A Destined Death (17 page)

After buying my ticket, I started writing my novel while I waited the three hours for the bus to arrive. When it did, I got a window seat beside a young girl in a bright teal jumper.

“Ali,” she said boldly, holding out a hand.

“Hi, Ali. I’m Elizabeth.” I shook her hand.

“I’m going to see my dad.”

“I’m going to see the Lady of the Harbor.”

“At midnight?”

I shrugged. “It was the first bus out.”

“My dad’s taking me there tomorrow so maybe I’ll see you. Oh!” The girl’s long, blonde braids swung as she shuffled through her bag and pulled out a card. “Here, take this.”

“What is it?”

“It’s my ticket to go up to the crown. You have to buy them months in advance. My dad bought it for me.”

I pushed her hand away. “I can’t take that.”

“You’d be doing me a favor. You see, my father has no idea what acrophobia is or how severe mine is. I was going to tell him I lost it anyway.”

“Thank you then.” I put the ticket in my bag and slipped a hundred dollar bill into her hand.

“Thanks!” She nodded approvingly before she shoved it into her own bag.

I leaned against the window and looked out into the dark night, wondering what I should do after I saw the Statue of Liberty. I’d done more new things in the last week than I’d done in the last twenty years but it still wasn’t enough. I’d lost so much time.

“Hey Ali, if you could do anything you wanted in your lifetime, what do you think you would you do?”

She giggled shyly, covering her mouth with her hand to whisper. “Besides marry Ryan Reynolds, you mean?”

“Yeah, besides that,” I said, giggling with her.

She looked upward for a minute to contemplate and then shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m twelve.”

“I don’t know either and I’m twenty.” After an awkward silence, I leaned against the window to rest my eyes.

“Please come home,” Draven begged. He rubbed his thumb over my cheek while we lay together in a tight embrace. “You’re not safe. Something else could happen. You could die.”

I snuggled into his arms, thankful to be there. “You’ve already made it clear that my outlook is bleak. Does it really matter when I die?”

“Yes. That’s what matters the most!”

Willingly, I started unbuttoning his shirt. “I don’t understand.”

His typical frustration puckered his face before he said, “I love you, Elizabeth. You know I do.”

Two more buttons. “Then why did you ask what you did?”

“Because I love you!” he demanded almost angrily.

The final button dropped out of its hole. I didn’t feel his anger. I felt perfectly peaceful. “Why do you want to hurt me if you love me?”

“It’s the only way,” he said solemnly.

“I want to understand.” I slipped my hand inside his shirt and ran my fingers over his hard, strong chest. My own body responded with butterflies and a racing heart.

He sat up and took my face in his hands. “I know you love me, Elizabeth. I know you can feel it. Tell me you can feel it and all this can end.”

Ali tugged on my arm and jerked me awake. “We’re here! Come on. I want you to meet my dad.”

She pulled me into the bus station and didn’t let go until right before she hugged her dad. He was a nice looking man, clean-shaven, wearing a dark blue suit. I couldn’t get past how much his hair looked like Draven’s. The man straightened when he noticed me staring awkwardly. “Who’s your friend, Ali?”

“Daddy, this is Elizabeth, and she’s going to the statue tomorrow too. I thought maybe we could meet her there.”

“Sure we could. I’m Arthur. It’s very nice to meet you, Elizabeth.”

I smiled and shook his hand when he offered it but my mind struggled to remember my dream. I knew I had been in a good place, and Draven had been there. I desperately wanted to remember what he’d said.

“So we’ll meet you at the ferry? We have to board by 10:30 sharp.”

After I agreed, I spent the night in a close hotel and met them the next morning as planned. I took a lot of pictures and bought postcards in the gift shop while we rode the ferry and visited the lady. When it was time to go up to the top, Arthur asked Ali to dig out her ticket.

“I lost it,” she lied with a glance at me.

“I’ll go up with you,” I offered, winking at Ali. When he agreed, we took the elevator to the top. “You do know she’s afraid of heights, right?”

“No, she’s not,” he grumbled, “and I’m really sorry about this. She tries to set me up with every woman she meets. I’ve been divorced for three years, and she thinks I’m lonely.”

“Are you?”

“Hell yeah, but it’s over for me.”

When the elevator stopped, we moved into the crown. I snapped pictures of the bay, without really looking. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, when you find the one, that’s it. You don’t want anyone else. I still truly believe my wife…ex-wife and I are supposed to be together. You might be kind of young to understand this but we had this magical connection that I’ve never had with anyone else.”

“No. I understand,” I said. Inside, another hole broke open in my heart, and I felt a sort of lonely kinship with the man in front of me.

Once back at the base, I snapped a picture of Ali and Arthur hugging before we said our goodbyes. I returned to the mainland alone and took a cab to the nearest one-hour photo developer. While I waited, I found a deli and filled out the postcards I had bought on the day’s trip. I explained that I was traveling and hadn’t called because I’d forgotten my phone. After the hour, I flipped through the newly printed pictures and removed the non-statue ones. I sealed the envelope, put Heather’s address on it, and then mailed them at a post office across the street.

With all my current obligations fulfilled, I took a cab to the airport where I stood in a long line for an hour. When I finally reached the help desk, I said, “I want a ticket to the City of Love.” I figured it would be the best place in the world to nestle down and write my romance novel.

“Passport.” The blonde reminded me of Brenda, only older and her face was harder, meaner, a hint that she hated her job. 

I looked at her blankly. “Oh, I don’t have a passport.”

“You’ll need a passport to leave the country.” She looked irritated when she handed me a pamphlet. “The soonest you’ll be able to get one is two weeks, and it could take up to eight.” She gazed behind me at the next customer.

“Oh, wait, I do have one. I’ll go find it.”

“I wish I had a passport
,” I thought while I searched for a place to sit down and eat. I didn’t care if I was being unfair by making an impossible wish because I guessed he could conjure one out of thin air if he wanted to.

Confident as I was, my heart nearly stopped when Draven walked up to my table and sat down across from me. I had just taken a bite of my turkey club and almost choked on it, my throat closing up before I could swallow. After an embarrassing coughing fit and several drinks of water, I tried to hide the way my chest rose and fell at the sight of him. He wore black, fitting for what he’d asked of me, but I couldn’t see past the sexy way his body moved.

He frowned when he handed me the passport. “I don’t suppose I could talk you into going anywhere but there?”

I shrugged, gazing into his eyes until I found the peace I needed to slow my pulse. I wasn’t about to shut down his opportunity to apologize. “What did you have in mind?”

“The Caribbean?” he suggested.

“Too sunny. I’d be distracted.”

“How about Hawaii?”

“Nah, too hot.”

“Alaska?”

“Too cold.”

“Why don’t you go back to South Dakota?”

“While you wait for me in the attic?” I rubbed my arms like I had goose bumps. “Too creepy.”

“It’s safer there,” he insisted.

I raised my eyebrows at him questionably.

When he caught my meaning, he looked away and sighed. “
Please
, go anywhere but France.”

Sitting back, I folded my arms over my chest. “Why?”

“I don’t like it.”

I shrugged again. “It’s the City of Love. I should fall in love before I die, don’t you think? I want to break someone’s heart so they mourn me when I’m gone. It’s on my bucket list.” When a low growl came from deep down in his chest, I smiled at the response. “And I’m a virgin, remember? I don’t intent to die that way.”

In seconds, he moved around the table, and his lips crushed mine with a desperate fever. His hands dove for my waist, and I forgot we were in a public place. “Please, don’t go,” he begged.

“Other men will have me, Draven,” I breathed. My heart raced as I wrapped my arms around him and kissed him like it was our last. “Will you be able to hear it when it happens?”

He pushed away from me and narrowed his eyes, but they softened immediately. “Do whatever makes you happy, Elizabeth.”

I took his advice and leaned into him, kissing him from the bottom of the heart that he possessed. He hadn’t bought my bluff, and I still ached for him. That would never change.

“Thank you for the passport,” I whispered before I released him and grabbed my bag.

I didn’t rush. I waited in the longest line and then waited for my flight, giving him four full hours to agonize with the grief of missing me. He sat across from me at the terminal gate, staring at me with a pained look on his face but he wouldn’t speak. He didn’t apologize. When my plane finally took off without him, I couldn’t stop crying.

****

Paris was exceptional. At first, it felt cold and lonely but I guessed anywhere without Draven would feel that way. I found a hotel with an amazing view of the city at night, and I could see why it was also nicknamed the City of Lights.

I spent the following days sitting at a nearby bistro writing. I’d made it to chapter eleven when a handsome man sat down across from me on day four. “Bonjour, Mademoiselle.”

“Hello.”

He wore jeans with a dark shirt and a lightweight, black leather jacket. His shoulder length black hair was styled back neatly on his head, held in place by some obviously powerful gel. He had dark brown eyes that weren’t quite as beautiful as Draven’s. A large dimple appeared on his right cheek when he smiled. “You’re American! Thank God!” he said, dropping his forced accent. “I can’t stand trying to pretend I know French.”

I laughed. “Why do you do it then?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I live here so people just expect it. It saves me from hours of explanations.”

“How do you explain if you don’t know French?”

“That’s my point!”

Thinking he seemed nice, I smiled when he chuckled. “So what are you doing in Paris?”

“Admiring you.”

I held back an eye roll at the line. “Spoken like a true Frenchman, I imagine.”

“I suppose.” He propped his elbow on the table and chinned his hand to smile at me in a truly charismatic way.

Finding his dimple distracting, I finally put down my pen. “Umm…Is there something you want?”

“Well, honestly, my client bailed on me so I happen to have the rest of the week free. I decided there couldn’t possibly be a better way to spend it than showing a beautiful American woman around Paris.”

“What kind of client?” I asked curiously.

“Oh no, Mademoiselle,” he said, shaking his head and talking with his fake accent. “The correct response is, ‘Thank you, kind sir. I’d love a tour of Paris.’”

“No, thank you. I have a lot to do.”

“Oh, come now. I’m offering my services free of charge. Tours of the city are normally very expensive, you know.”

“I know but I don’t date men whose names I don’t know...anymore,” I added thoughtfully.

“Smart woman.” He chuckled and held his hand across the table. “Ben, Ben Van Horning, at your service.”