The Unwanted

Caleb narrowed his eyes. “So that means you don’t feel safe doing it now?”

“That’s exactly what it means,” she said. Destin rubbed her hands over her face and then drove her fingers through her hair. The words danced on the back of her tongue, fighting to be free, and for once, she decided, to hell with pride. “You left me, Caleb. You broke my heart and you left me. I don’t want to hear this shit that you kept waiting for me to ask you to stay. If you wanted to stay, then you should have stayed. I read emotions and you’ve always known how to block me out. I didn’t know what you were thinking, what you were feeling. All I knew was that you were leaving me… leaving me and breaking my heart. How could I feel safe with you after that?”

Turning her back to him, she slipped back into her room. Then she locked the door. Pressing her back to it, she sank down to the floor and stared off into nothingness.

All I knew was that you were leaving me…leaving me and breaking my heart.

Caleb stared, a little dumbfounded, at the closed door in front of him.

He’d gone after her. After she handed him that little gem, he’d reached for her, but she’d moved away too quick and before he could catch up with her, she’d shut the door, practically in his face.

He swiped a hand over his damp brow and started to pace. She hadn’t said anything to him that day. He’d asked if things were ever going to change…or just stay the same. Her response had been easy and flippant… What’s wrong with how they are now?

Well, other than all sorts of things, he guessed he understood where she was coming from. They were great in bed, they never fought and they had so much in common; it was like they’d been cut from the same cloth.

Except it had stayed that way, just that way, for the entire time they were together. If he tried to take things deeper, she pulled away. If he tried to get her to open up to him, she closed down.

When he’d told her he was leaving, she hadn’t said a word.

She’d just sat by and watched him pack and she never said a thing.

When he walked out the door, she said nothing. Like it didn’t matter. Like they didn’t matter. He had been dying inside, all but ready to beg for her to give him something. Anything.

But it hadn’t ever happened.

And that was just the misery on the personal front. It didn’t even tap into what was screwed up with them, hell, with Destin, period, and she wasn’t going to open up about that because she wouldn’t admit there was a problem.

Problems…shit.

Turning away from the closed door, he ground the heels of his hands against his eye sockets. They had problems, all right. Destin barely slept without nightmares and her nightmares bled over into him because of how tightly they’d been connected.

Sometimes he could be five hundred miles away working with another psychic and he’d still have the nightmares. He’d even have his shields up and she’d find a way to pull him in. Yeah, he had solid shields—he had to develop them just to keep her gift from driving him insane, but while he’d been able to keep her from reading him, he’d never been as skilled at keeping her emotions on the outside. At keeping the two of them untangled. They’d been so twisted up in each other sometimes he forgot where he existed and where she began.

There had been times when the line between reality and her nightmares had started to dissolve and he’d told her they needed to find a way to fix it.

But she hadn’t seen a problem. Told him there wasn’t anything to fix. He was the one with the problem.

But Caleb had never been assaulted.

Destin had…although she hid from it.

It was where her gift had come from.

He knew it, even if she wouldn’t acknowledge it.

When he’d tried to press her, to get her to see that there were problems, things they didn’t understand affecting their connection, it had only gotten worse.

Physically for him, and for her. Whether it had been brought on by stress or something else, he didn’t know. But he’d started suffering from headaches that almost pushed him into blackouts. Nights passed where he didn’t sleep at all and he knew she wasn’t faring any better.

Then that case…

The door opened. Turning around, he found himself staring at a stranger. Cool-eyed, remote and her face void of expression, Destin stared at him. Her hair was damp and she was dressed in jeans, a skinny-strapped tank top and a pair of beat-up running shoes. She had a weapon strapped into place and a jacket slung over her arm.

She eyed him with disdain. “You plan on doing this job wearing those clothes around the campus all day?”

Caleb looked down and realized he was still wearing his workout gear.

Shit, how much time had he spent staring at the door and thinking about the end of them? Thinking about what she’d said?

“No.” He cleared his throat and turned away. “Just give me fifteen minutes.”

Chapter Six

“I haven’t ever seen any place where people run so much.” Destin watched yet another runner cut around them, heading up the winding streets that made up much of the area around the University of Virginia.

“They run because there’s no place to park. Driving isn’t an option,” Caleb said blandly.

She grimaced. It sounded laughable, but it might almost be true. Twenty minutes trying to find a parking space. “We’re calling a cab from here on out,” she said, following the ebb and flow of people.

A police car slowed just ahead as students thronged around one of the crosswalks. “Campus police,” she murmured.

“Yeah. The place has its own police department. So far, they haven’t found anything.”

She gave him a sidelong look. “I figured that. If they had, we wouldn’t be here, would we?”

Sighing, he dipped a hand into his pocket to touch the ID Oz had provided for him. It would get them around on campus, but it wasn’t going to open any doors if they had to ask questions. His Bureau ID wasn’t going to help there either, because unless he had a reason to be there, people weren’t as likely to talk.

In a smaller town, maybe. And it was always possible he could find a few people who’d talk out of curiosity, but the people who would have the answers weren’t the ones who’d answer questions just for the hell of it.

“If you keep staring so hard at that cop car, somebody is going to notice,” Destin pointed out.

He cut a look her way and grimaced. “Sorry. Trying to figure out how to handle this. It’s new territory for me.”

“Wow. You mean there’s something you’re not perfectly equipped to handle?” She blinked at him as she slowed to a stop in front of a storefront. “What exactly do you suppose makes your clothes fabulously British or un-British?”

Caleb shot a look at the display in the window. “If that’s fabulously British, then I’m going to be forever unfabulous.”

Somebody bumped into him.

Just one of those accidental bumps…a rush of images swelled inside his head and he whipped around to stare, the movement automatic even though it was useless.

A girl on the ground. Struggling. Hands gripping her wrists while a man laughed. Grunts, more laughter, a little ragged this time, while the girl whimpered. She went to scream, but it was cut off by a cruel hand against her mouth.