Page 89 of The Fate Factor

“What you said about the night we met. Did you mean that? You… felt something that night?”

He makes a face and pushes his hair back. “You must think I’m an asshole.”

I scrunch my nose. “What? Why?”

“I was there with Becca. I would never have acted on it, I just… you were so beautiful. It seemed almost… important.” He laughs, bewildered, and champagne bubbles rise in my blood.

“I don’t think you’re an asshole. I think you’re probably better than most to feel guilty over it even now, after… everything. But I also think I knew that about you from that first night. That’s why I told you what I saw, why I didn’t just run away. I could just tell you were good.”

He tilts his head, watching me with an expression that says there are things he knows about me too. That he can feel something coming. “I’m glad you did tell me,” he says carefully.

“It’s just…” I pause to press a kiss to the freckle beneath his collarbone, smoothing the hair on his chest. The words feel too big for my mouth after all of this time, but I have to tell him. I want to. This is a secret I want to be in on together. “There was something else.”

We’re so close I feel the tiny stiffening in his spine. His hips tilt a fraction of an inch away. “Something else in the vision?”

I nod, my lip between my teeth.

“What?”

“This.”

Jamie props himself on his elbow, looking down at me. “This… what?”

“This us. I saw you and mehere, Jamie. This hotel room.” I sit up and tug the sheet over my naked chest, feeling suddenly exposed. I doubt it after everything else, but there’s still the tiniest possibility he’ll think I’m crazy. “I recognized the room when we got here last night. That’s why I asked if you’d been here before.”

He sits all the way up too, staring at me with an unreadable expression, maybe the first Ihaven’tbeen able to read. The champagne bubbles fizz faster, close to bursting. “Say something, please.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t tell me,” he says, running a hand over his mouth.

For a true believer like Jamie, he doesn’t look happy or impressed like I thought he would. I start to wonder if it was a mistake, confessing this. “Are you mad?”

“No.” He shakes off his expression and slides his hand up my neck and into my hair. Then drops it just as quickly. “I’m not mad.”

“You’re something.”

“I’m just—You knew this whole time?”

“I wasn’t sure. Some things changed and—”

“What do you mean? What things?”

My mouth snaps shut. I’m suddenly hesitant to list them out. It doesn’t matter because there are more things that came true than things that changed, but I don’t want to give voice to the different ones. Not with the way he’s looking at me. There’s still a big question that Jamie wants an answer to and there’s no use in casting doubt on his hope for that by picking this apart. We’re here. It happened. It’s happening.

“It was just a few details,” I say lamely. “Are you okay?”

“I’m… letting it sink in.” His voice is off. The knot in my stomach pulls tighter.

“I didn’t tell you because I wanted to see if it would happen on its own. And it did!”

“Well… not entirely on its own,” he says, his face pinched in confusion. “Because you knew.”

I bite my lip again. “Right.”

He pulls away from me and runs a hand through his hair. Cold trickles down my spine at that nervous tic. He’s anxious, and I don’t know why. I was entirely unprepared for this reaction.

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