Page 84 of Tempt Her

“Yeah,” I answer. “The split-soul theory. That the god, Zeus, got so jealous of how humans were once united with each other that he ripped them apart. Then, that one human seeks its other half for the rest of their lives.”

The loon on the water suddenly surges. Taking to the sky, it begins its search while I wonder, “It’s been our oath, the three of us, that you can have more than one. You can have two soulmates. That nothing can break us.”

I turn to them.

Luke’s standing there, naked and breathtaking. Muscles rip down his big body. The deep suntan on his shining flesh is darker than mine, Brown by blood. The look in his eyes matches mine too.Love.

Then I cast my gaze at Ford.

Under his hard shell of shredded muscle and that Dom look he gets, he needs control and order. Because underneath, he can’t control the ticking bomb in his chest. The heart that will kill him one day.

He shares his love only with us.

“You think,” I ask them, always in my head, tumbling with ideas and questions. “Do you think it can be four people?Foursoulmates together? Or will jealousy break us apart?”

CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE

Boldness collides with desperation in my heart.

It’s been two weeks, and my dad is drifting further away. They told me it would happen, but I won’t let it. Not without a fight.

“Whatcha got there?”

Ms. Carol, his favorite nurse, eyes me carrying a case as I enter.

“My fiddle,” I answer, carrying muffins in my other hand.

“You gonna give us a show this morning?”

“No.” I stop at her nurse’s station. “I’m going to make him remember today. Because if music can’t bring him back, nothing else can.”

“Did he teach you how to play?”

“Yeah. It was my mom’s violin. My great-grandfather brought it from Italy, but the musical gene skipped her. But not my dad.Hisdad taught him how to play, and that’s what my dad calls it—a fiddle. Violin or fiddle; it doesn’t matter, I only remember one song.”

“Well, go on then.” She leans back in her chair. “Ain’t no harm in trying.”

This morning, like too many lately, Dad doesn’t greet me when I walk in. He nibbles at his muffins and stares out the window like he wants to be in heaven somewhere and not with me.

“I thought I’d play a song for you this morning.” I snap open the tattered black case. I haven’t played this thing since the Miss America pageant.

As I played on stage that night, the judges were moved by my tears, but I didn’t care about winning. I cried, playing my first notes of goodbye to my father.

I would give anything, then and now, to keep him with me.

Playing “Cluck, Old Hen,” I hold the bow just like he taught me, and the notes dance through the air, bringing his eyes my way.

He smiles at me like he used to when we’d cook SpaghettiO’s together, and he’d give me all the meatballs. And I play, remembering all the notes he left in my lunchbox.

I kept so many of his notes for years. They were in a shoebox in my closet. But last year, Gentry found them and threw them away. I cried so hard that I threw up. Death was all I could think about that night. Gentry’s. Or mine.

But now, life returns to my dad’s eyes. I play the song again, and when I’m done, I sit on the edge of his bed.

“I have a fiddle, too,” he says. “It’s a golden one.”

“Oh yeah?” He doesn’t recognize me or the instrument. But he’s happy and talking, and that’s all that matters. “Where is it?”

“With my sweet Priscilla. She plays like an angel.”

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