Consequence Read Free Page A

found out who she was in the beginning, you were just as obsessed about it as I—”
                  “And I paid for acting like an ass, if you remember,” Caleb told him. He sighed as his blue eyes found mine and he remembered how he watched me leave in the Jeep that night, feeling my heart beating so loud in his chest, and not knowing what was going to happen next. Knowing he’d screwed up, but not knowing what to do to fix it.
                  I shook my head and opened my mouth to tell him no, that I was sorry, but Kyle beat me to it.
                  “She’ll always be the Visionary, no matter what you want. Or what she wants.” He crossed his arms and scowled at us both. “Maybe that’s what’s going on right now. That you both are taking the Visionary thing too lightly and it’s pissed off, trying to send you a message—”
                  Caleb moved before I could stop him. He got right in Kyle’s face, nose to nose, and growled, “You don’t live it and breathe it every day. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
                  Kyle scoffed, but had the good sense to back down enough to show he wasn’t about to go head to head with the Champion of his clan. “I’m not trying to fight with you. I’m just stating fact…” Caleb moved forward and Kyle changed his wording, “I’m just talking ideas. There’s a reason this is happening to Maggie.”
                  I gripped Caleb’s arm—not to hold him back, but to just hold him. “Don’t ever say that Maggie hasn’t done enough or given enough or not taken being the Visionary seriously. She was yanked into this life by me and has done nothing but accept and love us, all of us. So shut your face with talk that she’s not absolutely amazing at what she’s been given and had to deal and work with. Even the ones of us that grew up in it wouldn’t do so well.”
                  Kyle sighed and raised his hands. “I didn’t mean for it to come out like that.” He glanced at me and back at Caleb. “Both of you work hard. I just mean that maybe you’re spreading yourselves thin. Or…maybe focusing on the wrong things. Maybe you’re not on the right path and this is a little course correction from the universe. It’s obvious that Maggie’s not doing something right or this wouldn’t be happening, right?”
                  Caleb’s hands snapped forward and gripped Kyle’s collar tightly.
                  “Caleb!” Lynne screeched from Kyle’s back.
                  “Champion or not,” Caleb growled, “I will bust you in your mouth if you don’t stop talking about my wife that way.”
                  “See!” Kyle said and pointed above Caleb’s hands. “You said ‘my wife’, not ‘her’, not ‘Maggie’, not ‘the Visionary’. You’re looking at this all wrong, bro.” He shook his head and pushed Caleb’s hands off. “If it were me—”
                  “If it were you, you’d be even worse than I am,” Caleb said, the fight completely gone out of him. He sagged, his head leaning down to rest his chin to his chest. I still had his arm in my grip, just watching the display.
                  “Maybe,” Kyle conceded.
                  You would. You know you would.
                  I ignored Lynne’s internal scold to Kyle and put my hand on Caleb’s scruffy chin to pull his face over to me. I pushed everything away but him and me. I moved and pressed right up against him, his chest and thigh to mine, letting my nose and cheek rest against his—our own little secret place, he called it. With our eyes closed, I tried to think of a way to apologize to the man I loved more than life. He was right. He had thought of me as a woman first, as his wife, as Maggie, first. That’s what I’d always wanted and took it for granted,