Angel's Touch

by Caldwell, Siri

  Chapter Sixteen

  The screaming was the worst part of the dream.

  Megan never saw the woman’s face, only her hands, which clutched at her with a desperation that echoed in her own gut. She really didn’t want to see the anguish in her face. Feeling it and hearing it were bad enough. Because as bad as it was to know something terrifying was about to happen, it was worse knowing she wasn’t the only one who would be hurt.

  She loved her. And the woman must have loved her too, loved her enough to defy those men, to grab her hands and order them to let her go. But the men were stronger, and her hands slipped free. As they dragged her away, the woman’s angry, combative shouts mixed with sobs of fear and despair.

  Her vision tunneled, blocking out the townspeople. The last thing she saw was the woman’s face.

  Kira’s face.

  Megan sat straight up and screamed.

  Kira jolted awake and reached for her, her face full of worry. “Are you all right? What’s wrong?”

  Megan’s heart pounded with a combination of residual adrenaline from the dream and a new rush of adrenaline that came with the realization of who Kira was. She was not doing this again. She was not going to date someone she’d been in a past life with. She’d made that mistake with Amelia and she was not making it again.

  “You’re hyperventilating,” Kira said sharply.

  “Nightmare,” Megan explained. She forced herself to take a deep breath. “Sorry I woke you.” She hadn’t woken up screaming like that since she’d been a kid. Not that she didn’t still have the dream. But she was used to it, and the death-by-fire thing didn’t scare her the way it once did. At least not usually.

  “Want to talk about it?” Kira prompted.

  “Must have been all that talk about soul mates,” Megan said.

  “That’s what made you scream like someone was trying to kill you? Dreaming about your soul mate?”

  Megan sank back and buried her head in the pillow.

  “Must have been pretty real to make you scream.”

  Kira was actually taking this seriously? A sob rose in Megan’s chest, but she refused to let it out. “Used to freak my parents out,” she mumbled into the pillow.

  “What? Waking up screaming? Of course it freaked them out. They were worried about you.”

  Kira gently rubbed her back with a touch that felt calming and safe—safe enough to talk about it.

  “For years my mother wouldn’t let me watch TV because she assumed I’d seen a fire on TV and that was why I was having these nightmares about dying in a fire.”

  Her mother did try. She taught her to crawl on the floor if there was smoke. They practiced Stop, Drop and Roll. They planned escape routes.

  “What if there’s fire at the front door?” Megan would ask, worried her mother’s escape plan was sorely lacking.

  “Then run out the back door.”

  “What if there’s fire at the back door?”

  “Then run out the front door.”

  “What if there’s a fire and I can’t run, Mommy?”

  “Sometimes in our dreams it’s hard to move our legs, but in the real world that doesn’t happen, okay? The fire is just a dream. It’s not real. If you’re scared and you can’t run, tell yourself it’s just a dream and wake yourself up.”

  Megan knew what she meant about not being able to run very fast in your dreams, but that wasn’t what she was talking about. She wasn’t talking about running in slow motion. She was talking about her legs not being able to move at all. Because they were lashed to a stake.

  “Change the dream,” her mother said. “Dream that I pick you up and carry you out and you’re safe, all right?”

  But she couldn’t change the dream. She couldn’t change the fact that in her dream, she always died. They tied her up and she couldn’t escape and the fire was everywhere and she died.

  “You’re still having the same dream?” Kira said, her hand warm and solid on her back, somehow managing to reach through time to comfort her child self.

  “Yeah. They took me to an allergist to find out why I was waking up coughing and gasping for breath. They didn’t believe me when I told them it was the smoke from my dream that was making me choke.” Megan rolled over and gripped the edge of the sheet. “I always thought it was something I remembered from a past life.”

  Kira stroked her hair. “I wish I could have been there to save you.”

  You tried. She twisted the sheet in her hands. “The dream was different this time.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I never saw the other woman’s face before—I only ever saw her hands. This time I saw her face.”

  “And this woman…she was your soul mate?” Kira asked cautiously.

  Megan twisted the sheet even harder. “She was you.”

  Kira’s hand stilled. “You’ve been dreaming of me since you were a kid and you think we’re not soul mates?”

  She hesitated. Why was it so hard to say she didn’t know? She tried it out in her head: I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know… “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  Kira was being patient, but really, she deserved more than a one-word explanation. “Maybe not,” Megan said. Because two words were so much more clear.

  “What do you mean, maybe not?”

  Megan wanted to scream. Kira was amazing—the most amazing soul that fate could have conjured—but Amelia had seemed nice at first, too. Not as nice as Kira, of course, but…

  She’d assumed Amelia was her soul mate.

  She’d been wrong.

  “Just because I was with you in a past life doesn’t mean we’re meant to be together,” Megan explained.

  “Of course it does.”

  She tried again. “Look at ex-lovers. It’s easy to get back in bed with an ex, because you’ve done it before and you already know how to get into her pants. But the next morning she’s hogging your side of the bed, the things that annoyed you about her haven’t changed, and you’re running out the door before anyone sees your car in her driveway.” Megan clenched her fists. “Just because someone’s familiar”—she punched her pillow to emphasize her point—“doesn’t mean they’re right for you.”

  “But neither one of us is running out the door,” Kira said. “Unless you’re about to run?” She said it like it was a joke, like none of what Megan had said applied to them, because they were perfect together.

  Something twisted in Megan’s chest. It was already too late, wasn’t it? Fate had already caught up with them. They were both trapped by the pull of karma, acting out roles that had already been decided. She looked at the wistful, happy smile on Kira’s face and wondered if crying was an option.

  I’m sorry, she mouthed silently, her throat too tight to get the words out. She couldn’t believe what she was about to do. But she had to do it. She had to be strong and do the right thing. When she met Amelia she had jumped in, naïvely assuming it was the right thing to do. She wasn’t making that mistake again. She was not going to waste this life being pushed around by karmic forces, pushed into repeating what she’d done hundreds of times before. She had a chance to break her pattern. She had a chance to break free of that fiery death. And the only way that was going to happen was if she did something differently, even if it meant pushing Kira away.

  “I don’t want to break up with you,” Megan burst out, on the verge of tears. She liked Kira. “But now that I know we shared a past life together—”

  “Wait a minute. You’re upset that we were together in a past life?” Kira said incredulously. “That’s supposed to be a good thing!”

  “I don’t want to repeat my mistakes. Before I die young again, I want to learn from my past—my past lives and what I’ve learned in this life—and get off the karmic hamster wheel.”

  “So I was a mistake?”

  Kira’s anger hit Megan like a fist to the chest. She tried to breathe in and couldn’t.

  “Was I?” Kira insisted.

&n
bsp; Megan couldn’t meet her gaze. “I don’t know,” she admitted as air finally rushed in. Why did she assume that everything—and everyone—in her past lives had been a mistake? Just because Amelia was a mistake, didn’t mean they all were. There were probably some things she’d done right.

  Hesitantly, Kira put her arm around Megan’s shoulders. “I didn’t mean to get mad at you.” She rubbed Megan’s arm up and down. “You surprised me, that’s all.”

  Kira was apologizing? For hurting her. When Megan was the one dropping bombs.

  “Can you tell me more about your dream? What exactly do you remember about me?”

  “I remember we loved each other,” Megan said quietly, a little surprised at how easy it was to use the word love and not feel she was giving away too much. “And you tried to save me.”

  “And loving you wasn’t enough,” Kira said bitterly. “You think loving me was a mistake.”

  “I—”

  Kira moved her arm away and shifted her weight so they were no longer touching. The rejection hurt. And she deserved every bit of it.

  Kira sighed. “You know, the first time I met you, I thought it was fate. You looked just like a girl I used to dream about when I was a teenager, and I thought…” She jerked her head angrily. “Who knows what I thought.”

  “You dreamed—” Megan stopped breathing.

  “Who am I kidding? I’ll tell you what I thought—I thought it was fate. I never imagined that being right about that was going to make you break up with me.”

  Megan snatched at Kira’s hands. “You knew?” Her voice jumped an octave with an unintended screech.

  The sand sculpture. Damn it. Kira had made a sand sculpture of two clasped hands. Megan had been startled by it without quite knowing why. It was so obvious now. The hands had been pulling away from each other, just like in her nightmare.

  “You knew we’d been together in a past life and you didn’t tell me?”

  “It was just a dream,” Kira groused.

  “A dream about me.”

  “It might not be you,” Kira said. “She looked like you, but that doesn’t mean she was you.”

  Oh, puh-lease. “You knew they killed me! You saw them do it.”

  “What? No. Different dream. No one kills anyone.”

  Megan stared at her. A different dream? Was it different parts of the same life, or had they shared more than one life together? Of course they had. They were sharing one right now, drawn to each other as if they had no free will at all. “Why didn’t you tell me? If I had known about this sooner…”

  ***

  Kira did not like what Megan’s ominous tone implied. If she had known about this sooner, then…what? She would have broken up with her sooner?

  “Turns out I was right not to tell you,” Kira said. “You’d never have given me the time of day.”

  Megan stormed out of bed and began yanking on her clothes, jamming her arms into the sleeves of her blouse.

  No, no, no. Kira propelled herself to the edge of the bed. “It was just a dream! I don’t believe in past-life memories. I don’t believe in ley lines. I don’t believe in any of this. I didn’t tell you about my dream because I didn’t think it was important, not because I was holding out on you. And then you said you didn’t believe in The One, in that One Right Person being out there, waiting for you…”

  “You didn’t think it was important? You told me you thought it was fate.”

  “I don’t believe in fate!”

  Megan gave her a look of disbelief.

  “I thought it was fate and then I talked myself out of it,” Kira admitted. “I decided it was a coincidence. I thought my mind was playing tricks on me, that the resemblance was an illusion.”

  Megan returned to the bed and flipped up the covers. “Have you seen my underwear?”

  “Don’t leave,” Kira pleaded.

  “I have to go.”

  “It’s the middle of the night. You take the bed, and I’ll take the couch.” She was starting to wish she had waited until morning to discuss this. Her brain didn’t function well on three hours of sleep, and it wasn’t coming up with words that would help.

  “No, thank you.”

  “I said, I can take the couch.” Kira grabbed her pillow and stomped out of the bedroom.

  “You go right ahead.” Megan followed her into the living room and continued past her out the front door.

  “Wait!” Kira went after her, still hugging her pillow, just barely remembering to grab her keys from the hook on the way out so she wouldn’t lock herself out.

  Megan stopped in the open stairwell and turned to look at her. “Are you crazy?”

  “I don’t understand what just happened.” God, that was putting it mildly.

  “That is not what I’m talking about.” Megan gestured uselessly, her voice strangled. “I’m talking about the fact that we’re outside and you’re…”

  Kira glanced down at herself. Oh. Her pillow was covering most of the important parts, more or less.

  “Let me take you inside,” Megan said.

  “Only if you stay.”

  Megan extended her arm as if she were going to come closer and take Kira’s hand, then let it drop helplessly at her side. She looked at the stairwell, then back at Kira, not bothering to hide the detour her gaze took before returning to my-eyes-are-up-here level. She sighed. “Why is it so hard for me to stay mad at you?”

  ***

  Kira knew about one of her past lives. One that Megan didn’t know about. It shouldn’t have been a shock, but it was.

  And not just one past life, but two. First there was the one where Megan got burned at the stake. Kira claimed she didn’t consciously remember that one, but she’d made that sand sculpture. Then there was the one Kira had dreamed about as a teenager. She might insist it was just a dream, but it was obvious from all her pointed questions about soul mates that deep down, she suspected it meant something more.

  Why hadn’t she recognized Kira the first day they met? She’d recognized Amelia, after all. Had she been so busy feeling attracted to Kira—and telling herself not to be—that she failed to notice there was something familiar about her?

  Megan sat on Kira’s bed and leaned back against the headboard while Kira threw on some clothes. This was not the way she had imagined their first night together would go. If only Kira had told her sooner… But, of course, she hadn’t told her. Even though Kira had agreed to protect the ley lines, she still didn’t believe they existed. Why would this be any different? Maybe she wanted to believe in past lives, but she didn’t—not really.

  Once she was dressed, Kira settled between her legs, her back to Megan’s chest. It should have been nice, except they were both completely tense. Wary. It was clear Kira didn’t want to tell her what she knew, not after the way Megan had reacted. If she could get her to stay without having to tell her about her dream, Megan had no doubt she would. She wrapped her arms around Kira’s waist and Kira didn’t resist, but she didn’t relax, either.

  Megan shifted uncomfortably. “Tell me about your dream?”

  “Are you going to run out on me again if I do?”

  “I’ll try not to.” She pressed her lips against the back of Kira’s head and breathed in the faded scent of her shampoo. “I want to understand what we’re up against. I want us to figure this out together.” She slid her hands underneath Kira’s shirt and moved them up the sides of her body, feeling the rise and fall of each rib, skimming close to the sides of her breasts where—hmm, no bra—her skin became even softer and more dangerous.

  “Does this mean you’re not dumping me?” Kira made herself more comfortable, fitting her spine against the curve of Megan’s body.

  Megan tried not to enjoy it too much, but she felt so perfect against her and God, she smelled good. She couldn’t get enough of the way she smelled, of that warm, subtle musk beneath the lingering trace of that morning’s shampoo. She was completely addicted.

  “You can’t dum
p me if you’re going to kiss my hair. Don’t think I can’t tell what’s going on back there.”

  “Let’s not make any decisions right now.”

  “Are you going to leave after I tell you my dream?”

  She pressed her forehead to the back of Kira’s head. “No,” she whispered, surprising herself with her answer. She hoped she wasn’t making a huge mistake.

  “My very first girlfriend laughed at me when I told her. That’s partly why I was in no hurry to tell you about it.”

  “Why did you tell her?” Megan asked, curious. “Was she in it, too?”

  Kira paused for such a long time that Megan started to wonder if there was any way she could take back what she had said. She was usually so good at keeping her mouth shut—at least with her clients. Why couldn’t she take that talent out of her massage room and apply it to situations like this? The problem was she let her guard down around Kira. Put her arms around the waist of an attractive woman without a bra—especially when that woman was carrying tons of karmic baggage—and she lost all her social skills.

  Kira inhaled as if she was about to speak, but didn’t.

  “That’s not the important part,” Megan said. “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “No, I want to.” Kira took another deep breath and blew it out. “We were so young—not that I thought so at the time—but she didn’t believe I’d never gone out with anyone before. She asked me how I knew what to do. In bed.”

  “That was rude.”

  “That was just the way she was—an ‘F’ for effort when it came to tact. She didn’t mean any harm. So I told her I’d been having this dream. This amazingly vivid dream. She thought I was lying to avoid telling her who I’d had sex with.”

  Megan pressed her lips to the back of her neck and ventured a few tiny, reassuring kisses.

  “Why would I lie about that? Why would I make up some story about a stupid dream?”

  It had to be hard for her to trust anyone with her secret again after that first bad experience, and Megan had gone and yelled at her for it. “I didn’t realize—”

  Kira cut her off. “It’s not the same thing. She didn’t believe me. You actually do.”