Free Twisted By Love, Reincarnation Tales, Book 1 by Jasmine Haynes

realized he’d pushed too hard for everything all at once. She
needed some breathing room.
    His phone chirped that he had another text
message, but his heart didn’t leap with expectation. He knew who it
was. There’d been seven text messages from Antonia today and four
voice mails. The woman wasn’t giving up, alternating between
apologetic and vitriolic. He’d deleted them all. He did the same
with this one. Livie was the only person he wanted to hear
from.
    In order to take his mind off the need
coursing through him, he dialed his brother.
    Wade answered on the first ring. “Hey, man,
what’s up?”
    “The Gillespie project is moving to the next
stage. I’ll be up there Wednesday after next. You’re still
available to go to the plant?”
    “Sure thing.” Wade was a structural engineer
and Bern’s first choice on any project he undertook. They worked
well in tandem, each building on the other’s expertise. And while
Bern would be paid for whatever plans he drew up, the contract
wouldn’t be officially awarded until those plans were approved. His
chances improved when he had his brother on his team.
    “You want to spend the night? With Amber away
at college, Clare needs someone to cook for, and I’m sure Mom will
come over.”
    Amber was an only child, and Wade’s wife,
Clare, was feeling the empty-nest syndrome. Besides, despite his
best intentions, it had been over two weeks since he’d been up to
see his mom. She lived in a retirement community. It wasn’t the
traditional old folks home with debilitated bodies filling beds.
Mom had her own small apartment and still drove her own car. If or
when the time came, the facility provided a higher level of care,
from assisted living to twenty-four-hour nursing. His mother wasn’t
ancient, but Dad had bought into the place on her behalf before
he’d passed away. He’d wanted to make sure she’d lacked for
nothing.
    “Sounds great,” Bern said. “I’ll come Tuesday
night, and we’ll go to the plant in the morning.”
    He discussed the project specifics with his
brother for another ten minutes, then segued into the other issue
on his mind. “Wade, I’ve got a question for you.”
    “Shoot.”
    “Do you ever wonder if Jake’s right about the
past life thing?”
    Wade was silent. Jake’s beliefs had caused
something of a family ruckus. Suze was the only one who’d agreed
with him, enough to make regression hypnosis part of her psychology
practice, though she didn’t always add past life to that
description. Their parents had been afraid he needed psychiatric
help. Wade had been like Bern, understanding Jake’s need to believe
in something but feeling he’d gone too far with it.
    “Where’s this coming from?” Wade finally
asked.
    “I’m forty-three. Getting older makes you
wonder if this is the only chance you’ll ever get.” It wasn’t the
whole truth, but at the same time, the older you got, the more you
started to rethink your beliefs.
    Wade was a couple of years younger. Maybe he
hadn’t reached that point yet. “So you really think one day Dorie
Hannigan will waltz back into Jake’s life?”
    “When you put it like that, it does sound
crazy. I was meaning something a little more theoretical.” Except
that there was nothing theoretical in the way he felt about
Livie.
    “People shouldn’t come back. They should just
stay dead,” Wade said, his voice harsher than moments before. “And
if Jake hadn’t decided he’d find Dorie again in some reincarnated
form, he wouldn’t be living over an old man’s garage, his life a
mess.”
    “I wouldn’t call his life a mess.” Jake
wasn’t hooked on drugs or living on the street. But it was true
that he’d never moved on. Thirty years ago, Jake’s best friend was
murdered. Dorie Hannigan had been eight years old. Her killer was
never caught. It was possibly the biggest tragedy the town of
Freedom had ever experienced, and it changed Jake’s life forever.
Maybe it had changed them