Perfect Halves Book One

CHAPTER FIVE-1

CHAPTER FIVE

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One month earlier

June 10th

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“I’M SORRY, SWEETHEART,” Ryan said in a husky tone of voice. “I know I said that I’d come to meet you. You know that I bought the plane tickets. I sent you the confirmation email, remember? But I’ve told you that I have to go on this business trip to Asia. It’s not that I want to but...,” he didn’t finish the sentence.

“You know what’s interesting, Ryan? You’ve never mentioned a business trip before,” Kate replied, cutting his explanations short. She wanted to cut to the heart of the matter. She wouldn’t allow him to make a fool of her.

“Come on, don’t be like that, Kate,” Ryan snapped at her. “You know I have to do business all around the globe. I’ve told you so. It’s not like I’m sitting on my a*s all day doing nothing,” he raised his voice, annoyed with her curt tone. “I haven’t planned any trip. That’s true. But, Kate, look, things happen, and I really have to make this trip. You must understand. I’ll come and meet you after I come back. You know you can trust me, baby,” Ryan tried to persuade her and lowered his husky voice.

“Really? How come?” Kate replied with sarcasm. “How do I know that?”

“You’re saying you don’t trust me?” Ryan replied in a nasty voice.

“I’m saying that I don’t even know you, Ryan,” Kate said, matching his tone of voice. “Let’s face the truth. You don’t know me, and I don’t know you,” she pointed out in a businesslike manner.

“A...a...after all these m...m...months...,” he stammered, “We’ve... we’ve talked on the phone, we...we’ve even chatted a few times a day...I told you everything there is to know about me, didn’t I?” he asked, and his bafflement colored his tone of voice. “How can you say that you don’t know me? Are you bullshitting me, Kate? Are you? It’s not like I’m sitting on my hands here, just waiting for things to happen,” he snapped, and his voice showed that his anger was escalating. He practically growled by the end of his tirade.

Ryan’s sarcasm dripped all over her skin, and a creepy feeling overwhelmed her. The conversation started making Kate uncomfortable, and she decided to end it. After all, it wasn’t like her to take any a***e from anyone. She preferred to fight.

“Perfect,” she replied in the same crisp and distant tone of voice. “Take care of your business trip, Ryan. Sayonara.”

Kate turned off the phone, cutting his last shouted reply, ‘What the...’ She didn’t stop to listen to what he had to say. She didn’t care about it anymore.

Nevertheless, Kate was bewildered. In a matter of a few months, that strange long-distance relationship had swept her in. Sometimes, she almost believed that Ryan had put a spell on her, but she knew that it wouldn’t have been possible.

Since the beginning, they had eased into talking about everything and nothing at the same time. That made Kate wonder. It didn’t seem natural.

Kate was an outgoing person, and usually, she got along with people just fine. She had to be a people person, or she couldn’t have created and nurtured her shop and the clientele she had built along the time.

However, Kate had always kept a certain distance in her personal relationships. She wouldn’t just open the gate to her inner thoughts and feelings to everyone; maybe because she could read people’s minds. What the woman saw in some men’s minds often horrified her.

She had met a few sweet men, but they had been too sweet for her taste. They would do anything so that people would like them. Maybe it was true that women said that they wanted good guys, but the bad boys attracted their eyes and hearts.

Kate needed a man that would be her equal in everything. She didn’t want someone she had to coddle infinitely. She would have hated being on her toes all the time, afraid that she would hurt their feelings.

No matter how patient she was, Kate didn’t see herself catering to a man’s every whim or need. After all, she wanted the man to pamper her, not vice-versa. For that, she needed a strong and dependable man. Kate looked for a man capable of doing things and protecting her if necessary. She needed a man that would provide the care and love she desired.

After subscribing to the dating site, Kate received messages from five men. After a couple of weeks of conversation on the website and on the phone, she finally met four of them.

Even while talking to them over the phone, Kate didn’t have any difficulty to read their minds. Her mental abilities had honed during the last few years, and now she perceived some thoughts even at a distance.

The thoughts of two of the men had been creepy; however, loud and clear. They revealed weird fetishes and obsessions, so she kept her distance. Those men were harmless, but not for her. She hardly managed to spend a couple of hours during an evening in their company.

One man had been beyond creepy, though. What she read in his mind had disturbed her. She found out that he had already met two other women he contacted on two different dating sites, and both women had met untimely and horrible deaths at his hands.

Kate had made an anonymous call to the police and given them a few details about the women’s deaths. She had given them the killer’s name and description and left it at that. She was positive that the police would take it from there. The woman didn’t want to get involved with the police once more.

Younger and naïve, she had done that once, a few years back. At that time, Kate believed that her gift would save the world. Now she scowled whenever she remembered her idealistic enthusiasm at the time. However, that experience removed any thought she might have had about saving the planet.

Kate wouldn’t forget the way the police officers treated her. They believed that she was either a freak or a fraud, and for a time, they couldn’t make up their mind about her. They even implied that she must have been involved with the killer, or she wouldn’t have known all the grisly details about the murders.

That bitter experience made her reluctant to let anyone know about her gift. Not even people close to her, like Ellie, knew about her unusual talents.

The other two men from the dating site were harmless. They couldn’t hurt a fly. Yet, they weren’t for her either. They needed a strong woman that would manage their lives and accept them as they were. They wanted a woman to mother them, and she didn’t feel maternal enough to embrace that role.

Kate looked for a strong man herself. She wanted to meet a man she could rely on, and who would make her feel like part of a team. She dreamed of a man who would love her, the woman, and not for playing the role of a grown-up boy’s mother.

She needed companionship, but she wouldn’t settle just for that. Kate longed for everything supposed to happen in an adult relationship. She wanted romance, love, physical connection, and trust.

The sixth man who contacted her was Ryan. In the beginning, Ryan insinuated himself in her life with messages sent every thirty minutes for twenty-four hours. When Kate finally gave in and answered back to him, he continued to charm her with witty chat on the Internet.

The man knew a lot about various things and was a pleasant conversationalist. Kate enjoyed their talks. Ryan showed cultural polish; however, he seemed down to earth. Sometimes, his attitude revealed his dark side, and she could catch a glimpse of the bad boy that lay beneath the polish. That attracted Kate like a magnet.

In less than a week, they exchanged phone numbers, and Kate regretted that once Ryan began calling her day and night. She told him and several times that she would prefer sleeping around two a.m., but Ryan didn’t seem to care about the time of the day too much. He lived somewhere outside the regular time.

Ryan sent her a few photos with him. However, in all of them, he wore big hats or caps. Kate couldn’t see too much. Asked to describe Ryan, she would have said that he was a dark-haired man. She had noticed the shadow of a dark beard and a lock of dark hair.

Ryan kept promising to have a new photo taken and sent to her, but of course, he didn’t do anything. Something always interfered with his plans, and he couldn’t do it.

Ryan told her that he lived in Chicago and gave Kate a Chicago phone number. However, Kate called that number twice, and every time, an answering machine answered her call. She never tried again. She just knew that no one would answer her calls, and that thought bothered her.

Besides, Ryan kept putting off his coming to Montreal to meet her. He would always say that he was in the middle of a big contract. The man explained to Kate that his construction company had promised a precise deadline to the client. His reputation was on the line, and he couldn’t afford to lose it.

Kate didn’t believe Ryan’s story about the contract, but not because she could read his mind. Kate wasn’t able to even glimpse into Ryan’s thoughts.

Ryan was the first man who had succeeded in keeping her away from his private thoughts. Whenever she tried to pry, she got the impression that he pushed her probing waves away and frowned. He couldn’t know about her attempts to read his thoughts, and still, his mind felt that something was wrong and kept pushing her away.

When they talked on the phone, Kate sensed that something was not quite right with the man, but she didn’t know what or why.

Kate couldn’t explain other things, either, and that worried her. She wasn’t the woman to wait near the phone. But, she expected Ryan’s calls anxiously, and she hardly waited to hear the man's husky voice and throaty laughter. That man was like a poison. He had seeped into Kate's blood, and she couldn’t live without talking to him.

Ryan’s voice made her feel good, at least most of the time. Sometimes, she became tense when they talked but still looked forward to those moments, and that didn’t make a lick of sense.

Kate felt torn and pulled in two directions. She felt the need to stay in contact with Ryan, although she couldn’t explain why. However, in spite of that need, sometimes, she didn’t want to hear another word from Ryan and wished he would stop calling her.

The man’s charming manner and sweet words overwhelmed her. However, Ryan could become sarcastic in the blink of an eye and soak Kate with arctic condescendence. Then she felt the urge to slap him senseless.

Kate had grown restless during the last few weeks, and now she questioned her own wishes. Trapped in a maze, she couldn’t find her way out.

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