Page 28 of Betrayed Bullied Mate

“I started to suppress the visions as much as I could. It requires constant vigilance, like something you always have to keep in the back of your mind. Like watching a pot so it doesn’t boil. Does that make sense?”

“It sounds hard,” I say, running the back of my hand over her bangs, which are slicked to her forehead with sweat.

“Sometimes,” she says, glancing down at the bed. “But the worst part is that suppressing them gives me these really bad migraines. I would spend days in bed, writhing in pain, just waiting for them to pass. It was hard to decide which was worse—visions of people in terrible pain or experiencing that pain myself. And it wasn’t like not having the visions made it so the stuff didn’t happen.”

“Have you ever tried to stop something you saw in a vision from happening?”

“Yeah,” she says, picking at a loose thread on the bed. “Nobody believed me. I had a vision of a forest fire once and tried to alert the park rangers and the fire department that it was going to happen, but when you say, Hey, there’s going to be a forest fire somewhere in the country, or even in the world, because someone didn’t put out a fire, they just kind of hang up the phone on you. Or, they think you’re a pyromaniac.”

“Fuck,” I say, thinking about how she must have felt.

“Those fires in Indiana two years ago,” she says, glancing up at me. “Did you hear about those?”

“Yeah, they were devastating.”

“Yeah—and if—I mean, I had a chance to stop them. And I couldn’t.”

“You know that’s not your fault.”

“It’s just—” she finally rips the thread clear from the duvet and gives me a sheepish look. “It’s frustrating because it’s like—why give me the visions if I can’t do anything about what happens? It’s like a punishment for something.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” I say, shaking my head and scooting closer to her. “Maybe it’s just something you need to practice on. Something you need guidance in.”

“Maybe,” she says, “But who would I even talk to about something like that? Everyone around here thinks I’m a screwball when I bring it up.”

“Well,” I grin, “I happen to work somewhere with a whole bunch of screwballs. There’s surely someone in another department who will know how to help you out.”

“Okay.” Linnea takes another deep breath, then pulls her shoulders back. “I’m going to tell you about the vision I just had.”

“Okay,” I say, seeing the pain and fear on her face and wishing there was a way I could take this pain from her.

“There was this big, gray building,” she says, her face pinching in concentration. If she hadn’t just been screaming in this bed, I might lean forward and tell her how cute she looks, but I don’t. I hold those feelings back and listen.

Chapter 16 - Linnea

As I start to tell Aris about the vision I had, I realize I haven’t shared one with another person since I tried to tell my mom about the carpool vision. I don’t realize the weight that’s been on my chest, keeping everything to myself, until I start to tell Aris and feel it lifting, letting him take on some of that weight for me.

I’ve been living with these visions for so long that I forgot it was even possible to tell someone else. I think back through the years and wonder what it would have felt like to have someone I could share them with—if I wouldn’t have felt so overwhelmed and depressed.

“Trees were blooming with cherry blossoms everywhere. I could smell them,” I say. “I know there are lots of places with cherry blossoms, so it’s not very helpful, but they just really stood out to me. There was a nice breeze, and behind the building was… A river? I think?”

Aris’s face is incredibly serious, and he’s listening to me like he’ll be tested on it later.

“There was a sign at the front, but—I usually can’t read stuff in the visions. I don’t know why; it’s like I can’t focus enough to see the letters or words. There was nobody around outside, which was weird. But I went inside the building, it was strange. This security guard took some things from me I didn’t even know I had—a phone and a gun—and then scanned my eye. He seemed really annoyed with me that I didn’t know what he wanted, but he couldn’t talk to me or anything. He mostly grunted.”

A wrinkle forms in Aris’s brow and he leans forward. I try to keep my eyes on his face, but they keep drifting down to his arms, how they’re flexing, his abs rippling down into the boxers he’s thrown on. My hands itch to reach out and touch him, feel his warm skin under mine, but I have to keep going with the story.

“He pointed me to a set of stairs, but I didn’t climb them right away. I stopped to look at this—this sphere up on the ceiling, with a bunch of little lights on it. It was beautiful, but when I have visions, they have a way of pushing me along. I didn’t have a chance to really look at it.”

“Was it a globe?” Aris asks, tipping his head down and looking up at me. I blink, pulling back a bit, surprised. Aris knows the place I saw in my vision?

“It—yeah, I think it was. I could make out the countries. I remember I found North America. I was trying to figure out what the different colors—”

“I don’t mean to rush you,” he says, his voice coming fast and clipped, “But I really need to know what happens in the rest of the vision.”

I swallow, not liking the intense look on Aris’s face. Like he might stare a hole straight through my head. From the expression he’s wearing, it looks like he’s recognizing some elements of what I saw. I think again of myself, bleeding out and screaming, and wonder if Aris will be able to see through me, be able to know through our bond that I saw that terrible thing happening to myself.

“I went up the stairs,” I say, tearing myself free from my thoughts and taking another sip of the water, though it does nothing to soothe my raw throat. “As I did, I realized it was a really, really big place. While everything was happening, I could also hear you. I knew you were holding me, but it was like trying to see you through a fog.”

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