Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 62637 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 313(@200wpm)___ 251(@250wpm)___ 209(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62637 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 313(@200wpm)___ 251(@250wpm)___ 209(@300wpm)
“Who is she?” I ask.
He looks up at me. “Who’s she?”
“Kit. She’s more than a fox. Something’s going on, something I can’t see more. She’s tied to me in a way I can’t explain. I feel things I shouldn’t feel after only knowing her for a few days, and I think I know what I need to do; I just don’t understand what’s compelling me so hard to do it.” I sigh. “I see memories, but then I doubt myself because I’m out of my own timeline. Are they hers, mine, both? I’ll fight to save her, and yet I wonder why. It’s all just so confusing.”
He grins. “Not my journey, not my path, but thanks for asking. Oh also,” he says with a snap of his fingers, “Timber said you hate ham. Are you good with turkey?”
I will kill everyone. “Turkey.” I can barely get the word out.
“That’s what I said, but then he was all like, oh chicken, but he like chickens because they used to sacrifice chickens to him, so it’s like a favorite.”
I remember a lot of chickens and feel actual trauma. “NO chickens!”
Tarek grins. “Good thing you have me then, right?”
“How do I help her?” Other than walking toward certain death.
He starts wiping the bar top vigorously. “You already know. It isn’t a question of how. It’s if.”
“If?”
“Or maybe, will you?”
“And if I do?”
“So many possibilities. I mean, that’s my only job, you know that, right? I see multiple possibilities, futures, lives. I’m not even sure at this point; I just know that working at this bar every day isn’t going to give you the happy ending you deserve, god of the sky.”
The entire building shakes for several seconds.
“See?” He cackles. “Your power burns to be set free, but you will never be fully yourself in this timeline unless you sacrifice. Don’t you get it? Sacrifice means sacrifice. Giving up. You have to do whatever it takes to be your true self here. Selfless. Fucking storm the gates. Become who you were here, and you will be.”
My memories jumble together. “I thought I was limited.”
“Limits exist in timelines only if we allow it.” He says it like it’s so simple. “Anyway, I chose chicken, and we have to leave in like five minutes. I’ll grab Kit.”
That’s how he leaves me, with a choice between family dinner at least for tonight or really going toward the Abyss in a sprint. I’m more frustrated than ever and terrified I won’t be strong enough to make it back to her. Does he see something I don’t? Is he trying to warn me to make a different choice?
My only goal is to return to her even if I’m not the same.
She has to know she is everything.
She’s important.
She’s mine. And always has been, even if she never knows it. I watch her laugh with customers. Sure, we kissed, and she feels something, but she has no clue. The past memories, the things we shared. I’m still trying to understand the fuzzy memories, but I know in my soul they’re real even if she doesn’t see it.
She has no idea, so I sit there, and I allow every memory that I can finally reach to pour through my brain.
Our first kiss in the forest.
Tag with the other foxes.
Telling each other stories. Decades and decades of stories.
Her head in my lap.
Me petting her head, running my fingers through her hair.
And then darkness. I can’t see anything other than a dark prison, screaming, and hands. Massive hands reaching through bone and stone-filled bars.
I jerk back.
“Are you okay?” Kit comes up to me and smiles. “You looked terrified.”
I want to say I am scared that even as a god, I’m limited right now, that I may not come back, and then I remember her kiss. I remember memories she has no idea even transpired.
I remember loving her so deeply.
My heart aches.
A fox, according to Cassius.
A fox? Really?
What could a mere shapeshifter give me to make me abandon everything in my world for her?
Part of me realizes I may not remember, not because I didn’t experience it, but because I left my timeline, so maybe my past self did, and I’m just seeing pieces of visions of his memory which almost makes it even more sad.
He got time with this glorious creature.
I got memories.
“I’m fine.” I force a smile. “Enjoy dinner tonight. I think I’ll go get ready.”
She grabs my hand. “You don’t have to do this. I’m fine as I am.”
I nod and meet her pleading gaze. “But I do. Because you aren’t who you’re supposed to be, and without an identity, you lose purpose. Without purpose, you aren’t just roaming or lost—you’re no longer human. You’re nothing. You simply exist. You need more than that. I will give you that even if it costs me everything.”