Page 19 of Never Quite Gone

“Busy running,” he countered, his gentleness more devastating than any attack.

My fingers strangled my glass, knuckles bleaching white. “What do you want from me, Rothschild?”

“Alex,” he corrected, the same way he had in my office, like he was trying to strip away layers of professional distance. “And what I want...” Something cracked in his perfect facade, letting raw need shine through. “I want to help you understand. You deserve answers, Eli. And whether you realize it or not, you've been searching for them your whole life.”

The memories hit like fever dreams –paint-stained hands guiding mine across canvas, ancient stone warm beneath our feet as we ran, music wrapping around us like silk in a smoky club.

“You don't know anything about me.” The protest sounded weak even to my own ears.

“Don't I? I know you dream of places you've never been. I know you remember skills you've never learned. I know you feel something when we're together that defies your precious scientific understanding.”

Each word landed like a physical blow because they were true. All of it was true. The dreams that had haunted me since his arrival, the way my hands had known exactly how to modify his architectural plans, the magnetic pull I felt toward him that defied every rationalexplanation.

“Stop.” My voice shattered on the word. “Whatever game this is?—“

“It's not a game.” He leaned in close enough that his cologne wrapped around me – sandalwood and something older, something that pulled at the threads of memories that couldn't possibly be mine. “You know that. Deep down, your soul knows exactly what this is.”

“My soul?” The laugh that escaped sounded like breaking glass. “Is that what this is about? Some mystical connection you think we have?”

“Think? No, Eli. I don't think. Iknow. Just as you know, even if you're not ready to admit it.”

“You're insane.” But the words tasted like lies on my tongue, because something deep in my bones recognized the truth he offered.

“When you're ready to stop running,” he said quietly, rising from the booth with that impossible grace, “you know where to find me.”

He paused, one last truth hanging between us. “Some things are written in the stars, beloved. Some connections transcend time itself.”

Then he was gone, leaving me alone with my half-empty whiskey and the terrifying possibility that Alexander Rothschild might be the key to everything I'd been trying so desperately to deny.

The bar's ambient noise faded to white static, drowned out by the thunder of my pulse. His words echoed like bells in an empty cathedral, mixing with fragments of dreams and memories that couldn't possibly belong to me:.

His voice carrying across a torch-lit chamber. Our hands entwined beneath a Renaissance sky. His eyes finding mine through centuries of searching.

Michael. I should be thinking about Michael, about our life together, about the future that death had stolen. Not aboutimpossible connections and past lives and a man who looked at me like he'd spent centuries memorizing my face.

The fresh whiskey arrived without my asking, amber depths promising answers it couldn't possibly deliver. Because Alex was right about one thing – I had been running. From the dreams, from the memories, from the magnetic pull I felt toward him that defied every rational explanation I'd built my life around.

But some things couldn't be outrun forever. Some truths burned through every defense, every careful wall, every rational explanation until all that remained was raw, terrifying possibility.

The night pressed against the bar's windows like a living thing, full of shadows and secrets I couldn't begin to understand. But for the first time since Michael's death, since I'd buried my heart alongside his body, I felt something crack open in my chest – something wild and ancient and alive. And that terrified me more than all of Vale's threats combined.

Because feeling alive meant I could be hurt again. Feeling alive meant facing the impossible truth that Alex represented. Feeling alive meant admitting that maybe, just maybe, science couldn't explain everything that lived in the spaces between heartbeats.

The whiskey burned going down, but it couldn't touch the fire that Alex's words had ignited. Something was coming – something bigger than hospital politics or development projects or carefully maintained grief. The only question was: would I be strong enough to face it when it did?

CHAPTER 6

The Weight of Memory

My phone's blue light cut through the pre-dawn darkness of my office, the message thread with Eli's name mocking me from between stacks of research papers. Three fucking AM, and I'd finally cracked, sending a text I already regretted. The recognition I'd seen in his eyes at the bar haunted me, that flash of knowing before his doctor's rationality had slammed the walls back up.

Marcus's expensive leather shoes whispered across the Persian rug, bringing the blessed scent of fresh coffee. He paused in the doorway, taking in what must have been a pretty pathetic sight – still in last night's rumpled Armani, tie abandoned somewhere between midnight and madness, sleeves rolled up in surrender to another sleepless night.

“You called him.” A statement, not a question, delivered with the dry patience of someone who'd watched me make worse decisions.

Instead of answering, I grabbed one of the yellowed letters spread across my desk, dated 1893. The paper felt fragile as moth wings between my fingers. “Look at this – a Dr. Monroe at Presbyterian, treating a Rothschild heir. But the patient records from that period are just... gone. Like they never existed.”

My hand raked through my hair, a nervous tell I couldn't shake. The office lights flickered, casting shadows that seemed to move with intent across the wine-dark walls.

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