The Time Seekers (The Soul Seekers Book 2) Read Online Free Page B

shoulder into the house.
    “You’re letting bugs in.”
    He shrugged.
    “Okay, I had one cigarette. I told you, it’s been a hard week.”
    “How long?” he asked.
    “What?”
    “How long have you been smoking?”
    Another moth flew in, and I envied it. Oh, to be a moth and not me. This wasn’t fun anymore. This marriage stuff was work, and I was turning out to be rotten at it, with piles of dishes and laundry, lies, and soup for dinner. Any day now, Will would ask for a divorce. Oh God, I’d wanted him so bad, but I didn’t understand anything about being someone’s wife. Especially Ward Cleaver’s.
    What if he did ask for a divorce?
    I missed Jesse, but I would die if I lost William.
    Smiling coyly, I pulled the half-empty pack out of my pocket and handed it to him. “So what? I’m weak. A stupid, weak human. That’s why you love me, right?”
    He wasn’t laughing. Will took the pack and lingered over its remnants. For a second, I thought he would pull one out and light up. His eyes held a kind of sparkle upon seeing them. Instead, he tapped the box on the doorframe a few times before tossing them into the kitchen trash. He turned to me. “I want you to live a very long time, Emma. Not just a few years. Not just a few decades. I understand what death is like, and I can’t stand the thought of you being gone. Do you understand?”
    “Sure I do. I feel the same way about you.”
    I walked up and put my arms around him. Will’s body was so warm; it made me safe and happy. His arms wrapped around me, too.
    “Do you really mean that?” he asked. “You aren’t sorry we got married, are you?”
    My head popped away from his chest, and the breath in my lungs stilled. “Of course not.”
    “Because sometimes I worry that we should have waited. You’re so young, and—”
    “We’re the same age!” I had to remind him of this on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis.
    I caught my reflection in the blackened glass of the storm door. I did appear young. And he, even in his nineteen years, held a certain distinction betraying his real age. His inner age.
    Sighing, I also noticed I was a long-haired hippie in ripped jeans and bare feet, while Will was all Brylcreemed hair and cuffed blue jeans. When I turned my chin up to kiss him, I said, “No. I never think about it.” Liar, liar, pants on fire.
    He hesitated before meeting my lips with his. “Good.” And then his lips turned to liquid warmth.
    We kissed for a while, and it cured everything, made me forget. His kisses were hot and determined. Electric. “It’s in the lips, too,” I said after a while, wincing and pulling away.
    “Hmm.” He captured me again, but the shocks grew so strong I couldn’t go on.
    “Stop,” I said, rubbing at my mouth.
    “Damn.”
    “This is crazy. Tell me again why this electric shock therapy of ours is a good thing?” I asked.
    Will sighed. “It’s good because it means I can . . . that we can . . .”
    “We can what?”
    “I don’t know,” he said, with a hint of sadness.
    An image crossed in my mind of him in a 1950s setup. Only it wasn’t a museum, it was real. He fit in, but the image I saw of me was all wrong. Coifed hair, red lipstick, and a pillbox hat with a mesh veil.
    “You want to go back,” I said, throat tightening. Him going back would be much worse than a divorce. No, William. No. Not you, too. I couldn’t lose both you and Jesse in my lifetime.
    “Emma, it’s just a fantasy. Just something I dream about once in awhile.”
    “You want to. That’s why the shocks are good.”
    “I could never really do it.”
    I rested my forehead against his. “No, William, you couldn’t. You’re here, in 1980, with me. And you can never go back.”
    I felt pain radiate from him, like grief. It was so strong that my whole body began to seize up.
    “I don’t really want to,” he lied. “It was just a passing thought.”
    I kissed him, despite all the sizzling pain, and kept kissing until it