Read Online Hereafter (Shadowlands) by Kate Brian - Free Book Online

his hands on the back of one of the wicker chairs. “We have to keep an eye on the visitors. We have to interact with them, because we’re integral in sending them where they need to go.”
    A cold gush of fear crashed over me. “Wait a minute. You said you don’t decide where people end up.”
    “We don’t,” Tristan replied.
    “So what does that mean?” I asked. “How are you integral?”
    He chewed on his bottom lip and looked up at the plaster ceiling, crisscrossed with cracks. “It’s a little hard to explain, but basically, everything we see, everything we hear…it all goes into the ultimate decision.”
    “Do you have to write a report or something?” I asked, resting my hands on the chair across from his.
    “No. Nothing like that,” Tristan said with a short laugh. “The information we gather, it just goes where it needs to be.”
    “So what you’re saying is, you’re telepathic,” I said.
    He shrugged, tilting his head to one side. “Kind of. We all are.”
    “And you send telepathic messages to who? God?” I asked, almost laughing at the absurdity of the concept. Fortunately, though, I managed to hold my tongue. I didn’t want to offend him.
    “I don’t actually know,” Tristan said. “I’ve tried never to ask that question.”
    “How could you never ask that question?” I blurted out, my grip tightening on the back of the chair. “That’s the single most important question there is! Why are we here? Why are we doing all this? If I’m going to be someone’s eyes and ears, I’d kind of like to know who that someone is.”
    “I don’t ask that question, Rory, because I’ll never get an answer,” Tristan said, his voice reaching a point very close to anger, a point I’d never seen him approach before.
    I looked down at the floor, my face burning. “Oh.”
    Clearly this was a topic of some frustration to him as well. Only he’d been dealing with it for a very long time. I turned away from him and stepped over to the window. With one finger, I moved the curtain an inch to the side, looking out at my house, our house, the last house my sister, my father, and I would ever live in together, and my chest felt full. My eyes prickled and I gulped in a breath.
    “Are you okay?”
    I felt the warmth of Tristan’s body as he stepped up behind me, the tickle of his breath on my neck. Instantly, my heart began to pound.
    “Yeah,” I said quietly. “I’m fine.”
    “I’m sorry,” he whispered, sending a shiver down my spine. “I didn’t mean to snap.”
    I turned my head ever so slightly to the side. My breathing was shallow, my pulse skipping with him so near. “It’s okay.”
    “I try not to question everything, because I know that what we’re doing here matters,” he said, his voice low.
    I turned to face him, so fast that my braid brushed his bicep and our knees touched. I pressed myself back into the window, flattening the curtain behind me, but he didn’t even flinch.
    “How?” I asked hopefully, looking into his eyes. “How do you know?”
    His eyes roamed my face, flicking from my lips to my cheeks to my eyes to my hair. “We’re maintaining the balance of the universe,” he said. “There’s nothing that matters more.”
    His eyelashes fluttered and he stared down at my mouth. My lips tingled and my fingers itched to reach out and grab his hand, his waist, his arm. I recalled the feeling of his thumb tracing my cheek last night, the way he’d held me close at the cove, how he’d looked into my eyes yesterday when he told me how strong I was. How beautiful. How true.
    In a rush of bravery, I stood on my toes and pressed my lips against his. For a split second, everything was perfect. His soft lips, the heady scent of sea and salt in the room, the sound of the waves crashing outside the open window. But then Tristan abruptly pulled away. He flattened the back of his hand against his lips, his eyes wide. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized he