . . top-of-the-world happy . . .” She almost whispered the last word as if in pain. But she pushed her lips into a smile.
Mitch took another drink of beer, realizing he should have started the morning with something harder from the case Christy had shown Halina.
“So no worries about where your future will lead,” she said. “No matter what the outcome of last night between us, your life will stay as sparkly, magical, and sex-filled as ever.”
He jerked the bottle from his mouth, spilling some of the beer. He wiped it off his chin with the back of his hand, glaring at her. His life wasn’t remotely sparkly or magical. And that’s all he had—sex. Never anything more. The life had always left a frustrating, painful hollow inside him. And now, after being with Halina, it felt like a fucking chasm.
He didn’t want to go back to that existence. But he wasn’t interested in a life of deception, either.