Eternal (18 page)

“This must be a photo of some of the people who lived here.” Mom’s declaration snared my attention.

She had put the dress aside and now, she held a small case that looked like a book with hinges. I recognized it as an antique picture frame. Every nerve in my being seized taut. I shook. Without seeing the photo, I knew it was of Jeremiah. It was the one I had wanted to find.

Time stood still as Mom pressed her thumbs into the seam and pried open the frame. Not daring to breathe, I stared down at the original photograph of the one I’d seen in the magazine.

Mom’s head cocked to the side. “This guy was kind of handsome.”

A chill swept down my arms and a hunch hit me that something significant was about to happen.

“You know, the…
ghost
…Ella told me about fits this boy’s description,” Mom said, tracing his face with her fingertip. “Dark hair. Light eyes.”

My breathing quickened. I tried in vain to keep my hand from trembling as I practically snatched the frame from my mom. Renewed love rushed over me like a rogue wave as I gazed at Jeremiah’s beautiful but stern face. “All these old photos look alike,” I said. “She could have been describing anybody.” For added emphasis, I said, “There’s a boy who rides our bus that looks sort of like this. Ella has a crush on him.”

I didn’t offer to give the photo back to Mom. Instead, I clutched it and peeped over her shoulder into the trunk. “What else is in there?”

Mom took the bait and with all the excitement of an archeologist opening an Egyptian tomb, she dropped to her knees and began prowling through the trunk.

After a while, I was satisfied there was nothing else inside that belonged to Jeremiah and when we heard Ella’s boisterous voice, Mom quickly packed all the items except the two which I still had in my possession back into the trunk, closed it, stood and brushed the dust off her hands.

I’d hoped Mom had forgotten all about the photograph I held in my hand.

No such luck.

“Let’s show that to Ella and see if she recognizes the boy in the picture.”

I blew out a silent but exasperated breath. “That’s why I was bringing it down,” I lied.

But when Mom went down to greet Ella, I prudently disappeared into my bedroom.

Ten

My eyes blinked open and slowly focused on Jeremiah’s figure standing at the foot of my bed. A slow smile crept across my face.

“I didn’t mean to awaken you,” he said, seeming to float to my bedside. His gaze slid past me to my nightstand. “You found my
carte de visite
.”

“Your what?” I asked him, my voice raspy from sleep.

“
Carte de visite
. My photograph.”

I twisted to glance at his photo standing in its little frame on my nightstand and then I looked once more at him. “You don’t mind, do you?”

One side of his mouth drew up in a lopsided grin. “I’m flattered.”

“I found your coat, too,” I said, gesturing toward his gray wool jacket which lay lovingly folded at the foot of my bed.

“I was wearing that when I was struck.” His expression turned serious for a moment and then he seemed to shake it off. “I really am sorry for waking you.”

“I don’t mind,” I said, unable to take my eyes off him as I scooted over so that he could sit. The few hours I’d spent without him had seemed like an eternity and my heart swelled with joy at the sight of him. He appeared just as happy to see me.

“What were you doing?” I asked.

He brushed an errant lock of hair from my cheek. “Watching you sleep.”

The act was so suddenly tender, my breath caught.

“You purr like a kitten when you sleep,” he teased.

“I do not.”

“It’s quite becoming,” he added, smiling.

His smile unraveled me, especially when those devastating dimples appeared at the corners of his lush lips. My entire body hummed with the desire to touch him, kiss him, to feel him next to me. My smile faded as I held his gaze and drew back the covers in unspoken invitation.

For a brief moment, he stared, torn, and then he kicked off his shoes and moved under the sheet and blankets with me. Folding me in his arms, he pulled me close so that our foreheads touched.

I held him, weaving my legs with his, wondering what it would be like if he were alive. Would I feel the same?

“When was the last time you slept in a bed?” I asked, merely curious.

“The last time you slept.” His velvet-soft voice caressed me.

My nerve endings sparked to life. “You’ve slept…with…in my…in my bed before?”

“Do you find it strange?”

“No, no,” I said quickly. “I…just wondered why you didn’t wake me up.”

He cradled me close. “Because you are so beautiful when you sleep.”

In the dark, his eyes were the color of charcoal, his thick lashes even darker. When I reached up and cupped his face with my palm, he turned into my hand and kissed the tip of my thumb. My heart rioted.

“I would give my soul to be a flesh and blood man,” he murmured.

I couldn’t stop shaking. “W-why?” I bit my bottom lip, desperately awaiting the answer.

His gaze slid to my lips and then back to my eyes. “Because I would put a ring on your finger and make you my wife.”

Unable to resist him any longer, I moved restlessly against him, threading my fingers into his hair. My mouth found his but despite my attempts to turn our kiss into a passionate one, he kissed me back with frustrating restraint.

I pulled away. “Jeremiah, I—”

He pressed his thumb to my lips to silence me. “Don’t say it, Wren.”

“But—”

Pain lurked in his eyes. His forehead furrowed. “Can’t you understand that I
feel
it?”

I stared, not comprehending.

“I know what you’re feeling for me right now. You don’t have to say it.” His throat muscles worked as he swallowed. “I wish you
wouldn’t
say it.”

A shard of fear struck my heart. “You don’t…feel…the same way…for me?”

He pressed a chaste kiss to the tip of my nose. “Foolish girl. It’s all I can do to lie here next to you. I want to be with you so badly and I…I love you so much that I’m terrified you’ll come to your senses and forget I ever existed.”

His words sank in, defying all reason. My world tilted.
He loved me.
My heart soared. I opened my mouth to speak but he silenced me again. This time with a tender kiss.

I melted in his embrace, kissing. Wanting. More. Always more.

He set me back again. “Wren, please be patient. This short time is hardly long enough to know what you want for the rest of your life. And if you were to love me and then leave me…I’m a jealous man. I’m afraid I could never let you go.”

His fears were unjustified and I knew it in my heart. Why wouldn’t he let me explain?

“If you love me as much as I feel that you do, then you will wait,” he said.

No part of my body wanted to wait for anything but I heard myself agreeing out loud. I relaxed into his sweet embrace and contented myself with just being near him, however difficult it was for me.

When he drew my head onto his shoulder and stroked my hair, I laid my open palm on his chest, letting my index finger slip through the opening between the buttons to rest on the smooth skin beneath.

“That’s better.” He breathed the words.

I snuggled against him. “How can you be so in control of yourself when my whole being burns for you?”

“I suppose it’s because you have a physical body,” he stated.

“But I can touch you, see you.”

He inhaled. “But you’re the only one.”

“Ella saw you. She said you winked at her.”

He chuckled.

“And Waylon…heard you,” I said, daring to revive a sore subject.

“Perhaps they saw and heard me because you can.”

“That still doesn’t answer my question,” I said, doggedly pursuing an answer.

“The reality is, I’m a spirit. I can move through a wall, this bed, even you.”

I tingled with delicious anticipation at the thought of him moving through me.

He resumed. “You perceive me as a solid entity because I want you to.”

The idea that he could, at a whim, take himself away from me—as he had done before—turned my blood to ice. I really hadn’t considered what his spirit might be made of. Until now.

Doubt abruptly flooded me that he existed at all even though I lay here in his arms. What if I’d been so desperate for love that I’d created him? What if he existed only in my mind?

My imaginations were silly. Both Waylon and Ella had seen him. I’d found physical evidence he’d lived. I heaved a sigh.

“Why are you afraid?” he asked. “I feel your fear.”

“I’m afraid I’m just crazy. Nothing has been the same since the accident.”

“I have detected more than fear in you when you talk about your accident.”

I began to tremble and could not stop. Alarm that he’d sense the true nature of my panic crashed over me. He cradled me closer, but this time I had to fight the urge to jump out of bed and get as far away from him as possible.
If he knew what I’d done…

I couldn’t bear his disappointment.

Tears welled in my eyes and I could do nothing to prevent them from cascading down my cheeks. Why did I always seem to be crying around him? I’d managed to hold all this grief and guilt in since the accident. Why now? Why with Jeremiah? Why couldn’t I pretend it had never happened and go on with my life?

I wanted desperately to be the girl—woman—I pretended to be, but even though I’d experienced a temporary death that night in Atlanta, it was as if I’d been the one who really died that day instead of Kira.

Jeremiah drew in a deep breath and then blew it out slowly. “When my brothers were killed during the war, I was so angry, I ran away to join the Confederate Army,” he confessed. “In doing so, I broke a promise I’d made to them and to my mother.”

“You’d promised not to join?”

“Yes. I promised them all I would continue to study law and become a lawyer. But when they died, I understood that my fate would be to become a farmer like my father.”

My heart ached for him. “You didn’t want to do that?”

“Not at all. I had no desire to follow in my father’s footsteps.”

“That’s not so unusual,” I told him.

“Maybe not,” he agreed. “But I felt my fate was being thrust on me. When I slipped off to join the Confederates, it was almost as if I had a macabre wish to die in battle.”

“Why?” But I, too, knew the feeling of wishing I had died and Kira had lived. For the first time, it struck me how she might have felt if that had been the case.

“I can’t explain it other than I couldn’t fathom why they had died and I still lived. Guilt ate me alive,” he said. “And on the long march from Decatur to Franklin, I kept trying to imagine what my life would be after the war and I could not conceive of it.”

He took another deep breath. “In addition, I felt somehow it was my fault my brothers had died.” This time, his voice was quieter. More sober.

I swallowed hard. I knew what he alluded to. “Why…why did you think that?”

“Perhaps I never should have made any promises to my family. Perhaps I should have been a man from the beginning and marched away when war was declared.”

“You couldn’t have known that.”

“Precisely,” he said, fingering a lock of hair away from my scarred cheek. “I could not have known. It’s easy to imagine in retrospect what you would have done in a given situation.”

My body grew rigid. He knew.

He knew.

Although I didn’t think I could bear it, I lifted myself off him to look into his eyes. There was no condemnation or disappointment. Instead, I found only compassion.

“There’s a dam inside you, Wren. A dam that’s holding back your emotions.” He held my gaze as he brushed the dampness from one of my cheeks. “I can never…meld…with you as long as it exists.”

He didn’t have to explain what
meld
meant. I knew he insinuated that it was a way we could commit to each other, to connect spirit to flesh—to be
married
.

I stared, debating whether to tell him about my part in Kira’s death or not. I didn’t want anything to separate us, to keep us apart, and if my guilt stood in the way…

I took a deep breath. “It’s my fault my friend died.”

“How so?”

I pushed myself up and tucked my knees underneath me. He rose up as well and took both my hands in his. “How so, Wren?”

Gnawing my bottom lip, I contemplated telling him everything. I very much wanted to unburden myself but more than that, I wanted his understanding. His love.

And yet, I couldn’t bear his pity or his disapproval. “I don’t want to tell you,” I said.

“It won’t change how I feel about you,” he assured me.

I searched his eyes. “Even if I…killed my friend?”

“Did you do it intentionally?”

“No!” I wailed. “Of course not.”

“Wren,” he said with a severity I’d never heard in his voice before. “When I was shot at Franklin, when I lingered, hovering between life and death in this very bed, all I could think was that I had essentially killed myself. I understood at that moment what my promise to my brothers and my parents had meant. As a spirit, I hovered, watching them grieve for me. I attended my own funeral, watched my mother weep beside my grave in her mourning black and watched my broken hearted father collapse in a fit of sobbing when he thought he was alone in his room.”

His eyes narrowed as he obviously struggled with the pain of his memory.

“I have stood in your place and I will not judge you.” A muscle in his jaw twitched. His hands squeezed mine. “Tell me what happened to you.”

I sniffed. “We were driving. It was dark. I think it’d been raining. I got a text message.” It occurred to me that he might not know what a text message was. “On my cell phone?”

“I’ve lingered a long time. I know what a phone is.”

“The message was from a boy Kira liked. It was about her. He wanted to go out with her. I-I was excited for her and I told her to read it. I handed her my phone and she…she told me to…to take the wheel. To steer while she sent him a text back, pretending to be me.”