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Hello and Happy Thursday! A few weeks ago, I promised my social media followers that if I hit a personal goal on Goodreads, I would share the prologue of my upcoming book THE FATE FACTOR! You all came through and helped me hit my goal of 100 adds, so here it is!
For fans of The Soulmate Equation and The Seven Year Slip, THE FATE FACTOR releases 6.10.25 and the e-book is available for pre-order now! Paperback pre-orders will be coming soon.
Noel Kasey has always had a soft spot for her Nana’s fortune-telling games. She also knows they’re just that. Games. Until one night at a party when she pretends to read a man’s future as a joke and sees his life play out like a movie, including a lucrative business tip and a very intimate moment—starring her.
An unbidden psychic vision would be enough to unnerve anyone, but for overly cautious Noel, it’s downright terrifying. She gives the stranger the highlight reel (minus their supposed love story), then hightails it out of the party and back to her normal, safe life. But two years later, when Noel is set adrift by family drama, the universe drops the stranger from the party back on her doorstep. Literally.
Jamie Bishop is convinced Noel is his long-lost guardian angel sent to guide him on his newest business decision. Noel, however, wants nothing to do with the reunion until a friend reminds her that a man who she may already be fated to is the safest bet of them all. As the two explore the fateful connection that brought them together and new feelings that are brewing, Noel is faced with a question: Is the future made up of things that are or things that could be?
Read on to see how it all starts...
Noel
I come from a family of dreamers. My father left my mother and me when I was eleven months old to go on tour with his band, Northern Boots. They played an eclectic mix of rock-country, and the way Mom tells it, he was destined for stardom. We haven’t heard from or of him since, so it’s likely it didn’t pan out
Mom couldn’t bring herself to fault him, though, despite leaving her to raise me alone at twenty years old. She loved him too much. And her dream was that someday, someone or something would love her that way. She chased it with everything she had. We chased it.
When I was ten, I missed a week of fourth grade so we could go to North Carolina to visit an airman Mom met at a bar while he was on leave. She had to quit her job to take the time, but the possibility of this man being her destiny was worth the financial risk. Of course it was; she was a dream chaser, a free spirit unconfined by things like practicality and responsibility.
And when the airman turned out to be less of a catch in the light of day, Mom pretended it had been a girls’ trip from the beginning. Something for me and her. She hid her disappointment behind sunglasses and beach selfies, and I smiled from the back seat with the map, and a stomach ache that started when I was eight and hadn’t quit.
I watched her pretend she was happy and free, instead of disappointed and tired, and it was like looking at an abstract painting and watching it shift. That’s the moment I knew: Dreams and nightmares are made of the exact same stuff. The only thing that separates them is how much of yourself you’re willing to lose in the chase.
Needless to say, I didn’t inherit the dreaming gene. Every reckless adventurer needs a foil, a sidekick, a supporting character who keeps their ambitions from overtaking common sense, or their habit of dream-chasing from getting the lights turned off or the car repossessed. Basically, someone had to keep their feet on the ground between the two of us, and it was me.
The thing about the roles we slot into as kids, though, is that they tend to follow you into adulthood. Which is why, even though I’m enjoying the late-summer party currently going on around me, I can’t help but scan the crowd intermittently, keeping an eye out for someone who might need to swap their beer for water or a safe ride home.
We’re on the roof of a brick multi-unit in downtown Portland, Maine, just across the bridge from the sleepy neighborhood of Willard Beach where my Nana lives, and where I spent my summers as a kid. I still do, actually, but only for a week or two rather than June through August. Instead of dream-chasing like Mom, Nana reads books and paints. She’s a devout Catholic, except when she’s a little bit pagan.
When I was a kid, she would read my tea leaves and tarot cards at night. Telling my future like a fairytale bedtime story I didn’t really believe, but found charming nonetheless. Her house was quiet and predictable, if not a little silly with all of the talk of magic, and it’s still my favorite place in the world.
Tonight, I left Nana on the couch with a book and a cup of tea, and let my best friend Kate coax me here. We’re lounging on faded, second-hand patio furniture that belongs to one of Kate’s coworkers. White string lights sway above us in a salty breeze, and no doubt someone, somewhere, is shaking their fist at the volume of the music.
“You’re not doing it right!” Kate slaps her hand on my thigh, offended that I would get the details of the game we’re playing wrong. “It won’t work with beer.”
I throw my head back and groan. “You have no way of knowing that. The last time we did this we weren’t old enough to drink.”
Kate grew up down the street from Nana. When I met her, she was wild with golden red hair and boobs before her time, and I was careful. Perpetually nervous. The only thing we had in common was that we were two pre-teen girls in close proximity, but sometimes the place and time you meet someone makes all the difference.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “It has to be the same way Nana does it.”
Kate’s dating a new guy this summer, and he chuckles into his beer. Colin’s a med student on track for emergency medicine, and so far I’ve deduced that he’s quietly brilliant. Which is why I’m mortified that Kate has insisted I introduce him to my grandmother’s witchcraft tonight.
Clearly she’s never heard of saving your weird family shit until you get to know someone a little. Kate’s in her final year at Maine Law, though, so for the most part I avoid arguing with her.
I lift the knockoff Yankee Candle, simply labeled “Beach Dreams.” Not exactly the fancy white pillar candles Nana keeps in her velvet lockbox, but Kate apparently doesn’t mind that concession. Borrowing a lighter from a guy smoking a joint behind me, I light the wick.
“Alcohol might make the wax float weird or something,” Kate explains to Colin who remains skeptical. He should be because we’re totally playing him right now. Like the tarot cards and the gemstones Nana wears to influence her energy, this whole thing is a silly game.
Granted, she did once predict that my high school boyfriend would break up with me and start dating his Spanish study partner. Shocking all of us, Nana nailed it almost down to the day. Though, to be fair, it was the day after the homecoming dance. I couldn’t go because I needed my shift at the restaurant I waitressed at to deal with the car repo thing.
I dump the beer from my cup into a nearby potted plant and make a gimme motion. “Colin. Your Poland Spring.”
“Fine,” he says, handing me the bottle by his feet. “But in case it’s important, you should know it’s just tap. I refilled the bottle.”
“What the fuck, babe.” Kate smacks his bicep playfully. “Noel, tell him that causes cancer!”
“She would know,” I say. “She’s been off phthalates since middle school.”
She points a finger at me. “Because I was ahead of my time. You would not believe the lawsuits that have come out of that shit.”
“Says the girl huffing candles.” Colin pinches her side.
“It’s soy!” Kate shrieks, dodging his attack.
I laugh alongside them, my cheeks aching from it, and when I turn to brush a strand of windblown hair off of my face, my eyes catch on a man’s. And it’s as if they just get... stuck there.
He’s seated precariously on the perimeter wall of this roof, three stories up, which is dangerous enough to notice, but he also has the kind of classically pleasing face that I might want to remember for later when I pick up my pencil and sketchbook before bed. That heavy brow and incredibly straight, almost sharp nose, full lips that rest in a lazy smile—they’re practically begging to be drawn.
My gaze falls lower to his biceps where black tattooed leaves poke out of his short sleeves, and something incredibly unfamiliar flares inside me. A quick pulse of unbridled want. I have to swallow it down like a lump in my throat.
He raises an eyebrow from beneath a backwards baseball cap as if to say having a good time over there?
And because I’ve been drinking and apparently possessed by the spirit of someone much braver than me, I respond with a prissy little pursed-lip smile and shrug that says wouldn’t you like to know?
Then I check the rest of him out because Beer Bravery is a very real thing. He’s taller than average, long legs dangling carelessly from his reckless wall seat, and his right forearm is covered in more ink. Not a full sleeve, but a flock of birds spread over the soft skin on the inside, silhouette style. Branches twist between them, thick and thorny.
Everything about this man screams wild, unsteady, not for you. And yet, there’s also something striking about him. Something I can’t look away from.
It’s his eyes, I decide as mine slide back to his face. They’re deep-set and the color of dark whiskey. Moody, if I’m being poetic about it, which I’m just buzzed enough to do. It’s his eyes and the way they don’t fit the rest of his vibe—cool, confident, comfortable here. Basically everything I’m not.
As if conjured by that thought, a tall blonde in cut-off jean shorts appears at his side, draping an arm over his shoulder, and I jerk my gaze away, motioning for Kate to scoot down so I can slide in front of Colin.
“Okay, pay attention,” I say, with a flick of my head to shake that off. I pour Colin’s water into the cup, swirling it like a spooky sommelier. “You have to get your mind right.”
“We’re doomed then. My mind hasn’t been right since I started clinicals.”
Kate pouts. “Aw, babe. In, like, ten years you’ll be a hot-shot ER doctor with a mountain of debt. Think positive.”
“We don’t know that yet. Let’s see what Noel’s prediction is. Maybe I quit school and play guitar for tips in Monument Square.”
I snort, tipping the candle over the cup and letting the wax drip— One. Two. Three—just like Nana does it. It spreads into the shape of a blob that vaguely resembles a dog with a few extra lumps, before hardening on the surface of the water.
Colin sniffs. “Looks like the last scan I read. Fingers crossed it’s benign.”
“Shhh. I’m working.” I press my fingertips to my temples, biting hard on my lip to keep a straight face for this performance. The nostalgia Kate and I have for Nana’s weirdness demands I give it my all.
After a moment of humming and rubbing my temples, I push out my bottom lip in an exaggerated Sad Face. “Looks like med school’s a bust. Luckily your musical talent is discovered, and you live a long life playing Ed Sheeran covers at weddings and proms. Oh, and you lose your hair really early.” I wince. “Sorry.”
Colin laughs like the good sport he is. “I was just starting to like you, Noel.”
“My turn.” Kate hoists herself onto Colin’s lap, and he gives a loud oof despite her being generally twiggish.
Plucking the solid wax from the surface, I chuck it over my shoulder and tip the candle a second time. Kate’s wax forms on top of the water and I scrunch my nose. “It says your future husband will leave you over your misguided crush on Channing Tatum, and you’ll spend your old age alone writing Magic Mike fanfic.”
She fake gasps, then snort-laughs. “I’ll negotiate the house in the divorce, right?”
“Obviously.”
Colin groans and they lock eyes, grinning at each other. It’s like watching a ship go down, slowly and inevitably. I’ve seen this before—Kate with her claws in someone. Kate sees, she wants, she takes. All the years I’ve known her, I’ve never stopped wondering what that must be like. Probably like jumping from a cliff with cement blocks for feet.
“Is there a fee?”
I look up to find the guy from before standing beside my shoulder, grinning at me. The rest of the party may as well have poofed out of existence. All I can see is him.
“A fee for what?” I manage, more than a little mesmerized.
“For the fortune telling.”
Those moody brown eyes lock onto mine, and now that he’s closer, I notice they’re slightly asymmetrical. His right eyelid is heavier, hooded where the left one isn’t. It’s something only a person who’s been taught to draw faces would notice—a perfect imperfection—and my fingers subconsciously mime the pencil stroke I would use to sketch it.
“Oh. Um… yes, actually.” My drink has been lost to the game, so I point to the makeshift bar tucked into the corner of the rooftop. “A shot gets you one reading.”
His grin widens, flashing a straight white smile, and my belly dunks like a duck into water.
“What’s your poison?”
“Uh…” I blurt out the first bottle I spot on the bar: “Jäger.”
Oh, God. My stomach preemptively turns at the horrible decision I’ve just made, but I’m not the type of person who has a drink order at the ready. Especially not a shot.
“Your hangover,” he says, shaking his head and laughing. “I’ll be right back.”
Kate’s jaw hinges open as the stranger steps away. “Do you know him?”
I shake my head.
“Hottie.”
Colin makes a noise in the back of his throat like a snort and my cheeks burn, feeling called out in the worst way. Like I’ve let some secret slip that could make me look foolish.
“He’s here with someone,” I reply. It’s silly, the deep disappointment when I say it out loud. It’s not like I was going to do anything about it even if he wasn’t.
He returns with my shot and I down it quickly, hoping it will dull this weird tingly feeling in my blood.
“What’s your name?” I ask him as he takes the seat across from me.
“Jamie Bishop.”
“Okay, Jamie. I’m Noel. Remember, you have to be open to it.” I wiggle my fingers over the candle, making the flame jump. “You know, let the spirits in.”
He nods, eyes suddenly serious.
“Is there anything specific you want to know about?” I ask like I’m not just going to make up something ridiculous for the sake of the game.
“No. Just, ah, whatever in general.” Long, comma-shaped dimples carve into his cheeks when he gives me a slightly nervous smile. I get the feeling he might actually believe in this, which is kind of cute.
I twist my long hair over one shoulder and lean forward, grasping the jar near the bottom to keep from burning my fingers while playing psychic. Slowly, I raise it just over the cup of water and let it hover.
Kate has moved to my couch to let Jamie sit across from me and I hear her snicker.
“Are you ready to see your future?” I ask in a creepy, mystical voice.
Jamie’s Adam’s apple bobs and he nods once.
I tip the candle, watching the wax pool at the edge, then drip over the side, but the Jäger must hit me at the exact same time because my head rushes, stars appearing behind my eyelids. I blink them back.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
“Fine.” I cast my eyes back to the water. The wax is still shifting shapes oddly.
Why hasn’t it formed yet? There must have been some beer left in the cup. Kate’s right. It’s messing with the buoyancy or whatever.
I clear my throat to tell him it’s not working but then it’s like someone grabs my chin to redirect my attention away from this table. Here, it says. Listen.
But I don’t hear it, I feel it. Like a nagging hunch stirring in the back of my brain.
“Are you worried about money?” I immediately regret asking it. First, it’s an incredibly rude question, and second, I have no idea why I’m even entertaining the idea that I might know something about him. We’re playing a game.
Jamie sits up straighter, cocking an eyebrow.
“I think you’re supposed to turn down a job,” I blurt.
What the hell? It’s like someone has injected information straight into my brain, translating what’s barely a gut feeling and spitting it out as words.
Jamie blinks at me, his full lower lip slowly separating from his top until he’s slack-jawed.
“Do you know what that means?” It’s clear from his face and the way he’s gone mute that he does. My pulse takes off in a sprint.
Kate is looking at me now, concern all over her face. It’s the right reaction. I’m acting unhinged, giving this man career advice based on whispers in my drunken brain.
That has to be what’s happening. It’s the Jäger. What is it they say? Beer before liquor, never been sicker. Maybe there’s more to that than just the likelihood of vomiting. Maybe it makes you say crazy things to people you should have just walked away from.
“You know what? This was a bad idea,” I say, reaching for the candle to blow it out. Whatever I’ve tapped into, I want it gone.
“Wait.” Jamie wraps his fingers around my wrist, and before I can extinguish the flame, a picture flashes so vividly in my head that for a moment I think I’ve been dreaming this whole time and I’m just now waking up. It’s the blonde he’s here with, sprawled out in something scant and lacy and definitely not meant for my eyes.
I pull in a startled breath and my nostrils fill with the scent of perfume and sex. It’s so strong my cheeks burn in second-hand embarrassment.
Jamie’s fingers still circle my wrist and I yank it back, gaping at him. My instant reaction is to warn him to keep his brain PG while we’re doing this, but what the hell does that mean? That’s not even how this works.
I mean, it doesn’t work, because it’s a game, but the game is to see the future, not read someone’s horny thoughts.
God, I hope Nana couldn’t read my teenage mind all of the times she did this with me and Kate.
I’m deep in that mortifying thought when a wave of emotion hits me square in the chest. But it’s not a vague inkling like before. This time my heart feels like it’s cracking down the middle. I have no idea what I’m feeling but it’s so strong, tears come to my eyes.
And then I see it, playing somewhere in my brain like a movie I didn’t buy a ticket for. The blonde again, her head tipped back in pleasure, and there’s a new problem. It’s very clearly not Jamie she’s under.
What the hell is happening?
I crush my palms into my eyes, trying to rub away the sight, but it doesn’t work. It’s there every time I blink, and I don’t know how to make it stop. “Shit.”
“Noel,” Kate says at the same time Jamie asks, “What is it?”
Colin sits up straighter, and I pretend to scratch my forehead, discreetly pointing over Jamie’s shoulder with my pinky. “Um, the woman you’re here with. She’s your girlfriend?”
Jamie turns to look at her and the wariness on his face flashes briefly to the kind of smile any woman would be happy to have pointed at her. My stomach descends another floor. “That’s Becca.” He lowers his voice. “I’m thinking about proposing. Thought maybe you could tell me how it’s going to go.”
Oh. Guess I misread the flirty eye thing from before. Foolish, Noel.
That’s the least of my problems, though, considering what I just saw. This game isn’t fun anymore. Nana’s supposed fortune-telling was basic and vague. If you wanted to believe, you could find a way. This is really freaking detailed, and I have no idea where it’s coming from.
What I do know is I don’t want any part of it.
My hands are shaking, stomach sour. Jamie can tell I’m stalling, and whatever hopeful awe he had quickly slides off his face. “Shit,” he mutters.
“I think we should stop.” I get to my feet and so does Jamie.
Colin stands too, saying something to Kate, and I can feel the tension ratcheting in my chest. The last thing I want is to be the reason for a scene. My mother makes scenes. I avoid them.
It’s obvious Jamie doesn’t share that inclination, though. He doesn’t even bother to lower his voice. “Noel, wait. Just… tell me.”
Oh, damn it. I want to ignore it, tell him I haven’t seen anything at all because I’d like to believe that myself, but I can’t. Not knowing what I know about the unfairness of a thing like this. The way love can absolutely ruin a person when it implodes.
“She’s um… Becca, she’s um.” God, how do I explain this? “I’m sorry. I think maybe there’s something she’s not telling you.” I shove my thumbnail between my teeth. “I’m sorry.”
“Holy shit.” He pushes a hand beneath his hat, rubbing his head.
I need to get out of here. This is too much. I reach for my coat.
“Noel,” he says, rounding the table so we’re face to face. “Hold on, just… Please.”
I stop, my heart in my throat. Maybe I shouldn’t have told him. What if I’m wrong because this is insane?
But I also know I’m not wrong. Like I’ve never known anything else.
“I thought this was a joke,” he whispers.
“It was.”
He glances at Becca, then back to me, eyes desperate. “Are you sure?”
I’ve already said enough. It’s time for me to go, but he’s blocking my exit. I put my hand on his elbow to slide past him and nearly whimper when I realize my mistake. I’ve touched him again and the stars are back behind my eyelids. Then a new picture.
It’s Jamie this time, shirtless against a bright white sheet like you find in a hotel. He’s lying on his stomach, eyes fluttering open, looking thoroughly bedded.
Why the hell are all of these visions X-rated?
I freeze, pressing my eyes with my palms, but it’s no use. The picture before was like a flash, a still snapshot, but this one lingers, and I can’t make it stop. I feel myself sway as it pans around the room like a movie camera. I’m there and here at the same time.
My brain snags on the cut of his hair. A wavy piece has flopped onto his forehead. It’s longer than it is now—short on the sides, wild on top. When he tipped his cap up a few minutes ago, I saw that his hair was practically buzzed. A wiffle cut, as Nana would call it.
There’s a tattoo on his back, scrolling words mostly covered by the sheet. It’s a block of black text over his shoulder blade, the letters too small, and in a handwritten style script too hard to read from this ethereal vantage. I’m desperately trying to make it out when Jamie rolls over—dream Jamie, not this one—and I see a woman there, on the other side of the bed. He pushes his face into her neck. He’s smiling, happy.
Finally, some good news. Apparently, there’s a happy ending to top this whole thing off. If there’s a point to all of this, it has to be that. Nana never ended a reading with bad news.
The woman’s face is obscured by a mess of dark hair, but I catch the bright pink splotches on her chest. Sex spots. It’s a joke between Kate and me. We both get them, to our utter mortification. I could have done without that detail, but it just affirms that this must be a good thing. Clearly, he gets over Becca.
His hand moves beneath the sheet, and it feels intrusive to keep watching, voyeuristic, but I’m curious now and besides, I don’t know if I have a choice.
The room is cozy—a blue quilt at the foot of the bed, a fireplace, a snowy mountain in the window. I find myself wanting to stay. Like a good dream you cling to when your alarm goes off. It doesn’t feel urgent anymore, blinking it away.
Dream Jamie brushes the woman’s hair from her face. She scrunches her nose, small and freckled and…
Pierced.
My breath catches.
My fingers fly to the tiny diamond stud in my nostril. The one I got when I was nineteen and toying with a rebellion that never took off.
It can’t be. It’s definitely not.
“Noel?” Kate’s voice is beside me. My skin heats with awareness that I don’t want to acknowledge just yet.
They’re so similar…
The woman rolls over and smiles back at him and—
—the cup of water slips from my hand, splashing onto the floor, soaking my jeans. I suck in a hard gasp, choking on nothing. “That’s my face!”
Kate squeezes my shoulder. “What are you talking about, babe?”
What the hell is going on? Am I having a sex dream about a stranger while awake? Am I awake? I smack at my cheeks like an absolute lunatic.
Jamie’s face has lost all color, but instead of running in the opposite direction the way he probably should, his fingers tighten around my elbow. “What did you see? Was it bad?”
No, dude. It looks like it was really good. That’s the problem.
This isn’t real. None of this is real. I have no rational explanation for this.
Unless…
I turn to Kate. “I think someone put something in my drink.” It has to be some sort of hallucination.
Colin is eyeing Jamie with murder in his eyes. People’s heads swivel toward us.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Jamie hisses. “I got it from the bar ten feet away. You watched me!”
I don’t know what to say because I did watch him. I’m grasping at straws and now I’ve just accused him of a crime. I need to go.
“Did you see something else?” he begs.
I shake my head vigorously, bile burning the back of my throat. “I didn’t see anything.”
“Well, something has you freaked.”
That’s putting it mildly. I’m shaking, fear climbing up my throat. I slip out of his grip and grab my jacket from the back of the couch, shrugging it on.
“Noel,” Jamie says, but Colin steps between us, arms crossed.
“Game’s over, man.”
Jamie heeds the warning and doesn’t come any closer, but his expression pierces my soul. I’m stuck between this weird sense of responsibility and the urge to get the hell out of here. I don’t even know this guy. I don’t owe him anything. And This. Isn’t. Real.
Still…
Overcome by human empathy for the shitty thing I’ve just witnessed, I push past Colin and reach for Jamie’s face, squeezing his cheeks in my hands. “Listen to me. I’m sorry, but your girlfriend over there, she’s sleeping with someone else. I don’t know who it is. Blond hair, tan? It wasn’t you, either way. And like I said, don’t take the job. You’re waiting on cash. You’ll get it. That’s… all I saw.”
There’s no way in hell I’m telling him the rest. If he wants to believe in this, fine, but I’m out. As far as I’m concerned, this is the first and last night Jamie Bishop and I are acquainted, cosmically or otherwise.
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