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Chapter Fifteen: Timeless by Rosaline Saul

Then everything speeds up again and the surrounding noises seem too loud all of a sudden, it shudders into me. I feel Kieran’s arms still wrapped around me tightly and I twist around anxiously.

A young man climbs hurriedly from the driver side of the car. It looks as if he just got his driver’s license, he must have turned eighteen only a month ago. He screams worriedly, “Are ye all right? I am so sorry. I did not see ye there.”

I look down and there is only a hair's breadth between the front of the car and Kieran’s leg.

Kieran steps away from the car unharmed, with me still in his arms. “No, worries.” He smiles sociably. “You stopped in the nick of time. You should drive more carefully though; you could have killed me.”

The driver of the car walks to the front of his car and wipes his hand disbelievingly over the unscathed paintwork. He says apologetically, “I swear ye weren’t there. You just appeared out of mist. I swear it on my life.”

Kieran steps toward him. He loosens an arm from around my waist and holds his hand out to the young man. The man reaches to him, and they shake hands. Kieran says, “No harm done, then.”

He turns me in his arms, keeping his one arm around my waist and steers me up the hill again.

I look at him anxiously. “I cannot believe we are still alive. That car barely missed you, it stopped just in time.”

He sighs deeply but says nothing. He looks uneasy and nervous, and he avoids looking at me.

When we reach the coffee shop and I see the busy flurry of everybody inside, there is not an empty seat, I feel reluctant to go in. After what just happened, I needed somewhere quiet to process my thoughts, since we could have been dead. More so, I could have been dead, if Kieran did not jump in between the car and me.

He suggests, “Would you rather like to get something to eat at my house? It’s just up the road from here.”

I nod my head in agreement. The initial shock is starting to dissipate and now questions are starting to crowd out the awe and wonder of this apparent miracle. I can swear I heard the crunching of metal, and I am sure I felt the car slam into Kieran.

We walk away from the coffee shop, my hand twined into his.

I turn to him as we turn up a cobbled alleyway. “I could have sworn that car knocked into you, yet there was not even a dent in it, and you are okay.”

I see him struggling with himself. His face is clouded over with doubt and indecision. He says, “We’re almost there.”

We walk through the busy Saturday market, and I have to look where I am walking not to crash into other people, so I look away from him. I have the distinct feeling he is hiding something from me.

When we reach his house, and after he unlocks the door, he lets me walk in and then he follows me in. I wait in the foyer for him while he closes the door again.

After he takes my coat from me, he drapes it over the banister. He smiles and says, “Come, sit down.”

 

I follow him into the lounge. It is a real royal dump. The large plasma television fixed to the wall above the fireplace and the brand-new leather lounge suite looks out of place.

My eyes fix onto a body sprawled across the large three-seat leather couch. The pair of black eyes from this body looks up at me in stunned surprise.

The owner of the pair of black eyes stands up hastily, and I cannot help noticing he is only wearing a pair of black sweatpants, hanging low on his hips. In an instant, I observe his arms, his firm stomach and his strong shoulders.

He gives me a long, unhurried look, and he smiles slowly, brilliantly. He keeps my eyes imprisoned with his, and I feel captured by his gaze, a gaze filled with promises and silent desires.

Kieran breaks this exhilarating moment between us by shouldering past him. “Put on a shirt, Jayden,” Kieran stresses as he walks past him toward the dining room.

Jayden pulls his face sourly and smiles at me, as if we are sharing a joke. His smile is not quite a smile. It is half a smile, half a grin, hinting at amusement, confidence and mischief.

I feel my face grow warm as he moves toward me. He is mere centimetres away from me, but he might as well have touched me, judging by the way my heart speeds up in my chest.

He stops when he gets next to me and lowers his head down to me. I can do nothing but look up at him. His eyes are dark, changing rapidly as a cold wintry day could turn into a bright cloudless sky, the wind trailing light and shadows across the earth.

Kieran calls my name from the kitchen.

One corner of his mouth curls up slowly and he says quietly, “Welcome to our humble abode, Heather.”

I step away from him. I whisper, not trusting my voice not to croak when I speak normally, “Thank you, Jayden.”

He moves away from me and distractedly I walk toward the double door separating the lounge from the dining room.

In the dining room, the entire wall between the dining room and the kitchen has been removed and the kitchen and dining room form one big room.

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