CHAPTER ONE
REUNION
If anyone had a reason to wake up with a smile on their face, it was me, but this didn’t stop me from rising with a grumble every morning of this best worst summer of my life. I might have had a man in my life girls by the dozens were waiting in line for, but forces against our control were making sure he wasn’t in my life, at least physically. I rolled over in the twin-size bed—strategically selected, no doubt—checking to see if he’d magically appeared beside me while I slept and just like every one of the twenty-eight mornings before, I awoke alone.
With the discipline of a rooster, I announced morning with a groan that rumbled my pillow, scrambling after my dreams from last night before they got away from me, but my dreams were as evasive as they were sigh-worthy and I’d learned from experience that the faster I chased them, the further they got away from me. It didn’t stop me from trying, though. Another grumble escaped me, this one vibrating the walls of my bedroom.
“Good morning, Bryn,” a voice that was too cheery for this early in the morning emitted above the sound of coffee beans whirring in the grinder. “You’re sounding your normal jolly self this morning.”
And you’re sounding your normal chipper self, I thought, knowing why—she had the man she loved under the same roof as her, where she could love him without fear of retribution.
“I wouldn’t want to disappoint you,” I grumbled under my breath, knowing she could hear me one floor below in the kitchen. A perk to the Immortal life and while there were many—living forever, possessing gifts that would scare the tights off a superhero, a sense of belonging, and a worthy cause to fight for, just to name a few—the cons of Immortality engulfed the pros. At least for me.
No one but yours truly could manage to have my soul possessed by a man more of the dream-world than this one, only to be told we couldn’t ever be together. And, oh yeah, ever had a completely different meaning now when the centuries laid in waiting before me
“Come on. Get your pouty little self out of bed and enjoy a cup of our favorite Indulgence before Joseph gets up.”
Second favorite Indulgence, I thought . . . though I had yet to experience what I knew would be my first favorite. Yet another Immortal wonder: Indulgences. Rough translation—anything we no longer needed but still liked to enjoy. Things like food, drink (namely, coffee in my case), sleep, and physical intimacy.
“Your favorite Indulgence?” a voice—endlessly happy, even in rebuke—called from the room down the hall.
“She just doesn’t want to rub it in,” I assured Joseph, who I could hear rousing down the hall. “We all know what her favorite one is.”
I knew. Despite “sleeping” two rooms down from them, my Immortal ears, an equal blessing and curse depending on the stimulus entering them, didn’t miss a single soft word or sigh the two shared with about the same frequency as Cora had a cup of coffee. Needless to say, I went on a lot of runs at night.
“Are you decent, Bryn?” Joseph asked, knocking outside my door.
“No. Go away.”
“Come on, don’t make me come in there and get you again,” he threatened, while I rolled over and threw the comforter over my head—only delaying the inevitable. “One . . . two . . .”—I heard the doorknob twisting—“Last chance, Bryn!”
“Come on, Joseph,” I called out, knowing it would have no effect on him. “This is getting old—”
“Three!”
The door fired open at the same time the comforter was parachuting across the room. Joseph had me over his shoulder and down the stairs before I had a chance to make my futile protest.
“Thanks a million,” I muttered, as he heaved me off his shoulder and into one of the chairs circling the kitchen table.
“To remind you . . . again,”—he smiled at me, rounding over to where his wife stood manning the coffee machine—“you can blame my older brother if you don’t like my morning . . . encouragement. He made me promise I wouldn’t let you get too . . .” he paused, before pointing his arms at me. “Whatever you are right now,” he said, sounding somewhat frustrated, partly annoyed, but mostly happy, of course. Joseph was the happiest person I’d known, happy in that child-on-Christmas-morning kind of way.
I lifted my legs up to my chest and circled my arms around them, looking away from the man who looked so much like the one I loved. Other than a couple years and a few inches, William and Joseph could have been twins. Dark hair, bronze skin, bodies that made you think dirty things, souls that inspired you to do pure things . . . basically, so divine they were half-god.
With my demi-god gone, Joseph and Cora were a welcome distraction. They’d been gracious beyond expectation and, second only to William, the best company I’d had in my new life of Immortality. They loved easily, didn’t keep pretenses, and were the only ones in the Hayward family—Patrick aside—who hoped to see William and me together one day in the official way our Council seemed hell-bent against allowing us.
Oh yeah, that was one of the other thorns twisted in my side. Immortals had their own kind of government, in the form of seven senior Immortals elected by their individual Alliances. Seemed logical enough, except the Council presiding over our Alliance wasn’t being logical about William and me being together.
“You’re right, I’m being a pain,” I admitted, as I did every morning since I’d been sequestered to their home hundreds of acres from the one William stayed at with his father and brother, Patrick. The Council seemed to think it was too much of a temptation for us if we were under the same roof.