It’s his hand.
“I think she’s having a vision,” Eden says.
“I—I—no. I’m not.” I shake my head and he lets go of my hand but . . . I’d know that hand anywhere. It’s his.
It was his all along. All this time, he’s taken my elbow or my arm or my shoulder, but I’ve never actually held his hand.
“You okay?” Eden asks. “You look like you’re going to pass out.”
“I, uh, I’ll go get my jacket.” I rush past them, banging into the doorframe, then stumble around the tiny bedroom until I hit a low bed. I collapse onto it, unsure whether to laugh or cry, the things I’m feeling too much.
Cole.
I shove my fist into my mouth, laughing. I’m going to fall in love with Cole.
Actually, I’m pretty sure I already have. I pull the pillow over my face and laugh into it. And I didn’t fall in love with him because his hand was right. I wanted him before I knew it was him. That makes it feel even truer somehow.
And then my stomach turns with a sick twist, because I can see. And it’s not what I want to see, I don’t want to, but I can’t stop it.
A beautiful man sits on a leather couch, leaning back with his legs crossed. His skin reminds me of the way coconut oil smells. His suit shines beneath the overhead lights, perfectly contoured to his every line. His hair is black and curly.
Next to him is Sadie, brown hair back in a ponytail. Baggy clothes—long sleeves pulled down over her hands, long pants, wide-set eyes darting around the room like they can’t settle on any one focal point. She’s curled into the corner of the couch, legs tucked protectively in front of her chest.
A heavy door opens and two people enter the room. One, carefully handsome James, something tight and frightened around his eyes but not showing in his broad smile.
The other is the owner of the voice that still haunts my nightmares. Blandly handsome, not quite as tall as James but almost, the family resemblance in the jaw and the set of the shoulders. Phillip Keane.
And then a third person comes in (please no not again, not this) and my heart twists to see Fia, my Fia, but she doesn’t move with her dancer’s grace. James and the coconut oil man both look at her at the same time, each trying to convey something with sharp, expectant expressions.
She giggles, a high, nervous sound, and the line of her eyes shifts them into a shape I don’t recognize.
She reaches behind herself
and pulls out a knife
and throws it, the knife sinking deep into Sadie’s chest.
The beautiful man shouts, his hands fluttering over the knife and the blood as he tries desperately to help Sadie, who looks sad and resigned.
No one is watching Fia, who drifts to the balcony and jumps.
Eden’s voice shatters the light, plunging me back into darkness. “Annie? Annie, what’s wrong? What’s going on?”
I gasp as though coming up for air from the depths of an icy lake. “Cole. I need Cole.”
She runs into the hall and I’m alone with the things I saw. It changed, but not in the way it was supposed to. Why did it change that way? What was different?
Oh, no.
Oh no.
“What?” Cole asks, out of breath. I can hear Eden panting behind him.
“What does Rafael look like?”
I know before Cole speaks what he will say. “Curly black hair. Olive skin.”
“He betrayed us,” I whisper. “He’s taking Sadie. He’s taking her to Keane.”