Witness by Jamie Magee Read Free Book Online

I whispered.
    His eyes locked with mine as he kept his pace. “How long…how long have you been talking to him?” he demanded in a low tone.
    “A while,” I mumbled.
    His jaw tightened as he balled his hands into a fist.
    “I…look…all I do is text…I wanted him to think I was asleep – blind…so he would leave us alone...buy us time.”
    He shook his head from side to side as he kept his pace. “Time…we’re out of time – our chance to leave here has come and gone.”
    “It’s not gone…just delayed.”
    He stopped his pace and stared at me. Instantly, almost defensively, I raised my imaginary glass wall in my mind; I didn’t want him to see me right now…obviously, he had already seen more that I would have ever wanted him to.
    “It’s gone, Charlie.”
    “Austin will come back. That Landen guy is probably still here…I think you need to calm down.”
    He tightened his jaw and let out a deep breath. “You were right…we are dangerous…I’m dangerous, and another dimension doesn’t deserve the darkness we’d bring…we aren’t leaving here – not now…I’ve seen too much.”
    My eyes locked with his; I focused on him, wanting to see what he’d seen. Draven slowly stepped forward and crawled onto the bed next to me. He reached his hand for the side of face and pulled me within inches of his eyes. “I’m not letting you see…I can’t…I just can’t,” he whispered. I leaned closer to him and let my lips rest on his; he kissed me back with a powerful force full of passion and anger. We fell back on the bed. I wrapped my legs around his and pulled his face gently away from mine. “I may not be able to see it…but I can feel it…tell me why you’re so scared…mad.”
    His eyes fell from mine as he rolled to my side and stared at the ceiling. I lay there, trying to calm my beating heart, trying to resist the urge to just fall into his embrace and leave my worries and questions for another time.
    “I don’t know what’s happening to me…how to explain it,” he said quietly.
    I rolled to my side and pulled myself up on one arm so I could see his intense green eyes more clearly. “Tell me what just happened…that book - where did it come from?”
    His eyes moved to mine. “Listen…I know seeing hasn’t come back to you, that you’re not as strong or confident as you were before that demon came into our life…so I don’t even know if I can explain it….I don’t know if I understand it.”
    “I’m not an idiot. You know my memory is just under the surface. Explain it…if I don’t understand it, I’ll tell you…it can only help make me stronger.”
    He slowly turned his head from side to side as his eyes moved to the ceiling. “Fine…when I heard you say you were afraid, I saw you...I saw you in the driveway...the rearview mirror...his car…you running in the house and staring out the window, waiting for him to come.”
    His eyes moved back to mine, and I held my breath. I was waiting for him to ask me why I was in his dad’s truck. I ignored the pause he gave and nodded for him to go on.
    “Seeing is different for me now….I don’t have to look at someone to see a memory; if I’ve seen it before, it’s now mine and I call it back at will. I can ‘see’ it again without the person showing me.”
    “Every memory – it’s now yours?” I mumbled.
    “Yeah…” His eyes moved back to ceiling. “It’s like having a library of memories – doorways to step through. The night of your accident, you showed me everything, every word he ever said to you...his house here...everything.
    “Just now, I was mad that he was following you here…I used your memory – the one of his house – and I went there, to find him. On his desk in his study, I saw his phone, and I read the texts you sent him back and forth today…” His jaw clenched, and his eyes were fierce. “I grabbed the book on the desk and smashed the phone as hard as I could. He must have came home or