But before I can get to it, he retrieves his own bottle and takes a long hearty swig, pulling me to him and pressing his lips to my cheek when he says, "I'm okay. Really. Race you home?"
Chapter Seven
Damen drives fast. Insanely fast. I mean, just because we both have advanced psychic radar, which comes in handy for zoning in on cops, opposing traffic, pedestrians, stray animals, and anything else that might get in our way, that doesn't mean we should abuse it. But Damen thinks otherwise. Which is why he's already waiting on my front porch before I can even pull in and park.
"I thought you'd never make it." He laughs, following me up to my room, where he plops onto my bed, pulls me down with him, and leans in for a nice lingering kiss—a kiss that, if it were up to me, would never end. I'd happily spend the rest of eternity wrapped in his arms. Just knowing we have an infinite number of days to spend side by side provides more happiness than I can bear. Though I didn't always feel that way. I was pretty upset when I first learned the truth. So upset that I spent some time away from him until I could get it all straight in my head. I mean, it's not everyday you hear someone say: Oh, by the way, I'm an immortal, and I made you one too.
And while I was pretty reluctant to believe him at first, after he walked me through it, reminding me of how I died in the accident, how I looked right into his eyes the moment he returned me to life,and how I recognized those eyes the first time I met him at school—well, there was no denying it was true. Though that doesn't mean I was willing to accept it. It was bad enough dealing with the barrage of psychic abilities brought on by my NDE (near death experience—they insist on calling it near, even though I really did die ), and how I started hearing other people's thoughts, getting their life stories by touch, talking to the dead, and more. Not to mention that being immortal, as cool as it may sound, also means I'll never get to cross the bridge. I'll never make it to the other side to see my family again. And when you think about it, that's a pretty big trade.
I pull away, my lips reluctantly leaving his as I gaze into his eyes—the same eyes I've gazed into for four hundred years. Though no matter how hard I try, I can't summon our past. Only Damen, who's stayed the same for the last six hundred years—neither dying nor reincarnating—holds the key.
"What're you thinking?" he asks, his fingers smoothing the curve of my cheek, leaving a trail of warmth in their path.
I take a deep breath, knowing how committed he is to staying in the present, but determined to know more of my history—our history. "I was thinking about when we first met," I say, watching his brow lift as he shakes his head.
"Were you? And what exactly do you remember from that time?"
"Nothing." I shrug. "Absolutely nothing. Which is why I'm hoping you'll fill me in. You don't have to tell me everything—I mean, I know how you hate looking back. I'm just really curious about how it all started—how we first met."
He pulls away and rolls onto his back, his body still, his lips unmoving, and I fear this is the only response that I'll get.
"Please?" I murmur, inching toward him and curling my body around his. "It's not fair that you get all the details while I'm left out here in the dark. Just give me something to go on. Where did we live? What did I look like? How did we meet? Was it love at first sight?"
He shifts ever so slightly, then rolls onto his side, burying his hand in my hair as he says, "It was France, 1608."
I gulp, taking a quick intake of breath as I wait to hear more.
"Paris, actually."
Paris! I immediately picture elaborate gowns, stolen kisses on the Pont Neuf, gossiping with Marie Antoinette...
"I attended a dinner at a friend's house—" He pauses,his gaze moving past mine, centuries away now. "And you were working as a servant."
A servant?
"One of their servants. They were very wealthy. They had many." I lie there, stunned. This is not what I expected.
"You weren't like the others," he says, his voice lowered to almost a whisper. "You were beautiful. Extraordinarily beautiful. You looked a lot like you do now." He smiles, gathering a chunk of my hair and rubbing it between his two fingers. "And also like now, you were orphaned, having lost your family in a fire. And so, left penniless, with no one to support you, you were employed by my friends."
I swallow hard, not sure how I feel about this. I mean, what's the point of reincarnating if you're forced to relive the same kind of painful moments all overagain?
"And yes, just so you know, it was love at first sight. I fell completely and irreversibly in love with you. The very moment I saw you I knew that my life would never be the same." He looks at me, his fingers on my temples, his gazeluring me in, presenting the moment in all itsintensity, unfolding the scene as though I'm right there.
My blond hair is hidden under a cap, my blue eyes are shy and afraid to make contact, and with clothes so drab and fingers so calloused, my beauty is wasted, easily missed. But Damen sees it The moment I enter the room his eyes find mine. Looking past my scruffy exterior to the soul that refuses to hide. And he's so dark, so striking, so refined, so handsome—I turn away. Knowing the buttons on his coat alone are worth more than I'll make in a year. Knowing without looking twice that he's out of my league...
"Still, I had to move cautiously because—"
"Because you were already married to Drina!" I whisper, watching the scene in my head and overhearing one of the dinner guests inquire about her, our eyes meeting briefly as Damen says: "Drina is in Hungary. We have gone our separate ways.''
Knowing he'll be the source of scandal, but wanting me to hear it more than caring what they'll think...
"She and I were already living apart, so it wasn't an issue. The reason I had to tread cautiously is because fraternizing outside of one's class was severely frowned upon back then. And because you were so innocent, so vulnerable in so many ways, I didn't want to cause you any trouble, especially if you didn't feel the same way."
"But I did feel the same way!" I say, watching as we move past that night, and how every time I went into town, I'd manage to run into him.
"I'm afraid I resorted to following you." He looks at me, his face chagrined. "Until we finally bumped into each other so often, you began to trust me. And then... And then we met in secret—stolen kisses just outside the servant's entrance, a passionate embrace in a dark alleyway or inside his carriage...
"Only now I know that it wasn't nearly as secret as I'd thought..." He sighs. "Drina was never in Hungary, she was there all along. Watching, planning, determined to win me back—no matter the cost." He takes a deep breath, the regret of four centuries displayed on his face. "I wanted to take care of you, Ever. I wanted to give you anything and everything your heart desired. I wanted to treat you like the princess you were born to be. And when I finally convinced you to come away with me, I'd never felt so happy and alive. We were to meet at midnight—"
"But I never showed," I say, seeing him pacing, worried, distressed, convinced I'd changed my mind.
"It wasn't until the next day that I learned you'd been killed in an accident, run over by a coach on your way to meet me." And when he looks at me, he shows me his grief—his unbearable, all-consuming, soul-crushing grief. "At the time, it never occurred to me that Drina was responsible, I had no idea until she confessed it to you. It seemed like an accident, a horrible, unfortunate accident. And I guess I was too numb with grief to suspect anything else—"
"How old was I?" I ask, barely able to breathe, knowing I was young, but wanting the details.
He pulls me closer, his fingers tracing the planes of my face when he says, "You were sixteen, and your name was Evaline." His lips play at my ear.
"Evaline," I whisper, feeling an instant connection tomy tragic former self who, orphaned young, loved by Damen, and dead at sixteen—is not so different from my current self.
"It wasn't until many years later when I saw you again in New England, having incarnated as a Puritan's daughter—that I be
gan to believe in happiness again."
"A Puritan's daughter?" I gaze into his eyes, watching as he shows me a dark-haired, pale-skinned girl in a severe blue dress. "Were all of my lives so boring?" I shake my head. "And what kind of horrible accident took me that time?"
"Drowning." He sighs, and the moment he says it, I'm overcome by his grief all over again. "I was so devastated I sailed right back to London, where I lived off and on for many years. And I was just about to head off to Tunisia when you resurfaced as a beautiful, wealthy, and rather spoiled I might say—landowner's daughter in London."
"Show me!" I nuzzle against him, eager to view a more glamorous life—his finger tracing my brow as a pretty brunette in a gorgeous green dress with a complicated updo and a smattering of jewels appearsin my mind. A rich, spoiled, conniving flirt—her life a series of parties and shopping trips—whose sights are set firmly on someone else—until she meets Damen...
"And that time?" I ask, sad to see her go, but needing to know how she went.
"A terrible fall." He closes his eyes. "By that point, I was sure I was being punished—granted eternal life,but one without love."
He cradles my face in his hands, his fingers emitting such tenderness, such reverence, such delicious warm tingle—I close my eyes and snuggle closer. Focusing on the feel of his skin as our bodies press tightly together, everything around us slipping away until there's nothing but us—no past, no future, nothing but this moment in time.
I mean, I'm with him, and he's with me, and that's the way it's meant to eternally be. And while all those prior lives may be interesting, their only real purpose was to get us to this one. And now that Drina is gone, there's nothing that can stand in our way, nothing that can keep us from moving forward—except me.
And even though I want to know everything that happened before, for now it can wait. It's time for me to move past my petty jealousies and insecurities, to stop finding excuses and finally commit to taking that big leap forward after all of these years. But just as I'm about to tell him, he moves away so abruptly, it's a moment before I can get to his side.
"What is it?" I cry, seeing his thumbs pressed to his temples as he struggles to breathe. And when he turns to me, there's no recognition. His gaze goes right through me. But just as soon as I perceive it, it's already passed. Replaced with the loving warmth I've grown used to, as he rubs his eyes and shakes his head, looking at me when he says, "I haven't felt like this since before—"
He stops and stares into space, "Well, maybe never."
But when he sees the concern on my face, he adds, "But I'm fine, really." And when I refuse to loosen mygrip, he smiles and says, "Hey, how about a trip to Summerland?"
"Seriously?" I say, my eyes lighting up.
The first time I visited that wonderful place, that magical dimension between the dimensions—I was dead. And I was so entranced by its beauty I was reluctant to leave. The second time I visited was with Damen. And after he showed me all of its glorious possibilities, I've longed to return. But as Summerland can only be accessed by the spiritually advanced (or those already dead), I can't get there alone.
"Why not?" He shrugs.
"Well, what about my lessons," I say, trying to appear interested in studying and learning new tricks, when the truth is, I'd much rather go to Summerland where everything is effortless and instant. "Not to mention how you're not feeling so well." I squeeze his arm again, noticing how the usual warmth and tingle still hasn't fully returned.
"There are lessons to be learned in Summerland too." He smiles. "And if you'll hand me my juice, I'll feel well enough to make us the portal." But even after I hand it over and he takes several long hearty gulps, he can't make it appear.
"Maybe I can help?" I say, staring at the sweat on hisbrow.
"No—I just—I almost had it. Just give me another second," he mumbles, clenching his jaw, determined to get there.
So I do. In fact, I let the seconds turn into minutes, and still nothing.
"I don't understand." He squints. "This hasn't happened since—since I first learned how to do it."
"Maybe it's because you're not feeling well." I watch as he takes another drink, followed by another, and then another. And when he closes his eyes and tries again, he gets the exact same results as before. "Can I try?"
"Forget it. You don't know how," he says, his voicecontaining an edge I try not to take personally, knowing it's due more to his frustration with himself than with me.
"I know I don't know how, but I thought maybe you could teach me and then I—"
But before I can finish, he's up from the bed, pacing before me. "It's a process, Ever. It took me years to learn how to get there. You can't just skip to the end of the book without reading the middle." He shakes his head and leans against my desk, his body rigid and tense, his gaze refusing mine. "And when was the last time you read a book without already knowing the beginning, middle, and end?"
I smile.
He looks at me, his face a series of hard edges and angles, but only for a moment before he sighs and moves toward me, taking my hand as he says, "You want to try?"
I nod.
He looks me over, clearly doubting it'll work, but wanting to please me more than anything else. "Okay then, make yourself comfortable, but don't cross your legs like that. It cuts off the chi."
"Chi?"
"A fancy word for energy." He smiles. "Unless you want to sit in the lotus position, then that's perfectly fine."
I kick off my flip-Hops and press my soles against the carpeted floor, getting as comfortable and relaxed as my excitement will allow.
"Usually it requires a long series of meditations, but in the interest of time, and since you're already pretty advanced, we're just going to cut to the chase, okay?"
I nod, eager to get started.
"I want you to close your eyes and imagine a shimmering veil of soft golden light hovering before you," he says, entwining his fingers with mine.
So I do, picturing an exact replica of the one that got me there before, the one Damen placed in my path to save me from Drina. And it's so beautiful, so brilliant, and so luminous, my heart swells with joy as I raise my hand toward it, eager to immerse it in that radiant shower of glistening light, longing to return to that mystical place. And just as my fingers make contactand are about to submerge, it shrinks from my sight and I'm back in my room.
"I can't believe it! I was so close!" I turn toward Damen. "It was right there before me! Did you see it?"
"You came remarkably close," he says. And even though his gaze is tender, his smile is forced.
"What if I try it again? What if we do it together this time?" I say, my hope plummeting the instant he shakes his head and turns away.
"Ever, we were doing it together," he mutters, wiping his brow and averting his gaze. "I'm afraid I'm not turning out to be a very good teacher."
"That's ridiculous! You're a great teacher, you're just having an off day, that's all." But when I look at him, it's clear he's not swayed. So I switch tactics, placing the blame back on me when I say, "It's my fault. I'm a bad student. I'm lazy, sloppy, and spend most of my time trying to distract you from my lessons so we can make out." I squeeze his hand. "But I'm past all that now. And I'm about to get very serious. So just give me another chance, you'll see."
He looks at me, doubting it'll work, but not wanting to disappoint me, he takes my hand and we both try again, the two of us closing our eyes, envisioning that glorious portal of light. And just as it starts to take shape, Sabine walks through the front door and starts up the stairs, catching us so off guard, we scramble too pposite sides of the room.
"Damen, I thought that was your car in the drive." She slips off her jacket and covers the space from the door to my desk in a handful of steps. The amped-up energy of her office still clinging to her as she shakes his hand and focuses on the bottle balanced on his knee. "So you're the one who got Ever hooked." She glances between us, her eyes narrowed, her lips p
ursed, like she's got all the evidence she needs. I peek at Damen, panic rising in my throat, wondering how he'll explain.
But he just laughs it off when he says, "Guilty! Most people don't have the taste for it, but for whatever reason, Ever seems to like it." Then he smiles in a way that's meant to be persuasive, if not charming, and if you ask me, it nails both.
But Sabine just continues to gaze at him, completely unmoved. "That's all she seems to be interested in anymore, I buy bags and bags of groceries, but she refuses to eat."
"That's not true!" I say, annoyed that she's starting this all over again, especially in front of Damen. But when I see the chai latte stain on her blouse, my annoyance turns to outrage. "How'd you get that?" I motion toward the spot like it's a scarlet letter, a mark of disgrace, knowing I have to do whatever it takes to dissuade her from returning anytime soon.
She gazes down at her blouse, her fingers rubbing against it as she pauses to think, then she shakes her head and shrugs when she says, "I bumped into someone." And the way she says it, so casual, so offhand, so blase, it's obvious she's not nearly as impressed with the encounter as Munoz seemed to be. "So, are we still on for dinner Saturday night?" she asks.
I swallow hard, telepathically urging Damen to just nod and smile and answer in the affirmative even though he has no idea what she's talking about, since I failed to mention it before.
"I made reservations for eight."
I hold my breath, watching as he nods and smiles just like I asked him to. Even choosing to take it a step further by adding, "Wouldn't miss it." He shakes Sabine's hand and heads out the door, his fingers entwined around mine, sending a warm wonderful thrum through my body.
"Sorry about the whole dinner thing," I say, gazing up at him. "I guess I was hoping she'd get really busy and forget all aboutit."
He presses his lips to my cheek, then slides into his car. "She cares about you. Wants to make sure I'm good enough, sincere, and not out to hurt you. Believe me, we've been through this before. And though I may have come close once or twice, I don't remember ever failing inspection." He smiles.