Free With Love; Now & Forever by Raeanne Hadley

getting hurt.”
“But you did and you got hurt. How can you say it didn’t affect you?”
“I never said it didn’t affect me. For three years I shut myself off, I focused on school, work, anything that would keep my mind busy. I shut out everyone, including Joyce’s family, not realizing they had lost a daughter and a granddaughter. I was so engrossed in my own pain, I shut everyone out, including myself.”
Amazed at this revelation, Ana asked, “What made you change?”
“Joyce did, the night of my graduation. I didn’t even go to my ceremony. I was a home, feeling sorry for myself when she came to me as clearly as you are right now and told me that I was being selfish. I had a lifetime of love and lessons to offer and I was betraying my love for her by secluding myself. I have always been psychic, seeing the dead since childhood. She told me that I was to grab onto my gift, my calling, so that I could help others that have gone through loss like I had.”
“Is that how you got into the business of being a psychic?” Ana found herself being pulled into this intriguing man’s life story.
“Oh no! I chalked the experience up to being exhausted from the grueling schedule I had kept for myself, earning a bachelor’s degree in engineering and being completely wiped out. It wasn’t until two years later that I met a woman who needed an engineer to help design an art gallery she wanted to build.”
Ana couldn’t help interrupting. “You were attracted to her?”
“Oh yes, but not for the reasons you believe. She wanted to open this art gallery with part of the proceeds going for prenatal research and she wanted to call it the Ava Foundation Art Gallery. Ava was the name Joyce and I had picked out for our unborn daughter. Only Joyce and I knew the name we had picked out, we hadn’t told another soul.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A
    na didn’t know what to say. Even with her intellectual mind, she knew the coincidence between the name of the foundation, its
    purpose and the name of the unborn child was too great. The expression on her face must’ve said the same thing because Rick glanced at her and laughed softly.
    “My conclusion exactly. The proprietor’s name was Sonya and I felt compelled to do this project, she came from money so my firm was enthusiastic with the project. The gallery was located here in London, and with having nothing to tie me down, I took the job.”
    Ana couldn’t hide her surprise. “Is that when you saw Austin’s work and met Jennifer?” She couldn’t believe the coincidences that were starting to accrue and the story that was starting to form in her mind. Rick had said he experienced two soul mates. She had to be blind not to see the relationship Rick and Jennifer had. Was Jennifer his other soul mate?
    “Not for another couple of years. Sonya and I spent the next two years working side by side on the gallery. Important to each other for different reasons, we became friends and then lovers and I soon found my guilt and pain a little more bearable. One night, I confided my painful history and when I looked in to Sonya’s eyes I didn’t see pity, I saw tears of love, compassion and sorrow. I opened my heart and soul to see that she was truly a kindred spirit, a soul mate. She had no family having lost them all in a car accident when she was sixteen years old. Since I wasn’t very close to my family, we got married within two weeks at a simple civil ceremony. It was a joint celebration, our exchanging vows and the grand opening of the gallery. We were happy, starting our new lives with the successful launch of Ava Foundation Art Gallery.
    We officially met Austin and Jennifer that night at the opening. Austin had a few pieces in the show that he had donated for the cause and Jennifer was still in the negotiating stages of purchasing the gallery she has now. When they found out we were just married, they insisted on taking us out for drinks to celebrate our nuptials. We clicked with Austin