Page 79 of At Her Will

As always, he waited until she ate her first bite before he picked up his fork and dug in. “May I ask you some things about what you believe, Veracity?”

The question made her wary, but his sincere desire to know wasn’t something she’d reasonably refuse. And truth? She was starting to think she’d tell the man anything.

“Of course.”

“Do you believe in Heaven?”

“I believe in reincarnation. With each life, we learn and grow. If we did something harmful in a previous one, we have to pursue redemption. Not so much as a punishment, but as a spiral toward an ultimate state of enlightenment, and a better Universe.”

She gestured with her fork. “Say I was an abusive husband. In a subsequent life I might be the abused wife, to understand what it felt like to be on the receiving end. Or if something unjust happened to me in a previous life, that might be the cause that’s important to me in this one.”

“So you just go from one life to the next?”

“After death, I believe there’s a place for the soul to rest, recharge, and decide what it wants to do next. Connect with those souls we care about. That’s where Heaven comes in.

“During our lives here, I think we also cross paths with certain souls in different guises. Like that husband might be the wife in the next life, but likewise, she might be him, to help her soul understand what made him treat her that way. And they heal, and grow, and move on to the next level.”

He grunted. “It sound like kids in a schoolyard, trying to figure out how to play with one another the right way.”

“Yes. On a far more serious and intense level.” She chewed her eggs. “Mavis told me about the man you chased off from the school.”

He’d been about to start on the cinnamon roll, but he stopped. He stayed still, his arm on the table, his gaze steady on her.

“I won’t ask you if you don’t want to talk about it.”

“I’ll answer any question you want to ask of me, Mistress. But most questions about things like that want to turn it into something else, so it can make sense to the person asking. I not saying that’s what you doing. I just telling you why I don’t like talking about it. It like looking at someone else’s painting, picking up your own brush and making it something different, then calling it their painting still.”

She studied him. “People are bad about not listening, even when they ask for a story or an opinion. We translate what we hear through the filter of our own story, our beliefs, our judgments. But when I’m in session with a submissive, I have to really listen to what he’s saying to me. With his mouth, with his body.

“I’m not saying I’m immune to the trap of filtering, but I’ll treat what you say like that, I promise. And I know you’re not lying to me, but there’s more to why you don’t want to talk about it. Can you tell me about that?”

He cracked his neck and looked out the window. A mix of reactions crossed his expression, then he shook his head. “No,” he said softly.

But it wasn’t “no” to her. He’d denied himself something, maybe the right not to tell her.

He turned to look at her again. “When I chased him, I could feel what his intent was. What he would have done if he could have gotten that child away from us. I knew he was sick, but any person that hold hate or harm in his heart is sick. Just different levels of disease, and his was so bad, it had invited evil in to take that sick and make it worse. But I didn’t see all that, feel all of that, not at first. I was angry, Mistress. Full of rage.”

In his hard face, she saw what she suspected Mavis had. “I was strong enough to hurt him. To kill him. And I wanted to. That rage grabbed me strong, because I love those kids. They my kids, just the way they are to Miss Mavis and the teachers, and their parents. Then, when I got up on him, I knew that feeling wasn’t right. It didn’t walk with God.”

He took a steadying breath. “So I opened myself up to Him, asked for help. ‘Lord, what do I do?’ And that’s when I saw that evil perched on his soul, a darkness on top of his sickness, that had made him go from just being sick to doing something to hurt a child. And I knew what I needed to do. I opened myself up to it, and it was cast out, through me. Lord did it all. I was just the instrument He used.”

She touched his hand. “How did you feel afterward? Were you all right?”

He looked at her fingers on top of his. “I was tired. Felt like I could barely move. After the police come and got him, and Miss Mavis leave me be, I sat down against that tree. Guess she thought I went back to work or headed home, because it was last period. I fell asleep, and when I woke, it was the next morning.Ten minutes before time to be at work.” He chuckled without humor. “The Lord made sure I didn’t oversleep.”

He paused. “I did wake up once. Probably about three a.m. There it squatted, a few feet away. That darkness. I said the Lord’s Prayer, and it hissed at me, like a mad cat. Then it was gone. I might have dreamed that, but I don’t think I did.”

His expression cleared, and he looked at her. “I didn’t expect you to ask how I felt. I guess I should have. You already done told me. You want to look after me when I need it.”

“You did that for me, too, the day Witford and Tisha were in my office. Before anything else, you asked me if I was okay. If I’d been with you then, in the woods, I would have sat with you out there.” Their hands were still linked, and they gazed at that connection, feeling it.

“Witford and Tisha think you wrong for me. They say you not Christian. They think you changing me, rather than knowing what I know. You were what I hoped to find.”

Tears touched her eyes and she squeezed his hand. When he touched her face, concerned, she shook her head. “You say things that just…”

That quiet all my worries. Heal what needs to be healed. And it’s happening so fast, it’s scaring the shit out of me.

She didn’t say that. Instead she worked around it. “The people we love can know a lot about us, but the deepest wishes of our hearts, I think only we and maybe the person who’s the answer to those wishes can see that part clearly.”

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