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.If we hadn’t made that connection back when I helped heal you, I wouldn’t have even begun to figure out a way to do it.But I just sort of merged our, I don’t know, let’s call it Chi, our Chis, and I did a little copy-and-paste of my protective aura onto your Chi, and then increased the bandwidth of your connection to the Source, so now you can draw on more energy to heal, to lift things and to punch faces.Beyond a certain point, super-strength stops being about muscles, and the ability to lift things becomes a touch-based telekinetic thingy.I kinda figured that out the first time I saw a picture of Ultimate flying around with a warship in his hands.That wouldn’t work without telekinesis, he would just end up ripping a hole in the ship or breaking it into pieces instead of picking it up.So, what he does, what you’re going to be able to do, is to grab the whole thing with his mind.It’s not a conscious process, though, so don’t think too much about it, or you may sabotage yourself, okay?”“That’s fucking amazing,” I said as soon as she paused, just to interrupt her verbal waterfall for a bit.“You’re fucking amazing.”“Thank you,” she said.I knew what I wanted to say to her, real world be damned.Chapter ThirteenChristine DarkNew York, New York, March 17, 2013OMG, L-word alert!It was on the tip of his non-existent tongue, held back by nothing more than the fear she would freak out if he said it.Well-justified fear, because she had no clue what she was going to say or do if he did.Don’t say it back unless you mean it, her brain piped in.Stupid brain.Yeah, don’t say it back and leave him hanging.But her stupid brain was right, lying would be even worse.But, would she be lying if she said it back?He was so beautiful.She’d looked into his soul, or something close enough to it to merit the name, and it had been truly amazing, the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.Nobility and strength and kindness and love and things she couldn’t name or even describe, all mixed together into something warm and gorgeous and chocolate-flavored with a hint of mint that she wanted to eat, to love, to fuck, yes, to fuck and to hold and to marry and have children and grandchildren with and…Get ahold of yourself, woman!The problem was, Mark’s had been the only soul (yeah, soul it was) she’d looked at.What if all souls were equally beautiful? What if she was just echoing his feelings and one day she’d wake up and regret what she’d done? Yeah, he was beautiful, but there was plenty of bad stuff in there, too: anger and fear and suffering, spread all over his beautiful soul, and sure, in some ways they made it more beautiful still, but they also scared her.What would John’s soul look like?Holy crap, it had gotten pretty quiet for quite a while.Mark didn’t said anything, just looked at her, and she felt the moment pass.He’d seen the panic in her face and had tacitly rescinded his offer.No L-word for you, Pissy Chrissy.Bummer, but also phew! But bummer so badly.She’d hurt him, she could feel that, but it could have been worse.The silence was getting pretty bad, thoughSay something!“Hey, did I tell you about my two disastrous boyfriend experiences?”Say something else! Stupid, stupid!“No; not in any detail, that is,” he said, and leaned back on the chair.“I think we’ve earned a little break before we go help Condor, so tell me about them.The a-hole and the d-bag, right?”He still remembered their conversation that first night.So sweet.And he wanted to hear about her exes.So weird.You brought them up, weirdo.All you had to do was say you should go check on Condor and the disruptor thingy.Idiot.This time, she agreed with her brain.She really was an idiot.“Okay.I really didn’t date much in high school.The first serious thing with a boy happened during freshman year at MU.His name was Dean.Dean Crenshaw.He was cute, funny, played the guitar.He even looked a little bit like Dean Winchester, which was cool even though I’m more of a Sammy kind of gal.Sorry, talking about a TV show in my universe.Anyway, he was my first.” First time: scary and messy and painful, and it had been over just as it was beginning to feel good.After that things had been a little better but she’d always felt like she was missing out on something; if that was what sex was like, what was all the fuss about? “I caught him cheating on me.It was pretty bad.” Go into the gory details? In for a penny, in for a pound.“He tried to make it my fault.Didn’t quite come out and say it, but he sort of implied that if I’d been any good in bed he wouldn’t have had to go somewhere else.” And she’d bought it too, that was the worst part.He’d made her feel ugly and worthless.It’d gotten so bad she’d thought about dropping out of school.Thank God Mom and Sophie talked her out of it.“The other guy was Jerry Bordeaux.He was French-Canadian and very pretentious.He had an opinion on everything, and if you didn’t agree with him he was great at figuring out ways to put you down and make you feel stupid.He was smart, but not half as smart as he thought he was.And when he lost at anything, an argument, or Trivial Pursuit, anything, he got mean.But he wasn’t all that bad at first.” He’d made her feel pretty, for one, which had been a godsend after the self-confidence tailspin she’d been in after Dean.And the sex had been oodles better; Jerry had always been proud of his ‘She comes first’ policy.Thanks to Jerry Christine finally realized that Dean had been the one that sucked at sex, not her.“It got worse later, though, because he needed to be right all the effing time.He was always putting me down for liking computer games and ‘genre fiction.’ Said I wasn’t serious enough.” And when he broke up with her, he’d said he’d never found her all that attractive in the first place.Nice parting shot, d-bag.“That ended like six months ago.”“Dean and Jerry do sound like a couple of clowns,” Mark said.“Although it would have been funny if their last names had been Martin and Lewis.” She didn’t know what he was talking about, but she let it go; he didn’t know what she was talking about a lot of the time, so turnabout was fair play.And why did I tell him about them? As a plea for him not to be an a-hole? Or maybe she was just letting him know she was an effing doormat, so he might as well wipe his boots on her on his way out of her life.“My first time also didn’t go so well,” he added.She picked up another emotional spike from him, one she recognized from the shopping trip earlier in the day.“So tell me.”He did.She almost wished he hadn’t.Way to make her feel stupid for whining about her First World problems.Let’s see.Her boyfriends were kinda douchy to her.His girlfriend ended up dead of a heroin overdose.Her life was Hannah Montana, his life was The Wire and never the twain shall meet.Except hurt was hurt, fear was fear, and at least now they’d shared the things that had hurt and scared them.She didn’t want to be used and put down, and he didn’t want to be abandoned and betrayed.Maybe sharing their bad experiences would help them avoid repeating them [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]