Love of Her Lives

by Clare, Sharon

  He brushed his lips over hers once again, and then he sat up rigid as a warrior on guard. “No, it’s not optional. It never was. My leaving was always a fact. I was allowed this human body for as long as it took to see you safe, Beth. My time here with you is over.”

  Something shattered inside her chest. Her heart? She felt the moment freeze around her, between them, the horror hanging in the room ready to flatten her lungs and throw her entire life into agony. “No.” The simple denial was all she could force up. A new surge of tears blinded her. She let them burn in her eyes before blinking them away. A salty stream fell over her lips as they quivered like a child’s. “You wouldn’t do that to me, Calum, not to us.”

  His eyes, like the bluest mood, had not left hers. The pain exposed there brought a whimper to her lips — too much truth to look at.

  “Beth, please look at me.”

  She kept her eyes fixed on the deer antlers nailed to the wall. If she didn’t find a way to stop her heart from breaking, she’d die right then.

  He took her by the shoulders. “It’s not over between us. Our time apart will be a short journey until we’re together again. I’ll always be with you — ”

  “That is such bullshit!” Anger felt better, like a lid she could shut on her pain to keep it bottled so she couldn’t feel it. “Don’t say you’ll be there for me like a ghost in my dreams as if that’s sufficient. I’m a person! I need a man to grow old with, not a spirit. How could you pursue me until I fell hopelessly in love with you when all along you knew you were leaving? You seduced me. You used me. How could you do it? You lying, heart–crushing, arrogant, barbaric throwback of a man!” The words coagulated in her throat, choked on her sobs.

  He flinched. Leaning forward, he wiped the streaks from her cheeks with his thumbs and hung his head. “I can’t deny it. I couldn’t stop myself from making you mine. I’ve always loved you fiercely, Bethia, perhaps too much so.”

  How gullible did he think she was? She wanted the torment to stop. She wanted to hate him. “What you did was not nearly as innocent as that, you bloody man. From the very beginning, this was about trust. You came here because you are too afraid to trust. Since you can’t trust me to make my own decisions, you interfere and you control and you call it protection. Well, guess what, Bucko? I don’t need you, and I don’t need you to come to my rescue again. Don’t whisper advice in my ear. Don’t wait for me in your afterworld because I won’t come looking for you. I can’t do this. I can’t ever see you again.” It killed her to say it, but she had to hope she would heal. The only possible way to stop her anguish was to strike him from her life.

  He rose from the bed, walked to the window, and threw open the drapes. Facing the outdoors, his broad shoulders quivered while he stood unmoving. A small part of her wanted to take back her hateful words, to console him, a self–betraying part she quickly overruled. Think self–preservation! Unless she’d rather bind her soul to a man who could so easily destroy her.

  Silence hung thick in the room for long, uncomfortable minutes until he broke it. “You know me, Bethia, better than I know myself.” He didn’t turn to face her. “You’ve judged me true, and I’m sorry it’s come too late. Ever since I lost you so long ago in Rokesburg, my fear of losing you has carried forward, my love for you grew oppressive. Your suffering is of far greater consequence to me than my own, so I became the worst of mother hens in trying to safeguard you.” His voice grew raw with his admission. “Our last life together ended badly, lass. I feared for the love–bond between us, and now I’ve done naught but ensure it be severed.”

  Beth heard bells ringing in the distance as if he’d conjured a choir to accompany his soulful revelation. She barricaded her heart against succumbing to him again.

  “You’ll be free of me soon, m’eudail. Free of my meddling, free of my temper, free of my overbearing weaknesses. In letting you go, perhaps I’ll free myself.”

  Good, she thought, and clenched her jar against another ridiculous rush of tears. The bells sounded louder and less heavenly. He moved to the table where a canvas bag sat — Matthew’s she supposed. She watched him search for something. He was not a beautiful man. Not beautiful at all. The flexing of solid muscles under his clothes was just a reminder of how deadly he could be.

  God help her hate him.

  He left the bag and crossed the room to the side of the bed. “I’ll accept whatever you choose, Beth, in this life, in the next. I’ll always love you, but you must love another, that’s your only hope for happiness.”

  Love another. As if she would. Had she learned nothing from the mother who’d left her? She’d known all along that love equaled loss, hurt, and devastation.

  Never again.

  She turned her head away, so she wouldn’t see the signs of his eternal promise in his eyes. His love wasn’t offered freely. His love was a tease, a cruel joke, a pit of despair. She ground her teeth together. The bells sounded like alarms.

  Suddenly she realized they weren’t bells at all. Sirens! Nearly upon them. Her gaze flew to the window as the sound of tires split gravel and came to a grating halt.

  She felt his lips graze her hair, heard him whisper some sentiment in his Gaelic tongue. She snapped her head away. I do not love you.

  “I’ll spend eternity perfecting my love for you, my Bethia.”

  Don’t look at him. Her throat throbbed from her sobbing. His fault!

  “When you wake up, you’ll be free of me.”

  The cabin door crashed open and hit the wall.

  “Ca — ” He covered her nose and mouth with a cloth. She’d not paid attention to what he taken from Matthew’s luggage, but now she knew. The same rotting smells as before. She didn’t struggle. Let him go. She was better off this —

  Chapter 28

  Untrue Confession

  Beth was furious, frightened and falling through the wet rain, nothing but a mess of clouds above her, a mountain, a sheep, a man. Calum? The face hadn’t been right, but the eyes. He had Calum’s eyes. And the emotion. The emotion was the same — anger, frustration, passion.

  “Hello, Beth, can you hear me?” A voice with a heavy French accent prodded. A man flickered through the clouds. A dark man in dark clothes. That couldn’t be good. Dark men hovering over her were trouble, and she wouldn’t put up with them. She squeezed her eyes shut. Go away.

  “Wake up now, Beth. Can you hear me?”

  Couldn’t he let her sleep?

  He gripped her hand. “Beth, wake up.”

  No. She didn’t want to hear any more of what he had to say.

  “Come on, Beth, open your eyes. Squeeze my hand.”

  Cripes, he was persistent. Her eyelids were unusually heavy. With no small effort, she raised them and hoped she’d not regret it. The world came into focus. Oh, better this time. This wasn’t the man she feared — she didn’t recognise him at all in his uniform and empathic smile.

  “Can you hear me?” he said again.

  She cleared her throat. “Y-yes. I hear you.” She wasn’t falling anymore, hadn’t been falling at all. Trees rustled in a soft breeze overhead. When she craned her neck to look past the uniformed man, she saw an ambulance and two police cars parked outside a small wood cabin. She lay on a stretcher.

  “You’re doing good, Beth. My name’s Adrien. I’m a paramedic. Don’t worry. I’ll look after you.”

  Her hand felt heavy. She lifted it up to have a look.

  “I’ve put you on intravenous,” Adrien said.

  A person appeared on her left side — a woman police officer. “Hello, Miss Stewart. I’m Officer Delaney. I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you’re up to it. You are Beth Stewart?”

  “Yes. What happened? How did I get here?” She tried to sit up, but pain sliced through her head, so she stayed where she was.

  “Y
ou’re fine, Beth, you’re not in any danger,” the officer said. “We’ve got him. He confessed to kidnapping.”

  A kidnapper? What was wrong with her memory? She’d used the crimson key and drove into town. She bought chicken. There were antlers on the wall and brown curtains …

  The police officer’s radio crackled. The woman stepped back to have a conversation Beth couldn’t hear. Those clouds she’d been flying through had lodged in her head. She tried hard to remember how she’d gotten there.

  A low voice mentioned a blue Dodge Caravan. A van door slid open in her memory and then …

  She gasped.

  Matthew!

  The horror of the cabin came back to her in shard–like memories.

  The police radio buzzed again then Officer Delaney spoke. “They’re bringing him out now.”

  Careful not to jar her head too much, Beth pushed herself up to sit. Bringing him out. Here?

  “I want to take your blood pressure again, Beth.” Adrien picked up her arm.

  “Other than a headache, I feel …” she was going to say fine, but felt a sudden rebellion waging in her stomach.

  A police car radio cackled. Behind her, the cabin door creaked open. A rustling sounded in the bush.

  Adrien slipped the cuff over her biceps. “Guess this wasn’t the best time to take your blood pressure. He’s coming now. No need to look at him.”

  Look at whom? Matthew? Matthew was dead. Turmoil rolled through her insides. Nothing here in these woods felt real. Why was she confused? She turned as footsteps sounded beside the stretcher.

  Her breath came head over heels in her throat.

  Calum!

  I will confess to taking you from your home in Ashbury. “No,” she cried to Adrien. “He didn’t — ”

  But Beth couldn’t utter a word. Her stomach heaved and slammed into her lungs as she was violently ill over the side of the stretcher. She felt Adrien’s hand on her back and heard his voice tell her to let it go. Black pinpricks appeared in her peripheral vision, closing inwards like a camera lens shutting out the light.

  Chapter 29

  No Happy Ending in Sight

  “No really, dad, I’m okay,” Beth said over the phone. “You don’t have to come and stay with me. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Beth had just arrived back home in Ashbury, released in good health after a week at her father’s house. He’d insisted she call him as soon as she arrived home. After reassuring him that the doors were locked and she was no longer shaky, he promised to leave her alone until the next day when he would visit with her stepbrother Craig. They would barbeque hamburgers just like a normal family. But normal was a murky yardstick that Beth couldn’t yet measure her days against.

  Her house was in good order, thanks to Craig and his wife. As she stood in her spotless kitchen, she remembered, without any of that disturbing heart–pounding affection, how Calum had tossed her over his shoulder when she’d refused to go to a hotel — the controlling brute. She was so better off without him.

  Just as he’d promised, he was gone from her life. He’d manipulated her knowing full well the heart–wrenching suffering his abandonment would cause. He’d not only claimed her virginity, he’d nearly managed to claim her soul. He had no right to one jagged piece of her heart.

  After Beth had fainted on the stretcher, she woke in the hospital, insisting that someone contact the police department immediately. As furious as she was with Calum, she would not let him hang himself, any more than she would she speak to him again.

  Gandhi said an eye for an eye will make the whole world blind. She wished she had a sliver of his capacity to forgive because she was nowhere near ready to forgive Calum. However, she had been determined to set the record straight, mainly because she didn’t want Calum to get his way. She’d been at his mercy in the cabin, but no longer. Besides, he’d rescued her from a wrongful imprisonment, possibly death, and the thought of him in a jail cell tugged at her sympathy — just a little.

  She’d not realized what Calum had done until it was too late.

  Officer Delaney informed her that Calum admitted Bruce Hopkins had hired him to ransack Beth’s house and find a flash drive that would incriminate both Bruce and Matthew. Calum took Beth to blackmail Bruce for the flash drive.

  Beth explained what had truly happened. Calum hadn’t kidnapped her. They’d run to Quebec because of Chantal Desjardins’ business card. Calum suspected she was being entrapped by Matthew. Running was a mistake, yes, but as it turned out, he’d been right.

  Officer Delaney raised one delicate eyebrow and said, “You are not the first woman to be attracted to her kidnapper, but trust me, Miss Stewart, don’t fantasize about this man. He’s dangerous. Perhaps, your discharge from the hospital was in haste. You are traumatized, non? Overstressed?”

  She gave Beth’s shoulder the kind of little pat you give disgruntled children.

  Two days later, Officer Delaney informed Beth that Calum had escaped. Nothing was found in his cell, but the clothing he had worn, left in a pile on the floor. Nothing tampered with, no evidence of his escape, no sign of him at all.

  She had to face it. He was truly gone. In case she harboured doubt, the clothes left behind in the cell were telling. That symbol of exiting one world for another, like Tam Lin when the Elf Queen released him from her realm — naked — born again to Earth. But Calum hadn’t been released into the arms of his true love.

  She relived every moment, engraving her mind with the feel of him, his scent, and his eyes of blue that smoldered with desire for her, his powerful arms that wrapped her in safe.

  So few memories.

  She knew now how he’d suffered upon losing her in that life so long ago. She saw now how his loss had grown to the fear that drove his overprotective behaviour. How had she reacted to his fear over their lives? She knew herself well enough to imagine. Push back for all she was worth — just as she’d done when she’d escaped with Finn’s key.

  They could change all that now.

  But not in this life. Her last words to him had been her cruelest. That memory stung, so she latched on to a memory more salient, the lovemaking — not the tease, not the pursuit — but the tender coming together, the rekindling of love, a thousand years old. True love. No longer did she doubt the age of their love considering its strength. Strange that it came so clear in its absence. Sad that she’d not deciphered the solid truth of it immediately.

  Chapter 30

  There’s an Immortal in My Fruit Bowl

  “Stop moping, Beth,” her father demanded. “Come on, love, all is well. Give me a smile.”

  All could not be further from well. She moved her mouth in a general upward direction, but there was no feeling behind it. The pretend smile appeased her father though.

  “Good girl.” He kissed her forehead and went back to flipping burgers.

  Craig and her nephews ran off to explore the ravine. Kids laughing, trees blooming, birds singing. What more could a girl want?

  She had a supportive family, and she owned her own home — mortgage–free. She was weeks away from a university degree, and she wasn’t in jail or dead. Her education and career goals were clear. Many people her age couldn’t count all those blessings. Nope. She sure was lucky.

  Behind her, Beth heard her sister–in–law Linda laugh at something her father had said. Beth slipped inside to slice an onion. As she fanned the pieces onto a plate she wondered if she would ever laugh again like she meant it. Perhaps one day, one single strand of joy would slip in and take her by surprise. But would she laugh again with a man she’d loved for a thousand years? No. He’d ruined her for all men — the thoughtless swine — so she wouldn’t love again, not in this life. She had to acknowledge the upside though. No longer did she fear she must wield control to avoid the sex addiction her mother suffe
red.

  The screen door snapped open and Linda’s flip–flops slapped across the kitchen floor. “Your father wants to heat the buns up on the grill.”

  “I’ll get them.” As she turned, a soft wind breezed in from the patio door and sent strands of hair fluttering across her face. She reached up, grabbed the buns from the cupboard, turned, and shrieked.

  Linda shrieked back, just as startled. “What? What’s wrong, Beth?”

  A white–haired elf sat cross–legged in the middle of Beth’s kitchen table picking through the bowl of fruit. Finn!

  “Oh, uh …” Could Linda see Finn? Linda followed Beth’s line of sight to the table, then back to Beth. Phew! No mention of a green–suited man inspecting her fruit bowl.

  “I’m going to get your dad.”

  “No! No, it’s nothing, Linda. I’m fine. I did something, poked myself, I don’t know. Here, take the buns.” She didn’t have the mind to make up a story. Finn chose a banana, peeled back one fraction of skin, and turned his head to Beth, silver brows raised.

  “Were you having a flashback, Beth?” Linda gave Beth’s arm a caring touch. “It must have been terrible what Bruce did. Your kitchen was a mess. You shouldn’t be alone here. After dinner, I insist you come and stay with us. Take however long you need to put this horrifying event to rest.”

  Finn puffed out his lower lip. “Ah, poor Bethia. Perhaps I should return when you’ve sufficiently recovered.”

  “No!” Beth didn’t mean to shout. It made her sound desperate, which she refused to be. With no little effort she turned to Linda. “I mean, no thank you. I’m fine — really.” She let out a puff of breath. Her mind didn’t seem to hold the capacity for anything else besides Finn and ultimately Calum.

  She pulled in a deep breath. Did she want to open a wound not yet healed? “Linda, Dad’s waiting on the buns. I’m going to cut up a tomato, and then I’ll be out.”