Old Souls

          She waltzes over to me, hips swaying. Then, fast as lightning, she reaches up and brushes her mouth over my scarred cheek.           My breath hitches as she lingers, her fingers lightly caressing the line from my temple to my neck. My heart twinges, shifting in my chest, aching for . . . something I can’t have.           She stares at me. “I like your face. It’s you. Oh, you were pretty before the scars—in fact, I liked to call you Henry Cavill . . . that jawline is wicked hot—but now . . .” Her shoulders shift. “You have character. Meaning. You survived and came out on the other side flawed . . . yet beautiful.”           I frown, grappling with how I feel about her words. “I’m not beautiful.”           “Beauty isn’t on the outside. I learned that in the pageants. I met some beautiful women who were ugly on the inside and some who were incredible. Beauty is how we go on, the life we create around us. Living a life that’s meaningful. I’m not sure I’m there, to be honest. I’m

          The tension was so thick I could taste it in my throat, but I pushed forward, unwilling to let him off the hook so easily.           “We’re only together because of a deal you made with my father. What’s it to you if my ex shows back up in my life? You know the wedding would move forward either way,” I said. “Are you afraid I’ll break the engagement? Run off with Heath and leave you looking like a fool in front of your friends? Why do you care?”           “I don’t know!” The force of his reply stunned me into silence.           Dante’s granite mask cracked, revealing the torment underneath.           “I don’t know why I care. I just know I do, and I hate it.” Self-loathing coated his voice. “I hate the idea of you touching anyone else, or anyone else touching you. I hate that other people can make you laugh in a way I can’t. I hate how I feel around you, like you’re the only person that can make me lose control when I. Don’t. Lose. Control.”           Every word, every step b

          “That’s not what I want.”           “A treasure chest of fake diamonds?” He wiped a tear away with a thumb, and the caress pulled honesty from my throat.           “I want you to care...” The words settled so thick and uninvited in the room they made my ears ring. It went so silent one could hear a pin drop. Or a heart-shaped earring.           Ronan’s hand dropped from my face, and with a harsh sound, he pushed away from me. “You’re a goddamn headache, you know that?”           His reaction hit me in the chest. I was the headache? He was the one who was so hot and cold, he gave me whiplash. I may be embarrassing myself again, but at the end of this, I would regret not having told him the truth. I would regret acting as if I didn’t care. Now, he knew, and clearly, he didn’t mean I could have “anything” by his look of disgust. This was turning out to be a really shitty day.           “I guess I’ll take the fake diamonds then,” I muttered and headed to the door.           “I fe

        “I’m sorry,” she said, dragging her eyes back to Daniel. “Could you, um, say that again?”         “I get to live forever,” he repeated. Luce was still lost, but he kept talking, a stream of words pouring out of his mouth. “I get to live, and to watch babies being born, and grow up, and fall in love. I watch them have babies of their own and grow old. I watch them die. I am condemned, Luce, to watch it all over again and again. Everyone but you.” His eyes were glassy. His voice dropped to a whisper. “You don’t get to fall in love—”         “But...” she whispered back. “I’ve... fallen in love.”         “You don’t get to have babies and grow old, Luce.”         “Why not?”         “You come along every seventeen years.”         “Please—”         “We meet. We always meet, somehow we’re always thrown together, no matter where I go, no matter how I try to distance myself from you. It never matters. You always find me.”         He was staring down at his clenched fists now, looking lik

“You have a client to call, remember?” “Never trust a flight attendant or much of anyone with our case work. We’re waiting until we have our drinks and they pull the curtain. And that’s not paranoid. I know an attorney who ran his mouth on a flight. He later found out that the flight attendant had been paid by opposing counsel to listen in on his conversations. Needless to say, the case took a brutally bad turn for him and his client. They lost.” “I would have never been paranoid enough to worry about such a thing,” she admits. “Lesson learned and thankfully not the hard way.” “It’s a good reason to never use your client’s name in public, and a lesson I’ve learned personally from experience, don’t say anything on the phone you don’t want recorded.” “You’ve had that happen?” “Once,” I say. “I almost lost the case over something that wasn’t at all what it was made out to be by the prosecution.” “But you didn’t lose.” “That’s the thing about a winning record,” I say. “Anyone who has one,

          Her eyes softened. “I’ve never seen you eat the morning muffin.”           “I have.”           “When?”           I shrugged. “Whenever you sent stuff with the guys on duty. But I don’t let myself eat much of anything you bake.”           “Why?”           “Because it would give too much away. I worried that if I showed how much I loved your food, everyone would see.”           “See what?”           “That I’m in love with you.”           Her breath hitched. “Austin.”           “I love you, Cleo.” Saying the words loosened something in my chest. Something that I’d been holding in for far too long. “I’ve been in love with you since the day I walked into the bakery and spotted you, covered in flour and blueberry stains on your fingers.”           “But that was . . .” Her forehead furrowed. The beginning. I’d been in love with her from the beginning. “All this time?”           I nodded, bringing a hand to cup her cheek. There was no use pretending. We were in this together now, vul

          It was only on the second day that my mother's voice whispered in my head, an old memory. Back from high school when I rolled the dice on a guy who promised a future, took my virginity, and then moved onto the next girl within a week. She'd found me sobbing in my bed for the third night in a row, coming in, sitting down, and placing her hand on my hip.           "Some men will be worth two nights of your tears, Meads," she informed me with a knowledgeable nod. "But not a single one in this whole wide world is worth three nights of them. So you are going to get up. We are going to order pizza. And watch a movie. And move on, okay?"           She'd been right. That boy had not been worth three nights of tears. Neither had a single one after that. - Jessica Gadziala, The Babysitter (Professionals #5)

          “Just some photos of people I met during my travels,” she says in a detached tone.           I point inside. “May I?”           She swallows, then shrugs her shoulders. “Be my guest.”           I’m not sure why I’m drawn to the collage. Maybe it’s because I think it’s going to give me some insight into Solange’s personality beyond the information she sent me. Now that I’m close to it, I can see that Solange is in every one of them. Looking relaxed and content. With people of different ages and racial backgrounds. All smiling proudly. “They’re wearing hotel uniforms.”           “Yes,” she says, appearing at my side, her arms crossed over her middle. “They’re the folks who clean the rooms. Or the bellhops who bring up people’s bags. When I was a child, my mother would always task me with finding out the name of the person who was responsible for cleaning our hotel room. Before we checked out, she’d leave a tip, and I’d leave a note, usually consisting of a terribly drawn pictur