Chapter 1

“In utter despair, relinquish crown, septa and shaul

Deputes in my head, with no time to spare

The question, do you believe in the supernatural?”

“Why do you insist on reading that to me every day?” Clara chuckled to Evander, her gaze moving from the book in his hands to his beautiful, clear ocean eyes. He was a beautiful man, the most beautiful she had ever seen. He had the most crooked smile and a jaw so sharp it could cut her heart in half.

It had been three years since she met Evander at a friend’s beach cookout in San Francisco. She had been on tour and was persuaded, well forced, to make a detour before continuing on her tour. She was promised numerous moments she would never forget, endless fields of nature with the sun to constantly illuminate her pictures and of course, a whirlwind romance. The rest she was willing to believe but the last had her doubts rising from zero to hundred. Isn’t Paris known to be the birthplace of romance itself? If she could not find love in Paris of all places, she was doubtful she would find it in San Francisco. 

She had been mindlessly enjoying the company of the large buffet table when he walked in, all masculine with a hint of languid grace. She stared shamelessly because who wouldn’t? Even as their eyes met, she still stared. It was as if their eyes were drawn to each other in a dance of fire, electricity and something unknown.

 She hadn’t been able to explain it then and in a way, even right now, while in bed with him, she still could not explain it. It was like he had a gravitational pull of his own, waiting, but not with bated breath. No, his pull had a confidence about it. He was a man who was sure about everything.

“Maybe one day I’ll stop. But that means you will have to stop treating it like a story and you know, respect it like I do,” He said, his usual god-like baritone doing things she couldn’t quite explain. 

He twirled a piece of her hair in his fingers, placed it behind her ears and planted a gentle kiss on her forehead. “Sometimes, things aren’t always as they seem.” He closed the book and placed it on the bedside drawer, right next to the lamp responsible for the golden light that surrounded the room.

He got up and headed to the bathroom and Clara wondered what he meant by what he had said. She was never one to think things too deeply. It was not like she thought herself shallow or a self-absorbed millennial like most women her age but it was always as if there was a block in her mind, something hindering her thought process. The doctors waved it off as unimportant seeing as she kept doing well in school and had not had any significant academic issues up till that point. She could keep up with school but not real life questions? 

Maybe she was shallow.

It had always been a source of deep concern for her and it became even more troublesome to her mind when she realized she could not hold a good conversation or even a good relationship. She had always been accused of being too yielding, too willing, a pushover, if her past relationships were anything to go by. Men wanted more, more banter, more spontaneity, more spunk, and more life. 

Life before Evander was like being a lonely lighthouse in a sea of fog. No one looked at her, only through her but everything changed three years ago. Then came Evander Straton, another lighthouse, but this time, he was looking for her, looking at her and looking out for her. He saw confidence and for some reason, she began to see it in herself as well.

After high school, she had decided college was not the best thing for her as she had taken a strong liking to photography. She had always felt like she could connect to unanswered questions, an era or situation she had no direct involvement with, through pictures and colors. Her dad did not approve for sure but her parents had not exactly done much to help in her quest for happiness. They loved her but even they had their own limits and she felt like they were in no position to take away what looked like a semblance of joy from her.

She was on tour for most of the year after high school graduation, spending time with a lot of amazing and talented people but she was still unsure, always second guessing. It was like being on the road for so long had put her on a mental loop of always being on the run. But what was she running from? Her own mind? If the mind was intrinsic then that would be a futile race.

She had met Jensen on one of the tours she took during this time, a twenty-two year old redhead with a heart of gold and a fiancé in Daly city. Jensen worked as a consultant in an insurance company and wanted to put down some roots. Jensen had just been approaching the end of her journey and loving the company Clara provided had really wanted Clara to come with her. Jensen had offered her a position at the new studio she was opening in Cali as her first step to a stable, stress-free retirement. She had wanted Clara on the team, claimed she had a Midas touch with the camera. Clara had found it both baffling and endearing at the same time knowing for a fact that she was usually not the first choice for things like this. Why was she so hard on herself?

“I’ll have to see Jorge today about the solar panels,” Evander called out from the bathroom as he maneuvered around his dentition with an electric toothbrush. “They keep switching to direct current, it’s annoying.”

Evander’s words, like a dose of sharp electricity, jolted her back to reality. His words were all she heard, not the meaning or intent, just words.

“What was that?” She slowly asked.

“Don’t tell me you were doing it again.” Evander uttered with an exasperated sigh. “Where did you go this time?” He stole a glance at her through the red curtains that separated Clara, sitted on the king sized bed of his monochromatic room, from his naked body seeing as he seemed to have left the bathroom door ajar. 

Ev had been present on numerous occasions where she had been lost in a maze of her own creation, a loop in her mind she could never seem to break. She wondered why he still hadn’t taken for the hills in an attempt to escape her. Reality was none but slippery colors on a wet canvas, he had said the one time she was bold enough to speak her mind and her reasons for unrest anytime he would act like her constant pull away from the present was normal. 

Reading the pull of brows and the downturn of her shoulders, he did not need her to voice it out loud to know what she must have been thinking of this time but he couldn’t be too sure. Wrapping a towel around his slender waist and another around his masculine neck, he walked to join her on the bed, closing the bathroom door on his way out the door.

“San Francisco, back to the bay area, back to Jensen and her beautiful family; you know, sometimes I wish things had happened differently,” she huffed, “Maybe they would still be alive.” 

“Clara, I’m sure you did not mean to kill them.” He frowned having had this conversation more times than he would like.

Her gaze drifted up to the top of his head where numbers hovered; invisible and yet, not. 

27000:30:00 

What does that mean?

“Babe, Babe, are you listening to me?” Evander called to her.

She snapped out of it hearing his voice for the first time since her last words. “Sorry,” she apologized, hiding her face in her hands.

“It’s fine. Anyways, San Francisco was not your fault at all, Clara. I believe you know that but you just find easier to blame it all on yourself. It is not good for your mental health. You have to understand that sometimes some things are beyond our control and despite our best efforts we cannot change it,” He offered, putting on some sweats and a white tank. 

He was right. She was a hostage of her own mind and prosecutor to her own free will. Did she really find it easier to blame herself? Why would she? Because she could not find the answers to the questions that plagued her mind and felt it was reason for all her misfortunes? Maybe or maybe not, the results were more questions to the growing list of questions with no answers in sight.

“Well now that I have your attention, I said I was going over to Jorge’s to get someone to work on the solar pa-” Evander reiterated but got interrupted by the increasing buzzing noise from his phone. “Give me a second, love,” he muttered going through his mail.

Clara had known him long enough to not miss the immediate tensing of his frame, the kissing of his brows and the appearance of a deep crease on his forehead.

“Ev? What’s wrong?”