“That’s as far as I think you should go with this regression. After you find what you need I want you to be happy with your life. At least we can still see each other as friends. I can still see you in my office. As for our being together, well…” He looked away. “As long as you’re back in my life, I’ll wait. I’m sure we’ll meet again in another life.”
“Chance.” I fell against his chest sobbing.
“Shh. It’s going to be fine,” he crooned in my ear. “You’ll see. We’ll both do what we need to do.”
“You know I can’t see you again after today.”
“What are you talking about? Of course we’re going to see each other. What about your job? You have to come to the office.”
“We don’t have to see each other. You can sign the authorization and I’ll leave the samples with the nurse. I could even mail them.”
I watched Chance as he looked at me. There seemed to be pity in his eyes. Why should he pity me? I wondered. Had I made my life appear so unbearable that he’d gotten love confused with pity?
An image of the day we met flashed before me. I had been a mess that day. Yes, he would pity me, but that was not what I wanted from this man. And definitely not on the last day I would see him.
“Chance, I don’t like the way you’re looking at me. What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that life is so unfair. You’re asking something of me that I don’t know if I can give you. I’ve been searching so long for you and now you want me to forget I’ve found you”
He smiled then. It was my turn to take the bait. At least the veil of pity was lifting from his eyes and a hint of a smile was in evidence.
“It would have all been so simple if I had met you twenty years ago when I discovered that you existed.”
“You forget I was already married.”
“But maybe you wouldn’t have felt so bound to your husband; maybe your memories of our life together would have been stronger. Life is so unfair. Why weren’t we born remembering?”
I thought over what he was saying. I didn’t want to think of my marriage as some cruel trick fate had played on us.
Before Chance came along I had thought that I was a wee bit crazy to think that I had lived before. I had only admitted to an occasional feeling of suffocation that had increased in frequency and duration with the passing of the years.
I couldn’t really say what it was, but to think that I had wasted the last twenty-six years of my life, I didn’t like it.
“I wanted to marry Larry. I believed then he was my destiny. I still believe it.”
“You wanted to die, Michelle! Do you remember that? Why are you insisting that you have to stay in a marriage that had you looking for a permanent way out? I wonder what would have happened to you if I had not been the one you met that day in the parking lot.”
“But you were the one I met.”
He stared at me for a long moment, his eyes narrowing into slits.
“You don’t really believe me, do you?” He smiled at my attempts to deny the truth. It didn’t seem to bother him.
“I know you don’t believe me. You don’t even believe what you saw and felt for yourself. Yet you’re here with me now. I can feel that you love me, yet you tell me that you’re going to remain in a marriage that was killing you. In all the lives that I’ve known you, this is the first time I’ve witnessed you weak.”
My face was burning from the shame he’d stirred in me. I swallowed several times, my mouth feeling twice its size, my tongue thick. “I’m not weak.”
“I’m afraid in this lifetime you are. You’ve told me about your life. What do you call it?”
“Marrying Larry wasn’t a wrong choice.”
“No, but remaining with him is.”
“Chance, you know nothing of our lives. You know nothing about Larry, the pain he’s had to overcome.” I was angry and defensive. Despite what I was doing I was bound to protect Larry from Chance’s scrutiny.
“I’ve been watching you, Michelle. You worry too much about what others think, about pleasing people even if it makes you unhappy. Dimi never would have put up with an unhappy marriage for so many years.”
“I’m not Dimi, Chance. My name’s Michelle and my marriage is just fine. We’re happy.”
“Is that why you’ve spent the last nine days in my bed, because your marriage is so damn happy?”
Had he shouted or looked angry I could have at least pretended righteous indignation, but he did none of that. He was looking at me, saying these things with as much calm as one would ask for a cup of coffee.
I tried again. “Chance, Larry’s a good man. He loves me.”
“I don’t doubt that. You’re very easy to love. Yet his love didn’t stop you from wanting to die, did it?”
I could see he wasn’t going to let that go. “Chance, I can’t just walk away from my life. I have…” I bit the words off; the reason seemed too flimsy even for me to say it.
He finished for me. “You have what, obligations? Commitments?”
“Yes.” I looked away from him, knowing he was goading me into taking a stand. “You have no way of knowing how complicated my life is, Chance. Larry needs me.”
He was staring at me. His dark blue eyes held the very secrets to my soul. I needed him to stop looking at me that way. It was making it damn near impossible to leave him.
“I’m the first woman Larry’s ever loved. The only woman. He didn’t chase me. I went after him. We made promises to each other. He’s kept his promises.”
I felt the sting of tears behind my eyes. None of this was any of Chance’s business. He didn’t need to know that Larry had been abandoned by his mother. How the hell was I supposed to abandon him too?
“He needs me, Chance.”
“And you, Michelle, what is it that you need?”
I shut my eyes tight against the smart ass retort that I wanted to give. I couldn’t remember anyone ever asking me what I needed.
Countless scenes flashed in my mind of Larry’s excited voice. “Honey, this is just what you needed.” I always wondered how he knew what I needed when he’d never asked. It would have been fine if the things he’d done were things I had longed for, but they never were.
So I thought over what Chance asked me. “I need to get over the feeling that I’m going crazy, that someone has taken over my body. I need to get over this strange connection I have with you. I need to get over this love I feel for you that’s tearing me apart.”
I sensed the beginning of tears. God no, I begged. I wanted to do this without turning on the waterworks. “I need to get over this fascination with reincarnation and regression. What does it matter anyway? It can’t be proven.”
“No? What about Blaine MaDia and the possibility that he’s our son?”
I saw the color draining from my hand. The mere mention of Blaine’s name was making me ill. “How is knowing it going to change my life? You really want to know what I need, Chance? I need to find my way back to my husband.”
We sat on the bed staring at each other. I was so proud that I didn’t cry. I would show him that I wasn’t weak. When I walked away from him without a backwards glance he could witness my strength. I alone would bear the pain of knowing how much leaving him was robbing me of my spirit.
His head dipped to the side. He appeared to be studying me, making me feel like a specimen under a microscope.
“Then, Michelle, I suggest you go back to your husband. I can’t give you what you want. I don’t need you in my life. I don’t need you to take care of me. I don’t need you to shelter me from life. I want you. And I think you…need to be needed. So go back to Larry. He needs you.”
I felt the tears sliding down my cheeks. I’d lost my battle not to cry. It all sounded so awful when Chance voiced it. I’d never thought of my marriage in that way. I didn’t like what Chance was saying. It wasn’t true.
One look in his eyes and I knew he meant it. He thought Larry and I had some sort of sick relati
onship, that we were somehow co-dependents in our pain. I didn’t need to be needed, that wasn’t true.
“Why are you crying?” he asked.
What did he expect me to say? He’d ripped my heart out and stepped on it and now he wanted to know why I was crying. I’d destroyed my marriage because of my desire to be with him and now…
I felt awful. I didn’t want us to end like this. The past nine days had been what I’d unknowingly longed for my entire life. The words might have been easy for him to say, but they sure weren’t easy for me to hear. Chance didn’t need me in his life.
To feel pain hearing on him say that didn’t make me an emotional cripple. It made me human. To hell with Chance Morgan.
He was looking at me with pity again and the very thought of him pitying me made me want to hit him over the head with a very heavy object.
He attempted to use the pads of his fingers to brush away my tears, but I angrily wrenched myself from his touch. He allowed his hands to drop to his side. He stared at me for a moment, shaking his head slowly, as if trying to decide what to do next.
“You’re angry because I said I didn’t need you. You’re not listening. I said I wanted you. I want you in my life. I want you in my arms. I love you.
“You have no reason to cry,” Chance continued. “Do you think I would have devoted twenty years of my life to finding you if I didn’t love you? It seems what I found is an imitation of the woman who made me swear to find her, who swore she’d wait an eternity for me. I kept my promise to find you. Now it’s up to you to decide if you want to be needed or wanted. It’s not my decision. You chose. Are you Dimi, my wife? Or are you Michelle?”
Chapter Seven
Chance Morgan felt the beginning of a severe migraine coming on. He knew what it meant. For a few minutes he could cross over into another time.
He could be rejoined with the woman he’d loved through eternity. In that time they’d had no obstacles to overcome. He was Jeremy and she was Dimitra. They were man and wife. They were free to love.
He resisted the pull. The woman he loved was sitting on his bed in front of him. In the flesh. That was a thousand times better than having her only in his dreams.
He knew he was as bad as she was. He’d accused her of playing the martyr. He had needs of his own, the primary one being to see to it that she got whatever it was in this lifetime that would make her happy. He could only pray that what she needed was him.
If it wasn’t, he would give her whatever it took to make her happy. If Larry was what she needed, he wouldn’t stop her, but he damn sure intended to give it all he had before he threw in the towel.
It was a little after seven. Larry fed his grandchildren breakfast, cold cereal and fruit. In the middle of talking to the kids something pierced him from the inside. He found himself staring at the children.
He knew.
Mick, his Mick, was having an affair.
His decision was not based on the fact that for a week and a half he’d not heard from her. Nor was it based on the message he’d gotten when he gave in and called her job. She wasn’t available. She was on vacation.
Larry had given into the fear and called a neighbor to check on Mick with a phony excuse that he didn’t believe the phone was working.
The neighbor reported back that she’d tried several times to tell Michelle Larry wanted to get in touch with her but that she was in and out before she got a chance. Larry thanked the neighbor, telling her that Michelle had called him.
At least he knew his wife was alive. That he’d known anyway. He didn’t doubt that if she was hurting, he would feel it, just as he didn’t doubt that feeling that now came over him that Mick was with someone else.
She was loving someone other than him. He was blind not to have seen it before. All the signs were there, had been for some time now. Why else wouldn’t she allow the kids to come?
He walked into the small bedroom he was using and began packing his clothes. The kids came from the kitchen and began running around his legs. Larry barely saw them; his mind was on leaving.
The three hours he had to wait for Erica’s and Roy’s return was like a short tour of hell. His hand kept moving toward the phone, stopped only by one of the kids yelling, “Grandpa.” He was grateful for those interruptions. It allowed him a little longer to pretend that his life had not been shattered.
I drove home, thinking over what Chance had said, sure that mixed up in all of that were his desires. He was not any different than Larry. He wanted me to give up my life for a dream he’d carried for twenty years.
He knew nothing about the joy on my husband’s face when Erica was born, of the tears he’d shed. He knew nothing about the love Larry felt for me. That was one thing I never doubted, Larry’s love.
In some ways I did think he was using our lives to make up for his mother’s leaving him. I knew his need for a family had to do with that, but I had never pressed the issue. I’d wanted so much to wipe away all the sadness that the five-year-old I’d never known had endured.
There was something tragic in Larry’s face from the first moment I met him. He carried around a sadness in his beautiful brown eyes. He didn’t have any friends as far as I knew and his cool manner intrigued me. I thought he needed a friend.
So I’d set out to save him, to be his friend. I didn’t know how badly he was in need of someone to love until after we’d made love the first time. Despite Larry’s aloofness the last thing I expected was him to be a virgin.
The brevity of our encounter surprised me. It was nothing like I had imagined my first time would be. There was an awful, painful burning, much worse than the worst bladder infection. Then in about three seconds Larry fell on me in a heap. It took me at least five minutes to know that it was over.
Disappointment washed over me in waves. I had waited my entire life and given up my virginity for this. It wasn’t worth it. After awhile Larry got off me and rolled to the side of the motel bed we’d rented for the occasion.
I remember the incident as clearly today as if almost twenty-eight years had not passed. For a long time we didn’t talk. Larry turned his back on me. I felt my stomach knotting up. I hadn’t pleased him either. I cringed at the thought that now I was no longer a virgin.
I heard sobbing. At first I couldn’t believe it. When I touched Larry’s shoulder’s he turned and held me so tightly that I thought something was wrong. I didn’t know what to do, but I was becoming afraid of his increasing emotions.
“Larry, what’s wrong?” I attempted to console him by stroking his hair, wishing I was anywhere else but in the room with him. I didn’t know how to comfort him. I worried that I was so bad that he couldn’t handle it. Yet there was something else there beneath it all. I felt I had betrayed someone by making love to Larry. That thought scared me more than Larry’s tears.
“I love you, Mick.”
That was the first time he’d ever called me Mick. I liked it. I wanted to tell him that I loved him too, but I wasn’t sure. I did like him a lot and I enjoyed being with him.
I loved the way he treated me. It was nothing like the way my parents did. He wasn’t afraid of me. He didn’t think that I was crazy. He always seemed in awe that I was with him, his face lighting up when he saw me coming toward him. It all gave me a good feeling inside.
“Don’t ever leave me, Mick.”
“Why are you saying that?”
“I couldn’t take it if you left me. I need you, Mick. I need you to make my life complete. Promise me, Mick, promise me that you’ll never stop loving me. Promise me that you’ll never love anyone else, that you’ll never give yourself to anyone else. Promise me that you’ll never fall out of love with me.”
I didn’t answer him. I felt scared deep inside. Larry seemed so desperate that I began to pull away. I had never told him I loved him and yet he wanted me to promise him that I would never stop.
That was when Larry told me about his mother. As he talked, I saw the frightened littl
e boy clinging to his mother’s skirt. I saw him crying alone in the darkness, blaming himself, not knowing why he was abandoned. I now knew why he was such a loner. That picture of Larry struck a chord in my soul and for some reason I mourned the loss of another little boy who’d not had a mother.
Larry was right. He needed me. There was no way I could let him down. Yet I had a sudden urge to run away. I heard a voice clearly in my head urging me to do just that.
I looked into Larry’s tear-stained face. What kind of person was I? He needed me. Then and there I swore I would love Larry always. I would not be the woman his mother was. I would make sure Larry could depend on me.
“Larry, I love you.”
He pulled away to look deep into my eyes, searching for the truth. I knew that from the intensity of his gaze. “Larry, I love you,” I repeated again. I ignored the voice that was now screaming in my head, telling me to run.
“Do you promise to love me always?”
I thought of his mother, of the five-year-old boy that he had been and my heart broke for him afresh. “I promise that I will love you always.”
“You promise me you’ll never love anyone else?”
“I promise.”
“You promise you’ll never let anyone else make love to you?”
I rubbed the tears from his face. I thought of our lovemaking. Why would I want to repeat that with anyone else? It wasn’t that big a deal.
“I love you, and I promise I’ll never love anyone else. I’ll never make love to anyone else. I promise.”
“Will you marry me, Mick?”
I gasped aloud. My head was swimming. I was so grateful that he wanted to marry me. I wouldn’t have to feel ashamed that I’d given myself to just anyone. I would be his fiancée.
“Yes, Larry, I’ll marry you.” I wound my arms tightly around his neck even as a feeling of panic overcame me. Again, I wanted to run. If I didn’t hold on to Larry I would. So I held on to him for dear life.
THE AFFAIR Page 11