Page 44 of Hotshot Mogul

“Done. I’ll text it to you. It takes fifteen minutes to drive to the station in good traffic. All you brought is in the suitcase we put in my office, right? Your computer, too?”

It was all I had. The huge suitcase barely fit in the trunk of Callie’s tiny car. She drove fast, bouncing hard over the rough, dirt road. We made it as the train pulled in. I hugged her hard. “Call if you need anything—if it doesn’t work out.”

“I will.”

I rolled my suitcase to the platform. The wind gusted. My heart raced. He stood in the front, his back to me. I knew him from the curve of his spine, the width of his shoulders, and the way his dark hair grew in the back. The train whistle sounded two short blasts. “Time to board,” a woman’s voice called.

I stowed my suitcase where the woman in uniform pointed and sat right behind Bruce, glad that Callie had bought me a ticket in business class. He used the same woodsy cologne as before. I wanted to touch his hair. Did he think of me as I thought of him? Before I could call his name, a beautiful young woman in uniform stopped in front of him. He held up his phone. She smiled at him. Jealousy curled my stomach.

“Are you from Chicago?” he asked her.

I wanted to vomit. Alas, what did I expect? I’d vanished from his life.

My ticket. The woman would scan that next when Bruce got done flirting. I pulled out my phone. It wouldn’t turn on. It was dead.

“Deer turds.”

The woman in uniform looked at me in question. “My friend Callie texted me my ticket, but my phone battery died. My charger is in my suitcase up front. I thought I had it in my bag.”

Bruce turned around. He looked pale and angry. He held out a phone charger. “Here.”

His hand brushed mine. It felt like lightning hitting my tree branches. “Thank you, Bruce.”

The woman scanned my ticket and looked at Bruce. “Later?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Thanks, though. Really.”

There was an empty seat next to him. I slid into it and left my phone charging in my seat behind us.

“You stayed.” His tone was sharp.

“What are the words from the Beatles song about love finding a way?”

He flinched. Not the right thing to say. This was so hard. “My English classes. I learned the words to your favorite songs.”

“You’re doing well with your English.”

“I aced my classes.”

He shut his sky-blue eyes, as if something hurt him. “You sped away from me and stayed away from me for a fucking year.”

Everyone heard. People stared, then scurried past us to the counter to buy drinks and snacks. “You’re angry.” I should have expected this. How to explain? “There’s something else, from before, that I didn’t tell you.”

The train slowed. A woman’s voice piped through a crackly sound system. “There’s some freight traffic in Indiana. Sorry for the delay.”

People groaned. Bruce tilted his head back against the seat. “I had a memory, or something, near the oak tree. My dad was with me.”

I reached for his hand, then stopped, unsure he wanted that. “It was an ambush, for some reason. That wasn’t clear. I died.” He continued. “A woman, I wanted her to be my wife, was there. She held my hand over her stomach, over our baby, as I died.”

I dropped my gaze and picked at my fingernails. Bruce threaded his fingers through mine. His touch gave her courage. I let my words come. “I carried our child when we walked the earth before. I suffered anguish when they killed you. I didn’t know who they were, or why they killed you. It didn’t matter. Finding out who they were and why it happened wouldn’t bring you back. In my sorrow, the baby, our baby, left my body.”

I was afraid to look into his eyes, afraid of what I might find—disbelief, dismissal, blame, disappointment that I’d failed… Still, I had to tell him. Maybe he could understand why I left him.

I continued, my voice barely above a whisper. “A shaman from your tribe agreed to hear my petition, although I had not been accepted into the tribe. You were bringing me to them when you were killed. I begged to be free of my crushing grief. I slept on the spot where you fell, by the oak tree. The creator granted me mercy. My soul awakened, encased joyfully in the roots and branches, free from…” I looked at him. Tears slipped down his cheeks. “You. I was free from the pain of losing you and our child, and from the scorn and derision of Étienne, my wedded husband.”

“The great tree in the glade. It holds your heart. Look close for what is true.”

“I don’t understand.”

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