Page 36 of Reclaiming Chaos
I opened the door.
She was standing in the doorway to the bathroom, a towel wrapped around her wet body.
“Sorry,” I said, unable to look away.
“I was just taking a bath,” she said, gesturing over her shoulder.
“Um.” I cleared my throat. “The pizza I ordered just arrived if you’re hungry.”
“I’m starving.” The pretty pink color staining her cheeks dipped down her chest and disappeared beneath the towel.
“Right. Uh. I’ll just go, um…” I didn’t finish the sentence as I pulled the door closed behind me.
I’d made our plates and was pouring her a glass of wine when she walked into the kitchen. I handed it to her, and she sniffed it before taking a sip.
A grin split her lip. “How did you know this was my favorite?”
“Power of observation.” I grabbed a beer and led her into the dining room, where the pizza box sat in the middle of the table. “You can tell a lot about a person by what they keep in the fridge.”
“Ah, that’s right. You’ve been to my house.”
“And you bought me a cake.”
“Well.” Her cheeks flushed again. “What kind of birthday would it be without a cake?”
“You made an impression. Not even the team knew it was my birthday.”
I pulled back her chair for her before taking my own in the seat next to her. After grabbing a slice of pizza and taking a few bites, I chipped away at the iceberg filling the room. “Tell me about you.”
“Not much to tell. I spent my informative youth being shuttled from one shrink to another after telling my parents about my gift. When the third one wanted to send me for more testing, I decided that sharing my predictions might not necessarily be a good thing and decided to keep them to myself.”
“Your parents didn’t understand?”
She shook her head. “I stopped sharing when I turned eight years old. Well, that is, until I turned sixteen.”
“What happened at sixteen?”
“I tried to warn my dad not to drive. I told him that he and my mom would both die and begged them to stay home for that night.”
I knew how this story ended. Both parents died when she was sixteen years old. It was in her file. “They didn’t listen?”
“You have my file. You know the answer to that.”
“You’re right, I do. What I can’t understand is why, after all the shrinks who thought you were crazy and losing your parents, you still signed up to participate in a trial at your college.”
“Easy answer. I needed the money and didn’t see the future harm.”
“Why didn’t you see the harm? You see everything else,” I said before taking a bite of my pizza. The melted cheese was heaven to my mouth.
“I had my future all planned out. At least until my first prediction that included you. I was twenty at the time. You were twenty-three.”
I slowly lowered my pizza to the plate. Five years ago, my life had changed on a dime. No one knew that, not even my family. My heart raced as I stared at her. My stomach tightened into knots.
“Exactly what prediction did you make?”
“You were shot in an abandoned alleyway chasing a criminal. He quit running and turned around to finish the job when he realized you were wounded.”
My chest tightened, making it difficult to breathe.
