Chapter 12

It took years to come up for air after Daisy died, but I did. That breath’s name was Jenna. With a single smile she showed me love never dies. We just experience it in different forms, ever-changing like the tides and the stars in the night’s sky.

Since she died, Morgan has been my life support—my new form of love. She’s my purpose for holding my shit together instead of drinking myself into the grave. Being her everything leaves no time for self-pity. No time for mourning. No time for letting my mind be anything but sharp and focused on working, raising a child, and being a role model.

Dr. Greyson helps me navigate the hard parts. I let go of my insecurities and confess my fears in the safety of his office. Then I put on my responsible father mask and do what needs to be done.

However, this week I cancelled my session with him because I need answers that I’m not sure he will have for me. There’s only one person I trust with these questions—a fellow professor at the university. She was my old professor of psychology. With a twinkle in her eye, she used to say pieces of many souls lived inside of her. The most unnerving part was her vast knowledge of everything. More knowledge than anyone could acquire in a single lifetime. Her students say it’s because outside of the classroom, she lives the life of a recluse.

No close family.

No friends.

No pets.

Just books—writing them and reading them. I’ve read several of her books and that’s why I’m here to see her.

“Nathaniel Hunt.” Doctor Hazel Albright peeks out from behind a pile of books on her desk, shoves a bookmark into the one in her hand, and slips off her reading glasses.

At eighty-four, she’s the oldest professor at the university and probably the shortest and skinniest. I think my bag of golf clubs weighs more than her—it might be taller than her too. Her short, gray hair and eyes too big for her head make me think of an aged Tinker Bell.

“What a lovely surprise.”

“Thank you.” I gesture to the door. “Mind if I shut this?”

“Must be serious.” She takes a sip of her tea then removes the teabag, depositing it in the garbage can next to her desk. “It’s a bit early for a nooner, so I guess you’re not here for that.” She winks, moving some of the books on her desk to the shelves behind her.

I chuckle, easing into the red leather chair. “I doubt I could keep up with you.”

“Don’t sweat it, young man. No one can.” She takes another sip of her tea. “Well, Professor Hunt, to what do I owe the honor of a closed-room conversation with you? Things not going well with Dr. Greyson?”

Hazel referred me to Dr. Greyson.

“Things are good with Dr. Greyson. He’s been helpful. It’s just …” I rub the back of my neck and grimace. “I’ve read several of your books.”

“That’s a lovely compliment. You might be the only one who’s read them.” She uses a cotton handkerchief with a yellow embroidered edge to wipe the pink lipstick mark from her tea cup—not a mug, but a delicate white teacup.

“Most of your books have landed on best-seller lists. I don’t think I’m your only reader.”

Her lips press into a soft smile. “And I don’t think you’re here to discuss my book rankings. Maybe if you told me which books you’ve read, I could make a better guess as to why the door is shut.”

“Your books on reincarnation.”

Her eyebrows lift a fraction. “My dear, I do believe you have my attention.”

“I hired a twenty-one-year-old girl to be my daughter’s nanny. And I think …” My momentum runs to the edge of a cliff and skids to a stop an inch before being airborne. It’s funny how limitless the mind is, but such a small fraction of thoughts materialize into spoken words. Somewhere between the mind and mouth exists a sticky web of fear and self-doubt.

Hazel nods while humming. “It’s truly amazing, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t finish.”

“You didn’t have to. Someone special to you resides inside this young girl. You’ve found a familiar soul.”

“I don’t know.” Elbows on my knees, I drop my head and run my hands through my hair.

“Then you didn’t read my books very thoroughly.”

I read them years ago, when I was her student, and I’ve reread them since Swayze broke down in tears three days ago in my garage.

Canting her head to the side, she taps her chin. “Then again, you’re here. The door to my office is shut. And you look like you haven’t slept in days. Who is it? Your wife? A parent?”

“A childhood friend. I named my daughter after her.”

“When did she tell you?”

“Who? What?” I look up.

“Your nanny. When did she tell you who she was?”

“That’s why I’m here. She doesn’t know.”

Hazel straightens in her chair, interlacing her fingers and resting them on her desk. “Then how do you know?”

“She knows things about me that only my friend knew. She talks like she’s known me forever. But when I tell her stories about my time with Morgan—my friend—there’s no recognition of anything about her.”

“How does she explain her knowledge of you?”

“She can’t. And … I think it scares her. The other night she said it’s because she’s reading my mind, but only stuff from the past.”

“Have you tried to connect the dots for her?”

On a laugh, my fingertips dig into my temples. “I can’t connect the dots myself.”

“I disagree. I think you have connected them, and they’ve led you to me.”

“I can’t say the words. It’s too …”

“It’s beautiful and miraculous. Surely as someone who has studied the human body you have to be awed by the division of cells that make life. We are all energy in many forms. Who’s to say we aren’t energy in a spiritual form too?”

I’m not this guy. Words like fate, serendipity, and reincarnation have not passed my lips that often—except with Daisy. “The timing … what are the chances of her coming back to me after Jenna dies?”

“Oh dear …” Hazel presses her hand to her chest. “Reread my books.”

“I did.”

“Then do it again. Focus on the part where I talk about the anatomy of the soul. My beliefs are a little different than traditional beliefs on reincarnation.”

She chuckles. “The western world doesn’t really acknowledge it at all. We tend to get caught up in the belief of one birth, one God, one Heaven, and judgment day. Other cultures acknowledge reincarnation as a way of life. It’s a fact, not a theory to them. And they openly discuss their previous lives.

“I have my own theories based on my personal experiences and memories of past lives. I believe the soul loses parts of itself and picks up pieces of other released souls before settling into human form again. Your nanny is not Morgan. And not ‘yours.’ She may have a part of her woven into who she is in this life, but I don’t believe two souls are ever the same. Just like two snowflakes are never the same. Everything is part of something bigger, small threads of infinity, ever changing.”

She shrugs. “Are we in search of something greater? Does each journey lead to an ultimate goal of spiritual oneness? I don’t know. I guess I’ll know if and when I get there.”

She blows me away. She always has. My father took me to church while my mother cheated on him. His faith gave him the ability to forgive her indiscretions. I believed in God until Daisy died, then I questioned his existence. Jenna gave me back my faith—until she died. Now … I just don’t know what to believe. My father would go into cardiac arrest if he knew where I am at this moment and what I’m discussing with Dr. Albright.

“What should I say to her? She had a moment … a bit of a breakdown the other day, and I didn’t have much to offer except a friendly hug. All words failed me because this young woman had me scared out of my mind with her knowledge of my past.”

“Good question.” She jabs her index finger in my direction. “If she claimed to be your childhood friend, then a simple validation of her claims would make moving forward easier but still awkward because she isn’t exactly the same person. But…” Hazel drums her fingers on her desk “…if she can’t make that connection, then the burden of proof falls upon you.”

“She’s miserable. I feel like telling her might put her out of her misery.”

“Don’t be so sure.” She shakes her head while bringing the teacup toward her lips. “If it doesn’t trigger her memory, which it clearly hasn’t so far, then it could serve as more frustration like someone suffering from amnesia.” Hazel’s lips dip into a slight frown when I release a long sigh. “You miss your wife.”

I nod, focusing on her teacup. Jenna drank hot tea every day. She was a tea connoisseur.

“You miss your friend too.”

I nod.

“You miss you.”

I glance up. Hazel gives me a sad smile. “The people in our lives give color to our existence. When we love, we choose to let part of our heart—part of our soul—live inside of another person. Their happiness is our happiness. Their grief is our grief. And when they die … part of us dies too.”

“If I can find Morgan in Swayze, then I can find that part of myself that died with her?”

With a soft, endearing chuckle she shakes her head. “Wouldn’t that be something? Unfortunately, I can’t answer that. We’re discussing something that a lot of experts won’t even acknowledge as a possibility. It seems we’ve forgotten that the greatest discoveries in the history of mankind have come from bold minds who dared to believe the unbelievable and venture to do the impossible. I guarantee you most of my colleagues think my published works on reincarnation are a disgrace to this department.”

I try to hide my grin. Everyone thinks she’s crazy. At one time I thought so too. Now … I don’t know what to think.

“Thank you for seeing me.” I stand. “I think you’re bold and daring—not crazy at all.”

“Shh …” She winks. “I like crazy. And let me know what happens. I’m awfully intrigued.”

*

Three nights ago Nate dismissed me with a “chin up, we’ll figure this out.” The we’ll meant a lot to me. Since then we’ve exchanged minimal words in passing. I don’t know what he’s supposed to figure out. This is my problem, not his.

Griffin’s avoidance of this subject has been disheartening too. I try to see this from their viewpoints. It’s asking a lot for them to say they believe me.

“That’s a lot of ginger.” Griffin sweeps my ponytail off my shoulder and kisses my neck as I stir and season the Alfredo sauce.

My thoughts return to the present. I’ve been making dinner on autopilot while Griffin’s been glued to NASCAR. “It’s garlic. And yeah, I may have put a little too much in. But can you really have too much garlic in Alfredo sauce?”

He chuckles while lifting the spice bottle I just set on the counter. “No. I don’t think you can have too much garlic in Alfredo sauce. However, I do think too much ginger might mask the Alfredo taste.”

“Shit.” My nose wrinkles as I focus on the label. “Dang it! I’ve ruined dinner.”

“I love ginger … and adventure.” Griffin ladles the sauce over our two bowls of fettuccine. “Stop frowning.” With a bowl in each hand, he bends down and traps my lower lip between his teeth, holding it there until I relinquish a grin that tugs it from his grip. “There’s my girl. I’m not sure I’ve seen you smile for days.”

My gaze moves up his face. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” He jerks his head toward the sliding doors to my balcony as I grab our drinks.

We ease back into the two red-padded chairs separated by a round table. The side street below and old park across from it is a five-dollar view at best, but it faces east so we can enjoy dinner without the blinding sun.

“Tell me about your day or that perpetual frown you’ve been brushing off as nothing.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop. Apologizing.” He grins while shaking his head as he twirls the pasta around his fork. “I’m not mad. I just don’t understand. Have I done something wrong?”

“No.” I poke at my food, but I’m not feeling hungry. “I have something to tell you, that’s all.”

Griffin coughs, and coughs, and grabs his water, gulping the whole thing down. My nose wrinkles as I make a guess as to what has him so choked up. Tapping his fist to his chest, he clears his throat. I take a tentative bite of my pasta.

“Ew … yuck!” I spit it back into my bowl. “I love ginger too, but this is nasty and not an adventure.”

Griffin laughs while digging his phone out of the pocket of his jeans. “I’ll order pizza.”

I take our bowls to the kitchen and return with the pitcher of ice tea to refill our glasses. Griffin loves blueberry rooibos ice tea. I love that this amazing man beside me doesn’t need a constant buzz to enjoy life—to enjoy me.

“Forty minutes.” He slides his phone onto the round table and holds out his hand.

I take it, letting him pull me onto his lap. Griffin nuzzles the back of my neck under my ponytail.

“Are you dumping me?” he mumbles as his arms hug my back to his chest, fingertips slipping under the hem of my blue tank top to tease my skin. “Is that what you need to tell me?”

I giggle because his touch tickles and his words are ridiculous. “No, I’m not dumping you. I’m never dumping you. And if you try to dump me I will hunt you down, tie you up, and take away your bike until you come to your senses.”

Laughter rumbles from his chest. “What if I cheat on you?”

“I’ll cut off your dick, but you’re still mine.”

“Oh … that’s wrong, baby.” His body stiffens beneath me like he’s trying to protect said dick from my evil threat. “You’d miss my dick.”

I cover his hands with mine and interlace our fingers to keep him from tickling me. “I would, but you’d still have your tongue.” Propping my legs up onto the railing, I let go of a long sigh. “I called the school and told them I had to regretfully withdraw my acceptance for the temporary teaching position this fall.”

“What? Why did you do that?”

“Nate asked me to watch Morgan full time.”

“And you said no because you have your very first teaching job. Right?”

I shake my head. “It was just for maternity leave.”

“It’s a job, Swayze.” Griffin’s voice escalates.

“So is watching Morgan. Nate pays me.”

“So it’s Nate now? I thought he liked to be called Nathaniel.”

My feet drop to the ground, and I scoot sideways on his lap to look at him, but before I am turned I already know there’s a hard scowl affixed to his face. I can tell from the sharpness of his words and the way his hands grip mine harder when I say Nate’s name. “He’s Nate to me.”

“What does that mean?”

“You know what that means.”

Griffin shakes his head with caution. “No. I don’t think I do.”

“Stop acting like we didn’t have this conversation even though you haven’t said a word since then. Ignoring it won’t make it go away. I know because I’ve tried.”

He scratches the back of his head. On instinct my eyes go straight to the flex of his bicep and the tightening of his inked skin covering it. But now is not the time to get distracted.

“The mind reading thing?”

My head falls to the side. “That’s what we’re calling it?”

He grunts a laugh, holding his hands out, palms up, before letting them flop back down to the arms of the chair. “Do you have a better explanation for it yet?”

My eyes narrow while my insides knot into a hundred little angry fists ready to fight, ready to defend. “You think I’m crazy.” I stand and distance us until my back touches the railing. “I knew it. Why didn’t you just say it? Why pretend to be supportive? Did you really think it was nothing more than wacky hormones or lack of sleep?”

“You know damn well I never said that. But I did say you should look for another job, not accept a full-time position in the very environment that brings about these episodes.”

“Episodes?” My head juts forward as I grab the rail. “I’m not having seizures or breakdowns or feelings of dizziness. This doesn’t go away. I know what I know and it’s real, not some illusion or dream.”

“Okay, calm down.” He reaches for me.

I let him grab my wrist, but I don’t submit to his pull. Hugging me, nuzzling my neck, and touching my skin may turn me on, but it won’t change what’s in my mind. He scoots to the edge of his seat when I resist his silent command to surrender to him.

“You can read the professor’s mind … or see into his past. Whatever it is … I’m just saying nothing good can come from immersing yourself in the very environment that’s causing you this stress. The answer isn’t spending more time with him and Morgan. You have a life, a degree waiting to be used, and a boyfriend who wants to spend the rest of his life with you.”

Tears sting my eyes. I don’t like having my future—my dreams—laid before me like all I have to do is grab it. I can’t grab it. Whatever is going on in my head feels bigger, like I’d be living a lie if I didn’t figure it out before letting it go.

“Are you asking me to marry you?” I rub the tears from my eyes before they escape.

Griffin leans back, interlacing his hands behind his head, eyeing me with the intensity of the sun. “It wasn’t a proposal. I may be a jerk sometimes, but I’m not the guy who uses a marriage proposal as a distraction or to win an argument. I just meant that I love you more than any man will ever love you. And your happiness means everything to me. But you don’t seem happy right now. When you accepted the teaching job you were happy. Before you met the professor you were happy.”

That’s my dream. As much as I want to be a modern, practical woman who sees how ridiculous it is to spend thousands of dollars on a white gown, expensive floral arrangements, and a sit-down dinner for two hundred people, I’m still the twenty-one-year-old girl who hears love songs on the radio and imagines waltzing around a dance floor in a wedding dress as Mrs. Griffin Calloway.

“I am happy. But I’m also scared. It’s not just Nate. I told you, before I saw him at Dr. Greyson’s office, there were times that I’d see people at the store or a movie or wherever and I knew them. But it was always a brief thing that I shook from my mind like crazy déjà vu moments.”

He shrugs. “That’s normal. I see people who look familiar to me and it drives me crazy because I know I know them, but I can’t remember their name or how I know them.”

I laugh, shaking off his efforts to empathize. “You see someone familiar and it drives you crazy because you can’t remember anything about them, but they look familiar and that’s the only connection your brain makes. I see certain people and I know their name is Craig Hall, homecoming king, ACL injury in the season-opening football game. He vaguely looks familiar because my memory of him is of a time before his black hair peppered to gray and his waist was a thirty not a thirty-four.”

Griffin looks at me with an unreadable expression. I’ve been avoiding a psychiatrist who has years of education and experience. He’s probably heard everything, yet I expect my twenty-three-year-old boyfriend to grasp something beyond comprehension like a great Renaissance philosopher might do? I don’t think Griffin’s soul is quite that old.

This is impossible to explain, but I try anyway. “If you told me you saw the ghost of your great grandma Annabelle and her poodle Corky, I would think you’re crazy. If you told me you levitated six feet off the ground while listening to Slipknot after an intense workout, I wouldn’t believe you.”

Griffin takes several large gulps of his tea and watches it as he circles the glass, rattling the ice. “You’re giving me permission to not believe you?”

“Yes.”

“So if I say I think you’re losing it, will you be mad at me?”

“Yes.”

His head snaps up, brow drawn tight. “But you just said—”

“I know. I’m asking you to lie to me if the truth hurts. I’m asking you to love me even when you don’t understand me. It’s selfish and immature. I’m selfish and immature. But I’m also alone and scared and going through something that has derailed my life. So maybe you think I’m crazy now, but if I don’t figure this out I will most certainly go crazy beyond anything I am right now.”

Griffin studies me for a few seconds. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah. Okay. But I want you to go see a doctor.”

“Dr. Greyson?”

“No. A doctor who will make sure you’re …” He clears his throat and takes a hard swallow while rubbing his hand over his mouth and looking at the floor between us.

It’s heartbreaking to see him struggle to say what he wants to say.

Big brown eyes look up at me. “I want … I need to know that you’re okay. Physically.”

“I’ve had a physical.”

“Jett’s wife died of a brain tumor two years ago.”

My perpetual frown returns. A tumor has crossed my mind, but I don’t see how a brain tumor could explain this. “Sorry, I didn’t realize your boss had a wife that died.”

He nods.

“I’m not sure how a brain tumor could do this. I’ve had scans before—when I was younger and too smart for my own good. They came out clear.”

“Jesus, Swayze! Can you just do this for me?” He bolts to standing.

I freeze. This is not Griffin. He’s calculated … controlled.

Caging me in with his hands resting on the railing, his brooding eyes trap me in his gaze. “Please,” he whispers while lowering his brow to mine.

The gravity of the pain on his face elicits chills along my skin and sends my heart into my throat—thick and pulsing. “I love you so fucking much.” His voice breaks as he brushes his lips over mine. “And I’m scared too.”