She didn’t flinch under the onslaught of words. “You know better than that. It’s a limited access program. Whoever sent you thought you were best suited for the job.”
He turned away, not able to take her calm expression. “They were wrong. If I can’t actually make an impact on someone’s life, why am I even doing this?”
She stepped in front of him again, her mouth twisted, gaze raking over him, and something unreadable behind her eyes. Pity, maybe? Irritation? “You make an impact with every job. You know that. You’ve seen the joy people get from being able to talk to someone. From having someone there to remind them they’re not alone.”
He did know it, deep down inside. It was why, once he’d started working, he’d stopped questioning things. But after yesterday…“I don’t even know what I know any more, except that I miss that woman desperately, and that shouldn’t even be possible for her to have left such a massive, aching, gaping hole in my chest.”
She took a step toward him, and then paused with a tiny shake of her head. “Take the day off. Take a week if you need. Deal with this and move on. It’s not who you are, and it’s not how we work.”
Move on? Like it was that simple? “Right, because you’ve turned salvation into a business plan.”
“We help people, and in your state of mind, you can’t even help yourself. Sleep it off. Find me when you’re doing better.”
Sleep it off. The words echoed in his thoughts, tugging at a loose string and mingling with something else. You can’t even help yourself. Her tone bounced around in his head, looking for something to latch onto. The room swam around him, everything moving in and out of focus.
“Devin?” Amanda’s voice was distant.
He rubbed his eyes, but the growing buzzing in his head wouldn’t go away.
“Tyler?”
Was that Amanda? “Kaylee?”
His entire world went black before fading back into focus again.
Kaylee looked at him, unshed moisture shining in her eyes. “I’m sorry. I love you so much, but I can’t. I’m not…I’m not ready for this.”
He looked between her and the ring, sitting in its black box, glaring at him and mocking him. He swallowed and snapped the box shut. The velvet-lined thunk echoed through the apartment louder than a gunshot. “It’s okay. I get it.”
She reached for him, tears spilling down her cheeks, and then dropped her hand. “I still want us, Tyler. I really, really do. I just can’t make that kind of commitment.”
He stumbled to his feet. “I said, I get it.” He stepped away from her, thoughts in a jumble. “I just thought…” He shook his head. “Forget it.”
“Tyler, please.” Her voice was raw against his fraying nerves.
“Please, what?” He couldn’t do this. It would be okay, she hadn’t dumped him. It was just a delay, right? So why had her “no” snatched all reason from him?
“We’ll be okay, right? I mean, I still want you around. I still lov—”
He held up a hand. “Stop. I need some air.”
He stumbled from her apartment, desperately trying to ignore everything around him. The steps rushed up to meet him as he made his way to the ground floor, and he was only vaguely aware of hopping on his bike, rain beating down around him.
He tugged on his helmet and gunned the engine to life. It roared under him as he peeled onto the dark street. The rain bit into his skin like millions of tiny daggers, and he didn’t care. He wove in and out of the slow moving cars, the streetlights glaring back up at him as they reflected off the wet asphalt. Each new glimmer was a taunting reminder of the ring nestled snugly against his leg.
What had he been thinking? He knew how Kaylee felt about marriage. That after a bad experience with her high school sweetheart—a marriage that only lasted six months but left her bankrupt and questioning every bit of her sanity—that she was terrified by that kind of commitment. But they were past that, right? When she’d said she loved him, he saw in her eyes that she meant it as much as he did.
He decelerated for a red light ahead, and then sped up again when it changed to green. The squeal of tires tore through his already jagged thoughts, and something loud, bright, and very heavy slammed into him at full speed.
The lights flickered in and out around him. He was a mess. God, what had happened to his face? Wait? How was he looking at his own face? What was he doing lying on that table? Where were his clothes and why was his skin so pale?
“Tyler.” A voice swam into focus, and a woman appeared between him and his body. She brushed a hand over his good arm. “Tyler, it’s time to wake up.”
Was that Amanda?
“Devin.” Amanda’s sharp voice cut through the haze of the memory. “Devin, wake up.”
Devin’s eyes snapped open, and his studio apartment mingled with the pain of his death. Every emotion and sensation from the memory still sat on and under his skin, along with his entire past, as if the whole thing had been shoved back into his skull all at once. He wrapped his arms around himself. He was cold. And his head hurt so much.
He raised his hand to his skull, relieved and confused when he met solid mass, and his palm didn’t come away covered in blood. Last night when he’d said he would spend eternity looking for a second chance with Kaylee, he hadn’t known where the words had come from. Now he understood completely and painfully. “Kaylee.”
“Tyler?” Amanda knelt in front of him, watching him with concern. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I am—Tyler, I mean—I’m not all right.” How was someone supposed to be all right after reliving their own death? But that still didn’t hurt as bad as Kaylee turning down his proposal. That mingled with what had happened between them the night before. She’d known he was Tyler. It was why she’d stayed. Why she’d given herself to him. And the last thing he’d said to her before she passed out was to remind her she couldn’t have him.
He rubbed his arms again, the cold from the memory replaced with a new kind of chill as his current situation rushed back in to take its place. “I remember.”
Chapter 7
Kaylee felt displaced in her own home. The clock on the microwave told her she’d been up for a couple hours, but she hadn’t managed to do more than shower, grab a cup of coffee, and wander through the house in a heavy daze. She sat at the kitchen table, staring at the wall. She couldn’t shake the memories of the day before.
It had happened. She knew that. Devin’s touch, his kisses, and every intimate caress lingered on her skin. How had she gotten back home? She rubbed her hand across her forehead. Had she been sick? A twenty-four hour fever that trapped her in the most realistic, beautiful, heart-wrenching dream in her existence?
Because there was no way her dead boyfriend had come back into her life for a single day, just to be gone again when she woke up. That didn’t happen. Even if her memories insisted otherwise. There was no way.
Her phone’s ringer jangled through the house, startling her and grating across her senses. She didn’t want to answer. What else was she going to do? Sit around and mourn a screwed up memory all day instead?
She grabbed the cordless right before it switched over to voice mail. “Hello.” Her voice sounded dry and papery.
“Kay?” Her best friend Eden’s cheerful tone echoed in her ear. “You okay?”
Kaylee swallowed to try and get some moisture back in her mouth. She needed juice. She shuffled to the fridge while she talked. “I’m good. Just a little tired. What’s up?”
“Really?” Eden’s disbelief was almost tangible. “What’s up? I stood you up on the biggest, suckiest love-fest day of the year because the building hottie asked me out, and you just casually ask ‘what’s up?’ Okay, I guess I deserve that.”
Kaylee grabbed her phone at the reminder. So the text had been real. That meant she hadn’t imagined the entire day. “I’m sorry. I just…” What was she going to say? “I just hooked up with my dead boyfriend for an incredible day of fun and an intense
night of sex?” Because that didn’t make her sound nuts at all. “You have to tell me all about it, Dee.”
“Hmm. Maybe.” Eden sounded smug. “But you’re going to have to beg if you want explicit, intense details. And tell me what you got up to instead. Otherwise, my secrets are my own.”
Kaylee gave a weak laugh. “I don’t know. Yesterday is kind of a blur. I think I was sick.”
“Aww.” Sympathy leaked into Eden’s tone. “Are you all right? Can I bring you anything?”
A little bit of “what the hell’s going on?” might be nice. “Thanks, but I’m good. We’ll hang later this week instead?”
“Sure. Just make sure you’re not contagious anymore. I don’t want whatever plague made you forget an entire day. Or on second thought, maybe I do.” Eden laughed.
They exchanged a few more jokes and jabs, made plans for lunch later in the week, and hung up.
Kaylee rubbed her face. She needed to get out. Maybe some air would help her clear her head and she could make sense of her jumbled thoughts. Then she could get back to the contract she had due next week. She pulled on some sneakers, tugged her still-wet hair back into a ponytail, and left her apartment behind her.
There was one way to get answers. She pointed her feet toward the part of town they’d been in the day before. The odd diner on the ground floor of the office building. Or was it an apartment? The strange place she’d never noticed before. She’d go back, she’d see it was there, and she’d either talk to Devin or realize she really had let yesterday get to her, and she’d just temporarily misplaced her sanity.
As each block passed, her determination slipped away a little more. What if it wasn’t there? What if it was, but he wasn’t?
She rounded the corner, and ambivalence speared her gut. Her feet froze to the sidewalk, and she was jostled back and forth as people brushed around her, some of them grunting at her to move the hell out of the way.
It wasn’t there. The block was exactly the same as it had always been. A random assortment of old shop fronts and two-and three-story buildings. No glass and concrete high rise racing toward the sky in the center of it all. No diner straight out of a film set.
There was nothing there.
It took all her remaining willpower to drag herself away and head back toward her apartment. She didn’t know what to think or believe anymore.
A tickle of memory taunted her. A snippet of the things Devin had said yesterday. That she wouldn’t be able to find the place without a cupid—without him—by her side. And that brought another jab with it. His question right before she’d drifted off to sleep against her will. Asking if she’d really loved Tyler, or just felt guilty and lonely with him gone.
The reminder tore her insides to ribbons, and she stumbled at the invisible pain. She leaned against a nearby building, her breathing jagged as she struggled to keep from collapsing in a pile of tears in the middle of the sidewalk. Was he right? Did she only want Tyler back because she felt guilty over turning him down?
No. She grabbed the single word as it gleamed bright in her thoughts above all others. It had never been a question of loving him; she’d loved him so much it terrified her. She hadn’t been ready for marriage at the time. As much as it hurt to remember the consequences, if she had to do it again, she still would have turned him down.
Though, she would have done everything in her power to stop him from walking out the door after. But that didn’t mean she loved him any less. Then or now.
She forced herself to stand up straight and put one foot in front of the other until she was walking a mostly even path back to her apartment. Not that it mattered. He was gone. Devin was gone. Even if he and Tyler were the same person—by some cruel twist of fate—she obviously wasn’t his second chance. She’d already thrown that away. A bitter laugh slipped past her lips. Apparently whoever they were, their belief in second chances didn’t extend to what she’d done.
Chapter 8
Tyler gripped his temples, trying to keep the memories and phantom pains from overwhelming him. In the background, he was vaguely aware of a chime, like a cell phone ringing. It wasn’t his, but it stopped Amanda from hovering over him, so he was fine with that.
On top of reliving the accident, the pain from Kaylee turning down his proposal echoed in his chest. He expected the wound to feel fresh and raw. He grasped it, looking for the overwhelming hurt he’d felt two years ago, but it was smothered with something else. Almost like understanding. He reached for both, the pain and the forgiveness, but Amanda’s voice yanked him back to the present.
“No…I understand, but he can’t, not right now…S-O-P…let her walk away…”
Tyler shook the memories aside and focused on Amanda. Something about the conversation was important. “What was that about?”
She shook her head. “It’s more important we focus on you. Do you remember everything, or just snatches?”
His eyes narrowed at the condescension-disguised-as-soothing in her voice. “All of it. What was that about?”
She rubbed a thumb over his forehead. “You need to lie down and take some time to process. I’ve seen this with head-trauma cupids before. You need to work through having your life and death jammed back into your skull.”
He needed to get to Kaylee. “Who was on the phone?” He emphasized every word.
She sighed and rolled her eyes, but she also took a step back. “Reception. Your assignment from yesterday was wandering the street outside the building. Obviously she couldn’t find the place, but they were a little concerned that she’d come looking for it.”
Kaylee was there? He had to get to her. He brushed past Amanda, growling when she grabbed his upper arm. Her grip was tighter than he’d expected. “You can’t leave yet. You’re still recovering, and you don’t know that she’s your second chance.”
He whirled to face her, not able to keep the anger from his expression. “Since when do you get to pick and choose what I want from my future?”
Her brows rose. “I’m not making decisions for you, I’m warning you. Before you go chasing after her, keep in mind she’s the reason you needed a second chance to begin with.”
“Excuse me?” His anger flared white-hot, and his hands clenched so tight it made his knuckles ache. No one could talk about Kaylee that way.
Amanda crossed her arms, expression stern. “She’s the one who severed the threads of your fate when she turned down your marriage proposal. I told you two years ago that you died before your time. I don’t know why they decided to send her back to you before you remembered your past and dealt with it, but it’s not a decision I agree with.”
He needed to calm down, and go after Kaylee. But Amanda’s words tore through him, trying to dredge up doubt and pain from his old life. It made him furious that she would say things like that, but even more of the rage tearing through his soul was directed inward, at the bits of him that wanted to agree. She didn’t need to know that, though, because she and those buried parts of him were wrong. “You’re serious. You’re going to stand there and tell me that with a fucking straight face? After everything you’ve taught me over the past two years? What happened to people deserving a second chance? To giving people the opportunity to make their own decisions?”
She put more distance between them, something flickering in her eyes. Defiance? Hope? “She made her decision. She told you no.”
It was true, she had. And he’d stormed out. But she’d also tried to stop him from leaving. Tried to explain. The conflicting thoughts and emotions swirled through him, making his skull ache. He’d wanted to blame her then, and he still felt it now. “She didn’t mean it.”
Amanda reached for him but didn’t move closer. She dropped her arm to her side, shoulders sagging when she sighed. “You can’t change what was. She did mean it. Even if it’s not all she meant, it can’t be taken back. If you go back to her now, and either of you still have doubts, you’re walking back into misery. That’s not much of a second chance.
”
A bitter laugh tore from his chest. Why does she have to make sense? “I need to think.”
Her jaw clenched, gaze sweeping over him. “Don’t make the same mistakes you did last time.”
He spun before she finished talking, and her words landed against his back. He was out the door, feet carrying him toward the elevator before she could add any more confusion to his already drowning thoughts. Of course he wouldn’t make the same mistake. Mostly because he didn’t have a motorcycle and it wasn’t raining.
He turned toward the atrium, but his feet froze to the floor. The night before was as fresh in his thoughts as his new memories, and the two intertwined in a painful twist of vines and thorns. The ache he’d felt in his chest the night before when he’d known Kaylee was still caught in the past of a dead lover—the pain and agony of her turning down his marriage proposal two years ago.
Maybe Amanda had a point. If he went back, how many times would she break his heart? He couldn’t subject himself to that. He loved her so much it burned through every inch of his veins, but he also hadn’t had two years to get over her. Not the way she had with him.
He couldn’t do that. He wouldn’t subject himself to someone else’s whims. He slid through the side door in the diner, relieved to see Josh working the kitchen. Josh looked up, familiar teasing smirk dancing on his face. “What’s up? You look like hell.”
Tyler—it felt odd thinking of himself as anything other than Devin, but it also felt right—rolled his eyes. For the first time since he could remember, he wasn’t in the mood for Josh’s sense of humor. “Let me borrow your car.”
Josh’s eyebrows rose. “Maryanne?”
Tyler let out a long sigh. “Yes, the Impala. I’ll bring it back later.”
Operation Cupid Page 4