Drift

by Amy Murray

  James eyes were dark and serious. “No, definitely not a bad thing. Some people wait their whole lives to find love, and some people find it when they least expect it.” There was a silence, a too-long beat where a thousand things were said. James looked at his toes. “But, something’s off. He won’t tell me who she is, only that if her father found out—well, he thinks he wouldn’t approve.”

  “Of Thomas?” I asked, surprised.

  “Sounds that way.”

  The very idea was ridiculous. James and Thomas came from money, lots of it, and beyond the money, they were the golden boys of Galveston. Smart, funny, charismatic. Everyone loved them.

  “I don’t know.” He sighed. “Maybe it’s us he’s worried about. Maybe he thinks we won’t approve of her.”

  “I can sympathize,” I said, and my cheeks warmed with embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  James moved with lightning speed. He grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me back on the sand. His body partially covered mine as he threaded our fingers together over my head.

  “My family will love you.” He searched my eyes. “Just like I do.”

  I blinked several times, not at all believing what I’d just heard. I shook my head and swallowed.

  “I don’t have family or money. You have both of those things. You’re expected to marry both of those things.”

  “I have one of those things. The money isn’t mine, it’s my parents’, and I can marry whomever I choose.” His gaze devoured mine. “I love you.”

  It was the first time he’d said it out loud, and my insides jerked as the weight of his words settled over me. “I love you, too.”

  James leaned forward and placed a feather-light kiss on my lips before pulling back, his face inches from my own. His black eyes were ablaze, and the heat inside them flickered over my face before settling on my lips. I placed my hands against his neck and curled his hair around my fingers.

  Applying pressure, I pulled him close, and this time when our lips met, something exploded. He tasted of salt and sea, and a warmth that had nothing to do with the setting sun burned in my lower belly. I pressed up and into his chest, feeling his body firm over mine, and finding it wasn’t enough. I wanted the confines of our bodies to fall away. I wanted to become a part of him, for our skin, bones, blood, and tissue to melt and mold together. To know that we were one person, now and forever.

  James pulled away first, his breath harsh above me. I opened my eyes, breathless and confused. “What’re you doing tomorrow evening?” he asked.

  “What?” I was on the verge of physically combusting, and his question—and its abrupt intrusion—confused me.

  “There’s something I want to ask you. Something important.”

  His words collided with me as if they had weight. “I don’t have plans.”

  His eyes smiled. “There’s a party.”

  “A party?” Hesitation edged its way between us.

  “It’s kind of a big deal. My parents will be there, and I want you there, too.”

  My breath caught in my chest. “I don’t know, James.”

  “Just say yes.”

  “I don’t know if—”

  “Please,” he interrupted. “It’s just a party. Don’t overthink it.” His smile spread, and I couldn’t help but feel the tickle of excitement begin to flutter in my chest.

  “Just a party?”

  “Just a party,” he confirmed before running his lips against my jaw.

  I nodded, and his lips moved across my cheeks and nose. But not until I verbally said yes did he cover my lips with his. I pressed my hands against his shoulders and ran them down the length of his arms, back up, and across his back. His skin jumped under my touch, and I reveled in the way his muscles bunched and relaxed as he moved on top of me.

  “Hey,” a booming voice called from our right. “This here is private property.”

  James rolled to his side and then to his feet, pulling me with him in one swift motion. “Sorry,” he called with a laugh as we ran up the dune.

  Our feet slipped and sank in the fine-powder sand and laughter burst from our lips. We made it over the edge and back to James’s car, where we fell into each other’s arms.

  We moved together like magnets, unable to stay apart. James wrapped his arms around my shoulders and pulled me into an embrace. I craned my head back to see the smile still lingering on his lips.

  “You told me we were allowed to be there,” I said.

  The chuckle in James’s chest vibrated against mine. “What’s the fun in that?”

  “You call that fun?”

  “I call that exciting.”

  “I call you crazy.”

  James’s smile faded. “Marry me.”

  I shook my head. “James, you know you can’t.”

  “I can do whatever I want.”

  “I don’t fit in your world.”

  James leaned down, wrapped his arms around my waist, and lifted me off the ground so that our eyes were level. “You are my world. Without you, I don’t exist.”

  I wanted to reply with something witty or even sarcastic, but the way his gaze caressed mine, like he was looking through me, sucked the words from my lips and left me breathless.

  “You don’t have to answer. Not now.” He set me on my feet and ran his fingers through my hair. “I want you to meet my family so you can put these ridiculous fears to rest.”

  “They aren’t that ridiculous.”

  James scrunched his face and tilted his head to the side. “They’re pretty ridiculous, but think about it all the same. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  I shook my head. “James,” I began.

  “Listen,” he interrupted. “There isn’t a part of me that doesn’t want to be with you. If you don’t say yes, I’ll get over it, but just so you know, there won’t be a lifetime that’ll go by where I won’t be there trying to change your mind.”

  He didn’t give me the chance to answer before he bent toward me and erased all my fears with a single kiss. I was going to marry James Bellingham, and I knew in my heart, a single lifetime would never be enough.

  The bare closet came into focus, and century-old emotions flooded my bleeding heart.

  How could life be so cruel? I loved him more than I loved myself, and I had no doubt that if James had proposed after the party, my answer would’ve been yes, but he never had the opportunity. He was murdered that evening. I swallowed, reliving the seconds of bliss as we fled the party, and the final moments before Thomas approached us.

  The bedroom door creaked open and James called my name. It was there, sitting on his closet floor, wrapped in his clothes, that he found me.

  “What’re you doing in here? Are you okay?”

  He knelt at my side, concern etched in his eyes. “We were perfect. Life had been perfect.”

  His lips closed in a frown. “You had a drift?”

  I nodded.

  “Tell me about it.” A flush crept up my neck and reddened my cheeks. “That bad?” he asked in response.

  “No. Not this time.”

  “Then what?”

  I folded my arms around my knees. “Our lives—my life—it was a fairy tale. The kind of story girls dream about. And then, in a blink of an eye, you were gone and Mack was there.”

  I looked at James in time to see the understanding dawn across his features.

  “You were together? You and McCormack?”

  My silence was my answer.

  “I knew there was a reason I never liked that guy.”

  “It’s more than that. Colin killed Thomas. He killed you.”

  James’s shoulders stiffened and his fingers curled into his palms.

  “I didn’t know,” I said. “When I left with him that night, after you’d been murdered. I didn’t know.” My voice faded and silence ensued.

  “That’s why I was coming here tonight. I’d just seen him, us, and everything fell into place. I’d married the m
an that’d murdered you. I’d been fooled into trusting him.” I sniffed and tried to calm my nerves. “He was working for Roselli then, and now—I feel so stupid.”

  “Shh.” James pulled me into his lap where he crushed me into his side, his arms wrapped protectively around me. “What happened to us in the past is done. We can’t change it, so don’t blame yourself or feel guilty. It wasn’t your fault.” He sighed into my hair.

  “There’s a reason I’m drifting,” I said. “A reason I’m seeing our past, and I think it has to do with the diamond. I mean, that’s the one thing that connects us all. If I find it, I think I can stop everything from happening again.”

  “Stop what happening again?”

  I leaned back and looked into his eyes. “I just have a feeling. Like history’s repeating.”

  James shook his head. “Don’t think like that.”

  “It’s hard not to. Mack turned out to be the same liar he was then. Who’s to say the rest won’t pan out the same way?”

  “I’m not going to die.”

  “I bet you thought that then, too.”

  He stared at me without saying a word, but I could see the conviction in his eyes. The determination to help me, to fix things, to make this better. “All of that is in the past. This, now? This is different, a new life, a new chance.”

  “You don’t know that. What if we’re destined to repeat our mistakes? What if we don’t have control? What if it’s all an illusion?”

  “We don’t, but that doesn’t mean we don’t try.”

  “I have to find that necklace.”

  James nodded. “Okay. We’ll start tomorrow.”

  I shook my head. “No, whatever it is, it’s got to be me. Somehow, I failed in the past. I didn’t do what I was supposed to. That’s why I’m seeing it again. To fix it. To stop it.”

  Disagreement shadowed James’s face. “Then why am I painting you? Why did I see you at all if I was never supposed to help you?”

  I stared at the hard planes of his face, so familiar and so loved. My chest swelled, not with tears but with something more. Something that convinced me that no matter where I was, what I was doing, this was where I was meant to be.

  “Losing you again…it would kill me.”

  He brushed the wet hair from my face and wound his hands through the mass at my back. He pulled, forcing my head back and my chest forward. The air felt alive as it hissed and spit some kind of electric current in, around, and between us.

  James moved first, his head inching toward mine at a pace that was almost painful. I reached forward, wrapped my hands around his neck, and closed the distance. My eyes closed and my insides ignited with flame. We rolled until I was on my back and pressed to the floor under his weight.

  His lips, soft and hot, traced the edge of my jaw and then down my neck as I ran my fingers through his hair. Arching my back, I dropped my head so he could move lower, and my heart began an erratic beat, thumping heavy and hard. It deafened my ears and blinded me to everything. All I could feel was James, and even with my eyes closed, all I could see was James. He lived inside me, and it was in that moment that I realized he always had.

  Before I knew his name.

  Before I’d seen his face.

  My heart. My body. My soul. They belonged to him as much as they belonged to me. We were two halves of the same whole, bound together for eternity, and this time, I wasn’t letting go.

  Chapter Fourteen

  There was a strange grating noise; it was incessant and clawed at my consciousness. Pulling the pillow over my head, I tried, without success, to reclaim the mindlessness of sleep, but the sound wouldn’t stop. The longer it went on, the more impossible the idea of falling asleep became. Pushing the quilt from my body, I scrubbed my eyes with my hands and stepped barefoot into the hall.

  Following the noise, I walked to the adjacent room and peeked inside. James was hunched over an ancient wooden desk. His head rest against his palm, and his fingers were threaded through his hair. I took a few steps inside the room, and a floorboard creaked. James looked up, his features tense.

  “What’re you doing up?” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “It’s not even eight.”

  “Couldn’t sleep,” I pointed to the printer that was frantically spitting paper from its bottom. “What’s all that?”

  There were several stacks of paper on the desktop alongside the sheets James had spread out in front of him.

  “I found sleep difficult last night.” James was wearing the same jeans and white T-shirt from the night before, and judging from the shadows under his eyes, he hadn’t slept at all. “How’re you feeling?” he asked.

  He took my hands in his. With gentle care, he pulled my sleeves back and examined the scabs on my wrists, running his fingers over the lighter marks. “They look better.”

  I flinched. “They are. And I’m fine, really.”

  James’s brow scrunched. He wanted to say something, but whatever it was, he let it go.

  “What kept you awake?” I asked, hoping to change his focus.

  His lips did that thing they did when he was trying not to smile. “You were talking in your sleep.”

  Blood flushed and burned against my cheeks. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  The corner of James’s mouth quirked up. “It wasn’t bad, and at times not even coherent.”

  “Do I even want to know what I said?” My mind raced with possibilities, most of them embarrassing.

  “You talked about Thomas.” James moved to his desk and sifted through the papers he’d printed.

  “Really?” I said, surprise evident in my voice even as a shiver of relief washed over me. It could’ve been so much worse. I cleared my throat and pointed to the stack of paper in his hands. “And that has something to do with Thomas?”

  He looked at the papers and held them out to me. “See for yourself.”

  The first page was an article from the Galveston Daily dated June 22, 1922. It was a single column article about the murder of James Bellingham. Below the headline was a photo, and staring at it made my heart stop. Even in the dated black and white picture, James’s eyes held an intensity that made me shake.

  The article recapped how his body was found. A young man, on his way to work at the Bellingham Hotel, stumbled across him by accident. Century-old guilt tickled the recesses of my mind, like the part of me that lived all those years ago still regretted the decision to escape with Colin.

  As I read, I wasn’t surprised to see my name mentioned more than once. Roselli had shown me a similar article last night. What bothered me was my alleged involvement with his murder.

  “None of this is true,” I said, dropping the paper to my side. “How could they think I’d been involved?” I looked back at the article and choked on the contents. “I can’t believe it.”

  James moved around the desk to stand in front of me. “You have to remember, it isn’t you they’re talking about. Just like that isn’t me.” He pointed at the picture on the paper. “You need to separate yourself from it.”

  “How? I lived this.” I shook the paper. “I remember it like it happened yesterday. This isn’t something abstract I came up with. It feels like real life, like real memories.”

  James frowned. “I know my experience with our past-life is different, but it makes it no less real. I know what it’s like to have ghosts haunt your days. To have things you can’t explain bury you.” He licked his bottom lip and heaved a sigh. “You need to keep perspective. Especially if we’re going to find that necklace.”

  Thinking about finding the necklace only made me think of Roselli—of last night. We had two days, and how we were going to find it was beyond me. I knew very little about my past life, and other than fleeing to Houston, I had no idea where I lived, how we made money, how we even survived. Had I made friends? Had I gotten a job?

  I lifted the article I held in my hand. “How did you find this?”

  “When I heard you talking, it made
me think. If you’re seeing it—if I’m painting it—there has to be a record of it. You know, if this truly is a past life, wouldn’t there be something out there to confirm it?”

  “So you just typed in his name, and there it was? It was that easy?”

  James shrugged. “Sort of. There was more digging involved, but once I found it and nailed the dates down, it wasn’t hard. Turns out the Bellingham family was pretty famous in Galveston during the twenties. The murder and disappearance of the Bellingham boys was big news. Literally, it covered the papers from 1922 to ’23.”

  “You found all of this?” I sifted through the pages lying on the desk. There were at least thirty different articles. “You’re like an internet super-sleuth.”

  “Not even close.” He chuckled before turning his focus back to one particular paper. “It turns out that James and Thomas Bellingham were heirs to—”

  “The Bellingham Hotel fortune,” I finished.

  “Right.” He nodded and placed the page in my hand. “Read that.”

  “If this is more nonsense about me luring you to your death, I think I’ll pass.”

  “No, this is important.”

  I sighed. “Six days have lapsed since the disappearance of Thomas Bellingham. Arthur and Marie Bellingham, owners of the Bellingham Hotel in downtown Galveston, plead with the public to come forward with any information regarding their son’s whereabouts. James Bellingham, murdered the night his brother, Thomas, went missing, was laid to rest at Old City Cemetery in the early hours of June twenty-fourth.”

  I couldn’t read any further and dropped the paper on his desk. James was pensive, his eyes narrowed and thoughtful.

  “Does any of that seem off to you?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “You said you saw Thomas murdered,” he said.

  I nodded, still staring at the article in hand.

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

  I sucked in a breath when I finally understood what he meant. “You’re wondering why his body wasn’t found.”

  James nodded. “Why would they have taken it?”

  “And why would they have left yours?” I took in a great gulp of air while James shuffled some of the papers before handing me another.