Page 105 of The Keeper and I

“Out of respect for her privacy, I can’t tell you her name.”

“I understand. What happened? Why aren’t you with her?”

Tessa turned her wine glass in half circles. Her gaze softened, as if seeing something that wasn’t there, something far away in her memory.

“She wasn’t quite ready for what I wanted,” she said. “That is…she wasn’t out. I kept waiting for her to get there as patiently as I could. She’s sort of well-known, and she had a certain image to keep up. It was mostly for her parents, but she was scared for the world to know too. And I couldn’t love her out of being afraid.”

A sharp pang of worry cut through Laci’s heart. Fear was holding Jordan back too.

“We were together a year and a half, and I couldn’t wait anymore, so I broke it off,” Tessa went on. “I needed to be with someone brave enough to love me the way I loved them. I could see she wasn’t going to get there any time soon.”

“Was it dangerous for her to come out?” Laci wondered, hoping there were extenuating circumstances, some reason other than fear holding the mystery woman back. “Maybe she couldn’t.”

Tessa shook her head. “No, in her line of work, she’d have been well supported. There are a lot of other gay women in that community. Plus, she no longer lived with her parents, and she made good money, so she wasn’t relying on them. She just couldn’t bear to disappoint them even though they treated her like pure shite.”

Laci fidgeted with her shirt. “Were you able to stay friends?”

“No, I’m not a believer in being friends with exes,” Tessa said. “Besides, she moved to Manchester. Dunno if that was because of me or just an extremely well-timed job opportunity, but either way, we were done. No use dragging it out.”

“I see.”

A few beats of silence passed while Laci panicked. Was she looking at her future?

If Jordan couldn’t meet her where she was, in vulnerability and honesty, would she be able to stay with him? She loved him, but she knew what she deserved. Like Tessa said, she deserved to be loved proudly and openly.

He certainly behaved as if he loved her though. The paintings, his support of her work, and his unwavering protection of her in the face of all that had happened with Dane all indicated it. But without the words, how would she know for sure?

Suddenly, the walls of the kitchen felt like they were closing in on her. She needed fresh air before she suffocated. Spying a full bag of recycles in the corner, she looked at Tessa.

“I, uh…I should take this out,” she said. She held up their empty wine bottle. “Get rid of this as well. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Tessa raised a skeptical brow. “Are you alright?”

“Yep. Yeah. I’m good…I’ll be back.”

She didn’t give Tessa time to pry before she wrapped up the bin bag, yanked open the back door, and stepped out into the dark night, her heart aching.

When she reached the side of the house, she slung the bag into the bin and let the lid fall closed with a slam. She turned to head back inside, but the sound of a soft rattling stopped her in her tracks. It sounded like a doorknob, but the only door around was the one to the closed off cellar. Or what they assumed was a cellar, but they never had been able to get it open. She looked at it but shook her head.

“It’s the wind,” she told herself.

She started to return inside again, but the bushes rustled. That made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Had Dane managed to find her and follow her here? Of course, the one time she was without Jordan. She bit back a swear and wondered if it would be too risky to call for Tessa. Another rustle made her jump with a gasp. This time, she saw the swish of the branches.

Heart pounding, she stole a sideways glance at the second bush, expecting it to move as well. If it were Dane, it was likely he was moving to get behind her and take her by surprise.

She heard a voice. A soft, feminine voice, not unlike her own.

“Samuel?” it called.

She whipped around. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark, but she saw nothing around except the shrubbery.

“Samuel?” the voice called again, louder this time.

Laci stumbled back until she hit the wall, pressing her body to it in hopes that the spirit or ghost, or whatever it was, passed her by. She slammed her eyes shut, but when she did, it was not the back of her eyelids she saw. Instead, she was standing in the precise spot she was in, only the sun shone in the sky, and she wore a long dress. Jordan strode toward her in the most absurd outfit she’d ever seen, a Regency era get-up made complete with waist coat, cravat, white billowy shirt, and breeches. His dark curls were down to his shoulders and tied loosely back with a ribbon. Her heart soared at the sight of him.

“Samuel,” she heard herself say.

Samuel? That was Jordan. What was going on?

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