Goose bumps erupted all over Samantha’s arms, but she refused to shiver or admit that any of this fazed her. Her plan was to convince Daryl to go with her to the park but now he just left her here with his brother whom she did not even know, but she pretended to be friendly.

She decided she would rather stand here talking to a stranger than go home. In fact, she was too afraid to go home after this morning. Her chest burned with a feeling of trepidation.

When she left for school, late as always, her stepfather was already crazy drunk and spewing curse words from his flapping lips. She had wondered if he had ever gone to bed the night before, or if he had just drunk his way through the dark hours.

However, Daryl did not seem interested in spending more time with her than necessary and soon she would have no choice but to go home and face whatever was waiting for her.

The sound of the traffic from Park Avenue started fading and she could not shake the feeling of being watched.

Nervously she looked around.

They only lived five streets down and even though her stepfather hardly left the dim lounge in their house, it could be him keeping an eye on her. If he saw her talking to Chris it would cause even more trouble for her mum.

 

 

Samantha was just an ordinary girl, so his sudden feelings of seeing her talking to Chris was unexplained. These feelings spindled its way around in his chest, slowly hooking its thorns into the edges of his heart, nudging into his soul.

Try as he may, to ignore these feelings, he could not, and he knew. He knew Chris fancied Samantha. He could feel it even though he could not describe the feeling exactly, but he just knew stuff, without being told. It was a knowing that went way beyond intuition or gut feelings.

He had never really felt guilty about the way he was aware of another person's feelings. Perhaps he should feel guilty because maybe people did not want him to know how they felt, but he could not help it, really. It was a curse or a blessing, whichever way he wanted to feel about it at any given time of any granted day.

He was used to the way other's feelings of happiness or sadness caused a hollow yearning sensation in his stomach when the muscles of his heart automatically contracted. Most people could do it; they just did not realise they had the ability.

It was like when a person sees someone they had not seen for a long time and even though they had changed, got older, looked different, they still recognised each other not by the way they looked but by the way they felt toward each other. It was a feeling, a feeling of familiarity, of knowing.

When a person met someone for the first time and felt an intense emotion of love, love at first sight or instantly disliked another person or just knew the other person was very dangerous and one had to be cautious in the presence of this other dodgy person, it was a connection Daryl felt with the world around him, all the time.

This was all very normal for him, and usually quite easy to ignore. However, for some reason, at this very moment, his own feelings for Samantha were stronger and it was harder to disregard.

From the window of his bedroom, he watched as Samantha ran her fingers through her hair. He watched as Chris stepped closer to Samantha on the sidewalk down below and started leaning closer to her to whisper something in her ear, to let his whispered breath brush against the curve of her neck.

Daryl fought back a grimace.

As if Chris could feel eyes burning into the top of his head, Chris glanced up to Daryl where he stood framed in his bedroom window. He met his gaze for a second and then looked back at Samantha.

Samantha looked up as well, too quickly for Daryl to step away from the window.

Their eyes locked for an instant.

Her green eyes were framed by long dark lashes, and they looked up at him inquisitively.

He knew her face, knew the shape, knew every line. He had seen her many times before this moment, so why did he only realise now just how beautiful she was?

Taking a deep breath, deep enough to lift his shoulders, he let his ability to know how she was feeling bridge the gap between them. Unseen to anyone, his soul reached for hers, like invisible fingers it reached closer, not to touch her, but to feel the vibrations. It was not something he could explain. It was just something he could do.

Quickly he took a step back. He felt nothing from her. Not even a hint of a feeling. He had never been interested in gauging how much of her feelings he could perceive, and now that he wanted to, he realised he could not.

His eyes darted back to her again and he felt a little unsure. This not knowing how another person felt had never happened to him before.

She was still looking up at him and again, his gaze locked with hers.

A warm red blush spread across her cheeks before she looked back at Chris, still standing beside her, talking a mile a second.

The emotions on her face were clear as if he could read them from the pages of a book, but even though the expression in her eyes said maybe more than she wanted to reveal, he could not feel the way she felt. Nothing at all.

An uncomfortable feeling crept through Daryl.

He felt the same as he always did, so was there something wrong with him?

Usually, he had the ability to sense other people’s emotions clearly, and generally, he had the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling, and he was always right. He could immerse himself in another person’s life and know what turmoil or happiness they were experiencing.

Burdened with a heightened sense of empathy, he was affected by other people’s energies, and he had an innate ability to intuitively feel and perceive others. Essentially, he was like a large dam-like structure, collecting all the accumulated karma, emotions, and energy from others. He could feel everything, soak up every insignificant thing everyone was feeling as it passed through them.

Why did he feel nothing at all from Samantha?

Then, he felt a sudden strange impulse, one he did not clearly understand. It had something to do with the way Chris was using his charms on her, the moves he was making on her which she was unaware of and he felt an urge to rush from his bedroom and down the narrow stairs, out the front door to where they stood on the side-walk.

He wanted to step in between them, to ward off his brother’s advances on her and to protect her from the darker thoughts of Chris' mind.

Maybe he would have wanted to do this with any other girl, not just Samantha, but Samantha looked sad most of the time and he did not want Chris to hurt her.

It occurred to him that if she felt sad most of the time, her emotions would have been more profound, so why then had he never taken them on as his own?

It was starting to seriously irritate him that he could not connect with her emotions. Chris' emotions were bouncing all over the place and he could feel them as clearly as he could feel his fingernails digging into the palms of his hands.

“Coffee?” His mum asked from his bedroom door.

He pulled his absorbed glare away from Samantha and Chris and when he looked away from them to his mum standing in the doorway to his room, he felt a sense of relief.

He did not want to suddenly be interested in Samantha just because she was the only girl whose emotions and feelings he could not decipher and he was one hundred percent certain that once he managed to connect with her, it would be the same as with every other girl, and girls falling for him so effortlessly had become tiresome and boring about four years ago.

“No. I'm okay. Thanks, Mum,” he said as he stepped away from the window.

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