by P. R. Mason
"All our lives?" he inserted.
"It's all riddles. You seem so familiar. So right. But I don't remember you being in my life before yesterday."
"Maybe we've known each other in other lifetimes. Ever think of that?"
Chapter Four
The SATs were less than an hour and a half away —ready or not. Reluctantly, I suggested we set out. Holden just seemed happy to be with me. He wasn't nervous in the least.
Clearly, he wasn't scheduled for the big test.
I wished I didn't have to go, but I didn't know how I could explain missing it to Dad. But I was determined to talk candidly with him that afternoon.
Holding hands but without speaking, Holden and I walked toward the school. The two of us felt more comfortable than my favorite slippers and more exciting than a roller coaster.
Past lives?
I hadn't pressed Holden and he hadn't volunteered anything more.
Not that I hadn't given some consideration to the concept, but this life had always seemed like more than I could handle, let alone some other ones I couldn't remember.
The sun shone bright today with the temperature in the 60s, so I wasn't surprised to see a lot of people already milling around the square near the school.
Despite giving Dad beaucoup grief when he'd announced his work transfer, I had to admit Savannah was growing on me. The buildings had an old-world elegance. No office high-rises or cookie cutter mcmansions. Every building was different and unique. And there was so much green space. My favorite was the live oak trees. With the Spanish moss draped from them, it seemed like the city was always decorated for a holiday.
Someone I knew was near the square's center, examining the face of a cell phone.
"There's Lashonda," I exclaimed. "Come on. I want to introduce you two."
In the distance, the clock in the steeple tower of the corner church tolled nine times.
A memory of Mrs. Gazardi saying something about a 9:18 a.m. deadline came into my head and then was gone again.
"Don't be shy," I said.
"No, Eve." Holden strained against my hold. "I don't—"
"She'll love you," I said, dragging him by the hand into a run.
My friend, clad in some pretty stylish jeans and a t-shirt that molded to her figure, swiped at the phone face before tossing it into her purse.
"Lashonda," I shouted. "Wait up."
She swiveled at the sound of my voice and waved as she started towards us. I slowed to a walk.
Birds pecked at the remnants of a muffin on the nearby park bench, so tame they didn't fly away. Our approach didn't ruffle their feathers. The loudspeaker system of the passing tourist trolley blasted us with a snippet of narration from the tour guide about the square.
"You left your purse at the party, Eve," Lashonda said when we were face-to-face. "I have it at home."
"Thanks girlfriend," I teased.
"Don't call me girlfriend," she said immediately, with a laughing glint in her eye.
"I want you to meet someone." I tugged at the sleeve of a reluctant Holden jerking him forward.
"Eve," Holden said, "I don't think this is the right time."
"'Course it is, silly."
"Who's silly?" Lashonda asked, a quizzical tilt to her head as her eyebrow arched.
"Holden," I answered with a laugh, a glance and a nod his way. My grin felt so wide it would stretch my chin out of shape. "You told me to go after him and you were right."
"Him who?" she asked.
"The Viking," I said, inclining my head in his direction. "Let me introduce you two. I want him to meet my best friend."
"Oh, sweetie. That's great," Lashonda gushed, taking me by the shoulders and giving me a quick hug. "How about tonight? We can all meet up at the Mall Food Court."
"Tonight?" I shook my head, confused. "How about now?"
"Cool." She scanned our surroundings. "Are you meeting him here before the test?"
My heart suddenly felt like a bird from the bench had flown in my mouth and lodged in my throat with its wings beating.
Omigod. Lashonda didn't see him. She didn't see Holden standing right there next to me.
Was he really there? He must not be. I hadn't had an imaginary friend since I was four. I must be crazy. Delusional. Straightjacket and electroshock, here I come.
The tourists, Lashonda, the birds pecking, the tour bus...Everything and everyone seemed to be in slow motion. My awareness heightened to the point where I could see and hear everything at once.
"Ummm, yeah." I was finally able to mumble to Lashonda. "Meeting him here."
"Well, don't wait for him too long. You don't want to be late for the test." With a wave, she turned on her heel and started in the direction of the school.
"Eve. Listen." Holden reached for me but I evaded his grasp.
"No," I said. "I can't...This is all..."
Before I knew it, I was running. I didn't remember when I'd started moving, waking to conscious thought only when already in mid-dash.
"Stop. Eve."
Hearing his voice only increased my speed and I dodged between two benches to get away. I registered Lashonda's widened eyes as I passed her before propelling myself out of the square and across the street to the other side. Once there, I stopped on the curb in front of the church and scanned the path I'd taken. I searched for Holden but didn't see him. Some kind of commotion—probably the tourists who clogged the city—blocked my view.
"Eve." Holden's voice from behind caused me to turn. He stood at the entrance of the church, holding the door half-open. He waved me toward him, a slight smile twisting one side of his lips. Suddenly, I wondered why I'd been so spooked.
Why was my first instinct always to run away? Shouldn't I start facing things instead of avoiding them?
Besides, Holden's face was so handsome, so dear to me. I...I loved him. Didn't I?
I should just go to him, I thought. But when I got closer, Holden turned and entered the church, forcing me to follow. Inside, my eyes easily adjusted to the dim interior after the bright sunshine to see Holden as he passed through a door to the right of the nave. Through that door I found a winding staircase that must lead to the tower steeple.
Up, I climbed, probably more than two hundred stairs. When I reached the top, Holden was there. He'd apparently opened the window and he was leaning on the sill as he gazed out onto the city landscape.
A breeze blew through the steeple from the window ruffling my hair and sending a chill through me.
"What's going on, Holden?" I asked. "Why couldn't Lashonda see you?"
He didn't leave the window but turned his head to me. "Maybe, the best way is for you to see. Come here."
Stepping up next to him, I grasped the sill to lean out.
"Look over there." He pointed down.
I followed his direction and looked to the street below.
A trolley tour bus was pulled over, parked at a strange angle on the street in front of the church. A man in a cap designating him as the driver sat on the curb with his head in his hands. The passengers had left the trolley and milled in a cluster at the front bumper.
"What am I looking at?" I asked.
Holden didn't answer. Merely shrugging, the sad turn of his lips etched lines around his mouth.
My gaze returned to the street where I observed Lashonda pushing her way out of the crowd. She stumbled as she mounted the curb. Even from here I could tell she was sobbing.
"Lashonda," I called to her. What was wrong? "Lashonda. Are you okay?"
She didn't seem to hear me.
A man clicking photos with his a long lens camera moved to the right just as the woman next to him moved to the left. The momentary parting in the cluster allowed me to see the focus of their attention.
Me.
My body lay still, broken and bloody in the street.
"Ahhhhhhhh," I screamed, jumping back from the window and whirling away from the scene. Step-by-step I backed up until I bumped in
to the metal railing of the staircase.
"You did this." I accused Holden.
He flinched and his expression turned wide-eyed and stricken.
My mind raced for answers. "Are you death?"
"No." Holden strode to me and, despite my cringing from him, he grasped me by the shoulders. "No. I'm life."
"No," I said. "I'm lying in the street. How can you say that?"
"Because it's true. I'm your life. Or rather, we are each other's life. We're fated hearts. We were meant to be together."
He tried to pull me into a hug but I resisted.
"You said before that we knew each other in a past life." I searched to make sense of this.
"Yes," he answered. "We were married during one of my five lifetimes."
"Five lifetimes? I don't understand," I cried, shaking my head.
To add to the confusion, the sound of footsteps climbing the steps freaked me out. What now?
Mrs. Gazardi, still wearing the flowing gown of the previous night, emerged to frown first at me and then at Holden. "You still haven't done it, I see."
"Done what?" My voice was a shrill shout. "Kill me? I think he has since I'm bleeding in the street."
"No you foolish girl," Mrs. Gazardi said. "He was supposed to educate you." She stalked to the window. "It's almost too late. We have to do it now or never."
I felt tears streaming down my cheeks.
How could I feel the moisture of tears when I was dead?
I must have spoken aloud because Holden answered me.
"You're body isn't dead. Not yet," Holden said with a sad shadow in his eyes.
Shaking my head a sob slipped out. "What are you saying?"
"You can go back to your body now and you'll survive. You have a choice."
"I can live?" Turning out of his arms I made to descend the stairs. "Okay then. Let's go."
The sad eyes returned. "Like I said, you have a choice. But if you choose to live...if you don't die now, we can never be together."
"Why? You said—"
"You can go back but I can't."
"What?"
"He's already dead," Mrs. Gazardi said. "He has no body to go back to. And his soul can only remain on earth for three days after his body passes."
"I didn't move here from Miami, I died in Miami." A tremor shook his voice as Holden said the word died.
"But—"
"And if you don't die now, we won't be reborn at the same time for our next lives," Holden explained. "We won't live and love each other in the next incarnation."
Shaking my head, I tried to clear it. Fear still pounded through me forcing out every other thought, making my mind foggy. "This makes no sense."
"Don't be afraid. Fear blocks love and it's your fear that has kept us apart before."
He placed his palm against my chest and memories flashed in my head. Memories of him. Of me. Of us together as teens running hand-in-hand through a field. His appearance was different then and so was mine but somehow I knew it was him...me...us...in a past lifetime. Maybe he really was a Viking then.
"Why didn't you do that before?" I asked.
"Because you weren't ready," Mrs. Gazardi interrupted with an impatient twitch of her hand.
"I'm still not ready." But I had to be. This was happening.
Locking eyes with Holden, he answered my unspoken question. "I appear to you now as I will when we meet each other in our next life," His lips twisted in a grimace. "If we meet each other next."
"You mean I'll remember all this?" My arm swept in an arc around me.
"No," he shook his head. "Probably not consciously. But your unconscious will know me."
"You said we were married in one of your five lifetimes. Did we have children?" My tears had stopped and I moved closer to Holden, leaning against him.
"One." I felt his smile against my forehead. "A boy. But then I was called to war and died in battle. So we didn't have the years together we should have."
"What about your other four lifetimes? Weren't we together?"
"No." He stiffened. "You were too afraid to feel the pain of loving someone to take a chance in each of those lives, so we missed each other. That's why this time they allowed me to come here and talk to you."
I felt his displeasure. His disapproval—anger even—lashed me with guilt and I pulled away.
More memories of my past lives came to me. No painful jolts this time. The images were more like old friends. But from them I realized that the pain of losing Holden in our first lifetime together had so traumatized me that I had not wanted to experience that soul wrenching pain ever again. And that fear had followed me from life to life. I still didn't know if I'd be able to break free of the fear. Hadn't I been living this lifetime shackled by inhibition, choosing not to take chances?
Stepping toward the window, I gazed down at the street as an ambulance screeched to a halt.
"Come on," Mrs. Gazardi demanded. "This is taking too long."
"So who are you in all this?" I asked. "Obviously, not just my school counselor."
Her inner light began to shine so bright I had to shield my eyes.
"I am Gazadriel," she said in a booming voice, part the woman I knew and part otherworldly baritone. "I am here to guide you to where you may go."
"Are you certain if I go with you now we'll have a lifetime together?" I asked Holden.
"Nothing is certain," he replied. "We will still have to make it happen. But it's certain we will have the opportunity. If you stay here now...we won't.
He held out a hand. "Please, my love. Take a chance to be with me."
"I don't know." Gnawing on my lip, I tried to process everything.
"The time is now or it will be never." Gazadriel climbed onto the sill where the wind whipped the long strands of gray-white hair that had escaped from her bun. The folds of the gown billowed about her body.
A whirlpool turned in the clouds over the square and the swirling increased its velocity.
"You have to make the choice now. There's no more time." Holden held out a beckoning hand. The hand shook. His face was grave and serious.
Through the window I could see the paramedics performing CPR, trying to save me.
At that moment, I knew my decision. I chose my fate. I would save myself.
The bell tolled in the clock tower, indicating 9:15. Only three minutes left.
Just thinking about returning to my body caused my soul or my consciousness, or my whatever, to jerk out of the bell tower, and it traveled down the stairs, passed over the sidewalk and reached the street. For a few moments I hovered over my still form before slipping back inside.
"She has a heartbeat," one paramedic shouted and ceased the rib cracking compressions on my chest.
No pain. That was the first thing I marveled at as I pried up my lids and peered up into the face of the man working over me. I didn't feel anything but a heaviness in all my limbs. Still I managed to lift one arm that felt like our living room sofa was on top of it as I moved to take the oxygen mask off my face.
Opening my mouth, I shouted out a whisper. "Lashonda."
"I'm here," my friend said, inserting herself between the paramedics to kneel beside me. Tears had etched a path down her cheeks and kept flowing. "You're gonna be okay. Hang in there."
I wished I could reach up and put a comforting hand on her arm. I wished I could tell her it would all be okay. I wished I could say so many things.
"Tell my dad I love him." The sofa seemed to be on my chest now, but I forced myself to speak anyway.
My words caused a new gush of tears to flow down her cheeks.
"You gotta stay strong so you can tell him yourself," Lashonda cried.
I just had one more thing I had to say.
"I love you too...girlfriend." I closed my eyes again and sighed out relief.
"Eve, don't go," I heard Lashonda shout from far away.
But by the time she spoke, I'd willed myself from my body and my soul had already tr
aveled halfway up the stairs of the church again. In an instant I was in the steeple where Holden waited.
His expression went from pleading to joyous.
Reaching out, I placed my hand in his outstretched palm.
"If you are coming, it has to be now." Gazadriel spread her wings wide, silvery long locks windswept and flowing free around her head. She tested the edge of the window with her feet and pointed to the full-blown tornado in the sky. "There's no more time."
"I'm ready, I said, squeezing Holden's hand. He squeezed mine in return, pulled me to his side and pressed a sweet kiss against my lips.
Side-by-side, hand-in hand, we climbed up onto the parapet beside Gazadriel. We grasped her robe with our free hands and she took off with us in tow. With Gazadriel as our guide, Holden and I flew off the side of the church, traveling up and into our future together.
# # #
Acknowledgements
Cover Art image created with stock photo courtesy of Arvind Balaraman/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Author's Note
**Thank you for reading Heart's Reflection. If you enjoyed it, I hope you will post a review at Amazon.com. And if you would like to know more about me, please visit my websites at http://www.prmason.net and http://www.patriciamason.net.You might find some freebies there!
More from P.R. Mason and Patricia Mason
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Entanglements (full-length urban fantasy/paranormal romance)-- She was driven by love. He was bound by duty. Together they were swept through a vortex to a world of danger. http://amzn.com/B005R0RPPG
If you enjoy humorous romantic suspense you'll enjoy this book by Patricia Mason:
In Deep Shitake (humorous romantic suspense) -- Take one devastatingly attractive movie star. Add one outrageously sexy female private eye with a penchant for food-word obscenities. Mix in a dose of mistaken identity and a handful of Russian mobsters...And they're all in deep shitake. http://amzn.com/B007VDZ0JA
Amazon Edition, Licensing Notes
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