Page 14 of Beyond Reason

The fact that we were in public, the fact that he was shorter than me… the years.

Twenty-two years slid off me and fell to my feet in a puddle—logic could tell me all it wanted that there was no way the man in front of me was Xavier.

Memory said logic was wrong.

Memory told me I knew the body pressed against mine, and something that existed even deeper in the center of my chest seemed to spark to life for the first time since I’d last held him.

It was that part that made my arms snake out, that part that had my hands fisting his hair so I could pull him back for just a second.

Just a breath.

Just long enough to see that ring of green burning hot and demanding.

“Xavier…”

Impossible…

But breathing the name made that soft flame in his eyes flicker to life and turn into a wildfire. Saying his name brought his lips back to mine and drove his tongue into my mouth.

When his knee slid between my legs, it was only natural for me to open up for him—it was what we’d done hundreds of times before… never mind that he was smaller than me now.

Never mind that the logical part of my mind was still trying to demand I realize this was completely impossible.

Never mind any of it, because my heart—my soul—recognized him.

I recognized the broken sound that spilled from my lips when I pulled back again—some strange mixture of a half sob and a half moan. It was the sound I made when I dreamed of him, the sound I made when I woke up from precious stolen moments of impossibility that he was still alive and still in my arms, and then I was thrust back into the reality that he was dead. Gone.

That I couldn’t hold him anymore.

That he was ashes on my fireplace, and he didn’t exist, even though my mind refused to let him go.

Maybe that was what was happening now. Maybe this was simply my mind refusing to give up on him, refusing to believe that he could be gone forever, that I had to live the rest of my life without him in it.

If this was a dream, I didn’t want to wake up. If I closed my eyes and let myself feel, it didn’t matter what the man in front of me looked like. It didn’t matter that his body was wrong. Because he felt right, because he felt more real than any fantasy I’d had for the last twenty years.

When he pulled back again, I couldn’t stop the words that spilled from my lips. I felt helpless, powerless—like the past and the present were colliding, and somehow I couldn’t tell the difference anymore.

“Do you believe in ghosts, Xavier?”

A flare of recognition burst across his face, and his head tilted. “Do you, Axel?”

And it was there—this moment where I could choose if I was going to let this happen, if I was going to let a complete stranger waltz into my life and convince me that this could actually happen.

I was a practical man.

I didn’t believe in ghosts.

I didn’t even believe in love anymore.

But…

“Best not take a chance, right?”

Xavier’s lips curved into a smile I thought I’d never see again on this side of Hell, and he nodded.

“Right.”

Apparently, words like impossible didn’t matter. I wasn’t sure if I’d completely given in to the insanity that was Xavier somehow being here, now, in a body that didn’t look familiar, but with a touch that I would have recognized even if I’d lost my sight… or if I was just too tired to fight it.