Trance by Kelly Meding Read Free Book Online Page B

chin; and I allowed him to tilt my head up. His flecked eyes bore down on me, mesmerizing and kind. A gentle look—one I’d not receivedfrom a man in too many years. It made my stomach flip in a pleasant way.
    “I’m sorry if I insulted you.” His breath smelled like apples. “That wasn’t my intention. The world rocked sideways last night, and I’m still getting back on my feet.”
    “I’m grateful you want to help, Gage, but trusting people always comes with a price.” I’d learned that lesson the hard way—multiple times.
    “Not always, Teresa. I’m not going to buy you dinner and then demand sex.” He sucked in his lower lip, adopting that scrunched, thoughtful look I’d seen twice in the last fifteen minutes. For a guy with learned control over his five enhanced senses, his face was pretty easy to read. “We may have been kids together a lifetime ago, but in so many ways we just met. I’m not expecting you to hand me your trust immediately, just hoping you’ll give me a chance to earn it.”
    He was right. I didn’t know the adult standing in front of me, or what he was capable of doing (or lying about). History showed that my judgment sucked when it came to trusting men—especially when my last boyfriend abused that trust so badly. I knew better.
    Yet for some reason, on an instinctual level built upon Meta kinship and the girlish crush of the child I’d once been, I knew I
could
trust him. Eventually.
    Enough to let him buy me dinner.
    We phoned in a pizza and made polite conversation until it arrived. I attempted to pick his brain one question at a timeover pepperoni and extra cheese, but hit wall after metaphorical wall when my questions delved deeper than surface stuff. I found out he’d been sent to St. Louis after the War, worked as a finishing carpenter in his early twenties, and then moved to Oregon. He’d lived twenty miles away from me for the last three years.
    He wouldn’t talk about what brought him to Oregon or engage in reverse questioning. I didn’t enjoy talking about my meager existence in the service industry or the hell I’d made of my life, but I would have liked some personal interest on his part.
    “Foster homes and therapy seem to be the norm for us,” I said, once again leading the topic. “I wonder if the others had the same problems adjusting to life-after-theft.”
    “After what?”
    “After our powers were stolen and our lives as we knew them shattered to bits. You know, I had the same damned nightmares for three years?” My stomach twisted at the recollection, the pizza no longer sitting well.
    Gage’s left hand curled around the edge of the table. “Nightmares about that last day in the park?”
    A tremor wracked my spine. I have never felt terror again in my life like the terror I experienced that day. Encompassing, mortifying, and ugly, it was fear of certain death in the most gruesome manner imaginable.
    “Yes,” I said when I found my voice. “A variation of it, anyway. Sometimes I’d dream about my dad leading the Banes toward us kids, shouting orders to capture first and kill later. It would be him coming up the steps first.” Things got fuzzyafter that charge, because that’s when the gut-twisting, brain-numbing power loss began.
    Gage’s right hand reached across the plastic table and squeezed my left. I tucked my fingers around his and held tight, focusing on his warmth. The nightmare had not returned in more than a decade, but the emotions behind it still ran deep and threatened to return in a wave of hot tears. Too bad memories didn’t come with an emotional mute button.
    “Hinder was a good man,” Gage said. “I remember how bravely he fought, even before the War, and how proudly he led his Corps Unit.”
    I rubbed my free hand across my forehead, as if the motion could erase the dream’s images from my conscious mind. “One of my shrinks used to say that the dream was my subconscious mind’s way of dealing with my own