The Reincarnationist

Chapter 46

New Haven, Connecticut-Monday, 10:18 p.m.

“Are you all right?”

His heart was ripped open. He was overwhelmed with sorrow and wanted to go back. To her. To Sabina. To their child.

“Josh?”

Gabriella’s voice was coming from far away, and he knew he needed to follow it. Feeling the awful wrench of leaving, he panicked as Sabina’s face dissolved in a great blue-green wave and he reached out for her.

“Josh?”

It was taking too long to reconnect to the present. He should say something, but he couldn’t find the words yet. He nodded. Took a deep breath. “I’m fine.” He was shocked to see his hands on her arms. He’d reached out for Gabriella? The confusion only intensified when he realized he was glad he had. He wanted to be holding her. It felt right.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I have lousy timing,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Because…because you’ve had a horrific few days, because too much has happened, because it’s late.”

“No, I’m okay, Josh,” she said, and from the way she looked at him, she didn’t seem to be thinking it was too late.

They were in the shadows, protected from the street and from the glass windows on either side of the door where her baby-sitter or her father might be watching. Josh pulled her closer and kissed her. It was immediately intense. Too intense. He let her go.

“It’s been a long time for you, too, hasn’t it?” she whispered.

He nodded, and this time she kissed him.

The world fell away and he stopped thinking. He gave up the dream of Sabina for just these few minutes. His nerve endings came alive and his blood warmed. It felt so damn good to feel her body pressed against his, to know she was responding the same way he was.

And then the rain started again.

They separated, and she had a pleased but still hungry look in her eyes.

That was when he realized that hers had been kisses that he’d never had before. There was nothing familiar or known about the smell of her or her taste or the way they fit together. Her hair was soft on his cheek, but he’d never felt it before. He kissed her again. Fell into a darkness that was deeper than the night sky. Her fingers gripped his arms and she leaned far into him. A sadness started at the center of his pleasure, and the two emotions did battle. Giving in to one meant giving up on the other.

Josh had wanted her touch to be familiar to him. For so many nights and days and weeks and months, the search for proof of reincarnation, his past and the woman who inhabited it, had haunted him. Now Gabriella would haunt him, too, tantalize him as something he couldn’t allow himself to have. But for now, for one night, he could feel her skin on his skin and hear her breathless oh as sensations overwhelmed her. It wouldn’t hurt anyone, would it? If, just for a few minutes, he hid inside her kiss?

The rain was falling and the wind was blowing, swirling around them, an embrace outside of their embrace, cocooning them in a whoosh of cool air that separated them from the rest of the world.

And then the sadness won the battle with the pleasure, and Josh let go of her. He couldn’t stay. He couldn’t do that to either of them.