average human’s Reviews > Visions > Status Update

My body comes alive.
“What men?” he grinds out as he grips my hip, squeezing as his other hand rests on a rock above me. His fingers splay against my body as though he just can’t get enough of me.
“That,” I whisper, knowing I probably sound insane.
“This… This fucking turns you on.” He presses his body against mine, his eyes blazing as though I am his sun, his moon, and the air he breathes. Once upon a time, I was, and I naïvely believed I always would be his goddess.
I shrug with a sly smile.
“What men, Angel?”
“Just a couple suitors.”
Rage turns his eyes into a deeper hazel, and the crazy bitch inside me fans herself. But I already got into one argument today over lust. I don’t want to anger Pim and Greyson in one day. That’s too much karma to balance out.
Don’t forget the stranger in the volcano. Ah, so three angry men.
“Come on, let’s talk.” I cave, giving him what he so desperately wants.
Astonishment makes his mouth drop open as he jerks back and gestures for me to go forward as though it was his idea to climb the mountain this whole time.
Sighing, I glance at the butte across from us, rising into the sky like a red dragon. “What do you want to talk about?” Out here, my visions used to answer those questions for me, but since Pim is dead, I can’t see into his future nor his past because it no longer exists.
I wonder if I could, even if I tried.
“Did you love me?” I almost miss a step as he asks the question.
Dwelling on my thoughts, I concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other while my heart beats out of rhythm in my chest. It’s a question I asked myself a thousand times over the last eight years. Pim wasn’t just my first kiss, he was my first everything. He was the first guy that I felt that spastic puppy love for. That all-consuming teenage obsession that I still dream about to this day. He stole my first kiss and then every other kiss after until Greyson kissed me this morning.

27%

Greyson sheepishly holds up his phone as it tracks our location. “You left it in your car.”
“My locked car.”
“No, it was unlocked.”
“Greyson.” Anger simmers below the surface as he holds his hands up.
“I swear it was open.”
Pim’s hand lands on my shoulder, squeezing my flesh. “Why are you stalking my girl?”
“Your girl?” Greyson’s face turns a mottled red as he takes a step forward.
A ghost and a mortal climbed up a mountain, I begin to hum.
“Yeah, she was my girl long before you showed up,” Pim argues.
“Looks like you can’t do much for her now though,” Greyson retorts.
They began to dual for their lady fair, I continue to hum and just barely restrain from swinging my arms.
“You have no idea the sacrifices I’ve made for her!” Pim’s grip tightens on my shoulder. This is getting good.
“I’ve been with her for the past eight months, making sure she’s okay. Do you know how many times a day she forgets to eat?” Greyson pulls a strawberry lollipop from his pocket and tosses it to me. Catching the little stick of sugar, I unwrap it.
But neither man knew of the third she met on a whim. The sugar taps against my teeth as I suck the delicious treat, and I continue to hum.
“Stop enjoying this.” Pim’s palm slides down my arm to grip my hand in his.
“Just an innocent bystander,” I quip.
“You have to touch her to be visible, don’t you?” Greyson’s eyes focus on our entwined hands, ever the observer, that one.
“Yep,” I answer.
“What’s it to you?” Pim talks over me, irritating me enough to slap his forehead with my lollipop.
“Behave.”
Greyson barks out a laugh, and with it, the tension dies just a fraction between the two men.
“You slapped me with your taffy?” Pim blinks down at me with a horrified expression on his face. “Then you just went along and continued to suck on it. What the hell is wrong with you?”
I shrug, I see no problem at all. Salty sweet is a flavor I can get behind. “Lollipop,” I correct.
“Apparently, she likes it.” Greyson shakes his head, looking toward the horizon where the sun sinks so low, it’s almost gone. “We should head back, it isn’t safe out here at night.” He frowns, his brows furrowing.
“I brought my gear to camp out under the stars.”
“Up here?”
“Yes,” I drawl. “It’s nice up here.”
“You could roll right off the edge.” Greyson tugs at the strands of his hair in exasperation, which wasn’t my goal. “Wait.” I see when his mind finally catches up to everything. His gaze zeros in on Pim’s fingers linked with mine. “What are you?” he questions softly.
Beside me, I feel Pim tense, because this is a question he has asked me on multiple occasions, all of which I deflect.
I can’t answer a question I don’t know the answer to. So instead of redirecting, I squeeze Pim’s hand and answer honestly. “I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?” Greyson walks right up to me, ignoring Pim’s death glare.
“I know what I can do.” Here is where I need to skirt the line. Greyson is smart, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out just what I was doing up here. Especially if he learns I can see images of the past, present, and future.
But what would it hurt if he knew?
It may break that precarious budding trust we are only just now dipping into.
“Is that what you were running from?” His hand cups my cheek with more care than I’m ready to handle, just as Pim squeezes my hand in his.
“We are all running from something, aren’t we?” I evade, because that’s all I know how to do. I toe the line of truth and reality. For a long time after my visions began, I couldn’t differentiate between reality and the images that tortured me. Here I have found some semblance of control, no matter how delicate it may be.
“We are,” he replies, but unlike Pim, he doesn’t push, he just brushes a kiss across my forehead before taking a step back, his hand falling to his side.
He’s just so damn sweet that it makes my teeth ache more than the lollipop I shove back into my mouth.
“How many boyfriends do you have, Vanessa?” Pim grumbles.
“Just the three,” I answer automatically, though I do not, in fact, have three boyfriends.
“Three?” Greyson’s calm slips as he screeches.
“Three?” Pim steps up beside us so we’re forming a triangle.
“Well. No.” I twist my face up.
“Then what is it, woman?” Pim throws his free hand into the air, narrowly missing Greyson’s face. That move may have been deliberate.
“I met a guy earlier today.” I blink up at him, debating how much I want to dive into that meeting.
“When you disappeared?” Greyson’s eyes narrow.
“You disappeared?” comes Pim’s emotional response. Really, he should get himself under control.
Rolling my eyes, I debate letting his hand go, but I don’t. Instead, I give them a partial truth. “I fell into a vision and met a guy.”
Pim’s normally plush lips form a thin line as he stares at me. “We are talking about this later.”
“I want to talk about it now,” Greyson argues.
“No can do, compadre. We have company.” Pim hooks a thumb behind him.
All the laughter and amusement dies in that moment as a vision rushes past my eyes. It’s as disorienting as it always is. I’m thrown into the future where I stumble and fall to my knees. I cry out, not in pain as my knees hit stone, but because of the asshole who threw me there. I whip my head around, unable to change my fate as I’m lost to the vision.
Standing there as though he owns the world is a man who cannot be a man at all but something so much more. He wears his power as a shield. His icy blue eyes stare at me with such hate that it ripples over my skin like a blanket. He hovers over me wearing jeans and nothing else, his bare feet stalking toward me with purpose.
My neck cracks as I stare up at him, this immense beast of a man. His muscles flex as he lowers to kneel before me. Thick, kissable lips taunt me, and his curly blond hair hovers around his angel face like a halo.
But he is no angel, of that I am certain.
“Hello, Cupcake.” His voice is like a slow caress as his eyes travel down my body before landing on my lips, where I can feel the promise of his kiss, his tongue, his languid torture. Except those are just the things I want him to do to me. The reality is so much darker.
My body rips back with a gasping breath as Pim shouts and Greyson yells right back. Sounds filter in far too fast for me to navigate as blood pumps through my veins, thumping in my ears.
“She’s coming back. Do you have the backpack?” Pim sounds worried as he focuses on me. “Angel, we need to run, I need you to run. Can you do that for me, Vanessa?”
He’s so anxious, stressed, with a hint of freak-out underlying those emotions. Something is wrong, very, very wrong.
“What—” My voice cracks in the dry heat. “What’s going on?”
“Pim says we need to run, Little