what happened after unlocked

chapter eleven ~ keefe's pov

"What are you doing?" Keefe yelled, their fingers still entwined, as they reformed at the edge of a massive, frozen lake.

"I don't know," Tam shrugged, which enraged Keefe.

"Tam, I could hurt you! My mom might force me to punish you for abandoning her, or something much, much worse – even I don't want that!"

Tam ignored him, and instead focused on their surroundings.

They had leaped to an icy, snow-covered frozen lake where mountains formed behind and a row of warmly lit chalets lined the bottom, right at the other edge of the lake. A small forest of pine trees missing their leaves were behind them, and it would take them a while to reach the chalets if they didn't travel fast enough.

"We'll be fine," Tam said dismissively, turning to Keefe. "Just don't lose your cool with me or go crazy if there are humans in those chalets. Simple."

"No, Tam it's not –"

"Shhhh!"

"It's not nice to –"

"Shut up, Keefe!" Tam hissed, and dragged his arm so that Keefe could see what he was looking at.

It was a bear.

A very, very angry looking bear.

Keefe quivered away from it slowly, Tam right beside him, and when they were a little further back from the growling creature, Tam whispered, "Now might be a good time to use your creepy controlling powers!"

Keefe's eyes widened fearfully as he nodded. He was pretty sure he'd gone pale – and the only part of his body that wasn't below zero degrees was his hand, which Tam was holding onto very tightly.

"Um...sleep!" he commanded.

The bear had already advanced on them, but as soon as the words left his mouth, it collapsed in a heap like a very large rock.

Tam and Keefe glanced at each other, both scared and amazed at the enormity of what Keefe had just done.

"Let's get out of here," Tam shivered, and blushed as he let go of his hand.

They both spun around to face the lake. Keefe thought for a second before he suggested, "Why don't we levitate? And then once we've...settled in somewhere...you need to go."

Tam glared at him. "I'm not going."

"Well when are you going then? I'm dangerous, you know. And I promised to meet Foster near Tinker's house in two days."

Tam didn't seem to be fazed by this. "I'm staying until you go and meet her. I need to make up for how badly I treated you."

Keefe tried not to show how many emotions he felt after he heard those words, but he was pretty sure even someone who wasn't an Empath could tell what he was feeling.

"Why are you so insistent on getting redemption?" he asked.

Tam looked away shiftily. "No one should ever deserve what your mom did to you – and it took me far too long to realize that I should never have hated you in the first place."

"But...I was the one who snapped at you literally the second you finished talking!"

"Let's go to the chalets."

Keefe obeyed him reluctantly, and like they knew exactly what the other was going to do, they levitated across the lake.

It only took them a couple of minutes to cross the massive lake, but it felt like hours – something about Tam was making Keefe feel a strange thing he couldn't quite figure out, and it made the space between them feel way too small.