Page 112 of The Keeper and I

“Thank you!” Billie replied. “I tried to show it to Ethan, but he absolutely refuses to look at it.”

“It’s bad luck!” Ethan insisted.

“You could have at least helped me pick out my earrings!”

“I told you, darlin’, I don’t want any clues about what you’re gonna look like that day. I wanna be blown away when you walk down that aisle.”

It carried on that way through much of dinner. Jordan briefly imagined downing the rest of his wine and shoving his head through the wall behind the table. The only respite was that Laci was smiling and giggling. When Ethan and Billie discussed their vows, Laci put her hand in Jordan’s and gave it a gentle squeeze, so he forgave them for all the wedding talk.

After the meal, Billie was the first to get down to business. “Who was that guy who stormed the pitch yesterday?”

Laci swallowed. “He’s sort of my stalker.”

“Sort of?” Ethan questioned.

“He’s a full-on stalker,” Jordan said. “He broke into your house, he’s crossed that bridge.”

“Hewhat?” Billie gasped.

Laci told the story starting from when Dane first followed her after her photoshoot, all the way up until the present day. She included his threatening messages, his appearances, everything. She even included that she and Jordan were faking their relationship initially, which surprised Billie and Ethan.

“Really?” Billie blinked. “You two seemed so smitten at the gala.”

“I was,” Jordan said.

Laci glanced down at her glass. “I was too.”

He wasn’t totally convinced. The admission about their pretense also had him nervous. Did that mean she was ready to call it quits?

“But Ethan told me Dane said some things that implied he knew more than he let on,” Billie said, drawing Jordan from his worry. “Things about who you were…before.”

Laci cast a sidelong glance at Jordan. “He did?”

Jordan scrubbed a hand over his face. “I haven’t had time to debrief Laci on everything, but yes. He said you were ‘promised to him’ and then he said it was when you were Caroline.”

She stiffened, then took another sip of wine. Billie and Ethan exchanged a knowing look.

“Have either of y’all ever seen something or dreamed something you couldn’t explain?” Ethan asked.

“Yes,” Jordan and Laci answered in unison.

“Before I knew Laci, I’d seen her face in my mind,” Jordan said.

“The night we met, he felt sort of familiar,” Laci added. “I even asked if we’d met before.”

“Sounds about right,” Billie said. “I said as much to Jordan at the gala. When Ethan and I met, we both felt like we’d met before. And we’d both been having dreams we couldn’t explain. Mine were about receiving a letter that devastated me.”

“And mine were about being in a snowy forest while explosions went off all around me,” Ethan added.

Jordan’s brow furrowed. That didn’t sound anything like his and Laci’s dreams. For the most part, they were pleasant, just baffling in their content. Ethan disappeared into the hall and returned with a box, which he placed on the table. The name Maggie Owens was scribbled across the cardboard side.

“The longer Billie and I were around each other, the more we started to see,” he said. “We saw dance halls with jazz music, making love in a barn, lying beside each other in a field of yellow flowers. It sounds like y’all are a little better than us and have shared what you’ve seen with each other.”

“Aye, we have,” Jordan said. “We’ve even been able to kiss and show each other what we’ve seen.”

“It was always stronger for us when we were close, too,” Billie said.

Jordan frowned. “What was?”

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