“Go on,” he said in a strained voice.
I swallowed hard and glanced up at him. “Is what I’m feeling coming from you? Or am I feeling my own true feelings?”
“Your own,” he answered as his eyes burned into mine.
I nodded, but continued to stare up at him; it was like I couldn’t break our eye contact. “Can you feel what I’m feeling?”
His lips turned up at the ends into something that almost resembled a smile. “Oui,” he said softly.
Drake was about to kiss me.
I could see it in his eyes and I could feel his passion when he tightened his hands around my waist, pulling me closer to him. As obviously as he wanted to kiss me, there was a part of me that equally, desperately wanted to kiss him. I was dying—no pun intended—to savor the warmth of his full lips on mine. My eyelashes dusted the tops of my cheeks as I closed my eyes and let his fanning breath tickle my face.
“Ma minette,” he started in a deep tone of voice, even though his words came out as mere whispers. My eyelids felt heavy when I opened them and found him staring down at me, studying me intently, as if he planned to etch my features into his memory for a later date. “J’avais envie de goûter vos lèvres . . . I have yearned to taste your lips . . . for so very long.”
Tipping my chin up with his fingers, he smiled down at me while his eyes smoldered. I suddenly felt intoxicated, as if I were losing myself in the rich hot chocolate of his eyes. But his smirk soon got my attention; it was one of victory, of conquest. I felt my eyelids growing heavier again as my breathing came in shallow spurts. I closed my eyes and listened to Drake’s soft chuckle.
Despite the side of me that wanted to know what it felt like to kiss Drake, to taste him and experience him in a way I never had before, there was an undeniable other part of me that rebelled against the idea. That part was in the process of digging my heels into the ground with abject refusal.
It feels right, Peyton, my voice sounded inside my head. Don’t fight it.
No, I barked back immediately. It doesn’t feel right!
Why not?
Because of Ryan.
As soon as Ryan’s name crossed my mind, I figuratively opened my eyes and felt like I just snapped out of the momentary intoxication. Even though I was still caught in the dreamscape, the influence of whatever sexual elixir I had been under had vanished, leaving in its place shock and guilt. I broke Drake’s embrace by dropping my arms from around his shoulders and boldly stepping away from him.
Ryan’s name continued to dominate my thoughts, echoing through my mind as I took another few steps away from Drake. I suddenly wanted to catch my breath, and needed to center myself. It was as though a thundercloud hung over my head, raining down the realization that Drake and I should never have gotten ourselves in this situation in the first place. It wasn’t right.
It was wrong not only because I cared about Ryan and wanted to explore the possibilities of what might develop between us, but also because Drake and I could never really be together. We could never be a reality. Drake and I could never become anything because only one of us was alive.
The whole situation sounded so completely bizarre and even crazy when I broke it down into its bare components—Drake was a spirit and I was flesh and blood. But in my heart of hearts, I knew it wasn’t as simple as just that. Yes, initially, Drake had been no more than a disembodied voice that I heard in my head, but he soon became much more than that. In the brief moments that we met in dreamscapes, he felt just as real as I. I could see, hear, smell, and touch him just as if he were standing right in front of me. During those rare moments, I probably lost touch with what was truly reality and what wasn’t.
“Je m’excuse. I apologize, ma minette,” Drake said, clearing his throat as he ran his hands down the front of his vest and sighed. He seemed embarrassed somehow, frustrated and remorseful. Actually, the more I studied him, the more I realized it wasn’t frustration, but rather perturbation. Since it wasn’t an emotion I’d ever seen on him before, it threw me for a few seconds.
I nodded, imagining it must’ve been difficult for him to make sense of what happened between us as well. I offered him a small smile of consolation. For my part, however, I still reeled from the shock of the whole thing. I half wondered if I shouldn’t have been consoling myself and not him. Inside, my raw emotions were on a battlefield. Part of me tried to ignore the extreme guilt at coming so very close to kissing Drake when Ryan and I were, more or less, already in a relationship—a new one, but a relationship for sure. Why I even wanted to kiss Drake, I didn’t know. I mean, despite how handsome Drake was, and the fact that he was sexier than sin, I couldn’t forget that he also wasn’t alive!
“I sense your discomfort,” he continued, shaking his head as he sighed. “I apologize again, ma minette. I do not wish to be the cause of such chagrin.”
“Let’s just . . . pretend like it never happened,” I answered evasively, refusing to look at him. Actually, I didn’t fully know what to make or think of the situation. Needless to say, though, the stupid truth was that I did care about Drake—I was very attracted to him, otherwise I never would have lost myself in that moment. Yes, it was true that I enjoyed Drake’s company and, who knew? Maybe in another place and time, he and I could have had something . . .
As of now, though, I had to restrain my feelings for Drake and impede their progress because he and I were no more than two ships passing in the night. Even though this pseudo world felt undeniably real—with leather chairs so plush I could sink into them and scents so distinct I could still smell the trace of cigar smoke, which haunted me even now—it wasn’t real. It was purely artifice, mere images created by Drake tampering with my thoughts, and allowing his own personal memories of what our home used to look like to filter into mine. They were simply illusions that conspired to trick me into thinking they were real. But when it came down to it, Drake was merely a spirit in possession of my body. Falling for Drake would be like falling for the air that filled my lungs. It would be like falling for nothing!
“Pretending it never happened will not make the feelings between us go away, ma minette. Certainly you realize that?” Drake said, while shaking his head. “Prétendre est pour les enfants. Pretending is for children.”
“Regardless,” I started, “that can’t ever happen again.” My voice was hoarse. Hoping to avoid the pain in Drake’s eyes, I glanced around the music room, taking stock of everything. I saw it the way it looked back in his time, nearly one hundred years ago, and it made me grow angry. I immediately thought to myself that I wanted out of this dreamscape, thereby shattering the visual of the early twentieth century music room in my mind. I had to fight to push away the images of the past, and force myself back into the present, but I gritted my teeth, demanding that history subside.
I found myself lying on my bed, gazing at the television. It took me a few seconds to comprehend the spontaneous exit from my dreamscape and return to the present. Once that realization dawned, I breathed a sigh of relief, but shook my head while remembering what had just happened. Was I starting to lose my mind? Maybe that was a stretch, but at any rate, my visits with Drake were becoming increasingly realistic, which was a thought that disturbed as much as worried me. Was it possible for me to get caught in the surrealism that existed in my head and stay there forever?
Of course, I had no answer to my question, but I had a good idea who might. Without wasting any more time, I jumped up from my bed and started for the chest of drawers in the corner of the guest bedroom. There was a piece of paper lying on top of the dresser with Lovie’s phone number written on it.
“Ma minette,” Drake started. “Please do not be angry with me. S’il vous plaît.”
“I’m not angry with you,” I replied in my mind. “I’m angry with myself.”
“Pourquoi? Why should you be angry with yourself and not me? It was I who made the adv
ances.”
“Because I expected that from you, Drake. You were just acting in accordance with the way you always act.” I sighed and shook my head, irritated that Drake’s advances were actually starting to work on me. What was wrong with me? Usually, we were just like an old married couple: bantering, bickering, and feeling nothing beyond aggravation for one another. Sexual attraction should have never entered the equation.
“You should not feel guilty for your true feelings, ma minette.”
But it was too late. I already blamed myself for allowing my feelings for Drake to go way beyond the friendship level. Now, those feelings would be bottled up and dropped off the ship of my mind, where they would disappear at the bottom of my subconscious, never to reemerge into my thoughts again!
“I blame myself for feeling things that I have no business feeling. I should never have allowed myself to get into that . . . kind of situation with you,” I said, hoping he would understand where I was coming from. I wanted him to realize the futility of desiring something that could never be.
“Oui, je comprends. I understand.” His voice in my head sounded hollow, dejected. “It pains me that your regret runs so deep, ma minette.”
“It doesn’t run so deep,” I responded immediately. The frustration and stress of the situation silenced me and I had to take a few seconds to figure out why I was so upset in the first place. “Drake, you do realize that you and I can never share anything together, right? It’s not like we can ever have a real relationship or look forward to a shared future. There is no future for us.”
“Bien sûr. Of course, ma minette. I have repeated your very words to myself so many times, I have lost count.”
“Then what happened just now?” I demanded.
In my mind’s eye, I imagined him shrugging with his eyes narrowing as he pondered a response. “I suppose I encouraged myself to kiss you because I have so yearned for that exact moment. I put aside all the reasons why we shouldn’t be together and acted on impulse. For that, again, I apologize.”
“It’s okay,” I answered immediately, and suddenly felt sorry for him. As difficult as it was for me to have him in my head, it must be even harder for him. At least my body belonged to me. He had nothing to call his own anymore, not even what he once called home.
With no wish to prolong the conversation, and seeing the situation was what it was, I reached for Lovie’s phone number and my cell phone, which was sitting beside it. I dialed the number and waited patiently as the phone rang once, twice, and then three times. Just when I worried her voice mail would pick up, she answered.
“Lovie here,” she said in her sweet Southern accent.
“Hi, Lovie, it’s Peyton,” I answered hurriedly. My voice could not conceal my worry.
“Ah honeygirl, where y’at?”
“I’m okay, I guess,” I answered, having already been schooled that “where y’at?” was a standard New Orleans way of asking “How are you?” and not a request for my physical location.
“What’s wrong, doll?” Lovie continued; the background noise coming through the phone made it sound as if she were in the middle of a parade.
“It’s too complex to talk about over the phone, Lovie. I was hoping I could meet with you in person, if that isn’t too much to ask?”
“’Course not!” Lovie replied with a little laugh that said my question was a silly one. “Just come on down to my store, honey, an’ we’ll fix up a cure for whatever’s ailin’ you.”
“Your store?” I repeated, instantly at a loss because I hadn’t realized Lovie owned or managed a store.
She laughed. “Guess we never got down to particulars, did we? Come visit my shop on Royal Street in the French Quarter, honey, an’ you can tell me all ’bout whatever’s ailin’ you.”
I glanced at the clock on the wall. “Your store is still open at six p.m.?”
“Oh, we stay open until I decide I’ve had enough!” She laughed. “But with the way business has been lately, the store is just a madhouse, so I’ve been stayin’ open longer than usual. I swear all the dead in N’awlins musta decided to come a-callin’ recently! I suppose it’s good for my wallet, but not so sure how my health’s holdin’ up! I swear I haven’t slept a wink in the last week or so.”
“Well, that, er, meaning the dead, is exactly what I’m coming to talk to you about,” I muttered as a sigh escaped my lips. There was a pause on the other line and I assumed Lovie was wondering to which dead I was referring: Drake or the entity of the Axeman she’d previously helped to exorcise. But I didn’t want to get into that conversation over the phone. “I don’t think you ever told me what the name of your store was?”
“Well, naturally, it’s called Ms. Lovie’s,” she answered with a giggle.
I laughed and suddenly felt like my day was looking up. I wasn’t sure why, because I didn’t know Lovie all that well, but somehow her presence comforted me. “Okay, Lovie, I’m leaving now.”
“Well, you hurry yer sweet hiney on down here, Miss Peyton!” she answered, turning to talk to someone else in a muffled tone.
We said our good-byes and I hung up before taking a deep breath and realizing I needed to check in with Ryan. One of the agreements we’d made in the last few days was that I wouldn’t shut him out of my life. He’d been especially miffed when I hadn’t told him about the exorcism Lovie and Christopher had performed on my house until afterward. I could just imagine how irritated he’d be when I finally grew the cojones to tell him about Drake. That was a conversation that needed to happen sooner rather than later, because I intended to involve Ryan in everything from here on out. It was a promise I not only made to him, but to myself as well. I lifted my cell phone and dialed his number. He answered on the first ring.
“Is this my incredibly attractive neighbor whom I can’t seem to stop thinkin’ about?”
I felt myself smiling as soon as I heard his rich Southern baritone. It wasn’t lost on me that Drake hadn’t said boo since before I called Lovie. I wanted things between us to go back to the way they’d been before our near kiss had thrown everything off course. Hopefully that wasn’t just wishful thinking.
“Hi, Ryan,” I said with a broad smile. “I, uh, wanted to tell you that I’m headed to Lovie’s store, which, coincidentally, I wasn’t even aware she owned, to discuss my concerns. Now that the dead seem to be spiraling out of control in this city lately, it has put me into a near panic because I’m afraid of what this might mean where the Axeman is concerned.” I took a breath. “Recalling the conversation we had the other day when you told me not to shut you out of my life, I thought I’d extend the offer to you, if you’d like to join me.”
There was a pause on the other line before his robust chuckle interrupted the silence. “Well, when you put it that way, how can I refuse?”
I laughed, suddenly feeling remarkably lucky to have this wonderful man in my life. Even if romance never figured into our equation, I would undoubtedly always value him greatly as a friend. A romantic relationship was really just the icing on the cake. Granted, it would be incredibly good icing . . . “I guess you can’t.”
“It’s Peyton,” he said to someone else in the room before pausing and apparently listening to the other person’s comment. I heard him say something else, but his voice became so muffled, I couldn’t make out what he said. “Pey?” he asked.
“Yeah?”
He sighed and laughed. “Trina is over here at the moment, an’ as soon as she heard about your little errand to Lovie’s, she insisted that she be invited also.” Trina was Ryan’s younger sister, whom I didn’t know too well, but still considered a friend.
“Of course she’s invited too,” I answered with a laugh. I could hear Trina gabbing on about something in the background.
“You hear that?” Ryan called out to her. “She said you’re invited so you better be on your best behavior!” Then he c
huckled into the receiver and I could tell by his tone that he was shaking his head. “I’ll grab a rain jacket an’ pick you up in the truck in, say, five minutes?”
“Roger that,” I answered, actually pleased that Trina was accompanying us. I hadn’t seen her in a few days and had meant to call her.
Ryan chuckled some more and when he spoke again, his tone was hushed. “I’ve missed you, Peyton.”
I could feel myself blushing as a huge grin broke across my face. “Missed me? We haven’t even been apart for twenty-four hours!”
“So what?” he demanded. “What are you, the romance police?”
I giggled, suddenly feeling all of twelve years old, and talking on the phone to my grade-school crush. I cleared my throat, trying to make my voice as deep as I could. “I apologize, Mr. Kelly, but I’m going to have to write you up for your unsolicited romantic sentiments to one Miss Peyton Clark.”
Ryan chuckled. “Ah, I apologize, officer. It won’t happen again, I do solemnly swear!”
“Very good, Mr. Kelly,” I continued, my voice starting to crack.
Ryan laughed again and sighed, clearing his throat. “See you in a few, pretty girl.”
“Sounds good, pretty boy.”
“Hey, ‘pretty’ doesn’t work both ways, you know?” he answered in mock offense. “Incredibly handsome an’ charmin’ hunk works better.”
“Hmm, I don’t know,” I responded, pretending to consider it. “I sort of like pretty boy—it seems to fit you.”