Persuasion Page 3

  It took a while to process what his silence meant; there were still too many thoughts flying at her all at once. “You knew,” she said, feeling stupid and kicking herself. “All the time we were in California talking about recipes we wanted to try for the restaurant and I was babbling on about tables by the fountain and candles in the water, you knew the tearoom was closed and our plans weren’t going to happen.”

  “You wanted to be distracted. Dad and Pru thought—”

  “What? That I couldn’t handle it?” Heat spilled across Barrie’s cheeks. She tapped him on the chest with her finger, wishing he could read her feelings or her reasons instead of just what she wanted most, because she wasn’t positive she could explain. She had never been good at explanations.

  “The restaurant was going to be here for you whenever you came back,” she said, tiptoeing through the words. “It was the career you said you wanted after baseball, and you’ve been so focused on wanting to get off this island for so long, I wanted to give you a reason not to run away. Maybe that was silly. Or hopeless, I don’t know. It was also something Pru and I could do together. Something that would connect us all to Mark.”

  “I know all that.” Eight looked at her as if he saw her, as if he did understand.

  Barrie hated that she couldn’t sort out how much of that came of caring for her, and how much was due to the Beaufort gift. Either way, it did horrible things to her concentration and her confidence. Suddenly she didn’t want to talk at all.

  “You mentioned something about a bookmark,” she said, her voice sounding small over the too-loud drum of her pulse. She wished she could bat her eyes flirtatiously without making a fool of herself. Wished she was good at the kind of charming seduction that Cassie had probably nailed before she was five years old.

  Eight pulled his hands from her waist. His fingers grazed her cheeks, making her breath expand and catch in her lungs. Her eyes fell closed, as if he were stealing her control until it was impossible to think about anything but that moment.

  The chapel smelled spiced and warm, and his lips came down slowly enough that energy had time to arc back and forth between them and build and build.

  Barrie’s lips felt swollen and her fingers tingled when she finally came up for air, but the worst damage was to her throat. The words came out a rasp when she tried to speak. “I wish we had more time,” she said.

  “We do have time,” Eight said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I’ve changed my mind about going to USC, and I emailed the baseball coach this morning and gave up the scholarship.”

  “What?” Barrie blinked at him, certain she had heard him wrong.

  “Going to California was a way to prove something to my dad, but there are more important things than pride. You, for one.” He paused and raised his head. “Hey, I figured you’d be happy. Why aren’t you?”

  She wanted to be happy. After all, she was getting what she wanted.

  But wasn’t that the problem?

  “Are you staying because you want to stay, or because I want you to?” she asked.

  “It’s not going to matter. I sent out emails this morning to the local schools. I’ve already heard back from the coaches at the College of Charleston and Charleston Southern, but I’m still hoping to hear from the University of South Carolina. Columbia is only an hour away, and it’s got a great athletic program. I may have to wait a semester, but I don’t need a scholarship anymore. Dad was only refusing to pay for school to get me to stay here, and now I’m staying.”

  He watched her, puzzled, and so obviously still waiting for her to be happy that it made her feel even worse. The longer she waited, the more his eyes darkened.

  The late afternoon light had spotlit a spider’s web in the corner of the chapel. It looked gossamer thin, but webs were always stronger than they seemed.

  “You’ve spent your entire life wanting to get off the island,” she said.

  He stared off past her shoulder in the direction of the river. “You weren’t here then.”

  “Pretend I’m not here now. What would you do if you weren’t compelled to give me what I want?”

  “The gift doesn’t quite work like that.” His smile was odd and almost wistful.

  “So you admit it’s the gift making you want to stay?” Barrie asked.

  “Don’t put words into my mouth. And who cares why I want what I want? I would be away from you all year, for four whole years.”

  “What kind of a person would I be if I wanted someone who didn’t want me back?”

  “I do want you.”

  “Do you want me for myself?” Barrie forced herself to meet his eyes, to let him see how much it mattered. “Choosing is the whole point of a relationship—the fact that someone picked you, the whole you, the good and bad, the awful secret things as well as the good parts you want the world to see. That’s the only way you can know a relationship is real.”

  “You’re saying it’s too fast?”

  “No.” Barrie wrapped her arms around her waist, holding herself together. “You can know some people in days more than you can know other people in years or decades. A night spent fighting for your life with someone teaches you more about them than a year of talking ever would. But if I let you give up your scholarship because of what I want from you, then how will I ever know whether you would have picked me on your own? I can’t let you make decisions that will change the course of your life when you can’t be certain that you . . .” She stopped herself and shook her head.

  “You can’t even think the word, can you?” There was a current of tension in Eight’s voice, a live wire that threatened to give off sparks.

  She was hurting him, pushing him away when she really wanted to hold him close. It made her shiver until her teeth chattered. She was coming apart, shedding pieces of herself. First her mother, then Mark, now Eight.

  “People throw the word ‘love’ around like it doesn’t mean anything,” she said. “But they don’t know what it’s like not to have it. Before I came here, I’d only ever heard it from one person in all my life.”

  Eight raised his hand and brushed her cheek. “You’re asking for guarantees, and there’s no such thing when it comes to feelings.”

  “How can you sound so sure?”

  “Faith is what gives any relationship a chance. That’s the difference between us, Bear. I happen to know you’re worth it.”

  She wanted to believe him, of course she did. But wasn’t believing in him a bigger part of the equation? If she believed in him, then she was being selfish for wanting him to stay. Wanting what she wanted was his compulsion. She couldn’t let him—make him—do it.

  Stepping back again, she put distance between them until she had almost reached the arched doorway and the path to escape. It would be impossible to say no when his skin burned on hers.

  “Give me logical reasons why the University of South Carolina is better for you than the University of Southern California,” she said, “and make me believe you aren’t giving up your scholarship just for me.”

  The last traces of Eight’s smile fell away. He lapsed into the expectant stillness that she had come to know. It was as if when he needed to concentrate, he channeled all of his kinetic energy into thinking. Seeing the hurt written across his features, an apology dropped onto Barrie’s tongue, ready to let him off the hook. She bit it off and made herself stand there waiting.

  Dammit, she wasn’t going to cry.

  But not crying got harder the longer he was silent. The longer he looked like he didn’t have a clue what to say.

  “You know what?” She managed to keep her voice steady. “Never mind. That’s my answer. I hope you can undo whatever you’ve done with the scholarship, because I can’t let you give it up. Not on my account.”

  Wrapping the last scraps of her dignity around herself, she walked out of the chapel before she could burst into tears. Before she could change her mind.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It w
as only when Barrie had passed the stables that she let herself look back. Eight had emerged from the chapel doorway. Cloaked in shadows with his shoulders hunched and his hands in his pockets, he seemed hesitant, as if he wasn’t sure whether to follow her or let her go. He looked miserable.

  Barrie couldn’t allow herself to care. The stables blurred as she strode past, and the caw of a bird swooping overhead was the sound of her own silent screech of rage. Not at Eight. Rage at the circumstances. At his gift. At herself. At the way the blows kept coming.

  Rushing around the corner of the house, she stepped off the lawn and her heels bit into the gravel. A low breeze hit her knees, drawing her attention to the shadows milling in front of her. There was something agitated about the way the yunwi pushed at her, as if they wanted her to go back the way she’d come. Their silent whispers, sound without sound, hummed in her ears:

  Caution. Caution. Beware, they seemed to say.

  Heart already revving, Barrie brought her head up to scan the circular drive, but there was nothing unusual.

  “What are you up to now?” she asked the yunwi. But they didn’t answer.

  A faint finding tug pulled her attention to a green object on the ground directly in front of her. It was about the size and shape of a poker chip, and it stood out starkly against the white gravel surface.

  The disk couldn’t have been there earlier. Barrie would have had to step right over it on the way to the chapel with Eight. It was possible she’d been too engrossed in Eight to see it, but she would have felt it, because clearly it was lost.

  She bent to retrieve the token. “Who’d you steal this from?” she asked. “And I thought you weren’t going to do that anymore?”

  Only the word “beware” came back to her.

  The wooden disk was silken against her fingers, in that way old wood grew soft, but the underside was sharply etched with a design. When she turned the token over, a raven peered back at her, its expression so vivid that it seemed intelligent and alive. The bird reminded her of something she needed to remember. But what?

  The returning portion of her gift kicked in. Pressure, faint but insistent, pulled her to the flowerbed beside her. Barrie bit her lip, because that couldn’t be correct.

  For the first time in her life, the returning sense had failed her. There wasn’t anyone in the flowerbed.

  No one. Not at first. And then . . .

  The same man she had seen on the wall was there, the same dark suit and aubergine shirt shimmering like an oil slick in the afternoon light, the same dreadlocks snaking over his shoulders. Like the disk, he hadn’t been there before. He hadn’t been there, and now he was, leaning back so casually against the house, one foot propped against the white-painted bricks, that he might have been standing there for hours.

  “I’m glad I saw that for myself,” he said in a voice that sounded foreign and deep, as if it had started with a growl inside his barrel chest. He flashed her a smile full of gold and white enamel. “I wouldn’t have believed the gift could have survived so long.”

  Barrie’s heart gave a nasty jump. “Who are you? How did you get in here?”

  He peeled himself away from the house and moved toward her with an eerie, gliding gait that seemed too smooth for human motion. “No need to be afraid of Obadiah, petite. Not you.”

  The r in “afraid” was rolled in the back of his throat, but along with the French, there was a musical hint of the sea island Gullah that Barrie was learning to recognize. It should have been a pleasant combination, but there was a harshness to his voice, something too clipped and careful.

  Fear as sharp as vinegar welled up in Barrie’s throat. “You’re trespassing. You need to leave.”

  “I will soon enough.”

  “My friend is around the corner. He’ll be here in a second if I scream.”

  The man smiled still more broadly. “Will he, now?”

  Opening her lips to yell, Barrie felt her tongue and cheeks go dry, as if her mouth had filled with sand. Sand that poured down her throat.

  She couldn’t scream and she couldn’t breathe. Panic punched her like a fist.

  Obadiah reached out and touched a fingertip to her forehead.

  The sand was gone. The panic stilled.

  Why had she been thinking of screaming? Everything was fine.

  “There. You see, little one? No need to bother with any foolishness. It’s only us here, you and me, and we’re friends now, aren’t we?” Obadiah spread his palms out to show her they were empty. “I’m not here to hurt you, and the Beaufort boy isn’t needed. Let’s leave it between us two.”

  “Who are you?” Barrie fought to push words through a cotton-wool padding of indifference she knew she shouldn’t feel.

  He winked at her. Winked, for Pete’s sake. “I couldn’t help overhearing your argument,” he said.

  The wink and the amusement in his voice helped clear some of Barrie’s fuzziness away. “How? You couldn’t have overheard.”

  “ ‘How’ is never the most important question. You see? Already I’ve given you a lesson to show we can help each other.”

  “Help each other do what?” Barrie forced her feet back a reluctant step; they felt weighted down as she waded through the false calm that enveloped her. But fear was the shoreline. Fear was safety. She should have been afraid. “Why are you here, and what do you want?” she asked.

  His laugh was harsh, but genuine amusement lit his eyes and lightened his expression. “ ‘Want’ is an interesting concept, isn’t it? The one your Beaufort boy doesn’t know how to answer. Human want is an onion, layer upon useless layer of it. The more you have, the more you want, until before long you’ve lost touch with what little you really need. The boy wants his gift gone, and I can take it away for him. Easy as pie. All I need is a small favor in return.”

  Hearing him mention Eight again, Barrie finally got her throat to work. She filled her lungs and screamed for him. Where was he, anyway? How was he not there?

  Her voice came out a strangled screech, instead of the words that she intended.

  A muffled rustle and a rush of air pulled her attention back to Obadiah, but he was gone. Just gone. There was an empty flowerbed where he had been, and emptiness all the way to the corner of the house. Emptiness to the front steps in the other direction.

  That was impossible.

  Wasn’t it?

  “Bear?” Eight rounded the corner at a sprint and stopped beside her. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  A piece of Barrie clicked back into place when Eight touched her, the finding gift homing in on him in the Watson version of magnetic north. For the moment, their argument ceased to matter.

  “You’re as white as that old peacock over there.” Eight grasped her hands and held them. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  The albino peacock was, as usual, perched on the hood of Pru’s ancient black Mercedes, more proof that no one had run away in that direction. Obadiah wasn’t anywhere. Had he been there at all?

  “Th-there was a man.” She fought to get the words out. “Obadiah. He was here a second ago.”

  “Where? There’s no one.” Eight scanned the same empty flowerbed and vacant drive that Barrie had searched already.

  She tried to summon up a picture to describe who she’d seen, but her memories were smoke. The more she tried to catch them, the harder it was to recall what she was trying to remember.

  She had found something, hadn’t she? A green disk of some kind?

  Thinking of the disk brought everything flooding back. Uncurling her fingers, she held her palm out, ready to show Eight the reason she had turned and seen the man in the first place. Because he had used it to test her finding gift.

  Except the disk, too, was gone.

  She stared at her empty palm. The imprint of a raven’s head was pressed into the heel of her hand where her fist had clenched around the token, and then that, too, disappeared. She opened her mouth to tell Eight to look, but the words slippe
d away. What had she meant to say?

  “Why are you gaping like a fish, Bear? What happened? Who was the guy? What did he say?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember.” Barrie dug her fingernails into her palms, hoping the twinge of pain would clear the strange fog from her head. “Maybe there wasn’t anyone.” She shook her head. “No, I’m sure. There wasn’t anyone.”

  Eight’s lips paled as they tightened. “You’re scaring me. Focus. You said the guy’s name was Obadiah. You didn’t make that up. Where did you see him?”

  The name brought a brief tug of memory. Barrie pointed at the flowerbed, but a moment later, she couldn’t remember why. She followed close behind Eight as he stepped onto the loamy soil. She barely avoided a collision when he stooped to examine a footprint that had sunk deep into the ground a few inches from the house.

  At the sight of the footprint, the image of Obadiah snapped back into focus. He had stood exactly there, in that spot, all of his weight resting on one leg while he’d propped the other foot against the wall.

  Why hadn’t Barrie been able to remember that? He had walked toward her, walked right past where she was standing now, and the yunwi hadn’t liked it. . . .

  “Bear? Are you okay?” Eight straightened, and she looked up.

  Everything went fuzzy again, then blank. She nodded. “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not. Someone was here, obviously, but I don’t understand how there’s only the one footprint. I really need you to think. What did he say? Did he hurt you? Did he threaten you? Is that why you don’t want to tell me?”

  “I’m trying to tell you.” Frustration fluttered in Barrie’s stomach. “But you never listen.”

  With a pained sigh, Eight wrapped his arm around her waist, radiating heat back into her body where she’d gone cold. “All right. Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “Let’s get you inside.”