THE AFFAIR

by Davis, Dyanne

  Blaine frowned slightly apparently having decided to let go of the fact that I’d not answered about remaining in his life.

  “You know there’s no guarantee. So far we’ve only seen images of us, of our past. I have no control over this, Michelle,” Blaine offered, “But we can give it a try if you want to.”

  My heart felt as if it had wings. It would work, I knew it would. Staid, stilted, responsible, traditional Michelle Powers was asking a psychic to help her have a vision. Wow, what a transformation.

  We sat close together, our knees touching slightly. Blaine held out his hand. This was my show; I would decide how to do it. I reached the tips of my fingers out toward his, not quite touching him, yet I could feel the magnetic force. I closed my eyes and thought of Viola and the accident.

  I could see it clearly. I was driving, my mood cheerful. I saw myself look down to push the number on the CD player in my car. Number seven of the Police. I listened as the sounds of Sting singing ‘Every Breath You Take’ came through my speakers.

  I saw myself singing along with the music, checking the rearview mirror occasionally. I glanced over at the sidewalk, heard my voice saying, “Oh no,” as I realized that an elderly woman was stepping out in front of me.

  I pressed my foot on the brake as hard as I could, but it was too late. The woman flew up onto the windshield of my car and fell back down.

  I watched her groceries fall in slow motion, the cans of tomato sauce, the eggs as they broke.

  I looked to the other side of the street and saw the city bus. The elderly woman had walked out into oncoming traffic to catch a bus. I had forgotten that.

  I pulled my fingers away from Blaine and opened my eyes. I didn’t need to see Viola lying there sprawled on the ground. I didn’t need to see the blood, or feel her touch. I would never forget it.

  Blaine looked at me with concern. “You have your answers?”

  “More than I ever imagined. I did see Viola and I tried to stop but there wasn’t time. It was very important to me to know if I’d not been paying attention. I was. The accident really wasn’t my fault but my breaking my promise to her was. Blaine, I know now why I cried so hard in the parking lot. When my groceries fell, I thought of Viola.”

  I closed my eyes and saw myself in another life, as Dimitra covered in blood, my life ebbing away. All that blood surrounding Viola had made me subconsciously remember Dimitra.

  I looked at Blaine. “You’re right. I am the key. Chance knew me because the moment we met, I was remembering my death.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Michelle, It’s time to face him. You’ve waited a lifetime for this.”

  Blaine ran the pads of his fingers down my arms. “He deserves to know that you remember.”

  I raised my head from Blaine’s chest, where it had been resting since I discovered I had not been at fault for hitting Viola. That guilt was gone.

  Still, I felt bad that I had not kept my promise. Now I knew why promises were so important to me. Jeremy and Dimitra had made promises that had not been forgotten, through death or another lifetime.

  Breaking my promise to Viola had started a chain reaction which made me fully remember my past. I might not have remembered had it not happened. Blaine was right. I had to see Chance, the husband from my past that I’d called out to in my dreams.

  “Blaine, leave it to me, allow me to tell Chance in my own time that I’ve left Larry. Promise me.”

  “No, Michelle, I won’t promise.”

  I looked into his eyes, puzzled. “Why?”

  “Because your promises are binding. Chance is hurting and I don’t know that I want to be a party to his pain. He’s stayed away from you out of respect for your marriage. You’ve ended it. There’s no reason you can’t be with Chance.”

  I reached out my hand to touch his face. “Blaine, I wasn’t a very good mother this time around. I know what you want. You’re a psychic, you tell me, is it in the cards for me to finish out this life with Chance?”

  He turned away. “You have the power to do what you want, to love whom you choose.”

  “That wasn’t my question. I know how miraculous this all is, that we found each other. But what about my family? I’ve cheated them out of so much. I didn’t want children.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  He was watching me closely, trying to read something that I wasn’t saying. “I didn’t. I did the things for them that a mother is supposed to do, but I always felt removed from them. The only one of them able to break through my reserve was Derrick.” I remembered my eldest. For a short time after her birth love for Erica had been overpowering. I had no idea when or how it left.

  “I still don’t believe you,” Blaine said softly.

  “Only because you don’t want to. You want to see me with Chance, here and now. You want us to be the family we didn’t get the opportunity to be before. Blaine, I’m not a saint. I’m a woman who’s made a lot of mistakes in her life, and who’s hurt a lot of people, probably more than I was even aware of.”

  “How could a woman who had so much love for her baby that with her dying breath she told that baby she loved him, not love her children in this life?

  “That woman’s love lived on through death and found that son. Don’t deny that you love me. I know you do, I feel it in your energy, I see it in your eyes and I feel it in your touch. Love doesn’t die, Michelle.”

  “Then why didn’t I feel that with my kids? Why did I feel so distanced from them, why didn’t I want them?” I sobbed.

  Before I knew what was happening, Blaine grabbed my hands and held on really tight. “I don’t know, but I’m damn sure going to find out,” he said.

  “No, Blaine. I’ve been through too many memories today.” He ignored me and held on.

  I fell against him as both of us relived his birth. I heard Blaine ordering me to focus only on Dimitra, on her thoughts, her feelings.

  We’d never done that. I didn’t know if I could. It was hard to not focus on the infant, or on Jeremy who was in agony over the death he knew he couldn’t prevent.

  “Focus,” Blaine shouted at me. This time I attempted to push my mind past the blood, past the poverty of the couple in the room. I concentrated only on Dimitra. I became one with her, allowing myself to enter not only her body, but her mind.

  It worked. I heard the thoughts she didn’t utter to her husband or child. I heard her crying out to God, asking him why he would give her a baby only to take her away. I heard her thinking, “In the next life, I’ll never love another child, because you’ll only take it away from me.”

  “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” I moaned over and over again. Blaine released the grip he held on my hands and gathered me in his arms, letting me cry until I felt cleansed.

  “I knew it,” he said to me as he patted my hair as if he were the parent comforting the child. “I knew it all along. A woman with love strong enough to defy death couldn’t not love her children. Michelle, because of your fear and your wanting to keep your children safe you buried your love so deeply into your subconscious that you wrongly thought it didn’t exist.”

  As I stared into Blaine’s eyes the memories came rushing back, the love for Erica, the pride in the miracle of her birth. He was waiting for me to speak to give him some profound wisdom. I had none. I had more questions than anything else. He was the one I was seeking out for knowledge.

  “Blaine, it would have been so much easier if I had known. I’ve carried this guilt around since Erica was just a baby.”

  I looked up at him. “But I do think I understand what you’re trying to say. My soul was trying so hard to convince God that I didn’t want my children, didn’t love them, so he wouldn’t snatch them away, that I convinced myself.”

  “Exactly. The mind is a very powerful instrument. Now that you know, how do you feel?”

  “Grateful and relieved. To know this within myself, that it’s not just your telling me but my knowing that I love them has fr
eed me.” I couldn’t help smiling.

  “I’ve always loved them. I was too afraid that if I admitted it, or allowed myself to feel it, they would be taken away. What kind of karma do you think I’ve created for my kids?” I shook my head.

  “I’ve only met two,” Blaine sighed. “Derrick loves you. It’s not too late to start over with all of them. Bad things happens, people die, that’s all a part of life. But if it happens,” he tilted my chin to look into my eyes. “Sometimes we’re lucky enough to see each other again.”

  For the next week I worked, going to Blaine’s office as soon as I was done. It was his suggestion. He freed up his calendar in order to have dinner with me each evening.

  He’d stopped asking me to call Chance, for which I was appreciative but surprised. On this particular Friday we’d decided to take in a movie before dinner. I was looking forward to it. I knew Blaine was trying to fill my hours to diminish the pain of my failed marriage.

  I walked into Blaine’s office saying a cheery hello to his secretary whom I’d become quite comfortable with. I found it odd that she didn’t look at me as she usually did, but instead looked away and told me to go ahead in the office that Blaine was waiting for me. He was. So was Chance.

  “Chance.” I looked from him to Blaine. “What are you doing here?”

  As he walked toward me, I attempted to tell him not to come any closer. Before I could, I was in his arms and my world was spinning.

  “You said you were going to call,” Chance whispered into my ear.

  “I couldn’t. I wanted you to hold me much too much to try a phone conversation.”

  “Michelle.”

  He moaned my name over and over. I felt the solidity of my bones changing, melting, and flowing forward to combine with him.

  An instant before his lips claimed mine, I saw Blaine leave the office. Chance moved his mouth closer, hesitating a nanosecond to gauge my resistance.

  How could I resist him, this dark-haired lover I’d vowed to love throughout all eternity? I gave in to the desires of my heart as his lips, warm and inviting, melded into mine, his tongue plumbing the depths of my mouth, my tongue battling his.

  He was holding me tightly against his heart. I couldn’t tell where the beating of his heart began and mine ended.

  “You’re free now, Michelle.”

  “No, Chance, I’m not.”

  “I’m not going to lose you again,” he declared. “I’m not going to let you go.”

  I felt my energy combining with his and everything that I thought existed in this life, in my sane, sensible world, faded away. I was whisked away with the speed of light across time after time. Each time, I was with Chance, in his arms, loving him, always his wife, always.

  Each life had been lived joyfully and ended as a natural cycle of things, until the last time we were together. That was the only life we’d not completed.

  It felt as if I were going to fall. My strength gave way and I could feel my body begin to fall. I was in Chance’s arms. His face was wet and covered with tears, his and mine combined. He was kissing my checks, my neck, my throat and his love, so pure, so real, wrapped me in a cocoon of safety.

  I had found the other half of my soul. I could only hold him without speaking, knowing that I was in his arms again and he was safe. I felt that I had just completed something, a circle. That was it. The circle was now complete.

  Blaine re-entered the room and looked to the floor where I was cradled in Chance’s arms. “What happened?”

  Chance looked up at him. “I thought you were going to give us a few minutes.”

  My eyes followed Blaine’s, as he looked at his watch then gazed back at Chance. “I’ve been gone over an hour. What happened?” he repeated.

  “She fainted.”

  I blinked twice. I didn’t remember that. “I had a vision,” I told Blaine. “I saw Chance and me living out our lives, time after time.”

  “That wasn’t a vision you saw. Those were memories.”

  Blaine helped Chance raise me from the floor. I felt a little woozy. “That’s never happened with Chance. I thought it was just between us.

  Blaine glanced from one of us to the other. “Did you feel the same burst of energy that you feel when we touch?”

  Though the words sounded innocent enough I knew in my heart Blaine was hoping that particular connection was only between the two of us. “No, nothing like that,” I finally answered. “It was just when Chance kissed me…” I stopped, blushing with embarrassment.“He kissed me and suddenly all of these scenes flashed before me. It was almost as if I were in a movie observing myself in different bodies, different times. Yet I knew it was me, and always the man was Chance.”

  Chance was smiling at me. “We were destined to be together from the beginning to the end of eternity. Our lives were always preordained. That’s why you called me. That’s why I looked for you and that’s the reason I found you.”

  I knew the words Chance spoke were true but there was something missing. Something had short-circuited in this life to prevent us from finding each other before we had a chance to hurt others.

  “While I agree with you, Chance, in all the other lifetimes, we were young, in our teens, early twenties when we found each other. We lived our lives fully, we grew old together. Never once did I sense that we had hurt anyone to be together. We were always born knowing that the other existed.”

  “Why didn’t it happen this time?” Chance asked. I couldn’t help noticing a puzzled look on his face.

  Blaine looked at us both. “I don’t know the answer to that. Maybe you both chose not to know. Maybe in this century you didn’t want to endure others’ disdain. In earlier times it was okay to believe. Now it’s not. Even if they believe in reincarnation most people don’t admit it.”

  Chance held my face in his hands. “It doesn’t matter, we’ve found each other. I’m not going to let you go.”

  “Chance.”

  “Don’t. I see it in your eyes, but don’t say it. Not now,” he pleaded.

  I looked to Blaine for help. My emotions were tumbling around inside me. Yes, I loved this man madly. My heart, soul and spirit belonged to him, but I had the niggling doubt that this lifetime, for whatever reason, was not meant to be spent in his arms.

  “Chance, I have to go with Blaine, we’re having dinner.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Chance lifted me in his arms as though I was nothing but feathers. I guess I was. I’d lost twenty-five pounds, the twenty I’d gained and an extra five.

  I buried my lips in his neck. I knew where we were going and what he wanted. I wanted it too.

  In the blink of an eye, or so it seemed, we arrived at Chance’s home. “Chance, don’t,” I protested as he once again lifted me in his arms, prepared to carry me through the door.

  “Shhhh,” he answered softly. “This is what a man does with his new bride.”

  “But I’m not.”

  I wanted to protest, but the look in his eyes prevented it. No words have yet been invented to describe that look, something so much more than love and adoration, something purely spiritual. For this moment in time I could deny him nothing.

  This time in his home, I welcomed the energy of our combined souls that had called out to each other. I felt the warm embrace of the rooms enfolding me in supreme love. Crouched beneath my feelings of joy were the first pinpricks of sadness. I pushed it away from me. There would be time to deal with whatever it was later. For now, this time, this moment belonged only to Chance and myself.

  He kissed my hands one at a time, then walked to the middle of the room. I watched him push the buttons on his tape player, not in the least bit surprised when Sting’s voice came on, singing, “Every Breath You Take.”

  How appropriate. It was so true. With every breath, I was closer to Chance, loving him more, remembering more, no longer running from my many pasts with this man, but capitulating to the inevitable.

  I was in his arms spinn
ing around and around believing that Sting had written the song so that when Chance and I found each other it would speak for us, saying the things we didn’t say. It did the job beautifully. Thank you Sting, for the song.

  I felt the fire beginning in the big toe of my left foot, the burn scorching me with its fervent power. It wasn’t long before the flames of desire filled my entire being, rushing over and through me like a giant tidal wave. I succumbed to the lust raging in my soul for this man I loved.

  Together we sank to the floor, the music having cast a spell over us. We could not take another step. The bedroom was too far away and our hunger, our need, too intense, too close to be denied. Chance’s lips touched me all over, as mine did him.

  I loved him with every cell in my entire body. I was his and he was mine.

  He entered me and I looked in amazement into his eyes, seeing clearly every moment of every life we’d spent together.

  Then something strange happened. As we began the exquisite climb together toward total bliss I saw us together in the future, blissfully happy and free to love. Chance was holding me in his arms. Suddenly a sword materialized out of the air and with one quick swipe, separated us.

  I saw myself crying out for Chance, screaming, “No God, no.” And a faceless voice answered me. “You stole one lifetime. This one I take back.”

  I saw myself crying, desolate, begging God for another life with the other half of my soul. I grew old, unloved, barren, always searching for Chance, always. I opened my eyes, fighting back the tears.

  This time Blaine couldn’t tell me it wasn’t a vision I had, for I knew it was. I closed my eyes, giving in to the lust of my soul, knowing within my spirit what the vision meant. This lifetime was not meant for me to be with Chance.