It was as if I’d been listening to a radio station that wasn’t quite tuned, and that skin-to-skin contact flipped it to the right frequency. Suddenly, everything was loud and clear. I just didn’t know what I was hearing. Not right away. It sounded like this:

Happy-content-happy-longing-thrill-happy.

I nearly fell off the arm of the chair when I realized what that meant.

“O-o-oh!” I stammered.

“What? Do you recognize this house?” Lon’s eyes widened as I wrapped my hand around his neck to stop him from moving away.

“No, it’s not the house,” I said, sounding mildly delirious.

Surprise-confusion-worry-worry

“What?” he said again, a little louder, trying to wiggle out of my grip.

“I can hear you!” I shouted gleefully.

PANIC-CONFUSION-PANIC.

“You can hear my thoughts?”

“No, I can hear your emotions. Your knack—this is what your knack feels like. Jesus! It’s amazing!”

He jerked out of my grip and stood up, all in one motion. “You can hear me?”

“Well, I could, when we were touching.”

Eyes on me, he set his laptop on a small table next to his chair, nearly missing the table altogether. “You can’t now?”

“A little . . . I think. It’s hard to tell.” I vaulted off the chair to follow him. “Are you panicking?”

“Hell, yeah, I’m panicking. Are you”—he backed away a step—“sure that’s what’s going on with you? Is this like the fork bending and the smelling?”

“Oh, yes. But this is so much better. You never told me how wonderful it is.”

He backed up another step. “It’s not always wonderful.”

“I think I was hearing Jupe on the sofa—I just didn’t realize what was happening. But it’s definitely stronger now. Either that, or I’m just really attuned to you. Can you hear certain people louder than others?”

“Yes.”

I grinned. “Let me just—”

“Hold on, now—”

“—touch you again. Stay still.”

“This isn’t a good idea.”

I stalked him as if he were easy prey. “Why?”

“Because it’s a distraction.”

“Maybe I need one,” I said, sobering up for a moment. “In case you haven’t noticed, life hasn’t been all that good to me lately, and this has been a particularly shitty week.”

His features softened. “Hasn’t been all bad.”

“No, not all bad.” My breath came a little faster. “A couple of highlights come to mind,” I said as I reached for him.

He sidestepped me and hid behind the chair. “Let’s be sensible.”

“Boo. You’re just afraid of me hearing your emotions, and that’s not fair. You get to hear mine all the time. Turnabout’s fair play.”

Indecipherable curses fell from his tightened lips. He glanced around as if he was trying to figure out an escape plan. I took that opportunity to leap onto the chair cushion and grab two fistfuls of his shirt.

“Ahhh,” I said triumphantly as I tipped toward him. “Don’t try to run again, or I’ll have to use my youthful vigor to catch up with your weary old-man bones.”

He snorted but didn’t pull away. “You’ve probably got a knack for that.”

“Probably. I’m going to try to read you now. Ready?”

“No.”

I ignored that and clamped my hands on his shoulders, making a fuzzy connection with his emotional rumblings. “Amazing. I can just hear you. It’s the direct contact that really does the trick, isn’t it?”

His Jupe-like dramatic sigh confirmed. “Go on, then.”

I slid my hands up to his neck so I got some skin contact. It turned up the volume from one to ten. “Wow. Just . . . wow.”

After a moment, he said, “What do you hear?”

“You’re still a little panicky.”

“You would be, too,” he complained.

“But you’re curious, too.”

“Of course I am. The last empaths I knew were my parents. It’s been years since anyone could hear me.”

“Does it bother you?”

“You tell me.”

I calmed myself down so I could listen in better. “Wow, this gets really jumbled. It’s hard to tell whose emotions I’m feeling—mine or yours. Whoa.” I sank a little further into the chair cushion and wobbled until my knees hit the back of the chair, putting me just above his eye level.

He slid warm hands around my waist to steady me and said, “You learn to sort that out with practice. Other people’s feelings have a different frequency.”

“You’re . . . a little unhappy. But resigned. Wait, you’re not really unhappy. You’re embarrassed?”

“Uncomfortable,” he corrected, smoothing one hand up my back, then down again. “Not unhappy.”

That hand was distracting me. “You’re worried about something. Oh! I heard that. Right about the worrying, for sure. Why are you worried?”

“Do I really have to list it all out for you? Or have you already forgotten everything that’s happened over the last twenty-four hours?”

Good point. “I’m trying to forget, at least for a few minutes. So don’t remind me. And hush, I’m trying to listen.”