Greek Mavericks: Seduced Into The Greek's World. Julia James

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СКАЧАТЬ tasted something like panic, which was strange, since he wasn’t entirely certain panic had a flavor.

      The baby wasn’t crying anymore. He couldn’t hear her. He could hear nothing but the sound of his own heart beating in his ears.

      He suddenly felt like he was walking down two different hallways. One in a smaller house. An apartment. And the one he was actually standing in. This was a new feeling. A strange one. The feeling of existing in two places at once, in separate moments of time.

      And he realized suddenly, that this was a memory.

      The second memory. Second only to Rose’s eyes.

      It was a foreign sensation. And it was still entirely nebulous. He couldn’t grab hold of it, couldn’t force it to play out. It simply existed, hovering in the background of his mind, wrenching his consciousness in two.

      He tried to catch his breath, tried to move ahead. It took a concerted effort. Perhaps this was what happened to someone with amnesia when their memory started to come to the surface. Perhaps it was always terrifying and foreign. Always immobilizing. If so, then the process of recovering his memories was going to be the death of him. Because this nearly stopped his breath.

      He continued to walk, battling against the icy grip of foreboding that had wrapped its fingers around his very soul. He had no idea what he was afraid of. Only that this was fear, in its purest, deepest sense.

      The image of the past imposed itself over the present again. Just as he walked into her room, he saw Isabella’s crib, and he saw another crib, as well. Smaller, not so ornate. There was no puffy swath of pink fabric hanging down over a solid wood frame. This one was simple. A frail, fragile-looking frame in a much smaller room.

      He took another step forward, and found himself frozen again. Isabella wasn’t making any sound. And he was afraid to look into her crib.

      Suddenly he felt as though he was being strangled. He couldn’t breathe. His throat was too tight, his chest a solid block of ice. He was at the mercy of whatever this was—there was no working his way through it. There was no mind over matter. He didn’t even know the demon he was fighting, so there was no way to destroy it.

      He was sweating, shaking, completely unable to move.

      And that was how Rose found him, standing in front of Isabella’s crib like a statue, unable to take another step. Terrified of catching a glimpse of his child.

      That was what was so scary. He didn’t want to see her lying there in the crib. He didn’t know why. He only knew that he couldn’t face the sight of it.

      “Leon?” Her soft voice came from behind him, and he couldn’t even turn to get a look at her. “Is everything all right with Isabella?”

      “She isn’t crying,” he said, forcing the words through lips of stone.

      “Did she need anything?”

      “I don’t know.”

      He heard her footsteps behind him, and then she began to sweep past him and he grabbed hold of her arm, pulling her back. “No,” he said, the word bursting from him in a panic.

      “What?” she asked, her blue eyes wide, terrified.

      “You can’t... You can’t go to her.”

      “What’s wrong with you?”

      “I’m having a memory. It hurts and I can’t... I can’t move.”

      She examined him for a long moment, the expression on her face shaded. “I can.” She pulled herself free of his hold and moved forward to the crib, reaching down and plucking Isabella up from inside of it.

      Terror rolled over him in a great black wave, and he forgot to breathe, bright spots appearing in front of his eyes.

      Then Isabella wiggled in Rose’s hold and suddenly he could breathe again.

      He took a step forward, and the crib mattress came into full view. It was empty, because Rose was holding Isabella. But yet again, he was seized with the sensation that he was standing in two different places. That he was looking inside a different crib.

      He stopped. Closing his eyes he let the images wash over him, along with a dark wave of grief that poured over him and saturated him down deep. It was so real, so very present, so overpowering he felt as though he would never smile again.

      And then, it wasn’t the same. He wasn’t seeing images superimposed over reality. He was just remembering.

      Michael didn’t wake up for his feeding like he normally did. The silence was what had woken Leon out of his sleep. Amanda wasn’t awake. It was all right—Leon didn’t mind going and checking on his son.

      He walked down the hall quickly, making his way to the nursery. And from there, the vision in his head seemed to move in slow motion. He could remember very clearly being gripped by a sense of dread the moment his son came into view.

      And then he reached down to touch his small chest, finding him completely unresponsive.

      There was more to that memory. So much panic. So much pain and desperation. He tried to close it all out. Tried to prevent it from playing through to its conclusion. There was no point. Nothing would change the outcome.

      And nothing would fill the deep dark hole that was left behind in his soul. The pit that he dumped all of his excess into.

      He waited, bracing himself. Wondering if other memories would pour forth in a deluge, overtaking him completely.

      As intense as it was to remember anything at all, he would have welcomed more memories. Would have begged for more if the option were available to him. Anything other than being left here with this, and this alone.

      He no longer had only empty blackness in him. No, the blackness had been filled. It had been given substance. It had been given form.

      Grief. Loss. Death.

      Emptiness—he could see now—was a blessing in contrast.

      He didn’t question whether or not this memory was real. Didn’t question if it belonged to him or to someone else.

      It was real, and it was part of him. He knew it down to his marrow. It was such a strange thing to have this memory, with a great gulf between it and the present.

      To have the image of that child back in his past so clear in his mind with this child right in front of him.

      Suddenly, his legs began to give way and he found himself sinking down to the floor.

      “Leon?” Rose’s voice was filled with concern.

      She placed Isabella back in her crib and turned to him, dropping down to her knees in front of him, placing her hands on his cheek. “Leon,” she said, her tone hard, stern, as though she was trying to scold him back to the present.

      His breathing was shallow, his face cold. He despised this. Being so weak in front of her. And that realization nearly made him laugh in spite of the pain, because it was always fascinating to simply know something about himself even when he didn’t know why it was СКАЧАТЬ