Forget the first Gwynn. The second is what counts. That's my future. That's what I'm capable of. The most unimaginable betrayal...not just of Ricky, but of Olivia.
"Gabriel, please. Please."
It was the "please" that snapped him back, looking up at Olivia, then rising onto his elbows, realizing he was lying on the patio floor.
"Did you...?" She swallowed. "You saw it, didn't you? The visions."
"Yes." His voice came hollow, barely recognizable, as if still in that distant, lost place.
"I did not do anything to cause that," she said.
He struggled to focus on her voice against the pull of the vision, threatening to drag him back. When he didn't answer, her voice rose in panic. "I didn't. I wouldn't know how, and I'd never do that when you didn't want to see it."
"I know." He meant it, but with that hollow ring, his voice lacked conviction, and fresh panic sparked in her eyes.
"You have to believe me," she said. "I would never--"
"I know," he said, forcing himself to sit upright. "You fell, and I grabbed you, and that seemed to cause it."
He glanced up
at the house. You did it, he thought, and felt rather foolish thinking it, but he knew that was the answer. The house gave Olivia the visions she needed, and he'd gotten them through her. Because, yes, he needed to see another side of Gwynn. But he also needed to see that side, the ugly and jealous side. To face it.
Face what? The possibility I could kill to win her? Not even to win her, because if I did that, I could never have her. Even if she came to me, I could not be with her, knowing what I'd done.
"That's not you," she blurted.
He looked at her.
"You saw Gwynn and then you saw the two boys, Carl and Peter, right?"
He tried not to flinch at the names. "Yes."
"Peter isn't you. It was different, wasn't it? With Gwynn, you were him, right? Seeing through his eyes."
He nodded.
"And Peter?"
"I was watching from the forest."
"Exactly. An actor in one and an audience in the other." She sat on the patio edge and twisted to face him. "It's like...spokes on a wheel. Gwynn is at the center. One spoke is you. Another is--or was--Peter. You and he aren't connected except through Gwynn. They're...variations on a theme. From the same initial source, like distant cousins of a common ancestor." She peered at him, face drawn, anxious. "Am I making any sense?"
"I'd rather not talk about it."
"But it might help. If we can work this out--"
"No." He said it sharper than he intended. But she didn't draw back. She sunk, as if defeated.
"I need to leave," he said.
"I know." And there was, in her voice, that same hollow note, not distance but resignation.
Goddamn it, say something. Don't run away. You don't need to have this conversation. Just don't run from her.
She'd called him a coward, running away whenever she pulled him toward something he didn't like. It was not so much cowardice as ego, and not even so much protecting his ego as safeguarding the supports that kept it intact.
Success bolstered his ego. Doing what he was good at and avoiding failure in every possible way. He'd first realized that in high school, when he'd dropped out of geometry, not because he disliked it but because he wasn't good at it. Algebra came easily. Calculus was also fine. But there was something about geometry that he could not wrap his mind around. So he dropped the course.