The Color of Forever (30 page)

“No,” he replied. “I knew you would never want to leave your children, so I stayed away. I did my best to move on.”

“And did you?”

He let out a small, bitter laugh. “Not very successfully. I eventually married, but we were only happy for a short while. Money was tight and there were mouths to feed.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I replied. “Are you married now?”

Aaron hadn’t mentioned whether or not Jack had a wife, but I wasn’t sure he would have, because he didn’t seem to enjoy talking about his brother.

“No,” Jack replied. “I haven’t found the right woman, I guess. I’ve been waiting for all the puzzle pieces to slide into place.” He gazed at me in that moment, with a hint of melancholy, along with that warm, comfortable familiarity that I remembered so well.

He had once told me he loved me. I had a strong feeling there was still hope in his heart.

This was too much to take in. Suddenly I felt as if I were drowning in a sea of questions about destiny and fate and what I was meant for, and who I was meant to be with—if anyone. I thought of Mark as well, and the loneliness I had felt in our marriage, even before he left me for Mariah. Bailey had always said he wasn’t “the one.” Maybe she’d been right. Maybe what I had been searching for was the forever kind of love, and I’d wanted it so badly, that for a while I’d convinced myself that Mark was the true mate of my soul.

But did I know any better now? No—I still felt completely unsure of this life and who I was meant to love.

“What about your brother, Aaron?” I asked for the second time. “Is he who I think he is? Is he Sebastian?”

Jack turned to me. “Yes, but he’s completely clueless about it, at least consciously. All he knows is that I have no fondness for him, and he hates me equally in return, but he has no idea why. Not
really
.”

“Were you ever tempted to tell him?” I asked. “To talk to him about it?”

“I did,” Jack explained. “When we were young, I told him we had been enemies once, in another life, but he told me I was crazy and made me feel like an idiot. I stopped confiding in him after that. I never spoke of it again. And we continued to fight over everything. Even from a very young age, we were never very good at sharing.”

Obviously the animosity between them was rooted very deep, even to this day. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like growing up in their home.

“I don’t know what to make of this,” I said, still struggling to find my equilibrium, “or what to do with this information.”

Jack stopped on the path and touched my arm. “I know it’s a lot. But take your time, Katelyn. I’m here for you, for whatever you need—always.”

My insides trembled as every single cell in my body darted about in a state of disorientation. I still couldn’t believe this was real, and that here was someone who understood what I was going through. Someone who was the same as me, because he remembered a past life.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t fail to remember Aaron’s warnings about his brother.

Aaron’s handsome face flashed in my mind just then. I was whisked back to how it felt to be kissed by him—how the whole world had fallen away beneath my feet. I felt horribly disloyal to him suddenly. And confused.

I started to walk again, slowly. “I should tell you that I’ve been seeing Aaron this week, and he’s expecting me back tomorrow. He’s waiting for me.”

Jack walked on in stoic silence. “Are you in love with him?” he asked, point blank.

The directness of the question hit me hard, like a sudden gust of wind. “I don’t know. We only just met.”

And I’d been guarding my heart very carefully.

Jack inhaled deeply, as if steeling himself for whatever might lay ahead. “Please consider staying in New York an extra day. We have a lot of catching up to do, Katelyn, and I’m sure you have more questions.”

I stopped on the path. “Yes, I do.”

He regarded me intently in the fading light. “Then let’s go get some supper. I promise I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

Chapter Fifty

We took a cab back to my hotel so that I could change into something more casual—a pair of skinny jeans, ballerina flats and a tank top and sweater—while Jack waited in the lobby.

We then went for dinner at a little Italian restaurant a few blocks away, and drank a bottle of wine while we talked keenly and openly for hours, about our experiences with past life memories and how they had affected our lives in the present. At times, Jack, like me, had suffered from anxiety and feelings of loss and confusion, when he was unable to understand where those feelings were coming from. Then a year would pass, and he would remember something new, and everything would become clearer.

He told me about some of the books he had read on the subject, and how it was possible that we’d all lived not just one, but a number of different past lives. I asked if he remembered any others, but he did not, and he had no interest in submitting himself to hypnosis and past life regression techniques.

“I’m okay, dealing with this on my own,” he explained. “I know all I need to know.”

It struck me, as Jack walked me back to my hotel, that with Aaron, I had shared none of my suspicions about a past life. Bailey, my best friend, was the only person I had fully confided in. What did that say about my feelings toward Aaron and Jack, or Evangeline’s true feelings toward Mr. Williams and her husband? Had she always felt more comfortable sharing her private thoughts with Mr. Williams? I pondered those questions beneath the flashing lights of Time Square as Jack took my hand and shouldered his way through the throngs of people ahead of us.

At the same time, I couldn’t let myself forget what Aaron had warned me about—that Jack was not to be trusted. Meanwhile, something in me
had
trusted him enough to spill all of my secrets and fears onto the table between us over dinner that night.

It had been that way between Evangeline and Mr. Williams as well. He was the person she had gone to more than once, when she needed friendship, comfort or advice.

My phone buzzed in the front pocket of my jeans just then, and I pulled it out. While Jack walked ahead, I checked it for messages.

It was Aaron, calling me. It was the second time he had called in the past hour, and again, I ignored it and slipped the phone back into my pocket, because I wasn’t ready to talk to him just yet. I didn’t know what I would say, or what I felt.

When Jack and I reached my hotel, he walked me into the lobby.

“Thank you for everything,” I said as I let go of his hand.

“It was my pleasure,” he replied. “And please don’t go back to Maine yet. I have to go to work tomorrow, but I’ll try to find out what I can about the job offer and let you know. And I’d love to spend more time with you. Can I cook you dinner tomorrow night? I still feel like there’s so much we need to learn about each other. And I have some books you might be interested in. You’re welcome to borrow them.”

“I need to think about it,” I found myself saying, realizing that if I decided to stay, I would have to call Aaron and tell him I wouldn’t be back the next day, after all. And if I did that, what else would I tell him?

I said goodnight to Jack and walked to the elevator. As soon as I was back in my room, I called Bailey and told her everything about my meeting with Jack. She could hardly believe it.

“He asked me to stay another day,” I said, “and I told him I’d think about it. Meanwhile Aaron’s been calling me, and he expects me back tomorrow. I haven’t answered his calls. I don’t know what to tell him, or what I should be doing. They’re both amazing men and I don’t want to mess this up.”

“What’s your gut telling you?” she asked.

“I have no idea.” I sat down on the edge of the bed and thought about it for a moment. “Although, I must say, I’m not as physically attracted to Jack as I am to Aaron. The first moment I laid eyes on Aaron, I wanted to jump his bones right there on his desk. But I feel really, really comfortable with Jack, like I could open up to him about anything. He’s just so down to earth and normal, while Aaron is kind of…” I paused. “Larger than life.”

“But you believe he’s your husband from another century,” Bailey reminded me.

“Yes, but what if he was never truly ‘the one’? I don’t remember anything about our lives after that morning at the lighthouse. What if I only stayed with Sebastian because of my children? And to honor my marriage vows? What if I was always secretly in love with Mr. Williams, and he was always the one I was meant to be with? What if that’s what this is all about? To right a wrong. To give Evangeline and Mr. Williams the chance to be together. The chance they never had.”

Bailey considered that. “I think you need to stay another day in New York and see how you feel about Jack. Besides, he works at CNN. That kind of smacks of fate, don’t you think?”

I sighed with resignation, because I was thinking the same thing, yet I didn’t know how I was going to tell Aaron I wouldn’t be coming back to Cape Elizabeth just yet.

Heaven help me, I didn’t want to lose him. Not now, when I was still so unsure.

After I ended the call with Bailey, I sat for a moment and considered my options. I could always text Aaron and lie—tell him I’d gone to a show that night and had turned off my phone, and that I needed to stay an extra day for a follow-up interview at CNN.

But no. If I was going to end up with Aaron, the last thing I wanted to do was begin our relationship with a lie. So, in the end, I decided to come clean, dial his number, and tell him the truth.

At least some of it.

Chapter Fifty-one

“You had dinner with Jack,” Aaron said, after I rambled my way through an explanation about why I hadn’t answered his calls all evening. His voice was cool, aloof. “I thought you said you didn’t meet him today.”

“I didn’t,” I replied. “Not at the news station, but then he texted me later and asked to meet me, and it wouldn’t have been smart to say no.”

“Because of the job,” Aaron said, as if he needed a firm confirmation as to why I would accept an invitation to dinner from the brother he had explicitly warned me against.

“That’s right,” I said.

There was a long pause. “What did you talk about?”

It hardly seemed like the right moment to tell Aaron that I believed I was reincarnated and that I had known him, and his brother, in a past life, and that’s obviously why they hated each other in this one—because they had fought over me before. Based on how he had responded to Jack’s revelation all those years ago, I wasn’t confident he would respond well to mine either.

Would I
ever
tell him about it? I wondered uneasily. And could I be happy with someone who didn’t know everything about me? Wouldn’t that be like living a lie?

“Work, mostly,” I replied. “The whole news industry. There’s a lot going on these days. It’s not what it used to be.”

It wasn’t a complete lie. Jack and I had spent time discussing that.

Again, Aaron was quiet, and I had the sense he was pacing around his condo, not wanting to reveal how agitated he was.

“So you’re not going to come back tomorrow,” he said. “Is that because you’re planning to see Jack again?”

I knew I had to answer the question truthfully, but I couldn’t seem to find the right words.

“Please don’t,” he firmly said. “Don’t see him again. Just come home.”

I found it odd that Aaron would use the word “home,” when I didn’t have a home in Maine. I was only visiting from Seattle, and there was no commitment between us. No promises. We weren’t together like that.

Not that I didn’t want something more solid. I did. Even now, when I was so utterly and totally confused about what was happening here, I wanted that.

The prospect of losing Aaron stirred something in me. A sense of longing. I felt desire in my bloodstream—the desire to return to him, touch him and hold him tight, to give myself over to him completely and never let go, despite the fact that we knew so little about each other.

Surely
that
meant something, didn’t it? That I was feeling desire in this moment? Or was it just a physical response to the sound of his voice and the memory of what a good kisser he was?

At the same time, I didn’t want to be pressured right now. I didn’t want to be given an ultimatum. “I don’t know,” I said. “I need time to think about this.”

He was quiet for a long moment. “You didn’t just talk about the news industry, did you,” he said in a low voice.

Suddenly, I had no trouble finding the right words to reply. “No.”

A prolonged silence caused my stomach to clench tight with apprehension. I waited with bated breath for Aaron to say something, but there was only silence on the other end.

“Hello?” I said. “Hello?”

Still…no reply.

“Aaron? Are you there?”

But the call went dead. He’d hung up on me.

Chapter Fifty-two

I did not try to call Aaron back that night, because I still didn’t know what I wanted, and I didn’t wish to be forced into making a decision. Nor did I feel that I was any position to explain the complexities of the situation to him. He could never understand. I wasn’t sure I understood everything myself.