Chapter 34 #2
In perfectly Reid fashion, he has not crossed the line with me at the bar, much as I would’ve loved him to. He’s my husband, after all. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know that yet. He was simply waiting for a drink, for him and this girl—his fiancée—and I wouldn’t leave him alone.
Ouch.
I vise-grip my eggnog with one hand and hold out my other politely.
“I’m Sutton,” I say, pulling from every actress skill in my book. “I start at the company in a few weeks.”
The girl’s screech alone might threaten to shatter glass ceilings.
“Congratulations!” She shakes my hand, hard, combing me up and down with her doll eyes.
“I’m Maddie. Wow, you are, like, so pretty.
The guys are going to eat you up!” She swats Reid’s biceps.
“You better look out for her!” She looks back to me.
“Reid will look out for you. Won’t you, baby? ”
Baby, again?
Reid’s jaw hinges open. He pulls at his chin like he’s mystified. His brain is so itchy, I almost feel it myself. I know this because I know him and his every living expression. He is still trying to place me.
I feel familiar to him, like skin.
If he only knew.
Maddie doesn’t seem to notice that his eyes haven’t left me—but I’m about to do the classy, adult, starkly high-road thing and make this breezy for everyone.
Plus, I need to exit this moment before I pass out on the floor.
I hold up my eggnog and point to their drinks, what look like two vodka sodas.
Twins.
But not my twins.
Or ours.
My eyes burn.
“Reid, Maddie,” I manage with grace. “It was so nice to meet you.” My mouth is a hyphen, tight and ungiving. “Merry Christmas. You two have fun.”
I peel my eyes from Reid’s face—its questions and kissable lips—bowing my head and sifting through the holiday partiers, beelining for the door. I’ll pass Jesus the guard, and I don’t even care. Perhaps he can give me a blessing on the way out.
“O Holy Night” provides the soundtrack as I stumble down onto the curb, but holy is the last thing I’d call this evening.
The winter air engulfs me with its chill.
I burrow into my fur shawl, but it’s not enough, not nearly. My pace speeds along the sidewalk, and soon I’m running as fast as these heels will carry me. I resent that they’re tall as the skyscrapers all around me.
When I get to the Plaza’s front entrance, I stop.
I look up to the hotel, to its comfort, to Quinn—and then I spin around, to the fountain across the way, and beyond to what is still the original charming FAO Schwarz and not just another Apple Store.
Toward Fifth Avenue and the lights, my body carries me.
Away from marble hallways and into the night.
I pinch my forearm, leaving incisions, hating that this is real.
Pivoting away from the Plaza, I pick things up to a power walk. While I stroll as fast as the taxis, I hug myself, imagining my pain bleeding out the bottoms of my poor feet. They’re getting sore, finally.
The stores are closed, but they’re all lit up.
My spiritual window-shopping, admittedly, has a different effect at night.
It feels less reminiscent of heaven and fate—and more like Dickens’s chains of regret and ghosts of everything past. I look away from a Christmas jack-in-the-box in the Saks window, shivering as he sneers at me.
Block after block, in ten more minutes, just past Fiftieth Street, I follow the jolly hum, scarves, and boots of so many holiday night wanderers—toward the radiance of their destination. They’re all streaming toward the same place.
As I follow them, I allow the tiniest smile when I see where we’re going. Rockefeller Center, the ice rink, the giant Christmas tree. Gold-trumpeting angel statues taunt me, reminding me of my redheaded guide, but it’s all so indescribably magical, I can’t complain.
When I reach the rink, I look below, where skaters scatter across the ice.
Late hours, on holiday time. I see flirty dates and families and the Prometheus statue.
I traverse the perimeter, lined with flags, fixing my gaze on the Christmas tree, its reds and silvers, greens and golds, drawing me like the Bethlehem star.
Finally, I stand before the tree’s majesty, eyes up.
If I wasn’t Kevin McCallister yet, I sure am now, with a Christmas prayer.
But I don’t even know what to say.
I close my eyes. I’m begging you. Please, please show me how to get back to Reid and my family. I want everything you have given me—the life I already have. Please, I’ll spend the rest of my days being thankful.
Standing in the silence, reverent and spent, I’m left with no choice but surrender. The fight flees my body. I swallow, squeezing my eyes shut. Breathing. Releasing.
Then, I feel him before I hear him.
The warmth again, behind me this time, spreading under my breastbone.
I can’t explain it, other than the feeling of something fragile and weighty that can’t be contained.
His breathing is heavy.
Slowly, I turn around.
Bending over, Reid palms his knees.
“You’re fast,” he pants.
I look side to side, though I’m not sure for what.
Did my prayer really work that quickly?
“Did you—”
“Follow you?” His torso heaves with each breath. “Kind of. I slipped outside shortly after you, but I couldn’t find you. I found a bellhop who said he saw you running toward Fifth Avenue.” He exhales. “I kept running.”
Gideon, I instinctively know, my warrior tipping his hat.
I fold my arms under my fur, at which Reid peels off his jacket.
“You must be freezing,” he says. “Take this.”
I stifle a laugh, knowing how much he sweats. I take it anyway. Give me it all.
With as much as I have to say, though, I suddenly want him to start, so I wait, snuggling into his suit coat.
He searches my eyes, and I stare back, unwavering.
I want him to feel what I know.
Thumbing his jaw, he speaks. “I know you. I know that I know you from somewhere. It’s driving me crazy. I’ve never felt anything like that before.” He gives a vague nod back to the party. “You said we’ve met. Tell me. Where?”
“What did you say to your fiancée?” I hear myself ask. “When you ran?”
He shrugs. “I said you seemed like you might be in some kind of trouble.” He pauses. “Are you?”
I weigh my words. “Depends on your viewpoint, I guess.”
“Crazy guy who just ran eight and a half blocks to find you?” He half smiles. “That viewpoint.”
“Then, yes.” I smile, adoring him, all over again, more with his every word. “I’m in very, very big trouble. Think you can save me?”
He squints, assessing me fully. “Who are you?”
I exhale, lifting my face to the tree, to the star on top, bright as the moon.
I close my eyes one final time before I open the truth, no turning back.
“707-87-6112,” I recite.
His brow furrows. “Did you just tell me my Social Security number? I don’t know if that’s impressive or creepy.”
“Let’s go with impressive,” I say. Because I’m just getting started. “Your favorite color is blue. You double-majored in history and economics at UCLA.”
His throat rolls.
“You get nightmares sometimes,” I say. “You just . . . sit up, you cry, and everything’s always fine, and you can never remember specifics. But I rub your back till it passes.”
He’s rubbing his fingers together now, thumb and pointer.
I point at them. “You do that—when you’re nervous.
Among other things. You saw me at the bar, and you thought I was beautiful.
But you’re loyal. You’re honest. You’re good.
” I pause. “You’ve never cheated on anything or anyone in your life.
You’re from Newport Beach, California, but you’ve always loved New York City. ”
I think he might bolt at this point. I’ve prepared myself.
Sort of.
This is just so much information. I could be a PI, a prophet, a psycho.
Wife in another life tends to sit pretty far down on the list of guesses, I’d think.
Instead of running away, though, one tip of a dress shoe steps toward me. I reach for his hands to steady them. “You don’t have to believe or say or do anything. I just need”—I pause—“to tell you who I am.”
He lets me hold them, his hands, twice the size of mine.
Home again.
Let’s go home.
“You have a scar on your left hip, from surfing.” I nod to it. “Your parents are Wayne and Tabitha Layne. Wayne Layne, that gets a lot of laughs. You have one brother. You dated a few girls in college, but never anything serious.”
His eyes are discs.
Here we go.
“In another life, you’re my husband. We got married seventeen years ago.
We have three kids. An older boy, two twin girls.
I’m here . . . from there. From our future together.
” I let the words hang there, not as fortune cookies, but facts.
“I’m about to turn forty, and in a series of crazy events I can’t fully explain, I was sent back to do my twenties all over again—without ever meeting you. ”
He drops my hands now, startling me.
“I’m not . . .” He steps back, cupping his neck. “No. I’m not anyone’s husband.”
“Yes.” I nod. “Not here. But there. That’s how you know me, deep in your soul. Even if you don’t, your body does.” I wait. “Some part of you . . . knows.”
Emotion clouds his eyes.
I’m losing him.
But he doesn’t look, necessarily, like he doesn’t believe me.
More like he’s scared that he might.
“This . . . no,” he responds. “I’m . . . I don’t know how you know all of that—it’s honestly wild—but this was insane of me. I’m engaged. I’m sorry.”
He turns from me and starts to walk briskly away.
Frantic, I gun the throttle.
“So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you,” I shout.
Please please please, God.
He stops.
“It’s your favorite quote,” I yell. “About love. From your favorite book.”
He doesn’t face me, but I’m not afraid of his back.
“The Alchemist. You’re a true romantic, but you struggle with expressing yourself, as we get older,” I say. “You’re so driven . . . and so capable, and so giving, that everyone thinks you are endlessly confident, and, well, you are. But deep down, you also battle feeling unworthy.”
I swallow.
“And I know it sounds wild and scary and impossible,” I continue. “And again, you don’t have to do anything with this information. But in another life, my real life, I love you.”
With all of—with both of—my hearts.
“You’re everything to me.” My voice hitches.
“From the day I met you, everything after was better. Even when things are hard, you’re the best part of my life.
I became who I was supposed to be—because of you.
The day that we met changed everything. And you never held me back, from any dream.
In fact, you gave me bigger, brand-new ones. ”
I’m kissing his jaw in the morning, newlyweds.
I’m showing him my first-ever home design.
I’m falling asleep in his arms.
“We changed along the way, but we changed together, for the most part.”
I’m holding the twins, I’m rubbing his back, I’m calling to tell him about Grandma’s stroke, that she might never speak another word.
I feel a tear drip down my cheek.
“And I would give anything to find my way back to even one day of that life with you.”
Please be my husband again.
The linchpin of my wonderful life.
He doesn’t turn around for what feels like minutes. But when he does, his eyes see me.
Me.
Sutton Layne.
The real me.
At least, I think so.
Then know it.
His stride is turbo fast toward me, but I still rush to close the distance.
We reach for each other, but still, he’s too far away—
I grasp and I hope, and he runs as I taste his name on my lips.
After all these years and journeys and scars, old and new, poked and reopened, but all sewed up once again . . .
I know what I know, and now he knows too, but still, there’s something standing between us . . .
Prometheus, hope, fire, desire . . .
O hear the angel voices!
Light.