Page 48 of The Soulmate Theory

“Ah, so that’s why you’re afraid of marriage, then. Because you don’t believe in soulmates.”

I shoved him playfully, rolling my eyes. “I didn’t say I don’t believe. I said it’s rare. Much rarer than marriage is.”

“You’re afraid of marrying someone who isn’t actually your soulmate.”

“I guess.” I shrugged. He kind of hit the nail on the head, but I didn’t realize that was the way I felt until he said it. That was the thing I was actually afraid of.

“Why?”

“Imagine you die, and you show up wherever it is we go after that. What if you get there and you’re given your soulmate, and they end up being someone different than the person you spent your whole life loving?”

He spent a moment considering what I’d said. “Maybe that’s why they say, ‘til death do us part.’ It’s the only promise we can make. We don’t know what will happen after that.”

“I don’t think I could do that,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t think I could agree to just life. If I loved someone enough to marry them, if I found the person I thought was my one-in-eight-hundred-million, then just this lifetime wouldn’t be enough for me.”

His face was relaxed but deep in his thoughts. He stared at the darkening water, but I knew he wasn’t seeing it. I was staring at him, but I realized I wasn’t seeing him either. Not really. I felt like I was seeing through him. Through his skin, his muscles, his bones. All the way down into his soul. I wondered if just a lifetime with him would be enough. Not as a friend, or neighbor, or even a lover, but as a person. Would I get to know him beyond this life? Beyond the bodies that we're in right now? Not knowing the answer to that question terrified me.

Because I wanted to know him in every lifetime.

I hoarded that thought inside my gut, unwilling to consider what it may mean. “How can you promise more than just this life? That’s what a vow is. That’s the vow you make when you get married because you can’t promise anything beyond that.”

“Isn’t that the point, though? Shouldn’t we be able to promise, ‘I’ll love you beyond this life. No matter what, my soul will find yours, every time.’ Isn’t that the goal? To love someone so much that we believe even death couldn’t keep us apart. That we’d continue to find each other again and again?” The words flew through my throat on their own accord. I had no control over them as they spilled from my body.

Breaking his focus on the water, his head snapped to mine. His face twisted into so many emotions, and yet I was unable to decipher a single one. I could see the pools of light reflecting in his eyes as the sun fell, changing the color of them with it. I didn’t break the contact either as he looked into mine. For a long while, we just looked at each other. He smirked as he broke the silence. “You’ve got a lot of soulmate theories for someone who doesn’t believe in love.”

I stifled a laugh. “I didn’t say I don’t believe in love, you ass.”

“Right. Just that it’s repulsive,” he shot back. “Doesn’t that kind of contradict your main theory, though? The one about the atoms traveling across a millennium to find their O.G. companions?”

I blushed at his remembrance of my soulmate theory. “Yeah, I guess it does. Except, maybe it’s not across a millennium, just a lifetime. Maybe when we die, our atoms get blasted across the universe. Like our own personal Big Bang. Then, as we begin our next lifetime, the atoms work to find their way back to each other again, the form of two new beings.”

He shook his head with a soft laugh, this one rainfall where it’s normally thunder. “Oh, so we believe in reincarnation too now?”

I nodded. “Definitely.”

“Maybe that explains why people meet their soulmate at different points in life. Maybe if one person dies first in the previous lifetime, they have to spend time in the new one waiting for their soulmate to catch up. Or maybe that’s why some people don’t find their soulmate at all. They’re living in different lifetimes and haven’t met yet.”

I flicked my brow at him. “Look who's stuck on soulmate theories now.”

“You got me hooked, Pep. Next thing you know I’ll be spouting off Atlantis conspiracies.”

“I look forward to that,” I said, my voice dripping with a tone I didn’t intend to produce. I cleared my throat. “Maybe people who meet their soulmates as children died at the same time in their past lives. Now, they get this whole new life together.”

He smiled, bringing his mouth to my hand and letting his lips feather against my knuckles. We watched the rest of the sunset in silence. Once it dropped completely below the horizon, and the sky had that flash that suddenly moved the world around us from day to night, Carter stood and tugged at my arm. I allowed him to lead me back to the house. We took the climb slowly. Mostly, because I’m out of shape. Carter matched my pace anyway.

When we finally got up that last step and into the house, I headed straight for the kitchen. He followed me in and sat at one of the bar stools as I stumbled through the fridge for wine that I knew Macie opened the night before. “Did you eat?” I asked.

“I did. Dom and I had a late lunch, early dinner. Linner, if you will.”

I lost control of my laugh, which came up faster than my mouth could open. The sound of an out of tune trumpet—or maybe a dying elephant—tore from my nose. Once I caught my breath, I peeked up at him behind the fridge. It wasn’t even that the word itself was funny, but the way he said it so casually. As if it was a part of his everyday vocabulary. “Linner?”

His mouth was gaping, his eyes huge. “What the fuck kind of sound did you just make?” I laughed a second time, but again, it came out as a rumbling snort. “Did you just snort?”

“Stop,” I pleaded between fits of laughter.

He quieted suddenly. I couldn’t see him as I bent into the fridge. “You know I think you’re the most beautiful girl in the world, right?” I snapped up and looked at him, opening and closing my mouth several times, unsure of what to say. A wicked grin tugged at his lips. “But that might have been the ugliest noise I’ve ever heard come out of that pretty mouth.”

I knew my face had dropped into a look of pure vexation.Ass.

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