Grace: An Eternal Beloved Novel (Eternal Beloved Novel Series)

by R. Rodriguez

  I looked up to the heavens, wondering if I was being heard or if my pleas were traveling off at the wrong speed of light.

  “What more do I need to do to earn your good graces? I’ve suffered. I’ve loved. I’ve reflected. I’ve modified. I’ve fought. I’ve researched. I’ve trusted and I’ve ultimately failed!” I covered my face at the finality of my last statement.

  I’ve failed. I’ve failed. Dario will keep relying on his good looks and charm, waltzing around in life as a predator after young girls, divorcees, whatever... As long as I’m alive, he’ll probably make sure he gets something out of me, even if it’s as small as a reaction. Dario was an expert at leeching off other people who felt sorry for whatever plight he invented. My nightmares were probably due to a tumor like doctors suspected.

  And worst, the one person I trusted the most had betrayed me. How could Lucian play around with my emotions and my mind that way? I questioned. How could he put me in the hands of a stranger whose only medicine for my tortured soul was to conjure images and life experiences that were not mine?

  How did she do it? Why did Lucian make all this up? I wondered how long he had been dreaming this up. He was the sickest kind of person, I realized. No wonder he was always available to me. In fact, he seemed to have no life of his own. In retrospect, I knew no friends of his besides his co-workers. No family. He even conveniently found a contract in my vicinity right around the time I moved away to Aurora with Dario.

  He had in truth, appeared out of nowhere so many years ago. At a time when all I thought about was for life to end. He had saved my life more than once. This was true. But I had never imagined that his reliance was actually obsession.

  I sank into the cold sand knees first and let the bitterness envelop me. I saw nothing else. No ray of hope like I had seen so many times before. No spark of fight within me. I saw nothing, but bleakness. Nothing, but void. And as much as I had wanted to die, not less than ten years ago, I wanted to live a different life now. For new beginnings. For new endeavors that I wanted to plan. I just didn’t believe that it could be anymore. This was the universe responding to my prevailing wish.

  I stood up as a vision of me as a pale lusterless thin corpse with a flamboyant head of auburn hair flowing behind me in the depths of the cold Calumet River appeared before me. Maybe that’s how I was supposed to end up all along. My morbid mind still had the capacity to play tricks on me, I saw. I remained motionless and tearless for a while, staring off into the invisible horizon.

  I almost expected to see that damnable panther creep out of the dark water for me, but instead I was soothed by a warm voice behind me that broke through the silence.

  “You are going to have a different life, Grace.”

  It was Lucian.

  Confusion filled my head because although I had every reason to be afraid of him, his presence was actually having the opposite effect on me. My heart calmed and I was filled with an all too familiar sense of peace.

  “W-what are you…?”

  I didn’t have time to finish my question or turn back to look at him because he encircled me with his strong arms from behind. His arms formed a tight fortress around my body and my crossed arms.

  The relief I felt at having him there holding me was indescribable. I leaned back into him automatically. Letting go of so many years of restraint of getting too close to Lucian and the apprehension the new revelations I had about him and me at Dr. Stella’s office brought me.

  Lucian simply held me without speaking. I sighed defenseless. He held me for what seemed like ages, finally turning me around to face him. I looked up into the soothing pools that were his eyes. His smooth beautiful features didn’t denounce all of the wrong doing that I had believed of him.

  He couldn’t be the evil conniving man that I feared.

  “You will have a great and rewarding new life, Grace.” Lucian reinforced his assertion.

  This was my dearest friend. He had been in my life since that fateful Halloween when the devil himself seemed to summon me into his dominion. He saved me more than once. He healed me. He held on to my darkest secrets. He stood by me during the good times and the hardest of times. He was always there for me. No questions asked. How had he managed to arrange that hocus pocus show with Dr. Stella? Or had he fooled her, too?

  “How did you find me?” I finally asked.

  “Your mother let me know,” he answered simply.

  “I bet she called you as soon as I was out the door,” I sighed.

  “Of course she did,” he concurred.

  “I suspect you could wrench any old thing from Mom,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. It was no secret that Lucian was in my mother’s good graces. She still harbored hope that I would come to my senses in respect to Lucian, too. That might’ve been true a few days ago, but now it seemed impossible to me.

  “Or anyone for that matter,” I added sarcastically.

  “Don’t you know you can’t escape me?” His tone was inoffensive, but it chilled my heart to hear the extent of his obsession with me.

  Wasn’t that just the type of thing a controlling man said to his victim before killing her? I looked at him carefully. I saw him clearly, now. There was no panther. It was Lucian… always striving for me. His presence haunting me.

  I swallowed hard and avoided a confrontation. “What do you mean?”

  I decided to play dumb in case I angered him.

  Luckily, he let the whole subject drop. He rendered me free from his steely arms and nudged me on the shoulder. He seemed to sense my hesitancy toward being close to him.

  “Let’s get inside, Grace. You’re gonna freeze out here.”

  I complied with his request gladly. I didn’t need to be alone with him for another second. The cold air seared my face as I turned towards the hotel. We walked back in silence.

  “Will the showdown be in your room or mine?” he finally asked.

  I thought his choice of words were appropriate. I never thought that our relationship would take on this dimension. Me and Lucian actually warring.

  I had always perceived Lucian as, educated, headstrong, gentle and a bunch of other great things. In fact, he was any girl’s dream man. At first he had been my savior. Then the ties of a true friendship bound us. But then, we had somehow broken that pact. We had somehow imagined that we could have each other in a different way. That’s when it all went wrong, I reasoned.

  I avoided the decision and invited him to the bar instead.

  “Let’s have a good strong drink and then you can join me in my room,” I countered.

  I decided to have things cleared on my turf. I wasn’t about to enter the dragon’s lair. Especially, when there were no witnesses. Everyone must’ve retired to their rooms because the lobby area and bar were empty.

  I looked around and acknowledged the coziness of the place. There was a dim light flickering in a giant modern fire place. I had seen a smaller replica in my room.

  I ordered two mojitos and gulped mine down as soon as they were served.

  “Whoa… Hold it on the alcohol, Grace.” Lucian criticized my choice of beverage.

  “Believe me. You’ll thank me later for the stupor it will help induce when I confront you.” I rolled my eyes and handed him his glass.

  I grabbed my coat and started towards the elevator before he was done with his. I felt Lucian’s strong steps behind me. Ever the gentleman, he opened the door to my room. He seemed to be such a good man, but given the previous events, I guess he wasn’t so different from the likes of Dario after all.

  I hadn’t bothered to lock it. No sense in doing so when I thought I was the only guest in the vicinity. Of course, Lucian had already realized this because there it was; my comfort gift. A humongous bouquet of wild azaleas sat on my bed. The sight was eerie although it was meant to be a thoughtful gesture.

  “Can’t blame me for being considerate. I was taught well.” He tried to make light of the gift.

  “Yeah. I wish I could
meet who taught you. If she even exists,” I almost spat.

  “Unfortunately, that won’t be possible,” he answered, rebuffing the allusion of a mother.

  “Isn’t that convenient?” I said carefully, setting down my watch on the nightstand and placing the fragrant arrangement harshly on the dresser as if to dismiss it.

  “There’s a vase full of water in your bathroom in case you take to them later on,” he said, ignoring my affront.

  “Why do you go out of your way to have everything at my feet?” I pointed out.

  Lucian didn’t hesitate with his answer.

  “Because I love you.”

  His expression turned serious and he stared me down with his soulful dark gray eyes, sending tremors down my spine. He had said this to me many times before, but the tone he used now was everything but usual.

  Ever since our brief time together, there was something deeper between Lucian and me. Even if we didn’t act on it, it hung in the air between friendship. Eros. The most torturous and destructive kind of love. A passionate, all consuming love. More powerful than any drug. It was this kind of love that had brought me so much pain and suffering with Dario. I couldn’t deny my feelings. I guess it was true that you could love two people at the same time. Well, technically, I didn’t love Dario anymore so… quickly I closed my mind to the other possibility.

  I gulped afraid to tread further.

  “Why hadn’t you told me before?” I inquired, pretending to organize the forgotten arrangement.

  “You didn’t give me the chance. You turned me away.” He took off his coat at this point.

  “Well… I’m not sure I understand. You have a hell of a way to let me know,” I said tentatively, trying to dismiss the love we shared briefly when Dario left for the first time. “After the whole trance gig, Stella told me she had something important lined up for me, but I that I had to be ready.”

  “That’s true,” he said.

  The anger and confusion I had felt crept up again.

  “I only know what I saw. I’m not, not… s-sure what I saw,” I stammered.

  I searched his eyes for answers and I only encountered the same calm self assured gaze he always had when my soul was in complete turmoil. Nothing seemed to faze Lucian.

  “Grace, sit down,” he suggested.

  “No. Say what you have to say and leave.” I hoped it would be fast.

  “This is gonna take longer than a few words.”

  Something in his demeanor urged me to sit down on the edge of the bed.

  “You better get comfortable,” He warned once more. “That is if you want to hear it. It’s your choice.”

  “Well, I can’t very well get comfortable with you standing there towering over me,” I challenged.

  “Maybe I should sit down, as well.” He walked over to the love seat that was in front of the fireplace, turned to face me and sank into it.

  I scooted back on the bed as far away from him as I could. It wasn’t fear that drove me anymore, it was expectation and a new sensation that was beginning to stir somewhere inside me every time he looked at me so intensely.

  “Now …you have to keep an open mind. What I’m about to tell you defies what you believe about life and even death,” He started. “And I have to warn you that I can’t prove some parts to you. I may be able to provide details, but you don’t have much on which to verify. Only a few newspaper clippings.”

  I was inclined to send him packing with his improvable explanation, but curiosity got the best of me.

  “U, huh… go ahead.”

  “How do you want to do this?” he prodded. “You can ask me questions or I can just tell you.”

  My mind was boggled.

  “Both. I ask. You tell. You tell. I ask.”

  “Fair enough,” He agreed. “Who first?”

  “Me.” I followed with a rushed question. “How did Stella make me see what I saw?”

  “She didn’t. You manifested that,” he answered.

  “I manifested all that? That can’t possibly be true. I know who I am. I know where I was born. I know where I went to school. I know when I met you. I know who I married. Those things I saw aren’t true,” I rambled.

  He sat back as if to tell a story. “Yes. You know who you were. What you saw is what will be. That’s you, too and it’s is a whole different story.”

  My mind reeled. “Reincarnation?”

  Is that what he was talking about? That I’d somehow keep coming back to live over and over again?

  “No,” he said forcefully.

  “That is now, too. It’s the real now, Grace,” he claimed as if he’d read my mind.

  If he was saying that what I saw is the real now, then my life with Dario wasn’t real? I saw him, too.

  “Yes,” he answered. “It was.”

  “What?! You can get in my head, as well as live in it forever?” I demanded forcefully.

  Chapter 19: Revelations

  “No. Neither. Your aura changes when you think about Dario. It gets darker. It doesn’t take a genius to know what you’re wondering. I know what you saw.”

  “So much for patient-doctor confidentiality,” I scoffed.

  “Stella never breached that,” Lucian sighed.

  “I know what you saw. I’ll be there, too, after all. She was only trying to help speed the process up,” Lucian continued.

  “For what?” My voice was beginning to crack.

  “For us to be together,” he explained.

  “So you admit that you’re the one who set this whole fiasco up,” I concluded harshly.

  “You admit that you recommended Dr. Stella Cummings to me as a therapist. You admit that you pretended to be a needy patient yourself to feed her stories that she somehow injected into me. I wonder what she’d think if she knew you manipulated her.” I pointed my finger at him.

  “Yeah. It’s true. It was a desperate attempt to get you to see the light.” Lucian suddenly leaned forward in his seat. “I had to do it, Grace. But… It’s certainly not what you’re implying. Time is just running out.”

  He ran his fingers through his sandy brown hair nervously.

  “Grace. I’m gonna tell it to you straight. Ask questions later.” He began his story. “It’ll all be about faith in the end. You may not believe me. It’ll be up to you. This journey is only yours to make.”

  He didn’t give me a chance to interrogate him further. He went on with his tale. I tried to focus on what he was telling me, but my head was reeling trying to find answers.

  “You’re an angel,” I declared almost as a breath.

  “No. It’s not at all that conventional, love,” he countered. How could an angel be conventional?

  “My guardian angel?” I chuckled bitterly. “Great job you’ve done! Keeping me safe from harm. Your kind of care is more suited for the condemned.”

  Lucian seemed sad as he continued, “I’m afraid it’s probably gonna seem more sinister than that to you.”

  I was completely at a loss for ideas. It wasn’t reincarnation. He wasn’t my guardian angel. What was he, then? A demon?

  I instantly rejected that notion. Deep in my heart I knew that I shouldn’t expect the worse from Lucian. After all he had demonstrated nothing but kindness and love to me and my children, even in my dreams and visions.

  “As long as you’ve chosen, I’ve had to be in this state.”

  “Chosen what, Lucian?” I asked, completely confused.

  “Dario. Your life with him. The love that almost killed you,” Lucian said gravely.

  “What love almost killed me? I’m still alive, Lucian. And what do you have to do with everything?” I argued.

  “Why won’t you just tell me who or… what… you are?” I shouted in desperation.

  “Grace… I’m not exactly human.” Lucian finally dropped it on me.

  I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry at his response.

  “So, you’re an angel,” I quipped.

  “There�
�s a whole other spiritual realm out there, Grace. It’s not limited to angels and demons.”

  “Well… which part do you belong to, exactly?” I ventured.

  “I belong to the spiritual part that has to do with…..passing,” He uttered quietly eyeing carefully for signs of fear.

  “Death,” I stammered.

  He didn’t answer.

  “I don’t understand,” I said bewildered. “I’m still alive.”

  “Yes, you are, but you’re not supposed to be.”

  Lucian’s words hurt me deeply. I stood up from the bed in outrage to lash out at him. It was all I could do. My mind was reeling. I didn’t want to hear anymore. I had a foreboding sense of dread at the rest of his revelation. My bones sensed what was coming. My soul sensed it. I didn’t want to hear it, but I knew I had to.

  “Well… Luc..ccian,” I stuttered. “How does that make you sinister? How did death end up linked to me as my best friend in my very much alive state?”

  Lucian was looking at me so intensely that his gaze almost made me shrink away.

  “Grace…I’m afraid to tell you.”

  “Jesus, Lucian…” I pleaded.

  “I chose you deliberately.”

  “You’re scaring me,” I said, backing away.

  “Remember… when we met,” he began tentatively.

  I simply nodded. I was eager for him to tell me whatever he had to tell me and over all to understand everything.

  “Grace… It wasn’t right to save you that night,” Lucian sighed and I knew what was next couldn’t possibly be good. “You were meant to die that night.”

  My heart stopped when Lucian said those words.

  “I interfered with your passing.”

  His words were like a punch to my stomach.

  “What? No… Lucian…”

  “Death had noticed you since you let it in… years before.”