Run to You Part Three: Third Charm - Clara Kensie

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      I didn’t move. I wanted—needed—to stay in the fog for a while longer.

      “I need to tell you something else. About Dennis.”

      “No more.”

      “I don’t want you to think I’m holding anything back.”

      “I can’t handle anything else right now. Please.”

      “Okay. When you’re ready.”

      * * *

      We hadn’t moved in hours, it seemed. I remained huddled in a ball in the corner. Tristan sat on the edge of the cot, elbows on his knees, head hung low.

      Finally he took a deep breath. “Tess—”

      “Don’t say it.”

      “I need to—”

      “I know what you’re going to say, and I don’t want to hear it. Please don’t say it.”

      But whether he said it or not, I already knew what he wanted to tell me. Forbidding him to say the words wasn’t going to change it.

      I gave a stuttery sigh of defeat. “He’s your father, isn’t he?”

      Please, please tell me I’m wrong.

      But he didn’t. He just nodded. “Dennis Connelly is my father.”

      Perhaps knowing I was about to cry, he opened his arms in an offer of comfort. I shook my head and pulled myself into a tighter ball and cried alone.

      * * *

      “How did you know?” Tristan asked from the cot when my tears had slowed to sniffles.

      I sniffled one more time. “Back in your kitchen. Kellan called you Junior.”

      “Ah.”

      I put my head on my knees. I just wanted to go back in time, back to Winterball. I wanted to go back to the running path. Back to laying on his bed with his head on my stomach.

      But there was no going back. I was here, locked in a cell with the son of Dennis Connelly.

      Tristan was the son of the man who’d tried to kill me. The son of the man who’d chased my family out of thirteen homes in eight years. The son of the man who would soon come and finish the job he started.

      I was in love with Tristan Connelly.

      “Oh God...” Dennis Connelly’s son leaped off the cot and scooped me up, rushing me to the bathroom and bending me over the toilet just in time. He knew I was going to throw up before I did.

      He held my hair back as I vomited for the second time since Kellan had kidnapped me.

      No, the third. I had a flash of screaming, screaming so long and so hard I choked and threw up all over his white shirt with the pink embroidered horse, and started screaming again.

      But now I was too tired, too broken, to scream anymore. I coughed the last of the vomit from my mouth, and he handed me a plastic cup of water from the sink. “Sip and spit.”

      I did, and he guided me back to the main cell. He tried to bring me to the cot, but I pulled away and slunk back to my corner. “Just leave, Tristan. I don’t want you here.”

      He walked away but only to sit on the cot again. “I’m not leaving you.”

      Chapter Thirty-Seven

      The door to the cell slid open and I startled, lowering the fog, certain it was Dennis Connelly. But it was just a guard, holding a plastic tray. A gun hung in a holster on his belt. I’d seen him before somewhere; his yellow spiky hair looked familiar. I raised the fog again but kept it close.

      Spiky Hair nodded to the tray. “Breakfast.”

      Breakfast. It was the next day. I’d been in this cell for over twenty-four hours.

      Tristan took the tray and placed it on the cot. “Thanks.”

      “Congrats on the mission, Connelly,” Spiky Hair said. “Nice job.” His gaze flickered to me in the corner.

      Tristan’s face reddened. “Thanks,” he mumbled.

      The guard left, the door sealing itself shut behind him. Tristan held out a plate for me, but I shook my head. “How do I know it’s not poisoned?” I was imprisoned by a killer, after all.

      He took a large scoop of scrambled eggs from one plate and ate it, then did the same with the other. “Nope. Not poisoned.”

      I narrowed my eyes at him and moved from the floor up to the chair. He placed the plate on my lap. I looked with distaste at the eggs, toast and orange slices. “Are my parents getting the same meal?” Mom would hate this breakfast. Rubbery yellow eggs and white bread. She would’ve used egg whites and whole grain.

      “They’re probably still unconscious. It takes a long time to neutralize someone.”

      “What does that mean?”

      “Their psionic abilities are being taken away.”

      “You mean, so they can’t escape?”

      “And so they can’t hurt anyone.” He looked pointedly at me, as if silently adding, So your mother can’t fly you into a wall anymore.

      I blinked. “She didn’t mean to hurt me, Tristan.”

      He swallowed his eggs. “I know.”

      “She would never hurt anyone. There’s no way my parents did any of the things you said.”

      He said nothing to that.

      In a display of loyalty to my mother, I pushed aside the eggs and toast, and ate only the orange slices. But because I was weak in both body and spirit, I betrayed her again by eating the eggs. “Does it hurt to be neutralized?”

      “No. It’s like blowing out a candle. In fact, your dad’s headaches will probably stop.”

      That, at least, was a tiny bit comforting. But my mom’s PK was as much a part of her life as me, or air. She couldn’t survive without it, or want to.

      Thank God Jillian and Logan weren’t here. My parents were right to send them away before driving up here. They wouldn’t want to live without their PK either.

      The cell door opened again and I jolted, my fork clanging to the floor, and again I lowered the fog. A dark-skinned woman in a lab coat entered, a thick green binder in one arm. “Hello, Tessa. I’m Dr. Sheldon. Do you remember me?”

      “Yes, ma’am.” She was the one who’d put her palm on my forehead and looked inside my mind. She was gentle. Warm. “Can I see my mom and dad now?”

      She tilted her head. “Sweetheart, do you understand why your parents are here?”

      “No.” I didn’t understand anything anymore.

      “I told her,” Tristan said. “But she won’t believe me.”

      Dr. Sheldon clucked. “I wouldn’t want to believe something like that about my parents either.” She patted the binder. A series of letters and numbers was printed on the spine: CARS0520. “But we have evidence.”

      So Dr. Sheldon was a liar too.

      “Any news about Tessa’s brother and sister?” Tristan asked. “Did we find them yet?”

      They were still looking for Jillian and Logan?

      “Let’s see.” She opened the binder and flipped through the pages. “Their parents gave them all their cash before sending them away on foot. We have an agent watching the house in case they return, but so far no one knows where they are.”

      “We’ll find them for you, Tessa,” Tristan said. “I promise.”

      Impossible.

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