by Jewel E. Ann
I hug her.
She would have kissed me back had I let myself kiss her, not because she doesn’t love Griffin. Because … we’re testing time. Waiting for the right moment—the right life.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
I hug her tighter. The curtain went down on Nate and Daisy. I mourned the end. Yet, here I am getting an encore. It won’t last. Nothing lasts. But I’m not going to blink. I’m not going to breathe. With every ounce of strength I have inside of me, I’m going to stop time and live in this moment forever.
“Oh … sorry.” Dennis gives us an awkward smile as he opens the door. No throat clearing. No death glares.
Swayze steps back.
“It’s emotional being in her room,” I say as an excuse for what he just saw. “Dennis, this is Swayze.”
“Hi.” She smiles, cheeks apple red with embarrassment. A good blush always looked good on Daisy too.
“Nice to meet you.” Dennis shakes her hand and gives me his attention. “I don’t think Claudia is going to let Morgan go home with you.”
I chuckle. “I’m glad we were able to stop by today.”
We follow him downstairs.
“I’m keeping her.” Claudia hugs Morgan to her, kissing her chubby cheeks.
Dennis shakes his head. “Clearly you know who to call if you need a babysitter.”
“Yes.” Claudia perks up. “Call me absolutely anytime you need someone to watch her.”
“Thanks.” I take Morgan and fasten her into the infant carrier.
“Did being in her room make you feel closer to her?”
I look up, giving Swayze a quick glance.
Her lips curl together.
“Yes. I felt really close to her.”
“It’s hard to believe it’s been so long. I had all these things I wanted to say to her. All this advice I wanted to share with her. You’ll understand as your little girl gets older. There’s just never enough time.”
I stand, zipping my jacket. “No. There’s not.”
Claudia rests her hand on my cheek, canting her head to the side. “Don’t give up on love, Nate. Okay?”
I nod. “I’ve got more love than one man deserves right here.” I glance down at Morgan. It will be hard, maybe even impossible, to love like she means after losing Daisy and Jenna.
“It was very nice to meet you, Swayze.”
She smiles at Claudia and Dennis. “Can I ask what you say to her … when you’re upstairs talking to her? I lost my father. I’m just curious since it seems to help you.”
Dennis gives his wife a gentle smile as he grabs her hand.
She draws in a slow breath. “Well, it’s been a bit of everything. A few months after she died, I decided to just pick up from where she would have been at the time. We discussed school, driving, boys, college.” She laughs. “I think I even discussed birth control with her. And Nate …”
Claudia’s focus shifts to me for a few seconds. “I told her all about you. How much you grieved her death. I told her about you not going to prom or homecoming dances and that I knew it was because you couldn’t go with her.”
Fuck. This kind of hurts. I didn’t go. I didn’t live in many ways for years … until I met Jenna.
“I told her you decided to go to college instead of playing hockey. I had to break the news to her of your engagement.” She winks. “She was jealous, but she understood.”
Swayze laughs. I meet her gaze and smile.
“And more than anything, I’ve given her advice on navigating this world, in case she gets a second chance. Crazy right?”
“A second chance?” Swayze squints.
“Swayze, can you please grab the diaper bag?” I lift the carrier.
“What do you mean a—”
“Swayze, the diaper bag. We really should get going.”
Claudia flicks her wrist. “I’m just being silly. I know there’s probably no such thing as reincarnation, but it’s comforting to think that her soul moved on. Our little girl had a beautiful soul.”
“Funny you mention that—”
“Swayze!”
Everyone snaps their attention to me.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to raise my voice. I just remembered I have a podcast to record tonight and I’m suddenly feeling anxious that I’m not going to get it done if I don’t get Morgan home and put her to bed soon.”
“Of course.” Claudia walks us to the door. “I can’t thank you enough for bringing her by. I’m a little embarrassed we didn’t make the first effort months ago.”
“Nice to see you, Nate. And good to meet you, Swayze.”
“Thanks, Dennis. It was nice to see you again too.”
“Yes, tha—”
“Have a nice evening.” I shove Swayze out the door in front of me.
“What is your deal?” She swerves to stay on the sidewalk as I nudge her forward with the infant carrier.
“I had one request—don’t be creepy.”
“I wasn’t being creepy. Dude! She brought it up like she’s open to the idea. What if she knew?”
“Shh!” I jerk my head toward her door. “Get in.” I latch the infant carrier and hop into the driver’s seat before Swayze decides to run back inside yelling, “It’s me! Your baby girl.”
“If I’m creepy, then you, Professor, are a paranoid whack job. And oh my god … good job waiting this long to mention you named your daughter Morgan. Whack. Job.” She folds her arms over her chest and snaps her head into a resolute nod.
“Swayze, you can’t play dead daughter reunion when you have nothing to offer them but visions. You can’t love them like Daisy loved them. You have a new life, a new family. It’s not okay to drop the I’m-Daisy-reincarnated bomb on them and then skip off like you didn’t just blow their minds.”
“I have a little more grace and tact than that, but thanks for the vote of confidence.”
As we turn onto the main road a few minutes later, I shoot her a sidelong glance. “Okay. What were you going to say to them?”
Her eye twitches, jaw clenched.
“I was protecting them, not dismissing you.”
She whips her head toward me. “You were totally dismissing me like a child. I know when I’m being reprimanded publicly. My parents used to do it when I’d get fed up with them treating me like a child.”
I snicker. “So if they said something about you acting like a child, your answer was to act out even more like a child?”
Her nose wrinkles as she speaks with a mocking voice. “Swayze, do you need to go potty? Swayze, did you wash your hands with soap? Swayze, let me help you tie your shoe better. Swayze, you’re scratching your head a lot, let me check you for lice.”
“And did you have lice?”
“That’s not the point. I’m just tired of people telling me what to do or what to think. That’s why I want to do the hypnosis. I want my feelings and opinions about that life to be my own.”
I scratch my head. “We’ve hugged a lot lately. That’s all it takes for those pesky little parasites to jump onto someone else. Have you always been such a hugger?”
“Oh my gosh! Would you please focus? I didn’t have lice.” She looks out her window and mutters, “That often.”
“Eww …”
Swayze blows a stray hair away from her face. “Shut up. There were like ten identical red hats in the lost and found at school. I just picked the wrong one.” On a sigh, she angles her body toward me. “But seriously, do you know how it could change their lives if they knew that Daisy did get a second chance?”
“Again, you’re not listening to me. You have nothing emotionally to offer them. If you have some miraculous recovery of your emotions through hypnosis, and you have this dire need to run home to Claudia and Dennis Gallagher, then you have my blessing.”
“Well, Dad. Good to know I have your blessing.”
I remind myself that she’s twenty-two, been scrutinized her whole life, and she’s living with memories from a past
life. She deserves a pass for the snarky, childish attitude.
“I’m sorry.” She exhales pure frustration. “I’m having identity issues. Morality issues. Commitment issues. Life issues.”
We pull in the driveway. “My head has been all over the place since we met. And I’m certain what I’ve felt is a tiny fraction of what you’re dealing with. So no apologies. Okay?”
“Thank you for taking me to see them.” She rests her hand on mine over the gearshift.
The warmth of her touch gives me something I’ve missed for so many months. I savor it, feeling it bone-deep. “You’re welcome.”
She opens the door and climbs out.
“Swayze?”
“Yeah?”
I want to deserve her. I lost her once. My wife died. Fate is this beautiful, shiny, tempting excuse to bend my own morality to fit what I want, even when she’s not mine. “Don’t lose yourself in search of her.”
“In search of Daisy?”
I nod.
Biting her lips together, a deep line forms along her brow. “What if I need to find her?”
“What if you don’t?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“There’s my favorite grocery store guy.”
Griffin glances over his shoulder, working on some metal part at his workbench. His eyes make their usual inspection.
“Still like what you see?” I grin.
“Always.” He turns back to the part in his hands, inspecting it closely.
Say it. Please.
“How was your day, Swayz?”
Yes!
“I over sugared my coffee this morning. Left me a little shaky by lunch. Morgan’s crawling a bit. In another week, I think she’ll be everywhere.”
“A fun age.”
“Yes.” I turn over my bucket and take a seat. This is nice. We’re talking about my job like a job, not like Griffin’s competition. I don’t sense any agitation in his voice. Maybe I can navigate this just fine after all.
“I have three really good job options away from here,” he says.
“Wait. What?”
Griffin turns, wiping his hands on a rag. “I talked to Jett about it the other day. He gave me three options, any one of them would be mine if I wanted it. We can see which location would be the better option for you finding a job. I talked to my parents about it too. They agree it’s best.”
“B—” My lungs burn, begging for a breath as my heart crumbles, bearing down on my stomach. “Best for who?”
“Us.”
I shake my head. “What are you talking about? Why are you doing this?”
“I love you.”
Adrenaline dumps into my legs, shooting me off the bucket. “This isn’t love!”
“I want you safe.”
“You want me away from Nate.”
Griffin nods, eerily calm like he’s holding a royal flush.
“Nate’s not a danger to me. You can’t take me away from them. You can’t ask me to leave my mom. You can’t ask me to leave Dr. Albright just when we’re getting ready to have this breakthrough.”
“I love you. I want to spend my life with you. Protecting you is my number one priority.”
I start to respond, but the words vanish, leaving me choking on a breath of nothingness. It feels like my world is crashing down around me while Griffin shows no signs of stress, anger, or regret.
“Protect me from who? Nate?”
“Yourself.”
I fight back the tears that sting my eyes. “This isn’t love. This is your jealousy. This is you not trusting me. You not believing me. You think hauling me off to some place far from here is going to make the memories I have disappear. But they’re not going anywhere, and unless I find a way to bring them to life, I’ll never be able to let them go.”
“We’ll leave after the holidays, whether you find a job or not.” He turns his back to me.
“Is this an ultimatum?”
“It’s an intervention.”
I cough sarcastically. “An intervention? I think that requires more than one person.”
He shrugs. “Fine. I’ll call my parents and your mom.”
“My mom? Really? Because the last time I talked with her, she was on my side.”
“Swayz, we’re all on your side.”
As he turns, leaning against the workbench with his hands on the edge, I bat away the tears that sneak their way out.
“Forcing me to do something I don’t want to do is not being on my side. I am not a child. I am so sick and tired of everyone thinking they know what’s best for me.” The lump in my throat swells, making my words break apart. “I was Morgan Daisy Gallagher whether you choose to accept it or not.”
Griffin rubs his hand over his head. “Swayz, I believe you. I accept it.”
“Then why?”
“Because I don’t want to risk someone fucking with your brain on the slim chance that you might remember something that will make a difference in the fate of Doug Mann. I don’t want to risk watching you lose your mind to some awful death. And …” His Adam’s apple bobs as his forehead wrinkles.
I hug myself as if I can physically hold everything together. “Finish it. You’ve come this far. Just … finish.”
“I don’t want you feeling things toward him. I’m begging you to leave all the emotions buried in the fucking ground with her body.”
My jaw slides side to side. “And you’ve shared all of this—Daisy, Nate, the reincarnation—with your family?”
“Yes.”
I grunt, shaking my head. “And they believe it?”
“They don’t know what to believe. But given the fact that you have a psychiatrist who believes you, it’s hard to make a case for anything else. However, they agree that leaving Madison—leaving Wisconsin—is the only way we stand a chance.”
“Oh my god …” I run my hands through my hair, nudging the edge of hysteria and delirium. “It is an ultimatum. I agree to go and we stand a chance. But what if I refuse to go?” I hold my hands out to my sides, palms up. “Then what?”
For the first time tonight, I sense genuine pain coming from Griffin. “Swayze …”
Great. I’m Swayze now. This isn’t happening. Someone please wake me the fuck up from this nightmare.
“I’m leaving no matter what.”
Pressing my mouth into a firm line, I nod slowly, focusing on the floor between us. “So this isn’t really about what’s best for me. You just want to move.”
“Jesus …” He sighs, finally showing an edge of agitation, pacing several steps in each direction, head bowed, hands shoved into the back pockets of his jeans. “It’s all about you! Don’t you get that?”
“Then why would you still move if I say no?”
He stops in front of me, grabbing my face with a firm grip. “Because I’m not going to watch you self-destruct. I’m not going to watch you fall in love with another man. I’m not going to watch you be a mom to a child that’s not mine. You want the perfect proposal and the perfect wedding. But I just want you. Since the day we met, it’s been that simple for me. And I’ll take you with the souls of a million lives woven into yours. I’ll listen when you need me to listen, I’ll protect you when you’re scared, I’ll be whatever or whomever you need me to be … but I won’t be him.”
“I don’t want him,” I whisper.
“No?” He cocks his head to the side.
“No.”
“Then move with me.”
“Please don’t ask me to do that.”
“Ask you to do what? Marry me? Have a family with me? Move away with me?” His words gain a sharper edge as his hold on my face tightens. “Be faithful to me?”
I swallow around the jagged boulder in my throat. Griffin’s nostrils flare as he lets go of me with one hand and reaches around to his back pocket.
“Carry a picture of me in your pocket?” He holds up the photo of Nate.
I don’t have to ask where he got it. I’m wearing leggings today.
Griffin does our laundry, and I just got sloppy and forgot the photo was in the pocket of the jeans I left on the floor of our closet.
How could I be so careless to leave it there? How could I be so stupid to have it in the first place?
He wads up the photo and releases it to the ground while his other hand palms the back of my neck, pressing our foreheads together.
“Swayz …” My name bleeds from his chest as heavy breaths fall between us.
I blink and the dam releases all the heartache that I can no longer ignore.
He draws in a shaky breath. “You’re. Breaking. My. Fucking. Heart.”
I try to speak, but painful sobs smother my words.
His lips press to my cheek. Even now, when he has every right to be angry, all I feel is his love—his pain. I’ve hurt my grocery store guy. And I don’t know how to make it right.
“If you don’t walk away from this…” he ghosts his mouth over my face, erasing my tears with his lips “…I won’t be able to hold on.”
My fingers curl into his shirt.
Don’t let go.
“Griff …” I bury my face into his chest. “I love you.”
His hands fall limp to his sides, leaving a chilling ghost of his touch along my face. After I make a wrinkled wet mess of his shirt, he takes a step back, tearing us apart.
No… I’m the one who’s tearing us apart because I’m so messed up in the head. It’s a morbid thought, but at this moment I wonder if a brain tumor would be less painful for both of us.
“I know you love me.” Griffin saying that to me, while his gaze remains affixed to the photo of Nate on the ground, is a self-inflicted dagger to my heart.
This is so much worse than Apple sitting on my bucket. This is Griffin taking a trip to California with her. No … this is worse. There’s no way a night locked in our bedroom, under the sheets, will fix this.
When his red-rimmed eyes find me again, I don’t look away no matter how much it hurts. And dear God does the anguish and disappointment ever hurt. So I confess, hoping there’s something to “the truth will set you free.” I don’t think it will, but Griffin deserves honesty from me.
“This other life wants to consume me, and I don’t know if I can stop it. I want to let it go, but it’s stronger than any drug. It’s bigger than me. It’s larger than life. So I can fight it for the rest of my life, or I can submit to it.”