Earthbound

It’s mine.

My hands are shaking too hard to undo the strings. “Benson? Can you please?”

He takes the delicate fabric and holds it in his hand for a few seconds before untying the thin strings to reveals a heavy pendant that glints silver and red.

It’s the one from my vision.

He looks down at the necklace with a tight expression. “So this will bring everything back?”

“I think so.”

He tries to speak, but his voice cracks and he stays silent for another few seconds. “And then what?” he finally asks, not looking up to meet my eyes.

I step forward and he draws the necklace closer, as though to keep it from me, but I’m not reaching for it. I run my hands up and down his arms the way he so often has with me.

Slowly.

Calmly.

Somehow I have to help Benson deal with all this. Help him see I still need him—need the guy who has seen me through absolute hell the last week. He didn’t ask for this, wouldn’t have had anything to do with this if I hadn’t walked into his life. Come to the library for help.

Help. If only he knew then what he was getting into.

My hands freeze, and the words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. “Benson, if you could go back in time to the day we met, and you knew everything that was going to happen, would you opt out?”

He looks down at me, and his eyes are hollow.

And he thinks.

Really thinks.

A prickle of annoyance threatens at his hesitance, but I stamp it down. It’s an important question and not one to be taken lightly.

“No,” he finally whispers.

“Me either. And this,” I say, pointing at his fist, still clenched around the necklace, the thin chain spilling out like sand, “isn’t going to change things. I don’t care what Rebecca thinks she wants, Benson. I want you. All this is going to do is give us answers.”

“You don’t understand,” he whispers. “You won’t feel the same.”

“Benson Ryder, put that necklace down!” I snap.

He drops the necklace on the trunk of the car with a thud, wary and confused. As soon as it’s out of his hand, I push my arms inside his jacket, just under his shirt. He shudders when my fingers touch his bare skin.

“Benson?” My heart beats wildly.

He just looks at me, and I could drown in the pain in his eyes.

“I love you. You.” I kiss his bottom lip, more of a gentle brush of skin than a kiss. Tingles spread through my body and I suppress a smile.

I said it.

I meant it.

I stand on tiptoe and kiss the scrapes on his face, then his nose, his cheeks. I let my hands slide up his neck and pull him down to me, kissing him gently, coaxing him with my mouth. “She can’t change how I feel,” I murmur against his lips.

“You don’t know that,” he whispers, and his voice is filled with an agony I’m desperate to heal.

I entwine our fingers and hold them against my heart. “I do. You are the best thing that ever happened to me, and I think you’ve more than proved the lengths you’ll go to for me.” I kiss his knuckles, one at a time, avoiding the reddened, broken skin on his right hand. “Now it’s my turn to prove it to you.”

I look up at him, and his entire face is tight with an emotion I can’t quite read. He draws in a ragged gasp and pulls his hand away. He turns halfway and picks up the necklace. “Shall I?” he whispers with near reverence.

“P-please,” I stutter.

He lifts the necklace, and rubies sparkle in a beam of sunlight. The chain is long, and Benson holds it up and gestures for me to turn around. Then the pendant hangs in front of my face, still suspended from Benson’s fingers. He hesitates, and I feel his breath close to my ear—in and out in a loud hiss.

“No matter what happens next,” he whispers, “I love you too.”

He drops the necklace over my head.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The instant the metal touches my skin, I’m in a whirlwind of light and color that flashes before my eyes, brilliant, excruciating, blinding in its radiance. My fingertips dig into Benson’s arm as I try to find something to grasp onto to keep from being carried away.

But the storm rages only in my mind, and soon I have to close my eyes to the world and try to force the turmoil inside me to calm, to hush to a reasonable volume. As the pain builds, I grasp for respite. Rebecca has done this before; she knows how to manage it. Desperate, I surrender my mind to her and somehow she takes the invading burst of memories from me.

They solidify, somehow, though it’s still like watching a movie in fast-forward. Scenes in a montage that flash before my eyes for only the briefest of instants before they’re gone—long before I can make sense of them. But soon they grow bright again, wild; Rebecca can’t handle them either.

“Benson, I can’t stop it!”

The pressure is still rising inside my head and I clutch at my temples, willing it to slow, to just give me a moment of rest. An instant to catch my breath. I can feel Rebecca trying to do the same thing, but nothing is working and the pressure is building, pushing out against my skull until I’m afraid my cranial bones are going to literally burst.

She’s no good to us if her brain is destroyed. The words skitter through my mind and now I understand what they were worried about.

Someone’s screaming and I think it’s me.

Hands are on me, arms wrapped around me, and even though my eyes are open again, I see only blackness. Images race, and just as I’m ready to give up, I see a flash of gold in the smeared scenes.

“Quinn, help me,” I whisper through clenched teeth that rattle as I speak.

And then his eyes are there, still and green amid a sickly sea of memories. I focus on those eyes and the crazed turbulence ebbs the tiniest bit.

But it’s enough.

I grasp for control and it’s like swimming through tar toward the dimmest of lights. But it’s there. Quinn’s eyes sustain my equilibrium and Rebecca’s mind and mine meld—we are one, we are us—and I know what to do. Together, our thoughts reach out like a net to bridle the energy that’s been poured into me and somehow, I hold it. It fills every inch of me until I swear my skin must be stretched to bursting, but this time I can contain it.

My breath slows and when I blink again, a fuzzy green greets me. It takes a while longer before I can see the sun-imbued leaves clearly, but eventually my focus returns. My head is on Benson’s lap and I’m lying on the sparse grass just behind the Honda. I try to move and everything hurts. After a few seconds I give up and just turn my eyes to Benson.

The forest is a glade of silence until Benson breaks it with a deafening whisper. “Are you okay?”

I nod. I ache like I’ve been struck by lightning, but I’m okay. I’m more than okay.

I’m full.

But I don’t have words to express that; not ones that he would understand. I wouldn’t have understood before either. It’s beyond normal human comprehension.

I must be beyond human comprehension.