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to promise to obey his request, but before I could follow through with the unfamiliar urge, he jogged back the way we’d come without another glance in my direction.
    I stood there watching him as he faded into the trees, clueless again.
    What happened? How? How did I feel? What did it mean?
    I had no answers, save that for a minute, I hadn’t been alone in my mind. Dace had come rushing in, and he hadn’t come alone.
    With the exception of Monday, I’d never felt anything so amazing.
    The sense of relief rushing up overwhelmed me. I wasn’t crazy after all.
    I might not have understood what that meant, but the confirmation sent relief shooting through me. Determination quickly followed. I had to find out more.
    Had I heard his thoughts just once, maybe I could have believed I imagined the entire thing, but my imagination didn’t have near that much power. Besides, Dace’s voice sounded nothing like that growl. The way he spoke was low, dark … soft and rough at the same time. That possessive growl was something else altogether, and it was as instinctively familiar to me as Dace.
    Rationally, I knew I should have been frightened, but I didn’t feel that way at all. For the first time in weeks, I felt optimistic. Like I could learn to deal with this new life, to accept it, and maybe even come to appreciate it.
    That probably should have worried me, too.

Chapter Four
    D ad and I went to Cabot for a laptop on Saturday. We returned four hours later with a laptop, an all-in-one printer, and enough other equipment to set up a small business. I didn’t know what half the stuff did, but he seemed to think we’d need everything at some point, so I didn’t argue much. I did, however, try to convince him to at least let me pay for the iPod he insisted I needed.
    “It’ll drown out the stuffy professors,” he joked.
    I couldn’t convince him to let me pay for that either. I got the lunch tab away from him and paid for before he noticed though. He objected as soon as he figured out what I’d done, of course, but the damage was already done. I’d spent a whopping $27.38 on lunch.
    We arrived back in town at one, unloaded our goodies, and then Dad headed over to the Inn to check in and see how things were going. I wasn’t sure if he and Melinda, the owner, were dating or not, but he spent a lot of time over there. Melinda didn’t seem to mind much. Dad was one of those people everyone loved. Not pushy or demanding, but quietly there to lend a hand.
    I prowled around the house for a little while. Took my new laptop out of the box and set everything up on the desk. Without access to the network, my interest quickly fizzled. By three, I was bored out of my mind, and my thoughts quickly returned to Dace and our bizarre meeting.
    My obsession with him had grown by leaps and bounds. He didn’t make any sense. Hell, nothing made any sense anymore.
    Yet again, I tried to convince myself to forget about him, but I couldn’t. The fact that part of me, a big part, didn’t want to stop didn’t help the situation. I still hurt, but I felt better. Stronger. And I owed that to him, though I didn’t understand why. I knew I wasn’t obsessing because he made me feel better. I was obsessing because the things happening between us were unbelievable, yet still somehow felt as familiar to me as an old, worn blanket.
    I didn’t understand a lot about the world. The Bermuda Triangle, people who swore they were abducted by aliens, psychics, serial killers, ghosts, Bigfoot … an endless list of unsolved mysteries existed. I knew that. I accepted it. But I’d never seen any of those things for myself, let alone felt them. So why now? Why here? Why me ? I was just a girl. Just a sad, messed up girl. Nothing special about me at all.
    Except, I wasn’t so sure that was true anymore. I felt as if some new road stretched before me, obscured in shadow, and ominous, but one I needed to travel anyway. Whatever lay at the end was important,