Magic Minutes Read online

  Magic Minutes

  The Time Series Book Two

  Jennifer Millikin

  Copyright © 2018 by Jennifer Millikin

  All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9967845-7-3

  www.jennifermillikinwrites.com

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. Noah

  2. Ember

  3. Ember

  4. Noah

  5. Noah

  6. Ember

  7. Noah

  8. Ember

  9. Noah

  10. Ember

  11. Noah

  12. Ember

  13. Noah

  14. Ember

  15. Noah

  16. Ember

  17. Ember

  18. Noah

  19. Ember

  20. Noah

  21. Ember

  22. Noah

  23. Ember

  24. Ember

  25. Ember

  26. Noah

  27. Noah

  28. Ember

  29. Noah

  30. Ember

  31. Noah

  32. Ember

  33. Noah

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Jennifer Millikin

  Prologue

  Noah

  Present Day

  It’s said that when you’re about to die, your whole life flashes before your eyes. There’s no way for me to confirm this, because I’m not currently about to die—as far as I know, anyway—but I’m certain what I’m about to do will create one of the images I’ll see before I kick the bucket.

  “Noah,” my brother says, his voice traveling through the thick wooden door. “You about ready?”

  His question could be answered two different ways. Am I dressed? Is my hair combed? Have I tied my bowtie correctly? Do I look like a doofus but also maybe like James Bond in this monkey suit? Then yes, I’m ready.

  Am I ready to walk out into that courtyard and create the image I’ll probably see on my deathbed?

  “Almost,” I croak out.

  “You nervous?” He pushes open the door and walks in without asking. Brody is shorter than me by two inches, and I’ve never let him forget it. He insists he’s better looking because his chin is square, and his cheekbones are chiseled—just like the shirtless men on the covers of the romance novels his wife reads. I told him Alyssa is looking at the rippled abs on her bookshelf, not the pretty faces.

  “A little.” Maybe I shouldn’t be nervous, but I am. Mostly because I can’t stop picturing her.

  Brody slaps me on the back, the thick black fabric muffling the sound. “I was nervous too. It’s normal.” He grins his wide, toothy, confident Sutton smile. As if everything has always gone his way, and everything will continue to be grand for him. He married his college sweetheart, and has two kids. Nothing like me. My own lips waver in my second-born, opposite of the first son, Sutton smile.

  Brody bends at the waist, falling back onto the small tan couch inside the room I’ve been given to get ready. From his pocket, he pulls a small plastic bag with five gummy bears.

  “Want to relax a little?” He pops one into his mouth and holds out the bag.

  “No.” I frown at him. “I’d like to be fully present today.”

  “Suit yourself.” He shrugs and throws another one into his mouth. After stuffing the bag back into his pocket, he stands and heads for the door. Before he walks out, he tosses me a last glance. “Noah?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You made the right choice.” The door shuts softly behind him.

  Choice? Did I ever really have a choice?

  In a few minutes, I’m going to take a trip down the aisle, but the walk down memory lane is too alluring. The memories are easy to conjure, perhaps because they’re never far away.

  So readily she comes to me, her copper hair alive when the sun streaks across it, shades of deep red and burnt orange, like the glow of a dying fire. Her smile, the way it tugged on the constellations of freckles that dotted her nose and beneath her eyes.

  Just like on that day, her face twists my heart.

  As though I’m dying right now, I see everything in slow motion. Every moment of Ember, drawn out to allow for careful examination. Everything that led me to this day, to this spot. I think, I see, and I wonder.

  What if I hadn’t stopped when I saw her? What if I let her quirky, electric personality keep me from leaving? What if, on the day I met her, I’d kept my eyes closed instead of letting her open them?

  Were those choices I made? Or inevitable plot points in Fate's never-ending story?

  Without a knock or warning, the door to my dressing room flies open again. Brody walks in and opens his arms, a question on his face.

  I turn back to the full-length mirror and adjust my bow-tie one last time. “Sorry. I’m thinking a lot. About—”

  Brody shakes his head, and my words die on my lips.

  “You got this man.” He says it with strength. His smile is confident, the grin of a man who believes what he’s about to say. “Ain’t nothing like the real thing.”

  A smile tugs at one corner of my mouth, and for the first time since I stepped foot in this small room, my nerves disappear.

  That woman out there… She’s the real thing.

  1

  Noah

  Seven years earlier

  I didn’t come to the lake for this.

  Running without a purpose. That’s why I came here. And I would’ve kept on running too, except for the violent splashes and thrashing arms.

  “Hey.” I stand on the shore and yell, panic edging my voice. I pull off my shoes and toss them aside, walking in a few feet. Water splashes the tops of my calves. I pause, waiting to see if the person will stop when she hears me. I’m desperately hoping she’s just goofing off. The movement doesn’t stop.

  I know it’s a girl because of all the hair. It floats on the surface of the water, and when she comes up again, it’s slicked halfway down her head. It’s red, like a flame.

  The water is on fire.

  “Hey,” I yell again. No response. Fine. I jog in a few more feet and dive under the surface. It’s not all that deep here, and there are no waves. I could stand, but it’s faster to swim.

  My eyes stay open in the fresh water. I’m not sure how long it takes me to reach her. Twenty, maybe thirty seconds? I’m a fast swimmer, and my lung capacity is larger than most.

  Her body arches above the water again, just a foot away from me. Reaching out, my arm wraps around her waist and tugs her to my side. With one arm, I keep her locked against me and above the surface; with the other, I tow us through the water. It’s slow going, not to mention cold, and it doesn’t help that the girl is still struggling. She’s twisting and pushing. She’s probably scared. Maybe she still thinks she’s fighting for her life.

  My one-armed strokes are enough to get us to a place where I can stand. The muddy bottom wedges between my toes. Trudging toward the shore, I glance down at the girl I’m towing along. Her body has gone slack, and she’s looking at me. Her lips are taut and her eyebrows are pulled together. She’s pissed?

  “What?” I say sharply, but I’m panting, so it doesn’t come out as strongly as I’d like. I can play ninety minutes of soccer with hardly a break, but this rescuing someone from a lake thing is harder than it looks.

  She doesn’t respond. When the water is only to my knees, I let her go. It laps to the middle of her thighs, but I figure she’s okay in th
at depth.

  Her arms cross her chest, and she stares at me. Her mouth is still a straight line, and her eyes are bright. Full of something. I don’t know what.

  The longer she stares, the more my stomach starts to feel weird. She’s not just staring… she’s evaluating. And for the first time in my life, I’m afraid I’m not measuring up.

  “I wasn’t drowning,” she says, as though it’s no big deal. She starts for the shore.

  “Looked like it to me.” I follow. My voice isn’t as calm as hers. The wind picks up, and my wet T-shirt clings to my skin. She’s wearing a dress, bluer than the water that surrounds us, and it clings to her. “What were you doing out there if you weren’t drowning?”

  If anybody’s keeping score, let it be known I don’t believe the girl.

  “Wait.” A horrible thought slams into me. “Were you…drowning on purpose?” I can’t bring myself to ask her if she was trying to commit suicide.

  “No,” she answers quickly, looking back at me. “I’m not suicidal,” she says softly. “I was dancing.”

  She resumes trudging through the water, and again I follow. In no time my long strides easily overtake hers.

  “Dancing?” I ask.

  “Ever heard of it?”

  “Nope. Never.”

  She laughs, and I’m struck by the feeling that I know her from somewhere. She’s around my age, I think. It’s possible she goes to my high school.

  Once on shore, she heads for a cluster of rocks and sits down on the largest, flattest one. Her head dips back, face lifted to the sun, and she stretches out.

  “No soccer practice today?” she asks, eyes still closed.

  So, she does go to my high school.

  “Practice finished up a while ago.” My mind races to figure out who she is. I walk closer, looking harder at her under the safety of her closed gaze, as though proximity will increase recognition.

  She’s beautiful in an unconventional way. If the red hair weren’t enough of a differentiator, she wears a tiny diamond in her right nostril. How many girls in my class wear a nose ring? I catch sight of her left ear and count. Seven earrings. Why only seven? Why not eight? And why aren’t there any earrings in her right ear? Does one nose ring equal seven earrings, so that now the left and right sides of her body are balanced?

  Despite the excessive earrings, she looks better than any half-drowned possibly suicidal person has a right to. The blue fabric drapes against her creamy skin, and the shocking red hair fans out around her. Her chest rises and falls with her breath, and my eyes are drawn to her collarbone. I’ve never noticed that part of a girl before. On her, it’s captivating.

  “Don’t you have a girlfriend?” She’s got one eye cocked open, and her hand lifts to shield it from the sun.

  “Sort of,” I say. My unease has more to do with the fact that she knows me, yet I have no idea who she is, and way less to do with the fact that my break-up with Kelsey is still secret, and I’ve just lied to this girl.

  “How do you dance in water?” I ask, before she can ask me to explain my sort of relationship status.

  “The same way you dance on land.” She gives me a perplexed look, like I’m the one who needs help.

  “Sure,” I say, nodding. I turn, heading to the shoes I threw off before running into the water.

  “You don’t believe me?” The wind takes her voice and throws it, but I catch what she’s asked. With goosebumps covering my arms, I spin around.

  “Not really.”

  Rising gracefully from the boulder, she comes toward me. Her lithe gait reminds me of a goddess. The sun has dried some of her hair, and it falls around her face in waves.

  “Put your hands above your head,” she instructs.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I am.”

  I sigh and look at the lake. It’s so calm now.

  Raising my hands, I look back at the girl whose name I still don’t know.

  She nods her approval and lifts her own arms. “Now,” she says, “close your eyes and think of your favorite song.” As I watch she closes her eyes, and in seconds her hips are swaying. A smile plays on her lips, and she turns in place, until she’s facing me again. She looks free. And happy.

  Her eyes narrow after she opens them and looks at me. “You didn’t do it.”

  “I…uh…I meant to.” I can’t confess I was too busy watching her. “I don’t know how to dance by myself.”

  She stares at me again, and again the feeling of being evaluated comes over me. She holds out a hand. “Dance with me?”

  I take her open palm and curl my fingers around hers. She steps into me, bringing with her a rush of nerves. Her other hand comes to rest on the back of my neck, and it’s her, not me, who makes us move.

  It’s slow, so slow, and there’s nothing to move to. No beat, no timing, no constraints. Nothing to tell us when to start. Nothing to tell us when to stop. She lays her head against my chest, and when I look down at the shock of red, I feel nothing short of wonder. It’s a color I’ve never been this close to.

  “I know you don’t know who I am,” she says against my chest, as we sway together.

  I opt for silence. Nothing I say will make it better.

  “I’m not mad,” she says, with her head still on my chest. “I wouldn’t expect you to know me.”

  Suddenly, I wish I did. She’s everything I want to be, and everything I don’t have the guts to admit I am. She is all the things.

  At some point, she decides our dance is finished. When she steps away from me, I fight the urge to pull her back in. Then, when she picks up her sandals and walks away, I want to ask her to come back.

  She pauses just before stepping onto the trail and looks back at me. Tree branches hang down around her, some low enough to brush her shoulders. She looks like she stepped from a fairy tale. “My name is Ember.” Then she turns around, and in a few seconds I can’t see her anymore.

  I want to chase her, take her hand in mine, and tell her I’ll never hear music the same way again.

  “Noah, where have you been?”

  My mother stands in the foyer, hands on her hips, her shrewd gaze taking me in. She’s not the kind of warm, loving mother I’ve seen on TV, or like my best friend Tripp’s mom. My mom is no-nonsense. Harsh. I tell myself she means well. In my head, I come up with excuses. She works hard. It’s not easy running the vineyard. Raising two boys who want nothing to do with the family business is probably frustrating.

  “Hi, Mom.” I come closer, skimming her cheek with a kiss. For some reason this evening I’m feeling softer toward her. Maybe I’ll blame it on Ember. “Sorry to worry you. I went for a run by the lake.”

  “And you’re wet because?”

  Oops. My fingers touch the side of my shorts, testing to see just how wet I still am. Wet enough to not say I dumped my water bottle on my head after my run.

  “I jumped in quickly, to cool off.”

  She clears her throat and takes a step back. “Dinner is on the stove. Gretchen made zoodles.” She throws her eyes upward, a half roll. I hold back my laugh. The half eye-roll is a Johanna Sutton signature look.

  “Zoodles?” I ask, glancing apprehensively in the direction of the kitchen.

  She twitters her hand in the air. “Your father. You know how he is.”

  “Right,” I say slowly. I’ve never understood my mother’s antagonism toward my father’s willingness to try new things. She likes constancy, and he wants to raze a section of field and plant hybrid grapes.

  She gestures to the next room. “Go get dinner. I have emails to return.”

  We go in opposite directions, but her pace is much faster than mine. Her heels make loud clicking sounds against the floor.

  In the kitchen, Gretchen prepares a plate for me. Her wide frame takes up nearly the entire front of the oven. She’s worked for us for so long, she’s practically a member of the family. As a small child I loved burying my face in the front of her apron. There was s
o much of her to hug, and she always smelled like brownies.

  “You’re eating late today.” She sets the plate on the counter beside the stove and reaches for the ladle. I eye the pile of pale noodles with suspicion. Some of them are green on one side.

  “Don’t make such a face, Noah. They’re not that bad. Mr. Derek requested them.” She laughs to herself. “He saw them in a magazine.”

  There’s no point in telling Gretchen she doesn’t have to call my dad Mr. She ignores me every time.

  When my plate is ready she hands it to me. I stifle my automatic revulsion at whatever these fake noodles are and smile my thanks. At least there’s tomato sauce on top. “If you made it, I’m sure it’s delicious.”

  She winks and gently pushes me out to the dining room. “Your dad asked me to send you in when you arrived.”

  Rounding the corner, I walk through the open doorway into the dining room. “Hi, Dad.” I step up to the long oak table. The best word to describe my dad is jolly. But not like Santa. More like…joyful. His personality can fill a room. He’s happy, and makes people laugh. He’s a third-generation Sutton, and loves the vineyard with all his heart. Brody and I joke that he loves those grapes more than us. Everyone adores my dad. From the vendors who supply the restaurant adjacent to the vineyard welcome center, to the groups he leads on the daily tour, and all the way out to the cleaning staff.

  He looks up from the hardback spread open on the table next to his empty plate. “Noah, there you are.” His large hand pushes aside the book. I can’t see the title, but I’m interested to know what book is that huge. “Late tonight.”