I Am Who? - Book 2

Chapter 33 - Shared Visions

"Bree?"

I could dimly hear Kotaro's voice as if he were far away. Realization was enveloping me in its arms. I'd had quiet fears that if my darkness overcame me again, I wouldn't be able to come back from it, but now...

"Bree. Look at me."

I did as he said, trying my hardest to regulate my breathing and think through the implications of the situation.

"We can figure this out together, okay?" Kotaro leaned closer to me, half leaving his chair behind. "I'm not going anywhere."

Realization struck home as my hearing returned. In his vision, I had lost control and not regained it, could that be some event still yet to happen?

"Are you sure what you saw was yesterday?" My voice was rough and scratchy in my own ears.

He nodded slowly in answer.

I leaned backwards, trying to force my sluggish brain into action. If what he had seen had supposedly been yesterday...a dull ache throbbed at the base of my skull as I tried to puzzle through the information. In his vision, Kotaro had seen me completely lose myself, but in reality...he had stopped me. He'd seen what the future might be, and he'd changed it.

Hope flared to life in my heart amid the darkness. If he could somehow see my future, then maybe, just maybe, we could work together, and perhaps, our efforts would keep me from falling off the knife edge where I was perched. Shooting a searching glance at Kotaro, I could see that he'd come to the same conclusion by the way he was looking at me.

"Do you want to try to figure out how it works?" My voice was steadier now, but my heart was beating a rhythm of bridled excitement at the thought that I might have the chance to learn more about this whole Seer thing through him.

Kotaro smirked. "I thought you'd never ask."

His playful tone was back, and honestly, I felt close to jumping up and down. After learning I was the last of my kind, I had thought I would never know what was happening inside me beyond vague assumptions. Now, however, the possibility that I could learn how to handle my visions rather than being controlled by them had appeared, and I was quietly ecstatic.

"I don't know how to trigger it." I shrugged. "Since it was never my attention to cause it to happen, I don't know if or when it will happen again."

"I guess we'll just have to experiment and replicate what happened." He raised a brow.

Pushing back through the memories, I tried to remember the details in search of the similarities I might find between the two occurrences. Both times, I'd held onto him, hoping we could stay together despite what might try to tear us apart. I'd held onto him—I blinked quickly, a blush coloring my cheeks.

"Do you mind if we hold hands?" The blunt honesty in Kotaro's voice and face caught me off guard, and I could only shake my head "no" in answer.

He reached over and took hold of my hand, and I felt my heartbeat pound heavily in my chest. How could he be so calm in moments like these? How was it fair that I felt a blush heating my cheeks, but he seemed as relaxed as if this was the most natural thing?

"Relax." His voice was low, quiet, and did nothing to help me relax. "Just close your eyes and don't think about anything." He said softly.

I closed my eyes, but my brain refused to be quieted. I focused on the callouses of his hand as he held onto me and on the sound of his breathing, but that only proved to make me more tense. I couldn't even think about the fact that I was trying to replicate an event in an attempt to come up with a better plan than we'd had so far. Just before I pulled my hand out of his and told him this wasn't working, an image burst to life.