Page 9 of Beyond Reason

There was a facility with a dark secret, a man named Heath Northman… an experiment gone corrupt that cost a young man his life…

Experiments, reincarnation… bringing souls back from the dead.

From the dead.

Which meant I’d…

But I couldn’t remember dying, and I didn’t know any situation I’d ever put myself in where I’d be in that much danger. I was careful.

I was precise.

I was…

In the body of a man named Marshall Lister, and as much as I’d never believed in ghosts or the paranormal before, I couldn’t deny that I didn’t look like myself. That I was shorter, and I had memories of how to operate a phone and a computer that I’d never even seen while I was alive.

But I couldn’t remember who Marshall had been.

I couldn’t remember why he had the flash drive.

And I couldn’t remember how I’d…

Had I really died?

It was the only explanation for a very impossible situation. But I’d spent the entire time I was in that condo trying to talk myself out of it… and in those two weeks I’d only been able to think of doing one thing.

I needed to find Axel.

Axel would know.

Axel was the only home I knew.

“Please? Axel, I didn’t know where else to go.”

A burst of pain flashed through his eyes before they narrowed.

“Who the fuck are you?” he said again, and when his long fingers circled around my upper arm and jerked me up to look at him, I felt my pulse race.

There was no mistaking it was him, even though he looked older. His face had been smooth when I’d known him, his hair dark and longer.

There were lines at the corners of his eyes now, pinched around his down-turned lips. A soft dusting of gray in his hair…

Like twenty-two years had passed.

Like it was really, truly happening… and somehow, even with every bit of evidence, with the computers and the phone and the fucking calendar telling me the date… it was seeing those blue eyes glaring at me that drove the point home.

“Fuck, this is real, isn’t it?” I said in a hushed tone, and my hand came up of its own accord. He caught my fingers an inch from touching him, his grip on my wrist just shy of too painful.

It made warmth surge through my body. I’d been slowly getting bits and pieces of memories back. From my life. From Marshall’s life.

And in so many of my memories, Axel held me just as tight. Like he wanted me to shatter, like he wanted to fuse us together so I couldn’t pull away.

Like…

“Who—”

“Fuck’s sake, Axel. If you ask me one more time who I am, I’m going to break your jaw.”

It came out as a hissed threat, and I flashed my eyes up to him in warning.

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