Total pages in book: 172
Estimated words: 157460 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 787(@200wpm)___ 630(@250wpm)___ 525(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 157460 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 787(@200wpm)___ 630(@250wpm)___ 525(@300wpm)
Zyah rubbed at her arms, once again trying to remove the sensation of Player running his hands over her skin. Touching her. Creating flames licking at her. A hundred tongues of fire. She couldn’t get him off her or out of her, no matter how hard she tried.
“I thought, when we talked all night and laughed together, we were building a solid foundation. When we fell all over each other, I thought it meant something.”
She shook her head, refusing to give in to the burn behind her eyes. This mistake was hers, and she always learned her lessons, accepted her responsibilities and didn’t make the same mistake again, no matter how hard it was to avoid that same blunder.
“We were both exhausted in the early morning hours. He lay on the bed, and I went to lie down, just to sleep for a short while next to him. I wanted him to hold me. I wanted to feel his body curled around mine, but he shoved me off the bed. Pushed me away. Hard. He actually said he was done with me. He told me he never slept with women like me and handed me a wad of money. Said I’d earned it. It was a lot of money. He even told me to leave my number on the end table so he could give me a call sometime. Wasn’t that just lovely?”
Humiliation turned her inside out. Color swept up her body all over again. Sadly, it was more than humiliation; disappointment in him, in her and the realization that she couldn’t trust her greatest gift had overwhelmed her. The hurt had almost been unbearable.
“I gathered up my things and rushed out of there. He just rolled over and went to sleep. He didn’t say another word to me. I looked for Francine, but someone said she’d gone off with a man from the Trinity chapter early in the evening. She’d even deserted me. I was crying my eyes out and rushing for the door, and another Torpedo Ink member stopped me. He stepped right in front of me, blocking my way. He was really intimidating, but he asked me what was wrong, if someone had hurt me. I felt him, the way we can, and he was good inside. That part of him was protected, hard to see because he didn’t want anyone to see it, but I knew he wanted to help me, and if I had said someone hurt me, he wouldn’t have been very nice to them.”
“These men from this club, the ones Inez likes so much, they are good men, then?” Anat asked.
“It is difficult to answer that, Mama Anat,” Zyah said, wanting to be truthful. “Every single one of them that I came into contact with, including Player, had intense, dangerous layers covering the heart of them. I think these men could be either. It feels to me as if their intention is to do right, to be good men, but then good is relative, isn’t it? I’m certain Player didn’t intend to break my heart. He didn’t know me. To him I was a woman he paid to have sex with. I played that part so perfectly.”
“Zyah. Don’t be bitter or fall into self-pity,” Anat chided gently. “Those are wasted emotions. It is okay to be sad for what is lost. What you missed. Your gift told you this man was the right one, and you acted on it, but he, for some reason, was wired wrong and didn’t connect the same way. That wasn’t your failing. Perhaps it wasn’t even his. We don’t know what this man has been through or why he didn’t have the same feelings you did. You have to let that anger toward him go.”
Zyah nodded. “It really isn’t anger so much as embarrassment and sorrow that I feel I can’t even trust my gift. My feelings were so strong. It felt so right to be with him. Nothing had ever felt that way before. When he said those things to me, it felt like he slapped me in the face. Hard. It hurt so bad and still does. I hear his voice over and over and can’t seem to get it out of my head.”
She could feel intense sorrow dripping down her soul. She’d been born with a priceless gift, one Anat had told her, from the time she was a little girl, had been passed down through her mother’s family for generations. Anat was her mother’s mother, and all of the women prior to Zyah had shared an affinity with the earth, a connection they felt through their bodies.
Zyah had made it a point to study science, to find a plausible explanation for her ability to feel a connection to others. The only thing that made the slightest bit of sense was that beneath the forest floor, mycelium acted like a wide network, distributing nutrients and other much-needed attributes to living plants and trees. At the same time, the mycelium knew to close off aid to the dead or dying or already decomposing plants it couldn’t save in the forest. That was the short version, but it fit.