She returned her focus to the cocoa. Kitty had introduced her to instant cocoa on those cold winter nights in the dorm at Columbia. They spent many nights sipping the drink while trying to keep Cassie’s monsters at bay. Poor Kitty had put up with a lot during their senior year, including nights on suicide watch debating whether she needed to take Cassie to the psych ward or if talking it out would be enough.
Do not think about those days. They are in the past.
But in Peruvian culture, cocoa was the food of the gods and even part of traditional betrothal and marriage ceremonies.
She would not think about that connotation, either, while sipping cocoa with Lucas. Here in America, it was merely a comfort drink for a restless night.
Lucas brought two mugs of steaming cocoa to the table and placed one in front of her. As far as she could tell, he did not seem to be depressed or needing anything from her other than companionship. She marveled that he seemed pretty upbeat most of the time, considering the great losses he had suffered. She glanced at the cover of The Secret again as she stirred the brown liquid in the mug.
“Is the bed comfortable enough, darlin’?”
She nodded as she took a sip of the too-sweet cocoa. “How about your makeshift one?”
“It’s fine. I’ve slept there many nights.”
Silence dragged out between them for a few minutes as they each seemed inordinately interested in the contents of their mugs. While Lucas seemed comfortable just sitting and sipping cocoa with her, she soon became uncomfortable with the silence—or was it his nearness?
Cassie pointed to the book. “I was surprised to find this on your bookshelf.”
“I found it a few years after Maggie died. Helped me turn things around in my life.”
Ah, so that explained how the man remained upbeat most of the time.
“What did your wife do?” She would not invite him to question her on why she suffered from insomnia, too. Perhaps talking about his wife would help bring up whatever issues were keeping him awake tonight. If he was plagued by ghosts, his wife would be front and center.
“A biology instructor at the University of Texas. Botany was her specialty. Knew everything about every plant growing in Texas.” He paused a moment. “Then she wanted to learn more about mountain ones, so we ventured up here one spring.” His voice grew softer. “Neither of us knew anything about the mountain climes.”
After a moment of watching him stare into his near-empty mug, Cassie prompted him to continue. “You must have felt very helpless.”
His chin shook almost imperceptibly before his jaw tightened. “I was her husband. I should have been able to protect her.”
Before she was aware she had moved, her hand covered the one wrapped around his mug. “Lucas, each of us is responsible for ourselves. She made the choice to put herself in that position.”
“I know. She never had any regard for her safety, but usually I foresaw the dangers and kept her from being hurt. Not that time. I had no idea that shelf was unstable. Just assumed it was a solid mountain ledge. I’ve learned since then about the dangers of permafrost melting and weakened snow masses.” He shrugged. “Back then, I was clueless about mountain conditions.”
She brushed her thumb over his knuckles, trying to comfort him but nothing she did would take away that kind of pain and regret. He needed to forgive himself. He was so much like Adam in that regard.
His gaze pierced her with his smoky-gray eyes. “Can you tell me something, Cassie?”
She hoped she would not regret this response. “I will try.”
“When Maggie came to you that day at the hospital, did she have any message for me other than what you depicted in that sketch?”
“I am sorry. I am not a psychic medium. I did not hear her speak. The image was imprinted on my mind and would not let go until I had sketched and released it. I did not even know who she was at the time.”
Luke quirked his mouth in regret and nodded.
“Is there something you want to hear from her?”
He shrugged again. “Nah. Just wondered.”
It seemed he was being less than truthful. She pulled away. “Is Maggie the reason you could not sleep tonight?”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “No. I don’t dream about her anymore. Not since I was semi-conscious in your cabin. They came back then mainly because of the avalanche.”
If that was true, why would he be dwelling on Maggie tonight? She wished she could remove some of his pain. He was a good man and should not allow regrets over something out of his control to keep him from living life to the fullest.
“The accident was no one’s fault. Maggie’s destiny in this life may have been to die on that mountain, just as yours was to survive. She was a fortunate woman.”
He furrowed his brows. “What do you mean?”
“To have a man who loved her and still pines for her all these years later is a rare and special gift. Most people never find that kind of connection.”
And some, herself included, avoided any chance of allowing someone like Lucas to love them for fear of being…smothered.
But something bothered her, though. “She should not have put you in a position to have to live with this much regret.”
* * *
Blaming the victim?
Luke stared at her, finding no words to respond as her words sank in. He’d gone through the anger phase of guilt long ago but had been overridden with guilt afterward. Blame Maggie for her own accidental death? “She didn’t get herself killed on purpose.”
“No, but she put herself in a dangerous situation. We have to take responsibility for our actions.” A pained look flashed before her eyes before she blinked and looked down at the table.
“She’s dead.” Why was Cassie so adamant about blaming Maggie? Did she blame herself for some action she took that led to disastrous consequences, too?
Cassie continued without meeting his gaze. “Her soul did not die, only her earthly body. I am sure she continues to work from the other side to make amends for making you watch her die like that. She doesn’t want that karma to follow her for eternity.”
Luke blinked. Karma. He believed in an afterlife. Only his was the kind where you have one go-around on earth, and then go to heaven or hell. No do-overs.
“But you drew a picture of her in heaven, Cassie. Why would she have to worry about making amends for the mistakes made down here anymore? She’s home.”
“That was how you interpreted the sketch. I only drew her in the depiction of an afterlife she showed me. She probably knew you would be most comfortable picturing them in the clouds. Heaven, as you see it.”
Luke wanted to go to the bedroom and bring her the sketch to point out other heavenly symbols in the sketch. “You made her an angel.”
“Again, that is how she came to me. I just conveyed her message. You are the one who interpreted it as her being an angel. But I do not believe we humans become angels when we cross over. They are special souls who have held that designation since time began.”
Luke had never been particularly spiritual and hadn’t attended church a lot since he was in high school. “She…” He cleared his throat before he could continue. “She came to me in a dream once and told me she was sending me an angel who needed me.” Had that been Maggie trying to make amends, as Cassie said? Cassie stared back at him without responding, so he continued. “I met Angel—Angelina—the next day.”
When Cassie relaxed, he let her think the same thing he’d thought at first—that Angel was the angel Maggie was talking about.
“So that’s why you call her Angel?”
Luke grinned. “Well, it started out that way.” He hadn’t realized until a week later that Angel, while needing his and Marc’s help that night at daVinci’s, wasn’t sent for him at all. “Then the nickname stuck.”
But at the hospital waiting for news about Adam, Luke began wondering if Cassie wasn’t the angel he awaited. Her long dark hair and olive s
kin fit the image, but so had Angel’s. After the avalanche this spring, he became more certain than ever Maggie only meant she was sending an angel to save his life. He’d been the one to decide to make her his wife, but maybe that wasn’t what the stars had in mind for them at all. Was he trying to force something that wasn’t meant to be—namely having Cassie fall in love with him?
He’d also turned around and rescued her and her alpacas. So that meant the dream’s prophecy had been fulfilled. Then why was it he didn’t want things to end there with Cassie? She’d tugged at his heart since the day they met. Beautiful—inside and out. Smart. Creative. Only Cassie was a lot more than the sum of her parts. She hid her light under the thickest damned bushel basket he’d ever seen, but every now and then a beam of her inner light peeked out. Like now with her just talking to him and trying to help him sort out his feelings about the loss of his first wife.
Not wanting this connection to end, he decided to pursue the conversation further. “You believe in reincarnation, then.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve lived in other bodies in earlier times?”
She nodded. “So have you. But not all incarnations are here in earth’s linear time.”
This conversation was growing deeper than he had intended to take it, but he didn’t want to stop talking and have both of them return to their lonely beds.
“I am certain you are an old soul, Lucas.”
Their marriage license application indicated Cassie was twenty-five, making him eight years older. Her birthday was July the thirty-first. He’d have to be sure and do something special for her.
He grinned. “Sure it’s not that I’m just old…period?”
“Chronological age has nothing to do with the age of the soul. An old soul must begin each incarnation on earth as an infant just like others do.”
Okay, she wasn’t going to let him tease her about this, and he probably shouldn’t. Her thoughts on spirituality made a lot of sense. He wondered what his old man would think hearing about this. Dad insisted Luke find a traditional church to attend back home and throughout college. He’d done so out of respect for his dad, but Luke wanted to explore this philosophy a little further. “What are the signs of an old soul?”
“Being a loner. Introspective. Didn’t quite fit into the role of child growing up. Understanding the transient nature of life.”
She’d nailed him on the first three, but he stopped her litany on that last one. “Who said I understood it? I just learned to accept the unpredictable nature of life for what it is.”
“But what if you planned a chart before you were born in which you and your spirit guides chose which issues you would learn from?”
“Predestination?”
“Not exactly. You might have said you needed to work on handling the fleeting nature of fame, for instance, and you then gained success on the football field only to lose it after college due to an injury or waning abilities.”
He wondered what made her bring up football, but he was more intrigued by this notion that he might have set the Universe in motion to have certain things happen in his lifetime just so he could learn a lesson from it.
“I don’t want to be saddled with guilt that Maggie died so that I could learn some life lesson I set out to learn here. I’ve always believed there’s a loving God, and we aren’t here randomly. All this talk of karma makes me wonder how someone with a disability came to be that way. Did they choose it or did it just happen and then they had to learn to deal with it?”
“That is where predestination becomes interesting and nearly impossible, because you do not know what she put into her own chart or what is a response to karma and what is just, well, random. While we each prepare our own charts, we cannot exist in a vacuum. We have to engage with other souls. That makes life less predictable. You also do not know how the two of you connected in prior lifetimes together. Often we return to work on issues with souls we were with in past lives.”
“I don’t remember any feeling of déjà vu or anything with her. How would I know we had shared some other lifetime?”
“Through meditation, past-life regression…”
No chance in hell he’d be delving into hypnosis and mysticism to try and find out what he and Maggie were doing in a past life. He had both boots planted firmly on the ground and intended to keep it that way. “I’ll pass.”
Her eyelids narrowed. “What scares you about it?”
He leaned back in the chair and sat upright. “Nothing. Just don’t see the benefit in churning up things best left alone.”
Cassie stared down at her mug and he regretted trouncing on her wholehearted beliefs. He had always been one to live and let live.
“It’s fine for those who believe in such things. I just think it’s better to put the past behind you and move on.”
Her voice was barely above a whisper. “Sometimes it is impossible to do that until the lessons you needed to learn have been internalized.”
Okay, then, he wanted to learn so he could put it behind him. “By saying you set certain things in motion, aren’t you blaming the victim?”
She closed her eyes. “No. Free will leaves the responsibility for heinous acts solely on those who perpetrate them.”
Cassie had an answer for everything. But she had demons in her past, too. Luke reached out and stroked the back of the hand she had wrapped around the mug.
“What is it you haven’t forgiven yourself for, baby girl?”
She pulled the mug closer to herself, breaking contact between them immediately. She didn’t answer, but he had no doubt she’d heard him. He let the silence drag out, thinking she might fill it by answering his question.
“I think I can sleep again now.” Without making eye contact with him again, she took her mug to the sink, rinsed it, and started back toward his bedroom. “Good night, Lucas. Sleep peacefully.”
Seconds later, the door clicked shut, and she was gone.
Luke didn’t regret prodding her a bit, but wished he’d done a little more of that with Eduardo when he’d had the chance. Surely the man would know what had happened with Pedro. Somehow, Luke was sure that man was at the center of Cassie’s heartache, but he might never know what happened.
Uncovering secrets from this girl was next to impossible.
* * *
Cassie closed the bedroom door and leaned against it. How had they gone from discussing spirituality to having Lucas pry into her past? She’d only wanted to help him deal with his survivor-guilt issues, not stir up any of her own issues.
“What is it you haven’t forgiven yourself for, baby girl?”
She closed her eyes, but when the movie in her head hit the replay button and she found herself flirting with Pedro and his friends at the bar, she opened them again. Sleep would not come to her this night. She wished she had a studio where she could work on something, as she had done on nights like this many times before. If only…
First thing in the morning, she would ask Lucas to see if they could return to her place. She wanted to retrieve some of her things, if anything survived. Maybe the fire would be under control by then.
Pushing herself away from the door, she walked across the room and climbed back into the bed. Earlier she’d worried Lucas’s scent would linger in the bed, but the fabric softener smell masked that, assuring her he’d made up the bed just for her.
Thank you, Goddess.
Being near Lucas in the other room, having his hand touch hers, stirred feelings she preferred to keep buried. She relaxed when she heard the front door close as Lucas made his way back to his bed in his studio, she supposed. Maybe he would have more luck than she would letting go of the past tonight.
She could never let go.
She closed her eyes, knowing sleep would continue to elude her…
“Don’t go back there, Cassie!”
Cassie startled awake, her own shouted warning reverberating in her ears. She’d trusted the man her parents had chosen to
be her husband. If only she had known to trust her instincts instead.
Images of the men’s brutality brought bitter acid into her throat. She tossed the covers aside and ran to the bathroom, heaving the cocoa and contents of her stomach into the toilet. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she washed her face and brushed her teeth.
Dirty. She felt so dirty. How could she ever be clean again?
She tore off the T-shirt and her panties and entered the shower stall turning on the spray. Picking up the bar of deodorant soap, she scrubbed. A sob tore from her throat. Thankfully the shower would mask the sound if Lucas happened to return to the house.
The scent of the bar of soap conjured up visions of Lucas. She pushed them away not wanting to think of him. She did not want him to see her or to even think about him seeing her. With a washcloth, she scrubbed her breasts until they burned but still could not banish the feel of Diego’s hands on her during the dance that had been a prelude to her nightmare.
Or had it started there in the bar? Pedro knew both of those men. Had Pedro planned for this terrible attack to happen just the way it had? Why else had his demeanor changed so abruptly?
Cassie sobbed and sank down the wall of the shower until she huddled in a tight ball on the tiles, letting the water continue to spray over her face and body. Perhaps if she stayed in here long enough, she could begin to wash away what she had allowed to happen that night.
The filth.
The guilt.
The shame.
Lucas’s face swam before her eyes. Loving what I know of you and trusting what I do not yet know…
Could she share her story with him? A sob tore from her already raw throat. No. She should call the therapist Savannah recommended. She needed to regain control of her life.
Chapter Seventeen
Luke heard the water running in the bathroom when he crossed the yard to the barn later that morning. Cassie must be up. He anticipated having breakfast with her. She’d stirred up a number of issues last night with her talk about the afterlife and reincarnation. He wanted to explore the subject further, curious about beliefs so different from the ones he’d been raised on. But he couldn’t say that one belief or the other was wrong. Just different.
Nobody's Dream (Rescue Me Saga #6) Page 36