Page 27 of City of Love

She was blushing again, but didn’t shy away. “Okay, so when might we have an opportunity to practice this dance in person?”

Right this very minute would have been nice, if things hadn’t suddenly gone to hell in the last twenty-four hours. But it had, and his shoulders dropped as he sank further into his chair.

Good God, he was an asshole. He’d reached out to her this morning to alert her to the telepathic overflow and to assess this new possibility of interdimensional telepathy. At least, that’s what he’d told himself. Instead, he’d gotten lost in the sound of her laughter, and her vulnerable, gorgeous, enthusiasm, and made the whole thing worse. For both of them. He couldn’t remember ever being so irresponsible with his actions.

Or maybe he was only now seeing it.

He cleared his throat. “To be perfectly honest, I’m not entirely sure that’s the best—”

“Ohhhh—”

“Lexi?”

At first, he thought she was reacting to his negative thoughts, or his mention of the portal.

“Miss Cross?”

But that wasn’t it.

Abruptly pulled out of the present, Lexi was in a waking dream. He could see it right along with her, through her eyes.

And it was bad.

She sat in a small, confined room. Someplace sterile and industrial, like a storage closet. Her hands were bound behind her back, and there was a loud whining noise waxing and waning. Her forehead throbbed with a burning pain. She was scared. So scared. And calling out for him.

“I’m here, Lexi, I’m right here!” Gideon shouted, not only mentally, but out loud in his living room. But that wasn’t going to work. He was shouting to her in the here and now, whereas she was calling for him in a vision, in a place and time that hadn’t yet occurred. There was nothing he could do but wait for the dream to play out, side by side with her.

The imagery switched to a different scene. Lexi down on a tiled floor, glass cutting into her bloodied knees, panic washing through her. It switched again, and again she was kneeling, this time a clean scent of hay surrounded her, and dirt and straw covered the ground beneath her. She looked at her hands, her palms covered in blood. So much blood. And grief. Oh God, the confusion and grief. Over what, neither of them knew. He experienced it all, right along with her.

“Lexi! Lexi, wake up. You’re having a vision. I’m right here.”

She coughed. Her head jerked and her eyes fluttered open. She was confused briefly, not remembering that he was there.

“Lexi?” he said gently.

There was silence for a moment while she sorted things out. “Gideon?”

“I’m right here.”

“Were you… were you here the whole time?”

“Yes. I saw what you saw. All of it,” he said, and waited for her to respond. When she didn’t, he continued. “Those images, have you seen them before?”

“No, they’re new. And I can’t say I’m particularly excited about them.” She gave a short, forced laugh, trying to put up a brave, almost nonchalant front, but she was petrified.

“Lexi…” She didn’t respond, and her thoughts were so filled with panic he couldn’t make them out as clearly as before. Anxiety and fear put a definite stress on their telepathic connection. “We’ll figure this out together. I won’t let anything bad happen to you. Okay?”

She silently nodded, but didn’t believe he could do anything about it.

“But you’re over there. I’m here.”

“And for now, that’s probably the safest thing. In fact, until we understand what happened last night with Vik and Alana, it’s best if you stay there. We can revisit this—”

“No! Gideon, no, I want to come back!”

He felt the panic rising in her again.

“Anyway, it doesn’t work like that,” she said. “My visions, I can’t out-guess them. Believe me, I’ve had twenty-some years to learn that doing something to try and avoid a vision is just as likely to be the path that causes it to occur.” She paused. “Besides, that room I was in, the one where my hands were bound…” Her heart rate rose and his sped up to match it. “...there were fluorescent lights in that room. I saw them. It couldn’t have been in your world. It was in mine.”

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