“Yeah. I can see how you’d think that.” I looked around, and it was true. Itwaspeaceful. The sparkling pool with comfortable seats arranged around it. The swing. The fields and woods.
Not a hint of the stress and chaos of the past year.
I sighed and sat on the swing. “I get the feeling you have questions for me.”
She gave me a wry look. “Am I that obvious?”
“Not at all. But my best friend and I talked about boys almost incessantly from the time we were twelve years old. Ex-girlfriends wanting to know all about the current girlfriend was a biggie.”
She laughed and sat down on a lounge chair and swung her feet up, leaning back. “Ah. This is so restful. I could sit here all day. You know that Jack and I weren’t like that, right?”
“I know.” I realized I was touching the tiger’s eye pendant he’d given me and put my hand on my lap. “I also know you were the most important person in his life for a very long time.”
“And he was mine, except for my sister. I’m sure, from the little Jack mentioned to us, that you know all about how close you can get to someone when you survive dangerous times with them.”
“I do know.” We sat in silence for a minute or two, while I idly pushed the swing into motion with one foot. “And then there was Alaric.”
“And then there was Alaric.” She sighed. “I don’t know if anything would have ever happened between me and Jack, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“I’m not—”
“I would be.”
I nodded. She wasn’t wrong.
“But I don’t think so. Jack thought he felt something romantic for me, but I believe it was more the danger thing, not to discount his feelings. And I loved him and always will, but not in a relationship way. More like a brother.” She gave me a direct look. “I know you know the difference. There was what I felt and still feel for Jack, and then there was what I feel for Alaric. A steady fire burning in the homestead compared to a raging conflagration.”
“Or a typhoon,” I said ruefully. “A tsunami.”
She grinned. “I know. Jack feels the same way about you. He told us he loves you. Jack, one of the most deadly and stoic warriors I’ve ever fought with, stood there grinning and told us he loves you and you love him back. And that he’s never been happier in his life.”
A wave of warmth swept through me. “I feel the same way about him.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Did Jack mention that I’m an empath?”
I sat straight up on the swing. “You’rewhat?”
“Guess not,” she said ruefully.
I fumed for a moment or two and then relaxed back into the seat. There wasn’t anything in my emotions that I’d be ashamed to tell anyone about, except …
“Hey. If you felt that bit where Alaric scared me, I just—”
“Relax. He terrifies everyone. He doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. Parents used to warn their children to be good, or he’d come get them, like some kind of boogeyman, because he was the most powerful high priest in the history of Atlantis. It hurt him, so I put a stop to it when I found out.” Her face hardened, and I had no doubt at all that this small woman could easily cow an entire continent into submission.
“What’s it like, being an empath?” I really wanted to ask what she felt from me, but I was embarrassed to ask.
“Horrible, most of the time. Exhausting. Emotions barrage me from all sides, everywhere I go. I learned early on to build a mental wall against it, but that’s tiring, too. See, right now I’m too worn out from the past couple of days to shield, so I just felt the sympathy and understanding you felt when I said that.” She said it so matter-of-factly that it didn’t embarrass me at all.
“Well, I don’t know if it’s sympathy so much as empathy. It’s exhausting having to protect myself from any possibility that someone might touch me. And …”
“Isolating?”
“Exactly.”
