Wherever She Goes (Psychic Seasons by ReGina Welling (you can read anyone txt) 📕

No matter what Gustavia said, picturing an entire bar full of half-naked people would not make her feel better. That was one thing she never doubted.

Her hands were shaking by the time the song ended. Cries of, “more” quickly turned into a chant. Gustavia called over, “Kat, don’t you want to sing?”

Now there was a lump in her throat that felt like a rock. Swallowing twice in rapid succession, Kat shook her head. What was the deal? She’d sung on this stage plenty of times. Tonight, however, she’d be lucky to eke out a squeak.

“Let’s do Little Bird next,” Julie suggested.

Still unable to speak past the tightness, Kat nodded. Keeping her eyes tightly closed, she narrowed her focus to let in only the music and the lyrics. Her breathing slowed, the lump eased and after a moment, she felt as though Annie Lennox, through Julie, was speaking straight to her.

From somewhere outside herself, a sense of warmth and acceptance fell like a warm blanket over her jangled nerves. It gentled and soothed.

It was her time to fly, her time to leave the nest. Kat opened her eyes and this time the crowd had lost that menacing presence. Looking out, she saw smiling faces, happy people clapping along to the song, sending her positive energy.

Except for Zack who sat with an odd expression on his face.

By the time the last notes faded away, Kat was enjoying the experience as much as she ever had and this time when the crowd asked for more, she decided to sing Black Horse and A Cherry Tree

If she glanced over at Zack a few times during the chorus, well, it was nothing more than the truth.

He was not the one for her.

Chapter 18

Gustavia shot her brother a saucy wink as she shuffled chairs around and he ended up sitting next to Kat. Not awkward at all, the thought as he angled himself as far away from her as possible. There were things he wanted to say but this was not the place or time.

Relief washed over him when she got up to take the stage. He felt the jolt when her foot caught on his chair. Instinct took over when she stumbled, he couldn’t help himself so reached out to steady her. Just that brief touch brought back the memory of kissing her.

He nearly groaned at the flood of emotions that memory brought with it. Desire, yes—but there was more. There was that same sense of anticipation he had felt as a child when Christmas came around and he held a brightly wrapped package in his hands. Sure, it might turn out to be socks, but it might also be a robot or a toy car. Either way, it would be a delicious surprise—one he felt compelled to unwrap.

Zack pulled his mind back from that track—Kat was not a gift to be unwrapped.

Stop. Just stop, he told himself.

Then she was playing and when that moment of stage fright, of self-doubt passed through her, he felt the sharp stab of it just as keenly. When her breath shortened and strained, the weight of it sank into his chest.

What was happening to him?

Tension mounted as her fear grew within them both. Every lurch of her heart answered in his until he could take it no more and reversed the connection. Now, instead of her fear swamping him, he was the one doing the sending. Reassurance, acceptance, and strength were what he poured through the connection until he felt the fear subside.

He turned burning eyes toward the stage and tried to figure out how to sever whatever tenuous hold she had on him. Seconds passed, as the height of emotion leveled off and he transitioned into cop mode, he understood that she’d done nothing intentionally.

Watching intently, he saw that her eyes neither sought him out nor avoided him. None of the markers that normally pointed toward deception was present. If she’d been sitting across from him in interrogation, the word innocent would be flashing through his head.

There was only one conclusion he could draw from that deduction. If she had not been reaching out to him, then he must have been the one who had infiltrated her psyche. He had been the interloper.

Okay, they had some kind of weird connection.

It meant nothing.

Of course it meant something, but it didn’t mean he had feelings for her. It just meant…he forced his mind away from this train of thought and focused back on the stage.

Gustavia. He would watch his sister perform and forget all about Kat and her siren song.

Zack lied to himself thinking he could have done it, too. He could have purged every memory of her from his mind, forgotten how the trill of her laugh warmed something inside him, ignored that place inside him that answered her like an echo winging through the mountains.

When she started singing straight to him about how he wasn’t the man for her and all he could think was Oh yes I am.

_,.-'~'-.,_

Two spots of color rode high on Kat’s cheeks when she stepped down from the low platform that served as stage. Her eyes darted toward the table. The chair next to hers now sat empty.

She was thankful and relieved not to have to spend the rest of the evening ignoring him even if some small part of her cried out that this was a lie. That same inner voice also insisted he had been behind that warm rush of reassurance that had gotten her through a minor on-stage meltdown.

Stopping along the way to accept compliments, Kat made her way across the room toward the short hallway leading to the restrooms. A few minutes of quiet would go a long way toward being able to regroup. It was a decision she instantly regretted when Zack stepped out of the door on the left.

Drawn to him like a magnet to steel but still wary, she tried to circle past without speaking but