“You’re way off. But I’m sure it seems that way.”
“It might seem like I do, but I don’t hate Cole. In fact, I care a great deal about him. It’s just so complicated.” A strange tightness constricted in my chest.
Trevor looked around the room as if he were avoiding my gaze. Trevor twirled me as if he detected my curiosity.
“What’s wrong?”
He shook his head, but then did finally make eye contact. “There’s something I think you should know, but Cole has asked me not to speak to you about it. I have been vowed to secrecy, but I no longer think that’s what’s best for you.”
A shudder ran the course of my veins.
His words would change my life. I could feel it in my blood.
Trevor took my hand and pulled me outside to a quiet corner on the balcony. The stars twinkled and a warm breeze did nothing to help the chill in my veins. Trevor took off his coat and rested it on my shoulders.
“Tell me.” I pulled the coat together.
“You’re not his cousin.” Trevor’s voice changed from cheery to businesslike, as if I were a client to whom he was selling a home.
“I already know that. We’re from a—”
“You and Cole weren’t just named after Cole and Allie Kinsley. You are Cole and Allie Kinsley. The reason Cole obsesses over you all the time is you’re his wife.” Trevor’s gaze was bold, serious.
I was silent. Surely he couldn’t think I had the patience for jokes at a time like this.
“Your soul was drawn to the fetus inside your mother, as was Cole’s. You were raised side by side so that you could be together without all the wasted time of searching for each other. You are endlessly reincarnated. In your previous life, you and Cole decided this process would, if it worked, save you two time and heartache. Cole always remembers his past lives, you don’t. It was a curse laid on you by your sister in the 1800s. She was a terrible person. She graced you with nothing but a horrible past. Before you call me crazy and go running from the room, all I need for proof to back what I’m saying is at Rollins Manor. Once you see it all, you’ll have no doubts.”
“I don’t even know what to say to this. It’s too farfetched.” I turned from him.
He touched my arm. “I’m sorry I’m the one to break it to you, but like I said, Cole made us promise after you two became teenagers. He saw a difference in you than he’d ever seen before and thought that maybe you might not actually return his devotion. If you didn’t, he wanted you to have Free Will. To be able to live your own life without the misery of sharing it with him.”
“Why would sharing it with him, if any of this was true, cause me misery?” My voice shook.
“You’re haunted. Or cursed. The ghost of your sister, Grace Rollins, used to follow you two and harass you to no end. We think she’s been done away with for good, but we’re not completely sure. He doesn’t want to take a chance in drawing Grace back to you, if there’s a possibility that you could be happy without him.”
“I need to find my date.” I slid the jacket off my bare shoulders and handed it back to Trevor. Unable to make eye contact with him, I turned.
“Promise me you won’t run away,” he called after me.
“I’m not going to run.” I picked up my skirts and searched the crowd for Derrick. With very little explanation, I left him at the dance by himself.
The limo sat at the restaurant on the corner a few blocks away.
I would have walked home so I could think through things, but with the mental state I was in, there was a possibility that I would forget my way.
Miles saw me approach and opened the door for me, a confused look on his face. “An early end to the evening, Madame?”
“Yes. I wasn’t feeling well. Would you mind taking me home?”
He nodded. “Will Mr. Cobb need a ride to his house at the close of the dance?”
“No. He’ll be riding with friends. Thank you.”
Miles shut the door and drove in silence as I propped my hand on the window and stared at the nightlife around me.
Past lives.
No.
I couldn’t think about it.
That meant too many things about my life had been a complete lie.
Who were my parents, really? Who was Cole?
No. I wouldn’t think about it.
But how could I not?
It explained so many things. And created so many more questions.
Ones Cole would answer as soon as I got home. And he would be the one to show me the proof. If this was all a joke, I would… I would….
It wasn’t a joke.
I could feel it.
As soon as Trevor had begun speaking, all the icy pulsing in my veins had seemed to ebb and a warm, comforting heat had replaced it. As if I was finally on the right track to finding out what my life meant.
As if I had finally found myself. Even though I’d had no idea I’d been lost.
Miles pulled he car to the front door, into Cole’s vacant parking space. He normally parked his black, antique Camaro right out front.
I gathered my skirts and lifted them so I could scale the steps two at a time. The squeaky elevator carried me to the third floor. I almost ran into Libby, one of the housekeepers, when I turned toward Cole’s room.
She had sheets in her hands.
Past her, Cole’s room was empty. The posters were off the walls, the bed was bare, and the dresser and nightstand where his alarm clock, pictures and watch normally sat, were empty.
“You just missed him. He left about five minutes ago.” Libby smoothed the sheets in her hands. “I was just about to make the beds with new linens.”
Upon closer inspection of the room, the only thing he’d left behind was a picture of us in a goofy pose stuck in the mirror.
I dropped my skirts and my hands dangled at my sides, lifelessly. I was so numb. When I finally got feeling back in my hands enough to move them, I took the picture down.
I was sticking my tongue out, but Cole was looking at me.
He looked at me as if he was looking at the soul inside me and that it housed the sun. Too painful to look at without cringing slightly, yet too breathtaking to look away.
My fingers trembled, and I almost dropped the picture.
What was this craziness going on inside me?
What had made Cole decide tonight that he was leaving?
Why couldn’t he have said bye to me himself?
I turned and took the picture with me.
On the second floor, at the last bedroom on the right before the stairs that led down to the main floor, I stopped, a strange pull leading me to put my hand on the door handle. It had been the deceased owner’s room. So, if all the stuff Trevor had told me was in fact true, it had been mine and Cole’s.
How could I not remember?
How did he get to?
I had avoided that suite of rooms at all costs, though I’d seen Cole close the doors behind him many times. He always gave himself entrance to the room just as if it had been….
Holy.
Crap.
I stumbled into the room and shut the door behind me. My chest swelled with breath I couldn’t release and my eyes burned with tears. I staggered to the bed and sat.
I yanked the draw cord on the claw foot lamp on the nightstand.
This room held ghosts.
Not ghosts that I could see but memories I could feel. My soul spun with a whirlwind of emotions—happiness, sadness, fear, terror, humor, love, and last but not least, a completeness—that made me feel more empty than I ever had in my whole life without Cole there to explain them to me.
I tried to walk around the room and look at some of my past belongings, but the air became thicker, Cole’s cologne found my senses. The smell of his neck when he’d hugged me from time to time wrapped around me. I suddenly couldn’t breathe in the thickness of a past that hadn’t been mine until only hours ago
.
I had to get out.
I ran right into my mother as I fumbled to shut the door behind me, still clutching the picture in a death grip.
“Are you okay?” she said.
I rushed past her. “Why don’t you ask my husband? Apparently, we’re cursed and haunted by a ghost.”
Her gasp echoed through the hall and down the stairs.
I kept going. I didn’t want to talk to anyone.
“Everything from your past lives is upstairs. On the fourth floor. You need to see it all.” Her voice trembled.
I stopped on the next to the last step. “Why? He’s gone. It doesn’t even matter. If it was true, he should have at least told me. Gave me a chance to see how I felt about it.”
“The reason he didn’t is because it’s true. He didn’t want you to suffer if the curse was over, if the part that involved you hurting for eternity on end was over. He felt like he was the cause of that hurt.”
I gripped the banister still facing away from her. “No. He was a coward. He didn’t want to find out how I really felt. He couldn’t face rejection. If that’s what it would have been.”
“As angry as you are right now, I don’t think it would have been.”
“We’ll never know, now will we?” I continued my descent down and went out the back door. It was my turn to take a long walk.
Living without him wouldn’t be that bad. I had for this long. I’d be fine.
Maybe things would be better now.
* * * *
The day before Christmas Eve, I was sure I’d see Cole over the holiday. I didn’t want to be without a gift for him, so I shopped until I found the perfect thing. A new journal and a pen that I had his name engraved on.
He wrote in a journal every night. Surely he could use a new one.
On Christmas Eve, I sat up staring at the Christmas tree long after everyone had opened the traditional one gift that we always opened in celebration of Jesus’ birth. After everyone went upstairs, I sat in the glow of Christmas tree lights, the rest of the room darkened, with the box in my lap.
No one had mentioned Cole.
My heart had punched my chest every time I started to ask if they’d heard from him.
So, I had opened the gift Mama got for me and left Cole’s gift under the tree until everyone left the room. I stared at it until four in the morning.
Mama had had many talks with me between the junior prom and Christmas. She, Shelby, Trevor and Jordan wouldn’t age. To hear them tell it, Mama and Shelby were ancestors of one of the most powerful witches ever known in these parts. They could do things only most witches could ever dream of.
I was the love of a shapeshifter’s life.
If they’d told me that part along with the whole reincarnation thing back at the prom, I probably would have run away, but now Cole’s long walks in the woods made total sense. Though he could scarf down a gargantuan amount of normal food, his metabolism called for much more protein that normal human consumption allowed.
And he was so hot.
Not just looks-wise.
Because he was.
I had been too blinded and pissed at him for all his hovering and moping to notice how much.
He’d always been warm as if he was running a bit of a temperature. If we’d ever cuddled, which was rarely, like during a scary movie or after the loss of my favorite pets—and there’d been many, being the animal lover that I was—he was always toasty and comfortable. Looking back, I wished I had taken the opportunity more often. Maybe then emotions I was supposed to feel would have slapped me in the face or kicked me in the ass.
They crushed me now, and according to everyone in the house, no one knew where he was.
Sure, he’d called to check in, but he wouldn’t disclose his location. He’d finished up high school at some other school out of town and had begun college level classes earlier than expected.
Of course. Because he was brilliant. He always knew how to do everything.
It all made so much sense now. If he’d lived all those lives, he’d learned a century of irritating skills to make me feel stupid.
I’d always felt so inadequate where he’d been a freaking genius.
I sighed, as pain wrenched at my chest.
If he’d just come home, I would have given him an apology. And probably yell at him. Some. I wanted to say to him how sorry I was for acting like a spoiled brat all those years and that I hoped he would consider a friendship with me. I would have told him that I missed his nagging and that I would never complain again if he would just tell me that all was forgiven and give me some sort of insult or needless advice. That would have been a start.
After that, I’m sure my notion of having been jaded by the truth being withheld from me all this time would kick in and an argument would ensue.
But hadn’t my friends always said making up was the best part of a relationship?
Before the sun came up, I finally retired to my bedroom and placed the gift in the top of my closet.
Even on Christmas Day, he never showed.
I stayed under my blanket for the next twenty-four hours.
The thing I had been fighting against most my whole life had turned out to be the thing I wanted most, and it was too late.
The day after Christmas, Mama came to check on me. Her slight weight settled on the bed beside me. She caressed my elbow. “Are you going to be okay?”
My voice was muffled by the pillow and hoarse from crying. “I thought he’d come home.”
“He’s not doing as well as you would think—if that helps any.” Mama continued to rub my arm.
I sat up. “Why doesn’t he want to see me? Haven’t you told him I know and that I want to talk?”
“Yes. Now he thinks you only want to see him because of your past. He wanted your time in this life to be unblemished by that past.” Mama looked down the flowered bedspread.
“Well, that’s stupid.” I coiled a handful of blanket into my fist. “It doesn’t make sense. He wanted me to love him. Now that I do, he’s running away. Ugh, I could slug him.”
“He’s just as stubborn if not worse than he was in his past lives.” Mama shook her head, her face twisted with disdain.
“Do you think he’ll ever come back?” Tears filled my eyes.
“I don’t know, honey. He was pretty upset when he left and with the curse not in place, there’s no telling whether the pull you once felt toward each other will ever guide you again.”
“Free will sucks,” I said flatly.
“I am a strong believer in fate working itself out. You just try to make it through the next day, and when you get sad, just take deep breaths and remember you are a breath closer to figuring yourself out with each one. Don’t try to tackle eternity just yet; take it one breath at a time.” Mama squeezed my hand.
“How’d you get so wise?” I looked to the picture of Cole and me lying on the bed. I had tried not to crumple it as I slept, but it was starting to show signs of wear.
Mama picked up the picture.
“I had good role models.” She nodded to the picture with a bright smile. “They taught me the value of love, life and everything in between.”
Mama got up and kissed my forehead. She put the picture on my nightstand, and left me with a lot to think about.
* * * *
Summer dragged by.
I vacationed in Paris, Barcelona, England, and Switzerland. No matter where I was, I couldn’t get the look on Cole’s face that last time I had seen him out of my head. There was no longer a crushing feeling in my chest though. I had begun to find peace without him.
I may have even matured a bit. Now that I had no one to point out all the stupid things I had done or would probably do, I no longer felt the rebellious urge to carry on the way I had.
Stupidly.
Looking back, I couldn’t understand how anyone in the house could stand me. I had been a complete spoil
ed brat, and I was embarrassed that I had behaved so insolently.
When I returned from vacation, my senior year was fast approaching, and I was actually excited about school. As I sorted and hung clothes that I had purchased from shops at the various cities I’d visited, I came across a box in the top of my closet.
From time to time, I took it down to swipe the dust off the top but couldn’t bring myself to look on its contents. It saddened me too much.
It reminded me of what I’d lost.
Chapter 3
Days turned into weeks and weeks into months. A few years finally passed. I’d taken online classes my first two years of college, and it was time to enroll in a campus-based school. I’d finish out my degree away from the home. Maybe it would help to get away from the manor. Since I’d graduated high school, I’d become a recluse.
Cole and I’d had exchanged roles.
I’d read all the books in the house pertaining to the past history of the family. All Cole’s old journals had begun as good reading material and left me between tearful fits and sobs. I’d never known a more honorable man. And all those years he’d been right under my nose. In this lifetime, he may have been in love with me, but he was definitely concerned for everything that had to do with me.
And I’d shoved him away at every turn.
I flipped through my emails and finished out the requirements for the college applications. So far, I’d had no acceptances, but it had only been two days since I’d sent in the first one to Western Carolina University.
I was a shoo-in, with perfect grades, so I don’t know why I was so nervous.
I could have chosen any college, but I really wanted that one.
Two days later, emails came flying in from all the schools to which I’d applied. Accepted.
Western still called out to me.
So, I sent in my payment for the first semester.
* * * *
Shoes, clothes, school supplies, my laptop, and one box that had gathered dust in my closet for months filled all the empty space in my car that wasn’t required to drive it. I couldn’t find it in me to leave the box. I couldn’t give up hope.
One day, I’d see Cole again. Even if we never spoke, I wanted him to have it so he’d know I paid attention to the things he’d like when we were younger and that all the small things had mattered.
Ever Lasting Page 4
