The Time Seekers (The Soul Seekers Book 2) Read Online Free PDF

next to me. “Are you hiding?”
    “No.”
    He popped the hat off my head and held it up to shield our faces. His lips met mine with a slow kiss. I’d gotten used to the sharp zaps and was really starting to like them again.
    “Tell me what you were like when you were ‘young’ young,” I said, glad about Weed’s departure. The mere thought of Will finding out I had once gotten high filled me with guilt. I’d never told him about the night, or the ones before it. Those memories of Jesse were mine to keep—they were all I had.
    “I was boring, just like I am now.”
    “Sometimes you’re not very boring.”
    He kissed me again, then accidentally lost hold of the fedora. It bounced out of his hands and rolled under the desk. Retrieving it with a quick swipe of the hand, he stood up and secured the hat over his head with a nice tip-down over the right eye for effect. “Let’s not talk about the old William.”
    I stood up and slipped an arm into his, leaning up to his height. “Let’s do.”
    He began to whistle distractedly, which meant he wasn’t going to spill a thing. Then all his thoughts locked up so it was impossible to get any memories out of him. “Maybe it’s too painful to talk about,” he finally said. “I’d love to go back and change things. Perhaps then I wouldn’t have to carry these memories that haunt me.”
    My heart stopped like a train on a broken track. “You can’t change memories.”
    “But I could fix them.”
    I fell back against the counter. “No, William, you can’t.” My eyes pleaded. Then, finally, I said, “I want to speak to you about it tonight.”
    Books dropped into the return box. They tumbled down into the bin with loud clatters, and Will bent over and reached inside to collect each one. “Talk?”
    My mouth felt dry. Was it too late? Had he already made up his mind to go back, without me? But he couldn’t. It would be like cheating, and William wasn’t a cheater. He was a good, all-American boy in cuffed Levi’s.
    And sometimes the way he talked, acted, and kissed was more like the past than the present.
    ¤ ¤ ¤
    For an hour I stared at my sketchpad, willing myself to finish the outline of Jesse’s body I’d started on Friday. Cowboy Jim let out a long whistle. “Man. That is some thinkin’ you’re doin’ over there. Maybe you should give up on that one.”
    “No, I have to do this. I have to.” I raised my pencil to sketch Jesse’s jaw. After a deep breath, I met charcoal to paper and curved it up to form his whole face. Then the hair. But not the eyes. Not yet. I spent a long time making his hair as authentic as I could; wild and shining with little tangles in spots. I remembered how often he used to comb his hand through it, especially when he was about to say something witty or when he thought he’d gotten my goat, which was almost always.
    I sat back and stared. It was a like a ghost, with no face, no soul. Like the vision I’d seen Friday in the backyard. An empty human who should be there, but wasn’t. My throat ached, and then my head began to throb. I closed the pad and opened a smaller one to make abstract doodles with a black, felt-tip marker. Jim told me about the time his daughter crawled into the horse stables when his wife was on a shopping trip. He talked on and on, and it worked to erase the thoughts running through my head, but not the ache. Five minutes before the end of class, I saw a familiar figure by the open classroom door. William.
    “Hey, Jim, can you hold that story and finish it tomorrow?”
    He glanced up and saw William standing there. “Sure thing, Blondie.”
    I shoved my supplies into my assigned slot in the sorting wall before making my way to the doorway. “Hi.” Good lord, my husband was handsome. I caught a few girls in class stopping their projects to stare at him.
    “Hi,” he said with a grin.
    “You never come here.”
    “Just wanted to see this teacher of yours. Was he rude to you