Run to You Part Two: Second Glance Page 3

  Later, after Melissa and Philip went to bed, Tristan set two mugs of hot chocolate on the coffee table. Giant marshmallows bobbed on top, and the mugs had smiling snowmen with green mittens painted on them.

  We’d never finished Say Anything during our first date, so he put it back in the DVD player, and we snuggled on the couch under a heavy fleece blanket. I leaned into him and gave him a dozen tiny kisses. He returned my kisses with a dozen of his own, each one longer and more passionate than the one before, stopping only when I became breathless.

  Curling up in his arms, I leaned my head on his shoulder. “You risked your life to save me today.”

  “I’d do it again, too. As many times as I need to.” He stroked my arm as he turned his attention to the movie.

  I pretended to watch the movie while gathering my courage. “Tristan?”

  He stiffened, just the tiniest bit. “Hmm.”

  “What were you doing at the park today? You told me you were watching basketball at Chad’s.”

  “I was. I just wanted to check on you and make sure you were okay.”

  He wasn’t telling me the whole truth. I could hear it in his stilted voice.

  I took my hot chocolate and blew on it. Tristan knew I had to lie, yet he never pressured me to tell him the truth. Was it fair if I pressured him?

  No. It wasn’t fair at all.

  Accepting his answer with a nod, I turned back to the movie.

  But I didn’t have as much self-control as he did. “But I didn’t tell you when I was leaving Vanessa’s house.”

  He pointed to the TV. “Watch this part coming up. It’s hilarious.”

  I slid off his lap and looked directly at him. “Tristan. How did you know I was there?”

  He shifted and cleared his throat.

  “You knew that tree was going to fall today,” I said. “Before it happened.”

  His gaze remained glued to the movie.

  “Back when we first started jogging together, you stopped me before I ran into a woman on the other path.”

  His gaze darted to me, then back to the television.

  “And when I was dicing that tomato on our first date, you pulled the knife from my hand and said I was going to cut myself.”

  My hands trembled, and he took the mug I was holding and put it back on the table. “You’re going to spill.”

  I stared at the mug. The snowman smiled back at me. “I think you just did it again,” I whispered.

  He scraped his hand through his hair and stared hard at the TV.

  “Tristan, please.” I couldn’t say it out loud. If I was wrong, he would think I was crazy. But it was the only thing that made sense. Could it be possible? Of all the people in the world... “Are you...can you...”

  He met my eyes and held my gaze for a long time. Then, inch by inch, he leaned in close, putting his lips to my ear. His answer was so soft, I felt it more than heard it.

  “...Yes.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I gasped at Tristan’s admission. “You can see the future.” I had to say it to believe it.

  “I know I should’ve told you,” he said, looking guilty, “but I didn’t want to scare you away.”

  I was easily spooked, but this was one thing that would not have frightened me. “This is wonderful!” Knowing Tristan had a secret similar to my parents’ would finally make them trust him. Maybe his precognition was the reason my father’s mobile eye didn’t work on him.

  He pulled back, eyes stern. “You can’t tell anyone. Not even your brother or sister. Your parents are so strict, they’d never let you be with me if they found out.”

  “But—”

  “Please, Tessa.”

  His plea was so similar to the request I’d made of him, to tell no one my family was in trouble. Please don’t tell, I’d begged him, and he hadn’t.

  And maybe he was right about my parents. In addition to being strict, they were suspicious. If they knew he was anything other than a normal boy, they’d trust him even less. Maybe we’d even run again. “I won’t tell anyone,” I said. “I promise.”

  He exhaled slowly, then tucked me under his arm, my favorite place to be. “Can you see my future?” I asked. Could he see when Dennis Connelly would finally kill me?

  “No. The premonitions just come to me. When I try to see the future, it doesn’t work.”

  “Oh.” I wasn’t sure if his answer disappointed me or not.

  “And they’re always some kind of warning. They only come when something bad is about to happen.”

  “So you were at Chad’s and had a vision of a tree falling on me.”

  “Well, yeah. But it’s not like I go into some kind of trance,” he said. “It’s more like a thought or an image that forces its way into my mind, kind of the way you can see a daydream. Except I can’t control it, the way you can control a daydream.”

  “What did you see?” I was almost too scared to hear the answer.

  His words sounded tight, like it hurt to speak them. “I saw you lying on the path, crushed under that big tree trunk.”

  “Was I dead?”

  He didn’t answer, which was an answer in itself.

  “I was supposed to die today.” I whispered the words, but they seemed to echo around the room. I’d never considered my death being caused by anything other than Dennis Connelly. The thought was actually comforting.

  “But you didn’t die today. Most of the time I can change the course of events to prevent my vision from happening.”

  “So nothing bad ever happens to you,” I said, almost accusingly.

  He chuckled. “I’ve always avoided little things like paper cuts and big things like speeding tickets and car accidents. I’ve never spilled my hot chocolate.” Grinning, he gestured to my snowman mug, now sitting securely on the coffee table.

  Then his grin faded. “Bad things do happen to me, though. My visions come only minutes or even seconds before the actual event, and sometimes they come too late. Like when I told you I loved you at the party. As soon as I said it, I had a vision of you running off. But it was too late to change anything. I’d already said the words.”

  Tristan’s warning premonitions made him invulnerable, yet I’d still managed to hurt him. “I’m so sorry.” I caressed his cheek with my palm as if I could erase his pain.

  He kissed the tip of my nose. “The weird thing is, I’ve never gotten premonitions about anyone else before. They’ve always been about things that would happen to me. My dad had a heart attack a few years ago, and I didn’t get a warning about that. But now I get premonitions about you. On our first date, I had a premonition that you fainted at the restaurant.”

  I remembered how he had suddenly whisked me away.

  “And today, I wasn’t even with you when I had the premonition about the tree crushing you,” he said.

  We were silent for a few moments, feeling the weight of his statement.

  “I was just sitting at Chad’s watching the game when the premonition hit me. I bolted out of his house. I didn’t think I’d make it in time, but I did,” he said. “So now you can believe me when I say I can keep you safe. I know I will. I can prevent anything bad from happening to you.”

  Did I dare hope he was right? His premonitions, combined with my dad’s mobile eye, would make it harder than ever for Dennis Connelly to kill us.

  The fact that Tristan was blessed with a paranormal talent meant more than just another line of defense against Dennis Connelly. That I should find someone who possessed the exact ability needed to protect me meant there were greater forces at work here. Tristan could see and change the future—proof that life wasn’t just plodding along on a predetermined, linear path. Perhaps whatever force that sent those warnings to him—be it fate, destiny or
some kind of higher power—was the same force that had brought him to me.

  We were meant to find each other, so he could keep me safe.

  “You’re a superhero.” I laughed. “My own personal superhero.”

  Grinning, he gave a mock bow. “At your service.”

  If Tristan was going to be my hero, there was something I needed to do. But there was only a short time left before I had to go home for the night, so I grabbed him and brought him close, putting all my love and gratitude and relief into a kiss.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Sleep evaded me all night long. At least that kept my nightmare at bay. I kept time by the rumble of the snowplows as they cleared the streets every hour or so throughout the night. The sun was rising before I admitted to myself that sleep just wasn’t going to happen, so I got up and went to the kitchen. I wanted—needed—to do something nice for my family.

  I spent the next hour making cinnamon rolls, and the warm sugary scent of baking pastries soon filled the house. My mom came in just as I was taking them out of the oven. “Need any help?”

  “Nope. Thanks, though.” I said, bracing myself for another round of her tight-lipped, silent disapproval of Tristan. Would that condemnation turn into commendation if I told my parents about his warning premonitions? That his warning premonitions had saved my life yesterday?

  It didn’t matter. I’d promised Tristan I wouldn’t tell them. He was keeping my secret, and I would keep his.

  From her seat at the table, Mom helped me with breakfast anyway. Plates and glasses took themselves out of the cabinets and set themselves on the table. The refrigerator opened and the jug of orange juice floated over to the table and poured itself into the glasses.

  I cut up a couple of grapefruits and placed them, along with the cinnamon rolls, on the table, then took my empty plate and put it back in the cupboard.

  Mom frowned. “You’re not eating with us?”

  “Tristan’s picking me up soon. I just wanted to make breakfast so you didn’t have to.”

  She said nothing for a moment. Then, “You’re in love with him.”

  The air thickened, and I tensed, backed away. “Please don’t be upset.”

  She sighed remorsefully, and with it, the air thinned again. “I’m not upset. Not anymore. Tristan...he’s good to you. He’s good for you. We trust him now, even without your father watching through him. He’s proven himself.”

  Tristan had won my parents over. Despite his immunity to my dad’s remote vision. Despite them not knowing about his warning premonitions. He’d won them over because he was kind and respectful and supportive and dependable. Because he was Tristan.

  Mom rose and glided over to me. “Babydoll,” she murmured, and kissed my forehead.

  I crushed her with a hug. She’d accepted Tristan, and she’d called me Babydoll. “Thank you, Mom. Thank you so much.”

  She came to wait with me by the front window for him, and when he walked up the driveway, she opened the door. “Come on in for a minute, Tristan.”

  I shot him an alarmed look as he came in. My parents trusted him now, but this was the first time he’d have to talk to them since I’d told him we all had aliases. He could ruin it all by accidentally calling me Tessa.

  I wondered if he’d had a premonition about this.

  He gave me a wink—Relax, I got this—and said, “Hi, Sarah. Morning, Mrs. Spencer.”

  “Shelby mentioned she’s going to a dance at school on Friday night,” she said.

  “Yep. Winterball.”

  I’d seen posters for the dance at school, but hadn’t given it a thought, and Tristan had never mentioned it.

  “I assume you and Sarah are going too?” my mom asked.

  He shook his head. “Sarah doesn’t like crowds. I thought we’d do something on our own instead.”

  Mom’s hopeful smile fell, and she looked at me with such hurt and disappointment, I was sure she was about to cry.

  “I—I want to go to the dance,” I said before her tears could form, and forced my lips to curve up. “It’ll be fun.”

  She nodded with a happy sigh.

  * * *

  We walked to Tristan’s house, my mittened hand clasped in his gloved hand, my book bag slung over his shoulder. A few kids built snowmen and forts in their yards while their dads ran snow blowers down their driveways. The snow squeaked under our boots and little clouds puffed from our mouths with each breath.

  “Tristan,” I said, trying to sound casual, “can anyone else in your family...you know, do what you do?”

  His steps lost their rhythm for a moment, then found it again. When he spoke, his voice was soft, almost under his breath. “My mom has dreams about the future sometimes.”

  I inhaled, unsure if his answer surprised me or not. “Do her dreams always happen?”

  “Not always. The future is never definite, as my own premonitions prove. Sometimes she interprets her dream wrong, or something happens to change the course of events. But lots of things happen exactly as she dreamed them. She’s had dreams about you.”

  He said that last part casually, like an afterthought, but it surprised me so much I stopped short. My only possible future was to be killed by Dennis Connelly. Had Tristan’s mother seen my murder in her dreams? “Wh-what did she see?”

  He gave my hand a reassuring squeeze. “Only good things. She had her first dream about you ten years ago. In the dream we were little kids, like nine or ten years old. We were playing up in the tree house in our backyard.” As he said it, he looked out into the distance. “I wonder what happened to change the course of events and prevent that dream from happening.”

  I knew the answer: Dennis Connelly.

  “She had one more dream about you, two years ago,” Tristan said. “We were older in this one. She said I brought you home, and she gave you a hug and said, ‘Welcome to the family.’”

  “But why does she think that girl is me?”

  “Because of your wildflower eyes.”

  I blinked. “My eyes?”

  “She called me a few weeks ago and could tell something was wrong. I told her I kind of liked this new girl who seemed to like me too, but then she would get scared and run away. My mom asked me to describe her eyes. I thought it was a weird thing to ask, but I told her how they were green with flecks of color. She got all quiet for a minute. Then she told me about her dreams. She said she’s been waiting ten years for the girl with wildflower eyes to come into my life.”

  He wiped a tear from my cheek with his gloved finger. “Why does that make you sad?”

  “Because her dream won’t come true. It can’t.”

  “It will,” he said. “She believes you’re my future, Tessa.”

  Maybe he was right. That dream confirmed the hope I’d felt last night. If I was his future, that meant I actually would have a future.

  And I didn’t want a future if Tristan wasn’t in it.

  He put his arm around my shoulder. “I’ve put all my faith into her dr—”

  “My mom’s psychokinetic.” The words forced themselves out before I knew I was going to say them, like they’d been waiting for the slightest opportunity to be spoken. Now they hung heavily in the air.

  He froze, then pulled away from me. His face was stone.

  “That means,” I whispered, “she can move things without touching them.”

  “Tessa...”

  “Just this morning she set the table and poured the orange juice without ever leaving her chair. She can watch TV in the family room and switch channels without using the remote, all while folding the laundry upstairs and cutting up vegetables in the kitchen. She can lift furniture. She can crush cars. She doesn’t even need to see the object she wants to move. She just pictures it in her mind, and it happen
s.”

  He kept his eyes on mine. “Are you sure you want to tell me this?”

  I’d never been more sure of anything in my life. “If I’m your future, then you have to know my past.”

  After my revelation, Tristan took my hand, a strange, almost sorrowful expression on his face. He whisked me to his house and up to his room without a word. I was shivering with cold—or maybe it was apprehension and guilt.

  He plugged his iPod into his speakers, then sat with me on the bed. “Tell me.”

  “Where are Melissa and Philip?”

  “Melissa’s working her shift at the hospital. Philip should be back any second, but he’ll probably just go to his workshop. He won’t hear you.”

  I took a deep breath, and the words poured from my mouth like water from a fire hose.

  I told him about my father’s remote vision.

  About Jillian’s psychokinesis and her new ability to piggyback on our father’s mobile eye, and her failed attempt to develop one of her own.

  About Logan’s PK and his automatic learning ability of hypercognition.

  How my parents hadn’t trusted Tristan until just this morning because he was one of the rare people immune to my father’s remote vision.

  How my dad used his mobile eye now only a few times a day because of his headaches and bloody noses, and how Jillian had started getting them too.

  For over an hour, I told him everything about my family’s abilities, and then I stopped.

  The following silence was broken only by the soft music from the iPod and a muffled whirring from Philip’s workshop on the other side of the house.

  Tristan had said nothing the entire time. In the silence his awed expression turned into one of anticipation. “And what about you? What powers do you have?”

  Of course he would expect me to have a paranormal ability when everyone else in my family did. I gave him an apologetic smile. “I don’t have any,” I said, speaking around the brick in my throat. “None.”

  “None? Really?”