Rebirth (Cross Book 1)

by Hildred Billings

  ***

  Devon arrived home after four, awaiting Alicia’s arsenal of accusing words that were sure to smack him in the face the moment he entered their apartment.

  In the five minutes it took him to get from the parking lot to his place, every possible scenario had already played out. Where were his belongings thrown into the hallway before he had the chance to defend himself?

  Yet the space before his door was clear.

  Perhaps nobody was there, and Alicia, in a fit of rage, had forgotten to lock the door. When she was home, the news dominated the television, but that evening the living room was eerily quiet.

  The back bedroom door was also ajar, light streaming through to the short hallway. Great. Maybe Alicia was home and packing up her own things instead of throwing Devon out. Not that such a thing made sense. She could make the case for keeping the apartment through the school if she was the only one left.

  She sat on the edge of their bed, her back toward the wall and legs drawn up against her chest. In her lap she held a journal-sized book with thick sheets that snapped every time she turned a single page. She didn’t notice her boyfriend until he pushed the door open.

  Alicia didn’t react in the way Devon anticipated. Instead, she gazed upon him with hollow eyes, a side effect of not leaving the dark hovel of a bedroom the whole afternoon.

  Devon was hesitant to address her. “I can explain about earlier…”

  She trembled. Never, during their relationship, had Alicia trembled before her boyfriend. Not even when she was passing-out drunk at that frat party where they first met.

  “The… about the phone.”

  “Oh.” Alicia’s fair face grew paler. She opened her mouth only to discover that it was too dry to speak. “Don’t worry about it. I know it was probably someone else answering for you.”

  Speechless, Devon struggled to respond. “Really? I mean, thank God. I knew you would assume the worst.”

  Alicia remained transfixed on the journal in her lap. Devon approached her with the gravity of a doctor going to a dying patient.

  “What’s that?”

  “This?” She held the journal up high enough for him to see it better, but would not let him see the My Sweetest Memories title hiding beneath her hand. “It’s from a long time ago. Sort of another life.” She closed the journal and turned it upside down in her lap. Even she didn’t want to see the irony of those words on the cover.

  Devon reached the edge of the bed and sat next to her, heart heavier with each passing second of secrecy. Danielle’s suggestion that he tell her about Marlow, Relics, and everything in between (maybe including that reincarnation thing) hung in the air. She had a right to know, yes? Except he loved her, and his love dictated that she would be better off not knowing, not worrying, not trying to understand what he was saying. Instead, he placed his hand upon her smooth face, black hair falling across his fingers the more he touched her.

  In lieu of a moment of sweet sentimentality, Alicia broke down into a weeping, wailing mess.

  Tears streamed down her face, dampening her hair and Devon’s fingers as he stared at her in disbelief. Alicia cast aside her journal and thrust her head into her boyfriend’s chest. The last time he saw Alicia cry was when they first met, her body curled up in the corner of a fraternity as she drank and sobbed away her last heartbreaking relationship.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t…” She withdrew from his embrace. “I can’t say. I don’t really want to talk about it.” Her lips quivered with each passing word.

  “Tell me.”

  She no longer touched him. “Do you remember when we first met?”

  “Of course.”

  “I was drunk. I was crying. I was stuck in a bathroom and my friend had to stop you, some stupid, innocent underclassman to help carry my sobbing ass downstairs so she could take me home. But you offered, you know. I may have been totally out of it, but I remember being amazed that some total stranger was willing to get me a ride home so my friend could coddle me and keep me from being totally sick from how much I drank.” Only shadows managed to leave their mark upon Alicia’s visage. “I remember thinking that I wish I could have been with a guy like you, somebody so patient and so…” She choked back another sob, unable to continue.

  “Alicia.” Devon laid a gentle hand on her back. “What happened in your last relationship?”

  She stopped moving for a moment; her salty lips shook with words. “It was an ugly end to an otherwise nice romance.”

  “Why are you so sad now?”

  “I was an idiot. Do you ever wish you could be with somebody? I know this sounds so horrible, but even though we’ve been together for so long and there would be absolutely no reconstructing my last relationship, I sometimes still wish that I could go back and relive those happier moments. I know this must make me sound so horrible and selfish, but it’s the truth. I’m still in love with somebody else. I always have been.”

  Devon refrained from touching her again. “I know. I’m the rebound. You feel too sorry for me to break up with me.”

  “No, it’s not that.” The anxiety in her voice almost crippled the conversation. “I do care for you. But… I feel like I am only fooling myself. I am trying to be something that I am not.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I wish I could tell you.” Each gasping breath was like a punch to Devon’s gut. “I wish I could tell you everything, share every detail of my life, but I have been holding it in for so long that I couldn’t do it any longer. Please forgive me, but I can’t tell you everything right now.”

  “It’s okay.” He embraced her again, her lithe body fragile in his arms. The last time he held her like this was the night they first met, his arms wrapping around and supporting her as he helped her friend guide her drunk body down a flight of stairs.

  “I know that if I ever do tell you it will sound so petty, but until then, thank you for understanding my need to keep some things private.” She glanced at the journal. “Please promise me you will never go looking for that.”

  “You should burn it.”

  “I can’t do that yet. There is still too much in my heart holding on to those memories.”

  Devon pried his eyes off the journal and back onto his girlfriend’s breaking face. “What about our memories? Will the memories you have of being with me make you happy?”

  Alicia wiped away the remaining tears and took in a deep breath, one that racked her rib cage and shook the dark green blouse she wore. “This hasn’t been a terrible time together. I’m confident that if we should break up, it will not be as torturous as my last one.”

  “That’s good, I guess.”

  “Thank you.” Alicia kissed him on the cheek, a move more platonic than anything else. Devon clutched her and kissed her harder, his desire to make her happy flowing through his actions. He waited for her to resist him – she hugged him back and threw herself into a short-lived kiss.

  Perhaps they both wanted to continue, but between Devon’s uncertainty over the past few days and Alicia’s emotional distress, they pulled away from one another and stared at the floor beneath their feet. Alicia wiped the last of her tears away. Devon cleared his throat.

  “I’m gonna go scrounge something up to make dinner. If you need me, I’m only a shout away.” Devon squeezed her hand before leaving the bedroom. He knew her well enough by now to give her space even when she didn’t ask for it.

  Alicia waited for him to leave before stashing her journal in the bottom of her nightstand. After tucking her hair behind her ears and tightening the sash around her sweater, she went to her small vanity and opened an ebony jewelry box containing her most precious jewelry.

  Including a small butterfly-shaped locket.

  One day she would be able to burn the journal. She would never be able to let go of this small keepsake from another life.

  Out in the kitchen, Devon grumbled that his wrist hurt. Again. Like it had earlier when he was
reading that free paper from his school. So happened that was the same time Alicia first glanced at her jewelry box in a long time. And when she heard Danielle’s voice on her boyfriend’s phone a few hours ago?

  A power surge almost wiped out the electrical circuits in the building. Because when such spiritual forces were awakened, nobody could break the chains linking five unfortunate souls together.

  SEVEN

  “You’re here early.”

  Danielle shoved the coffee pot into its stand. She rubbed her bloodshot eyes and glanced at Troy as he entered the break room, grabbed his mug off the staff rack and waited in line for the next batch of coffee.

  “Decided to get a jump on the week.”

  “You also sound like shit. Didn’t you get any sleep last night?”

  Danielle inhaled her coffee. With a whole three hours of sleep under her belt, she was liable to collapse from exhaustion at any moment.

  Troy gently shoved her out of his way to get to the coffee pot. She sat at the break table until she was due at her desk in ten minutes.

  “What’s wrong, sweetheart? Get in a fight with loverboy?”

  Danielle didn’t have the strength to growl at him. The thought of blurting out her predicament amused her, but the clicking of heels made Danielle gag down the last of her coffee and Troy turn his head over his shoulder. Before either of them had the time to collect their early morning thoughts, Miranda entered, her shoes louder than a rolling luggage bag traveling on the tarmac. “Cromwell,” she began, with barely a look in Danielle’s direction, “I need you in my office at nine sharp.” She grabbed a cup of coffee and left as quickly as she entered.

  “Great.” Danielle took her empty mug to the sink. “Do tell me that I was on time today.”

  “A whole ten minutes early. Unprecedented.”

  “Then what the hell is this about?”

  “The sexual tension between you two?”

  “Besides that, asshole.”

  “How would I know?”

  Danielle shook out her mug and hung it up on its rack. “Might as well get this over with.”

  “Have fun. Call for help if you two get hormonal over each other.”

  “You’d come running with the camera, right?”

  “It’d be the talk of this year’s Christmas party, hon!”

  Danielle left the break room, feet carrying her past the rows of cubicles and the other personnel arriving and filling their chairs with tired, aching bodies that chatted with neighbors about what they did that weekend. Danielle couldn’t imagine being asked that question now – how would she ever explain Friday night, let alone the entire weekend?

  The secretary was busy setting her things down, her short khaki skirt rising as she bent to pull out notebooks and writing utensils from her bag. Danielle cleared her throat.

  “Huh? Oh! Lieutenant!” Shelley the secretary stood and tugged at her skirt until it met her knees. “Did the captain tell you to come by? She walked out of her office a couple of minutes ago mumbling about trying to find you.”

  “Yeah, she found me. She told me to stop by. Is it okay to go in?”

  Shelley glanced at the tinted windows lining the captain’s office. “Should be all right.” She straightened out the notebooks into separate piles and pushed the clear button numerous times on the phone.

  “Thanks.” Danielle approached the office door. Once she heard a disgruntled voice, she admitted herself with the hopes that this would not be another embarrassing meeting. “You wanted to see me, Captain?”

  Miranda opened and closed doors on the file cabinets behind her desk. She turned around, arms laden with manila folders packed to capacity. “Have a seat. We need to discuss something.”

  The bland sincerity in Miranda’s voice almost worried Danielle. She was so used to a flirtatious nature that a cold, distant captain made her wonder what she had done to suddenly fall out of favor. “What is it?” Danielle sat in one of the chairs.

  A few seconds later, Miranda joined her with a single folder, the name “CROMWELL, DANIELLE S.” plastered across the top. Danielle didn’t like where this was going.

  “I’ve noticed that you put in for this Tuesday afternoon off a while ago. Mind telling me what’s going on?”

  “I have an appointment at the clinic. It’s the only time I can get in for my checkup.”

  Although it was no secret that she had a breast cancer scare several months ago, she still did not want to talk about it with anyone else. Bad enough the scare came after Ally dumped her. Bad enough she spent weeks in and out of clinics getting second opinions and fighting with military insurance about what would be covered. Just because her last two scans came back clear didn’t mean it didn’t keep her up at night. Danielle also didn’t need well-meaning individuals prying into her health status. That included her boss, one of the only other people besides Danielle’s close friends and family to know about the scare.

  Miranda put the personnel folder down. “I’m worried about you. The precautionary treatments weren’t easy on you, yet you didn’t take much time off. I don’t want anybody in my department collapsing because they were too stubborn to stay home for a little while.”

  Shoulders tightened at those rigid words. “My doctors said that it was okay to do a desk job, even if it turned out I had to get radiation treatments.” She didn’t, but that didn’t mean the stress hadn’t wiped her out. “I feel fine. I look like shit today because I got three hours of sleep last night.” She sucked up her pride. “My apologies, Captain. It won’t happen again.”

  “Let’s look at your file.”

  “What about my file?” Danielle cleared her throat. “Ma’am.”

  Miranda revealed a paper with charts and a large pair of photos, one of Danielle in her usual khaki uniform and the other in her formal dress.

  “When you joined the department a couple of years ago, your file was stamped with ‘Unfit For Combat’ due to your eyesight. These past few weeks you have come up for review again. Aren’t you lucky that we forced you to get a physical to have your eyes tested again?”

  “I’m still as blind as ever.”

  “But not dead.”

  “No, not yet.” Danielle didn’t want to think about it. She knew that the military was a possible death trap when she signed up at the tender age of twenty, but not even her retired grandmother could have foreseen something like 9/11 and the Iraq War happening when it did. Now, almost ten years since she was first shipped off to Basic Training, Danielle couldn’t say she had ever been deployed. On one hand, it made wearing her uniform feel more like a costume than a representation of the United States military. On the other, she would forever be grateful that she didn’t have to see that side of the job. Danielle at twenty-nine had a lot more perspective than Danielle at nineteen, who struggled with her college classes, her sexuality, and her place in the world. The fact that her grandmother probably helped her stay out of overseas trouble was another factor.

  “Your report came back the same as always.”

  “So I’m not being deployed?”

  “Not as far as I can tell. You’ll be here serving your country via a computer screen for the foreseeable future.”

  “I still don’t understand what you’re getting at, ma’am.”

  Miranda’s finger ran beneath lines in the most recent report. “I’ve been going through your file. Customary for everyone who comes up for review, I assure you.” She didn’t give Danielle the chance to reply. “I noticed something odd about your mental history.” Did she notice Danielle flinch in her chair, though? “Says here that you saw a child psychologist between the ages of six and fourteen. Something about possible…”

  “Lots of kids go through that sort of stuff,” Danielle interrupted. Miranda sat back, too shocked that Danielle had interrupted her to give her a proper reprimanding. “My mother died when I was five and I went to live with my grandmother right afterward. She took me to a therapist to help me deal with the loss and getting u
sed to a new life. It wasn’t a big deal. Nothing to do with my mental health now.”

  “I see.” Miranda flipped the folder closed. “You know, Danielle,” whenever she used first names like that, it was supposed to make people feel comfortable… so why did Danielle shudder? “My own superiors often ask me for my opinions on what should be done for and to those beneath my command. So, if there’s something you want me to keep in mind the next time they come to me during one of your reviews, please let me know. Off the record, of course.”

  Off the record? While Captain Hotchner was good for it, Danielle was right to assume this would be a personal favor. No way did she keep track of off the record requests from thirty personnel under her command. But this was Miranda. From the first day Danielle walked into this department, she was under the constant watch of her commander, a brash, dominant woman who screamed of the lady-loving persuasion even before half the department confirmed it. Once it was apparent that Captain Hotchner was more than attracted to the young Lieutenant Cromwell – and the feeling was unfortunately mutual – Danielle spent most of her time at work fantasizing about dating her commander. A laughable thought, since it was impractical and immoral.

  So she was at yet another strange crossroad. It was odd that Miranda was so willing to overlook a discrepancy in Danielle’s past that could very well be used to convince the higher-ups not to put her in the field, but at the same time it would be a quick, easy reprieve from the monotony she endured – and the woman she was attracted to but could never date.

  “Obviously I am not mentally fit for the field either, Captain,” Danielle began.

  Under her reddish bangs, Miranda’s brows turned a darker shade of brown. “You don’t want to go to Iraq anyway. It’s dusty and it’s… Lieutenant, is that a tattoo on your wrist?”

  Danielle’s eyes widened as she looked down at the black butterfly tattoo on the underside of her wrist. “Er, yes, about that…”

  “You know that violates the visibility line, right? No tattoos on your wrists. Please tell me that it’s temporary and that you can wash it off.”