LOVE ME TO DEATH - Chapter 8

Maggie Shayne
Oct 29
7 min read

A chapter-a-day for 10 days! Your Halloween Treat from Maggie Shayne

It was, Sara thought, ridiculous that with her life falling apart at the seams and her very sanity in question, she couldn’t seem to think about anything but David. David’s hands. David’s mouth. David’s eyes.

She’d only just met the man, but it felt to her very core as if she would die if he didn’t touch her. Kiss her. Soon.

She stood beside him at the headstone of Padma Kasir, chilled to the marrow to realize the woman she’d seen and spoken to was not a hallucination. She had been real, once. And she had been related to Sierra Terrence, who was buried right beside her. It would have been easier to believe she’d imagined the woman than to believe she had seen a ghost.

“She was real,” she whispered. “But I couldn’t have seen her. I couldn’t have talked to her.”

“How else would you have known where she lived twenty-some years ago? In the only yellow house on the street?” David asked. “Or even that she was Sierra’s aunt?”

“I don’t know.” Sara had turned her eyes away from the grave and was staring now at the headstone beside it. Sierra’s grave.

“It must be hard for you to be here,” David said softly.

She lifted her eyes quickly. “Why would it be? It’s not my grave. I’m not her.” The wind blew. She shivered and hugged her arms around her.

“I know, I know. I just... You’re connected to her somehow. I mean, you must be.”

“Apparently.”

“But how?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“No, really.” David touched her shoulder, turning her so that she faced him instead of the cold gray stone. And all she wanted was to be folded up in his arms, held against his broad chest. She felt as if she’d been waiting forever for him to find her, and now that he was here, she didn’t have the guts to tell him so.

“Really,” he went on. “You must have some gut feeling about all this. What is it?”

She lowered her head. “Did you love her?” she asked.

“Nice way to change the subject.” David sighed. “You’re freezing. Let’s get you inside.” He took her arm and started to lead her back to his car. Hers was still parked along the roadside in The Heights.

But after only three steps, she planted her feet in the snow, and he was forced to stop. He frowned at her, puzzled. “What’s wrong?”

“I want you to tell me. Did you love her?”

His lips thinned, he blinked slowly. “I was sixteen.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I know. I know it’s not. To be honest, Sara, I’ve been asking myself the same thing for the past twenty-two years. At the time, I thought I loved her, but I thought I loved the three girls who’d captured my attention before her, too. The thing is...I never stopped thinking about Sierra. I never stopped aching, hurting, regretting, wishing it had been different. I’ve never thought about any of the other girls I dated the way I keep thinking about her.”

“But you didn’t set a fire that killed any of them, either,” she said.

Her words hurt him. Hurt him badly, she saw that in his face. “No,” he said softly. “No, I didn’t.”

“So maybe that’s why you’ve been obsessed with her.”

“Maybe. But over the past couple of weeks, it’s been—”

“It’s been what?”

He blinked, searching for words. “Worse, I guess. I’ve been dreaming about her—or you. I’m not even sure which.”

“What happens in the dreams?” she asked.

He parted his lips, then closed them again and shook his head. “Let’s get in the car where it’s warm.”

“Because I’ve been dreaming about you, too,” Sara said, still not budging. “I’ve been dreaming about making love to you.” She blurted it quickly, forcing the words out before she lost her nerve. “Is that what happens in your dreams, too?”

He held her steady gaze, his eyes showing surprise, and then gradually softening into something else. “Yeah. That’s what happens.”

“Did you ever—make love with her, in real life?”

“I never even kissed her.”

“If you kissed me, right now, do you think you’d be kissing her, in your mind?”

He lifted a hand to her face, his fingertips gently pushing the hair off her cheek, then sliding slowly down it. She let her eyes fall closed, and felt his breath on her lips as he moved closer. And then, suddenly, only cold.

“I’m not going to kiss you, Sara.”

Her eyes flew open, and then burned, though it was ridiculous to feel this much disappointment over a man she’d just met. Even if it did feel as if they’d been together for lifetimes.

“Why not?” she whispered.

“Because—because you’re sixteen years younger than me.”

“That’s not a reason and I think you know it.” Her eyes were wide now, and focused on his.

He nodded. “Maybe not. Then let’s go with this one. I don’t know the answer to the question you asked me. I don’t know if I’d be kissing you, Sara, or if I’d be kissing a memory that has built up in my mind until it’s more than it ever was, or probably ever would have been. And that wouldn’t be fair to you.” He turned then, started walking. “I’m going to the car.”

She stood where she was. “Padma said you were my soulmate. Do you feel that’s true?”

He stopped walking, but said nothing.

“She spoke to me as if I was Sierra. She kept saying that I had come back, to make things right. I think…I think she was talking about reincarnation, David.”

Turning slowly, he faced her.

“I’m very scared right now. Because the next thing I need to do is talk to Frank Terrence, and for some reason I’m petrified of doing that. If you leave me now, I don’t think I can do it. And I feel like I have to. I need you, David.”

His face seemed so incredibly sad. “This is tearing me apart, you know that, right? To go back over all this, to open it all up again—it’s killing me.”

Sara lowered her head, closed her eyes and felt tears burning to escape. And she didn’t look up, not even when she heard his footsteps coming closer, hurrying through the snow. And then he was clasping her face between his palms, tilting her head back and lowering his mouth to hers.

The instant his lips touched hers, she twisted her arms around his neck, and the sound emanating from her chest was one of mingled longing and relief. She opened to him, pressed tighter, kissed more deeply. He hugged her waist and bent over her, and it was as if they were sucked into the spiral of a whirlpool, where nothing else existed. Only this point of contact. This kiss. It was everything in that moment. It was everything.

When he lifted his head away at last, his eyes were tumultuous. There was desire there, yes, but there was also confusion. And above all else, this overwhelming sense of relief. It was an exact mirror of what she was feeling.

“That didn’t feel like a first kiss,” she whispered.

He nodded in agreement. “Maybe it would be better not to...try to analyze it right now.”

“I don’t know that I could if I tried.”

“No. No, neither do I,” David said. “So let’s leave it for now. I’ll go with you to see Frank Terrence. But if we don’t want the man to keel over dead, maybe we should do something about your... appearance?”

“How? You have a suitcase full of disguises in your Jeep?”

He shrugged. “No, but I have a baseball cap and sunglasses.”

“Not very creative, but I suppose it’ll do.”

He took her hand and started toward the Jeep. She went a few steps, but then stopped him and when he turned, she leaned up and kissed him again.

He stared down at her. “I don’t know what this is, Sara.”

“Don’t you want to find out?”

His eyes were pained, but sincere, too. “I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know if I can handle it.”

She felt her brows push against each other, but then nodded as she tried to understand. Every time he looked at her, he must be reminded of his crime—the mistake that had resulted in a young woman’s death. And a horrible death, at that.

That might very well be too much for anyone to bear.

“I guess I get that,” she told him. “Try to hang in with me, though, would you? Just until I figure out what the hell I’m supposed to be doing here?”

“I don’t think I have a choice.”

“I’d never try to push you into—”

“No, that’s not what I meant.” He hooked an arm around her waist, pulled her closer, held her in a tight, warm embrace, and his face was in her hair, and she knew he was feeling, smelling, relishing her, just the way she was relishing him. “I meant, I don’t think I could stay away from you if I tried. At least, not now. Not yet.”

“But maybe.. .later?”

“Sara,” he whispered, dropping his forehead against hers. “We just met. Why don’t we try to take it moment by moment? Just for now? Think you can do that?”

“I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life to find you,” she whispered. “I feel like we’ve always been together. And I don’t know anything about you. And that makes no sense whatsoever, David, but that’s what it feels like.”

“I know.”

She held his gaze for a long moment, then nodded. “Okay. As long as you know.”

“I do.” With a deep sigh that sounded like one of regret, he looked at his watch. “It’s after nine. He might be in bed if we wait much longer.”

“Let’s go, then.”