Impulse (New Adult Romance) Read online

  * Impulse *

  C.J. Lake

  Copyright © 2016 by C.J. Lake

  Snow House Books

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  The scanning, uploading, and distributing of this book via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the copyright owner is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

  Please Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter One

  “Just come with me.”

  Cady gave her best friend, Torie, the skeptical side-eye, before replying, “To a psychic? You must be kidding. Do you know me at all?”

  “She’s not a ‘psychic’, per se,” Torie argued, looking in the mirror as she styled her unruly, wheat-colored hair. One by one she pulled sections up into tiny gold hair clips. While she did this, she smacked her lips lightly, checking her lip gloss.

  Meanwhile, Cady sat on Torie’s bed with a textbook in her lap, a pen behind her ear, and her brown hair up in a simple ponytail. Her jeans and pale-blue sweater were about to be replaced by pajamas.

  “She’s more of a fortune teller,” Torie explained. “She reads cards, I think. She talks about the future—but she doesn’t try to talk to dead people or anything.”

  “Oh, good,” Cady said, humoring her roommate with a placating smile, and turned a page in her book.

  “Come on, it’ll be fun!” Torie urged, doing one more touch-up with the eyelash-curler before turning around. “Ember said she went last weekend after the Haunted Hayride—Mademoiselle Gigi has her shop set up right near there.”

  “Of course she does,” Cady muttered with an eye-roll, as she gave up on her textbook and set it aside.

  “Were you really reading that?” Torie asked curiously. “God, how can you study so much? It’s beyond hardcore.”

  They had lived together since their sophomore year, so by now Torie was as used to Cady's compulsive studying as Cady was used to her friend's commentary on it. Still, Cady admitted, “I wasn’t actually studying at this point. Just looking at the pages, hoping something will sink in subliminally.”

  “Too much studying,” Torie scolded lightly, before setting down her eyelash curler. “I get that mid-terms are coming up, but take a night off already.” Next she went to her closet and rifled through her collection of stylish jackets and adorable sweaters. “'Too much studying' is probably the first thing Mademoiselle Gigi is going to tell you.”

  Cady smirked. “Hmm, wouldn’t that make her a present teller?”

  Torie gave a laugh, but shook her head as she shrugged on her coat. “Listen—when we get to Mademoiselle Gigi’s, I would check that smartass attitude at the door.” As Torie pulled her thick hair out from beneath her collar, Cady told her:

  “I’m not going. I thought we'd covered that.”

  “What—for real?” Torie whined. “You're really going to stay here and pretend to study?”

  “I wasn't pretending. I was warming up.”

  Torie ignored that. “C'mon, please. Don't make me drive to Salem all by myself. Especially so close to Halloween—with all the, you know, ghosts and scary spirits, etcetera.”

  “Witches would have been more contextual.”

  Smartly, Torie didn’t bother to drag on the pretense that she was scared of Salem, Massachusetts. Instead, she said: “Fine, so please don't make me sit by myself in all that traffic. Just come with me.” She crossed over to Cady and tugged at her sleeve. “We’re graduating in seven months. I want to know about my future. What can it hurt?”

  “Oh, fiiine,” Cady acquiesced, climbing off her friend’s bed. “But what if this Gigi woman pulls the Death Card on me? It will totally ruin my night—no, make that my week.”

  “Oh, she won’t do that,” Torie said dismissively, as they headed to the front hall of their apartment. “She wouldn’t stay in business if she made people upset.”

  “Ah-ha!” Cady said somewhat triumphantly. “So then you admit: she’s going to tell us a bunch of cotton candy fabrications just to turn a profit.”

  “I admit nothing, except that you’ll have fun.” As Cady zipped up her boots, Torie slung her bag over her shoulder and commented, “If I may say something...”

  “What?” Cady said warily.

  “I think you’ve been staying in way too much this year. I know it’s only October, but still. This is our senior year. You need to get out and have some fun.”

  Once Cady put on her coat and gloves, Torie snatched up her keys and beamed a grateful smile at her.

  Cady issued a warning look. “I’ll go to appease you, and to keep you company in traffic, but just to recap: if this woman pulls the Death Card on me, I’ll be very pissed.”

  “Awesome,” Torie agreed merrily. “Of course we’ll do the Haunted Hayride first, though. We’re not going to drive all the way to Salem and skip the hayride.”

  “Okay,” Cady said. “But—”

  “No, no,” Torie cut her off, again reaching for her arm, “enough stipulations. Forget the Death Card crap! You’re only twenty-two! You’re not about to die, I promise, so please: enough negativity. How can I put this delicately? Shut your ass up and get in the car, bitch. Thank you. Sorry I had to go there.”

  Cady’s mouth fell open…before it changed into a smile. “No, you’re not,” she said, then followed Torie out the door.

  Chapter Two

  Mademoiselle Gigi’s shop was every bit as hokey and lacking in subtlety as one might expect. Incense burned pungently in the air. There were crystals strung from the ceilings, dangling low, sparkling and tinkling against each other. An old wooden bookcase was jammed with dusty books on the occult.

  None of the furniture matched, but all of it seemed to be upholstered with worn velvet and frayed gold braiding. And in case you missed the eeriness all around, there were two black cat statues—one of which was perched on the bookcase across from Cady.

  As she waited for Torie to finish her “reading,” Cady willfully avoided eye contact with the statue, as she flipped through magazines she never knew existed. Future Forecast Weekly—really?

  When Torie finally stepped out from behind the velvet drapery that separated the front waiting area from Gigi’s private lair, she wore a bright smile. “Hi! Oh, my God, that was amazing!”

  “Really,” Cady said, giving her a pleasant smile, as she thought: Gee, why am I not surprised? Obviously the woman was a fraud who told people what they wanted to hear so that they would refer their friends.

  “Mademoiselle Gigi said there is a strong possibility I’m going to meet the love of my life this week! Wow, did not see that coming,” Torie enthused. “I thought she’d say, you know, by the time I’m twenty-five or something, but this week?”

  “Awesome,” Cady said, trying her best to humor her as she came to her feet.

  “Your turn,” Torie said.

  When Cady stepped through the curtain, she found Mademoiselle Gigi swirling her hands around a crystal ball in a rather ostentatious fashion (but then, it was probably hard to employ a crystal ball and be subtle about it).

&nb
sp; “Hello, welcome...” Gigi practically crooned. Even though her face was youthful, Gigi had a low, almost shaky voice that sounded more mature (and was possibly put on). She wore heavy eyeliner and a dark, shimmery caftan dress that virtually screamed “part-time pretend fortune-teller.” She said, “And how are you on this spooky evening so close to All Hallows’ Eve?”

  Cynically, Cady thought, Please—what did the woman say in March? “I’m fine,” Cady replied simply. “And you?”

  “Ah, the vibes I’m getting are very strong…” Gigi informed her. Then mimed some more crystal ball stuff. She wasn’t actually touching the ball—more like checking for its energy. Or whatever. “Now let us see what the cards tell us.”

  She started flipping over cards. Cady eyed them quizzically; she’d seen Tarot cards before, but these were totally different. Inexplicably, she felt a current of uneasiness. Ridiculous, she reminded herself. None of this was real. But still, something compelled her to interrupt the charged silence. “Let me guess,” she blurted out, “I’ll meet a handsome stranger, right?”

  At that, Mademoiselle Gigi raised an overdrawn eyebrow and said smugly, “Actually, no.”

  “Oh.” Regretfully, Cady realized she was being rude. Besides, she had already paid. Why not let Mademoiselle Gigi do the full service? “Sorry, go on.”

  There was a quirk of Gigi's mouth before she spoke again. “What I see for you is a long lifetime,” she declared. “A lifetime…of incredible solitude.”

  Stunned, Cady scrunched her brow in disbelief. “What did you say?” Had she heard that right?

  And how could solitude be “incredible”?

  “I said that you will live a very long life,” Gigi restated, as if the “long life” part was what had stopped Cady cold—and not the implicit misery of it.

  “Okay…” Cady said a bit impatiently, still waiting for the golden shoe to drop.

  “But this life of yours will be full of solitude.” Gigi's tone was so matter-of-fact, so blasé, so damn unapologetic!

  Cady couldn't help but protest. “How can you say something like that? I’m only twenty-two!”

  Gigi's response was little more than a shrug, before she continued, rather blithely, “The cards also tell me that you will one day have a moderately successful career.”

  “All right, well, that's something. Doing what?”

  “The cards don’t tell me that.” Of course not. “Oh, wait…I see something else here. Something I did not see before.”

  “Thank God,” Cady muttered, waiting for some much-needed retcon.

  “Dull,” Gigi said, dropping the word like a hatchet.

  “Huh?”

  “'That was the part I’d missed.” Gigi appeared to be still studying her crystal ball, as though cross-checking it with “the cards.” “A long, dull life of solitude.”

  “That’s great,” Cady replied sarcastically. “Here, I thought solitude would be a real thrill. But thanks for clearing that up!”

  “You seem distressed,” Gigi observed, sounding rather unconcerned.

  “Um, yeah. 'Moderately successful'? A lifetime of dullness? What kind of business is this? You’re telling me a bunch of depressing stuff—is that what I paid for?”

  Again, Mademoiselle Gigi arched an eyebrow. “Read the sign in the window,” she said and pointed a black acrylic fingernail in that direction.

  The window was circular like a full moon, with crisscrossed panes and frosted glass. Across the bottom was a decal that apparently spelled out Gigi’s philosophy:

  ONLY HONEST FORTUNES.

  BUYER BEWARE.

  THE CARDS DON’T LIE….AND NEITHER DO I.

  “Great,” Cady muttered under her breath, then rose from her seat.

  “We’re not done,” Gigi informed her. “Don’t you want to hear the rest?”

  “Oh, what else? Will I get fat, too? Why not throw that onto the pile?”

  Ignoring Cady’s sarcasm, Gigi squinted at her crystal ball. “It appears that you will never find true love.”

  “I get it!” Cady snapped.

  With that, she stormed out—but it was annoyingly hard to storm out through a velvet curtain. It just ended up getting all tangled up around your arms as you were trying to make your pissed-off exit.

  Either way, Torie, who was playing on her phone, widened her eyes with concern. “What’s wrong?” she said. “What happened?”

  Cady just shook her head. She did not want Mademoiselle Gigi’s words to affect her; she was a fraud, a charlatan. For heaven’s sake, the woman had a sign on the front door that said, “Cash is King, Money Orders are Queen”—how spiritual could she be?

  And yet, her fortune really struck a chord and, as illogical as it was, had soured Cady’s mood.

  “Well?” Torie pressed, waiting for a response.

  So Cady kept it simple. “Let’s get drunk.”

  Chapter Three

  When they got back to Boston, they picked a random bar—Donovan Shay's—which was Torie’s way of testing the notion that she might meet her big love tonight. She figured she wouldn’t meet him if she went to all the usual bars that they might hit on a Thursday night, which were destined to be filled with fellow students and familiar faces.

  Honestly, Cady didn't believe that Torie was serious about finding her “one true love,” if such a thing existed. Torie was more of a compulsive crusher, always infatuated with some guy or another, but then losing interest almost immediately, before anything could materialize.

  “This place is cute in a divey way,” Cady admitted, appreciating the dark woodsy ambiance, which tonight felt like a sanctuary.

  “Cheer up,” Torie remarked, piling both of their coats on the vacant bar stool to her left. “I still say Gigi was messing with you.”

  “Why would she do that?” Cady wondered aloud—then eyed her friend. “What kind of sadist did you take me to?”

  Torie took a sip of her Cinnamon Apple-tini, before expanding on her initial point. “Look, she probably just didn’t like your vibe.”

  “How so?”

  With a casual shrug, Torie suggested, “Maybe she picked up on your whole I-don’t-believe-in-psychics attitude and found it condescending, and she wanted to stick it to you.”

  That gave Cady pause. She supposed she had seemed annoyingly dubious about the whole experience right from the start. Still, was that any reason for Gigi to doom a paying customer to a loveless existence?

  “Those weren’t even Tarot cards, by the way,” Torie added, stirring the cinnamon stick in her drink.

  Cady grumbled, “Yeah, they were obviously way worse!”

  “It looked like an Old Maid deck from a garage sale or something,” Torie said with a laugh, shaking her head. “Come on, it’s not like you can take any of it seriously.”

  Wryly, Cady said, “Are you saying that you don’t believe you’ll meet the love of your life this week?”

  “Sure, I’d like to believe that. But hey, I’m just having fun with it. Remember that foreign concept? Fun?” she kidded.

  Still, Cady frowned at that. Then took brief refuge in her cocktail. Honestly, Mademoiselle Gigi had struck a nerve precisely because Cady was caught in a dull rut; she hadn't been going out much or even trying to meet a guy. Instead, she’d been sort of hibernating. Tonight’s whole fortune-telling experience had just made her question herself, and also consider the idea of inertia. When was it time to break the cycle of staying in, of studying, of watching movies alone?

  The downward spiral (yes, she would be dramatic and call it that) had begun last year. It had started as general wallowing following Cady’s breakup with Wes. The two had met on campus when Cady was an inexperienced freshman and Wes was a worldly “older man” of twenty. He was an art major, who had managed to be adorable and ooze sensitivity.

  They had dated for two years, until Wes abruptly ended the relationship. Basically, he'd ditched Cady for another girl, though he tried to make it sound more complicated than that.
/>
  Truly, Cady hadn’t meant to waste the remainder of her junior year moping, but it kind of happened anyway. Time just sort of sped up and slipped away, the way it always did. And now here she was: in her senior year of college, and for some reason, she still felt no real desire to go out and mingle.

  She was pretty much over the party scene, and as far as guys went…well, who needed a pointless rebound? Wes was her first love and he’d crushed her heart like it was a piece of glass that he'd stepped on by accident. That was so Wes. So unaccountable for his actions, so damn lovable that you had to hate him for it. Even when he was dumping Cady, he had sobbed guiltily, imploring her to understand, while lavishing her with praise and compliments.

  So there went writing Wes off as heartless. He was clearly the opposite: a talented artist with an overstuffed treasure chest of emotions. Surely he would go on to be a big success—but without her. It had taken a long time for Cady to accept and process the awful feeling of loving someone who didn't love her back. Now she would say that she was finally over Wes, but even so...

  Her first and utterly painful experience with love hadn't exactly left her jumping to try again. Though she was over him, she wasn't fully over it. At least that was the explanation she had settled on for the romantic cynicism that had formed on her personality like a layer of frost.

  Just then, Torie nudged Cady on the thigh, bringing her back to the present. “Don’t look! But two cute guys are approaching.” It was impossible not to look, so Cady shot what she hoped was a covert glance over her shoulder. “The bald one’s hot,” Torie whispered.

  “He…doesn’t really do it for me,” Cady murmured distractedly, as she slid her gaze instead to his friend, who had blackish hair and a more serious expression. He was about 6' with a nice build, and there was something intense about him, with his dark eyes and shadow along his jaw.

  “Yes!” Torie celebrated. “The bald one’s mine,” she managed to eke out before “the bald one” reached her.