“Scout’s honor.” Cole held up a scout sign.
I shoved him playfully. “You were never a scout.”
“You don’t know that. I’ve been a lot of things, and I was good at what everything I tried.” His smile widened even more, but the look of love there outplayed any innuendo. Determination filled his eyes. “Except keeping you safe. This time, I’m going to master that.”
Once in the kitchen, Cole and I made our rounds looking under all the covers and lids of the desserts that Maria, the assistant cook, had prepared for the coming Thanksgiving event.
One pie looked so good that I almost stole it and the whipped cream and scampered off to my room. As soon as the thought formed in my head, I tensed.
Cole grinned mischievously but sighed. For the first time in a long while, he didn’t take the opportunity to offer to bring the whipped cream personally to my room.
“What? Hey, you thought it. Not me.” He ran his finger along the side of a chocolate cake at the end of the long line of desserts, where no one would suspect a taste-tester had been. He grinned and licked his finger.
There were no sidelong glances or little comments about whether I might want a lick.
“You think I’m an animal, don’t you?” He gave me a wounded glare. “I think I’ve done well not to respond to all your little fantasies. I’ve got this. Are you sure it isn’t you with the most problems?”
“You’re not being too good. If you touch that cake again, I’ll take that pretty little finger and chop it right off.” Gertie made us jump. She had sneaked in the service door.
Cole nodded and saluted with chocolate icing still on his finger. “Yes, ma’am.”
I giggled.
Cole was fun when he was being silly. It was great to have him back.
This was unbelievably easier than I ever imagined or prepared myself for on the ride home.
At the dinner table, everyone chatted, laughed, and finally began the ritual we’d carried out since I was a small girl.
Each person told what they were thankful for. When Cole’s turn came, he looked to his mother. “Witches, spells, and all the things I used to find fault with when it came to your ways of doing things.” Cole’s gaze fell to his plate. “And I’m thankful for Grace Rollins—”
A unanimous gasp filled the room.
Shelby dropped her wine glass.
Mama’s fork fell into her plate.
And the men glared at Cole.
“Before you all have a heart attack, let me finish. I’m beyond thankful that she cursed Allie and me, otherwise we wouldn’t have a chance to live and love forever. Now, you can breathe again, Mama.” Cole nodded at Shelby.
Everyone looked at me but Cole. He flipped his napkin repeatedly and stared at its folded seams.
“It’s sort of hard to top that one. I’m grateful for Maria’s sweet potatoes?” I winced waiting to get slammed with disapproval.
“Seriously? That’s all you can think of?” Trevor gave me a sideways glance.
“Okay, okay. I’m thankful for the witch who chased your mother and father for years. Without her, Grace would have had no power. See, I’m terrible at this.”
“No. That’s even better than mine.” Cole squeezed my hand under the table.
“You read my journals.” Cole’s voice flowed in a quiet stream through the annals of my mind.
“I was bored.” I squeezed his hand in return, but placed it back on his lap. “I loved reading them. It was amazing to learn who you really are through accounts of someone else’s life, even though I knew it was you then too.”
“Mama and Shelby can hear us or have you forgotten.”
“I don’t care if they hear. I’m just glad my dad can’t. I’m still his little girl.”
“In that case, I’m thankful for how you look in a miniskirt.” Cole grinned with his gaze on the painting behind my father’s head.
Mama and Shelby made a noise somewhere between a giggle and a cough.
I slapped at Cole but he dodged me.
“It’s good to have you two back and so…close.” My dad took a sip of wine. “Just don’t get too close. She’s still my baby.”
After dessert had disappeared from their plates, the way it normally happened when Gertie made one of her gourmet specialties, Cole stood with his hand on the back of my chair. “I’ll see you all later. I have plans I can’t break.”
Shelby wagged a finger at Cole. “Oh, no you don’t. We need to know where you’re going to be and who you’ll be with. Just in case.”
“We were going for a walk. And yes, you do need to know. I’ll keep my phone on if we get out of mind reader’s earshot.” I stood and joined Cole.
* * * *
I still was in my skirt and heels. I had gotten carried away worrying over what I’d wear and had let too much time pass.
The large wrought iron wall clock in my room read exactly one minute till the hour.
I slipped on anything that looked casual, but not too frumpy. I didn’t want to show cleavage, but I also wanted him to think of me as a girlfriend instead of a nun.
Ugh. I hated decisions.
Chapter 13
Cole stood at the edge of the patio with an extra jacket over his arm. The puffy clouds in the sky threatened snow.
“In case you decided to come out in your pj’s,” Cole said, offering the jacket.
I took it. “I guess since I can’t have your arms, a jacket will do.”
“If you get cold, you can still have my arms. I don’t care what some dumb blood promise says.” His tone was low and serious. I at least hoped I’d get the mischievous look that normally accompanied statements like that. I needed that side of him, too. But Cole seemed older tonight, more in control.
All those times when we were younger and he’d searched my face for the Allie he really wanted to see, I hadn’t been there. Now I was, and we couldn’t touch.
I took my gaze from his and stared at the cobblestone drive. “It won’t be long before your arms will be as cold as it is outside.”
“I forgot about that.”
I searched his sad expression.
“What do you want to see?” Cole said softly. Did he know that I wanted the sinister side of him to come out and play? I had gotten used to it now and had grown to like it.
I couldn’t speak.
“Allie?” Cole waved his hand in my face. “Hey, what do you want to see first?”
“I miss the promiscuous you. He’s not all bad.”
“I was referring to our walk.” Cole walked ahead a few steps. “Trust me, he’s still in here. But the more sentimental me needed to be with you tonight. We don’t even have to talk.”
My heartbeat raced. Silence with him caused a thick tension for me.
“No. We have to talk. Silence gives me too much time to ponder.” I hurried to catch up with him.
Cole slowed to walk alongside me to the back of the house. “What would you have done differently, if you could go back?”
I thought about it for a few long moments before I answered. “There are so many things. We’d be in here all night if I started.”
With a grin and a wink, Cole entered the maze and disappeared around the first turn.
A movie of all the times he had given me that very same look played in my head. The first time I caught myself liking him too much had angered me for some unknown reason. I didn’t want to like him. I wanted to explore the world.
“I would have given you the world.” His voice, even and promising, was muffled behind the first few turns and a wall of roses that still bloomed even so late into the fall.
I stepped into the maze, glad for the walls it put between us.
“I cannot believe how many times I acted so childish,” I stopped. I hadn’t been in the rose maze since a year ago when I’d retraced the steps Cole and I made as children. Which way had he gone? “You deserved someone so much more matur
e. I wasted so much of our time.”
“You were the only thing that existed to me.” He was behind a wall even farther away from me.
My chest ached and I longed to be close to him. I stepped around a few more turns. At any moment he could have slipped from a dark shadow the lampposts didn’t light and take me in his arms. I would have given in.
The little green leaves that accompanied the blushed roses waved in the breeze. The aroma of each flower filled my nostrils. It was a sweet aroma, a sweet night.
“When you weren’t looking, I stepped close to you and breathed in the smell of your perfume that, by the way, was the same kind you wore in the life before this. In lives before that one, you chose something that smelled much like it. This time around, you didn’t realize I adored your existence. Every little step you made, every movement of your eyes, every gesture, every syllable that had the good fortune of touching your lips. Each sound had no idea how much I envied it.” Cole had stopped moving to let me catch up.
My legs didn’t want to work. I wanted him to come find me the way he always had. I wanted his soul to be where it was supposed to be. He’d probably be off at some ball game or a bar with his friends when it happened. I could have crawled inside him and waited. I couldn’t get close enough.
Cole poked his head around the corner of the wall that separated us. “The day I know my soul is settled back in my body the way it is supposed to you’ll be the first to know.”
I gasped. How had he gotten so close without me hearing him?
“I’m faster than I used to be and lighter on my feet. There’s no telling what sorts of new talents I might have.” Cole winked then ducked behind the wall again.
I ran around the corner to catch him, curious about what new talents his mind had entertained, but he was gone again.
“But for now, we wait.” His voice tickled my ear, though he was behind a wall near me.
I wanted to press my way through the wall and find him the easy way—but we never did things the easy way.
The way of the thorns would have hurt and caused gashes in our morality, but it would have given instant gratification. The way around them was the longer and more complicated way, but it would lend us less ramifications. It was the right way.
“I’m still paying for not doing things right in our first life and another that you don’t know about. Doing things the right way is the best we could ever do to complete this journey.” Somehow his voice came from the other side of the wall behind me.
How had he moved from in front of me to behind me without me hearing him?
“In the end, my arms will never let you go, and I promise you won’t want them to.” Cole was behind me again.
“Do we need to go back in? It sounds as though you may be nearing a weak moment. I know I am, so let’s not chance it.”
“Who are you talking to?” Cole rounded a corner and stopped before me.
“I thought you were back there.” I shook my head. “Never mind. I’m losing it.”
“I think you’re the one we need to worry about tonight.” Cole nodded toward the center of the maze. “Come on. Let’s get to the end then go back.”
I walked slowly, finally remembering the way.
Cole went on a few steps ahead of me.
“It’s starting to get colder.” I came to a place where there was a choice, a fork in the walls, where I had to choose which path to follow.
Then the strangest thing happened yet.
Cole’s voice came from both directions. From the right his voice was clear. “It’s times like this I really miss holding you close.” Then from the left in a soft whisper so that no one else could possibly hear: “But why should we wait?”
How did he do that?
With a cold ball in the pit of my stomach, I couldn’t choose which way to go.
Around the corner of the path to the right, Cole stuck his head out and smiled. “You are so slow.”
“And you are talented.” Worry bubbled beneath my skin.
Cole grinned but rolled his eyes. “Gotta keep my thoughts clean.”
“Good job, Buddy,” I said.
“Let’s find the middle together. I don’t like it when you are too far away.” Cole pulled me by my arm and glanced past the curve behind me with an uneasy look on his face.
“How could I be in danger in here?” I followed him more closely as he zigzagged through the path, ignoring my question.
The family tree placed in the center of the maze had many branches carved from stone.
Cole stepped up to it.
“This is something new. My mom thought a family tree would be cool to have in the center of the maze, but it ended up being more of a laugh than anything. Look at all the Cole and Allie branches.” Each branch held a small metal tag with the engraved names of all the family members in the Rollins family.
Cole ran his hands over our collection of tags. Each married couple should have only had one metal tag, but we had more than a few.
Cole’s face went blank. He gently unlatched the metal tag from the last branch of our past life. His eyes softened more than I’d seen them ever before. He clutched the tag as if it were the only thing in the world real to him. Cole’s eyes closed, and I wished, as I had done occasionally, that I could read his thoughts, know his deepest longings.
His eyes flashed open to me in answer to my question. “She never let me see that she was scared of me, though I know at times it had to be unsettling to know that if my emotions got to be too much for me, I shifted to another animal. I remember when it was such a burden. Now I only wish I could figure out how to do it again.” Cole took the little tag with him to a concrete slab bench that matched the monument. He sat down. “It was definitely a burden that came in handy more than once.” He opened his hand and looked back to the tag, remembering some private thought. “The first time I realized that you found me, that you were the girl with the crescent moon birthmark, I was so elated and relieved, that I climbed into your bed with you. It was the first time in a hundred years that I finally felt at home.”
I approached Cole and stood close. But not too close.
Cole’s gaze shifted to the cloudy night sky. “I lost control that night. We’d been around each other a whole three weeks, and you had fallen head over heels in love with me. I guess it was one of those love-at-first-sight moments, and you just had to ask me for the one thing I couldn’t give you. Intimacies I couldn’t allow myself to fall into because I was tainted, cursed, and unable to love you for fear of your life. You thought I was rejecting you when all I was trying to do was save you from me, from yourself. You were so mad at me. God, were you mad.” Cole’s rumination of that past that seemed like such a fog for me. “You loved me then. There was no question. You saw me; you loved me—point blank.”
I chose one of the other matching benches beside Cole and sat down.
“I’m sorry.” I stared at the side of the monument that we dominated. “I was selfish. I would have come around after another few months.”
“Funny thing is, I wanted you to be selfish. I thought that was what was best no matter how it hurt me, and I did well just protecting you and being that guardian you always called me before. I guess I thought you had finally come to your senses this time around because it had all been too good to be true before. I was the poor farmhand and you were the rich girl. In the books and movies, they were never supposed to be together. Something bad always happened to one of them. You loving me wasn’t possible. Not anymore. That’s what I thought.” Cole’s words were haunting—he remained quiet as they sunk in.
“I’m sorry I put you through all that.” I adjusted my hips on the seat; it was hard and cold beneath me.
Cole looked at me. “You might have come around within a few months, and we would’ve been able to live as close to a normal life as possible, but the bad boy inside me that always seems to get his way won out. I don’t want him to win this tim
e. I want you to fight tooth and nail against him, do you hear me?” Cole stressed the last few words. “That is, if you still want me when this is all over.”
I went to him and sat close. I had felt him out long enough and this wasn’t the bad boy of whom I had to be wary. “So you think all the pain and suffering we’ve been through is because of what we did in our first past life?”
“What I did,” Cole said.
I felt one with the cement bench under me.
Wow.
Cole opened his hand on our tag, looking thoughtfully to it.
“Our names will be on another one, one day.” I almost took his hand but thought better of it.
Cole laughed the cutest little laugh. His eyebrow arched in innocent flirtation. He leaned over and nudged me with his shoulder keeping our contact simple, harmless. “So, is that a proposal?”
“I guess it is.”
Cole took my hand regardless of my faltering willpower and stood. “Let’s get you back. You’re shivering.”
Not because of the cold, I thought as he dropped the little tag back onto its hook.
Cole chuckled. “Either way, we don’t need to test fate with giving you pneumonia or allowing you near me for too long. I’m so irresistible but you are the one with the control issues, remember?”
“Ah, I highly doubt I’m the one with the biggest problem in this outfit.” I followed him to one of the many exits out of the center of the maze. Only one would lead us where we needed to go and this Cole, this one who didn’t seem to be threatening, knew the path. All too well.
* * * *
Once inside, Cole turned and nervously gestured toward the stairs. “I guess I’m going to go to bed now. I sleep way too much these days. It passes time, though.”
“I wish I could. I don’t seem to get enough.” The light conversation probably didn’t hide the disappointment in my voice. I hated that I couldn’t go up to my room with the man who, in my heart, was my husband.
Cole paled. It was hard to imagine, but his pain was exponentially more horrible than mine.
“Are you okay?” I touched his shoulder but he flinched.
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