It was just that he was Chris. Handsome, in his cardiac-surgeon-next-door kind of way. His open and honest face, the hesitant smile that he couldn’t keep down at seeing her even though things were weird between them. Laura realized, seeing him there in the doorway, that his house felt more like home now than her apartment ever had.
“Hi,” she said, which was about the best she could manage at that moment as far as being witty went. She just wanted to say something, anything, to make sure that he didn’t close the door in her face.
“Hey,” he said back, and there was a look of such relief on his face that she was absolutely sure she wasn’t the only person who felt the way she did. “You want to come in?”
“Yes,” Laura said, and she wondered if she’d ever agreed with a question so much in her whole life.
Chris stepped aside to let her by, and she caught the scent of him as she passed—the masculine, clean aftershave he wore, reassuringly constant. She found her steps taking her to the kitchen. It was where they usually sat together to watch the girls playing in the open-plan living room, so that by now it was automatic habit to go there instead of sitting on the sofa. As if by habit, too, Chris went to the coffee machine and turned it on, letting it make two cups for the two of them to hold.
“So,” Laura said, which was a terrible way to start the conversation but really the only opener she had.
“Right,” Chris agreed. He brought the coffee cups over and set one in front of her, one in front of himself, facing one another at the kitchen island. The stools he had set up for breakfasting here were more comfortable than her sofa.
Laura took a deep breath. “You know I have something to tell you,” she said. “I guess I should just get right to it.”
“Please do,” Chris nodded, taking up a serious expression as if to show that he was ready for it.
“I just want you to understand that it might sound strange, at first,” Laura said. “That you might think that I must be crazy, or that you might not get what I’m saying. But if you give me some time to explain it all, to prove it to you, then it will become clearer.”
Chris frowned and nodded. “Okay,” he said. “You’re kind of worrying me.”
“Don’t be worried,” Laura said automatically, though she privately thought that maybe he should be. He had no idea what was coming next. For a moment, she felt bad for him. Everything was about to be turned on its axis for him. Once he knew, he wouldn’t be able to unknow.
But if they had any kind of future together, it had to be this way. It had to. And Chris would understand that once he understood everything.
“It’s the only secret I’ve kept from you, but it’s a big one,” she said. She wanted to take Nate’s advice, to show him why she had kept it from him and why she was telling him now. Because even once she got past the hurdle of him believing her, he needed to know he could trust her again. He needed to know that she wasn’t a liar by nature. “I know it’s going to feel like a betrayal that I didn’t tell you before. It took Nate a long time to forgive me for hiding this part of myself from him. But you have to understand, this isn’t something I can just tell anyone. I need to know that I can trust them. That it’s worth it. And so far in my life, Nate is the only other person who met that standard. So, please, don’t think of it as an insult that I waited this long to tell you. Think of it as proof of my commitment that I’m willing to now.”
Chris nodded somberly and reached across the kitchen island, touching her hand. “I hear what you’re saying. And you can trust me. Whatever it is, I’m not going to share your secret with anyone else.”
“Okay.” Laura took another deep breath and looked down into her coffee. This was it. The final moment to back out. She could make something up. Tell him that she reacted weirdly to stuff because she was autistic. Pretend that she was going to counselling for PTSD and was worried that people would judge her for it, and it made her trigger-happy. Make up some wholesale story about her being a secret agent or something else ridiculous.
But no.
She loved Chris. She knew now that she didn’t want to live her life without him. And that meant telling him the truth—no matter what it cost her. She couldn’t live their whole lives together on the basis of a lie. She knew how badly that had gone for her and Marcus.
“I’m psychic,” she said, laying out on the line as clearly as she could, staring him right in the eye. “I have visions of the future, which I’m not able to control. Mostly I see really terrible things, and then I have to try and stop them from happening. That’s why I’m good at my job. That’s why I do what I do. And that’s how I was able to save Amy from your brother.”
It was out in the open now. Chris’s hand tightened on hers, a reflexive gesture. She looked at him, at the blank expression on his face as he processed what she’d told him.
He opened his mouth, and Laura prayed that whatever came next would be acceptance.
Not persecution.