Anchor

Chapter Sixteen

I locked my fingers together, bringing my hands to my heart and something deep within me knew what he was going to say.

She was like me in more ways than just seeing souls.

"She caught me and she was so mad..." He looked at the sky, smiling dreamily, like he was remembering the sweet memory, a moment lost in time. "She screamed at me and grabbed me by the arm. I'd never seen her that mad. She rarely ever lost her temper. But that night, when she touched me, she burned me."

"Burned you?" Hayden intruded, his voice deep and gruff and I heard his footsteps as he approached. "Actually burned you?"

"Yes. It left a burn mark and all. It was a bitch to heal," he answered and the truth in his voice was unmistakable, as well as the resentment. "She was baffled and scared out of her mind when she pulled away and realized what she'd done."

Who wouldn't be?

Hurting your kid because he was sneaking out of the house to go play with his friends wasn't lightly taken – it couldn't be.

It was serious shit.

I closed my eyes. "And it started," I whispered to myself, remembering how the same had happened to me, how I'd suddenly burned Hayden that day out of nowhere. I opened my eyes, locking mine with Seth's, his longing and mine sorrowful. "Right?"

He nodded somberly. "After that day, she struggled with that part of her gift. My father and I tried everything to help her but she was too scared to ever touch us again. She knew what she could do and she hated herself for it. She placed a brick wall between us. She was there but we couldn't get to her."

Hadn't I heard that song somewhere before?

I sighed, trying to remain hopeful. "Did she ever gain control over her gift?"

Seth ran a hand through his hair. "She battled against her gift, just like you, for years," his voice died out and I knew it brought him pain, the next part of the story. "But then, when I was around twelve, my father had a heart attack –"

Geez.

How much sadder could this get? Honestly, this woman almost killed her son, lived years scared of touching them and then her husband drops on the floor with a heart attack and she has to choose between sitting there with her hands on her ass or try to help him?

I couldn't hold back my wittiness. "Seriously, could this story get any sadder?"

Hayden bumped my hip, now standing directly behind me, his chest almost touching my right shoulder. The heat coming from his body made my skin warm and even with the sun high up in the sky, his presence seemed to warm me up more than the bug yellow ball. "Zoey," his voice was stern.

Seth gave me an entertained glare. "If you shut up, I'll move on to the good part," he scolded me and I giggled at the way his eyes crinkled in content even though he'd just lashed out at me. "So, of course, my mother ran over. I don't know if she thought about it or not, if she planned it or if she even knew what she was doing but she touched him."

Hayden's voice bathed me, coming from close to my ears and as he leaned in, I felt his smell of fallen leaves and spices, intoxicating me. "She healed him, didn't she?"

Seth shook his head, his lips thinning in tension. "No. She brought him back."

My mouth dropped open.

Brought him –

Holy shit.

I blinked.

Brought him – back?

Holy shit.

Brought him back? What the hell? Bringing someone back? To life? That's impossible. There's no such thing as resuscitation. There couldn't be. That broke the laws. The natural laws. Like, the law that said that whatever's dead should stay dead. Isn't there some stupid law like that? Resuscitation like in that TV show, 'Supernatural', didn't exist. It looked pretty beautiful for a TV character to give his life in exchange for his brother's to save him but that was a TV show. Demons existed there and a bunch of other creatures that made me piss myself. But in real life? This was the real world. Bringing someone back from the dead is impossible.