SWNOVELS Chapter CHAPTER 9
Grandma Jean has me swing by her house and give her the letter. She and Raegan wanted to look it over. Quickly I put my Jeep into park once I pulled into Grandma’s driveway and then made a mad dash to her front door. I didn’t even bother ringing the doorbell or knocking; besides, they knew I was coming anyway.
After I handed the letter to them, I decided I couldn’t wait any longer and needed to have the dreaded conversation with Jessica. I grimaced at the thought but knew there was no reason to delay. With a deep sigh I jumped into my Jeep once more and drove to her house.
Jessica is the same age as me. We had both just turned twenty a few months ago towards the end of the summer. We’d always celebrated our birthdays growing up since there was literally three weeks between our birth dates.
I had known she had a crush on me in our early teen years but thought she got over me because she started to go out on dates with other guys and we still remained friends. I never had a clue that she was still pining for me after all these years until recently when Chris, Riley and Devon started to say random things about it. Being me, I had just ignored their comments for the most part and then the High Priestess sent me on the mission to find Alina and any concern I had about Jessica was put on the back burner.
It never crossed my mind in the slightest that bringing Alina back with me would hurt her feelings. Hindsight is of course 20/20 and I realized Ali and I flaunting our relationship in front of her, probably wasn’t the best of ideas not that it was intentional. I’m sure it was a shock for Jess to know I had left the Coven single and returned with a girlfriend. But it was even harder to not be near Ali when our souls constantly called to each other.
Standing at the front door of the white two-story A-framed house, I ring her parents’ doorbell. Taking a step back I stared at the white door with black trim and waited for someone to answer. As it swings open, I see Jess standing in front of me. She looks stunning as usual. Her pitch-black hair cascades down around her hitting just below the middle of her back, making her look like a warrior goddess. She’s wearing an over-sized pink sweatshirt that falls off one shoulder and torn jeans. “What do you want?” she asked scrunching up her nose, while at the same time flipping one side of her hair to the other, and then folding her arms across her chest to glare at me.
The winter weather has a clipped, crisp chill to it this morning and I bunch my jacket up tighter around my neck as I look at her earnestly. “Jess, can we talk? Please?” She scoffs at me but steps aside so that I’m able to enter her home. We walk into the living room and sit on the oversized, over-stuffed dark blue couch together.
Jessica hooks one leg over the other, looks at me with flames of hatred still blazing in her hazel-colored eyes. “Okay, so talk!” She demands in almost a growl, the hooked leg shaking back and forth as she stares hard into my eyes.
I sigh, brushing fingers through my hair as I debate how to go about the touchy subject of Alina. “So, I know you’re upset with me, and I understand that, but I really need you to be a part of our circle.”
“But do you really?” Jessica jumped in, exasperated. “You, bringing her back here, fine, whatever. Understood, she was the ‘savior’, but then you claim her as your girlfriend! You had known her all of one week! You’ve known me for an entire lifetime and never even attempted to give us a chance. You never once tried to date anyone in our community but can fall immediately in love with a HUNTER! How balanced is that?” She is nearly at a screeching pitch in her voice as she stops talking. Breathing hard, her body shakes with anger towards me.
“Let me explain something to you that only Grandma Jean and High Priestess were aware of when I returned with Ali, because I never had the chance to tell the rest of you. Alina and I were, are, soul mates. It wasn’t something I planned or even expected to happen. But it did.”
“You’re what?” Shock is written all over her face as my words sink in. I can see her trying to recall what we had been taught in grade school about the soul mate bond. I watch as her demeanor changes as the lesson pops back into her head. ‘A person with whom your soul connects with on a level so deep that it is completely unexplainable, until experienced.’ “Seriously?” And though I can still see the heartbreak etched on her face she looks at me in wonder, eyes wide with curiosity.
I nod my head, “yeah, seriously. And now that she is gone, I feel like an empty shell of myself. An incomplete puzzle that will never be finished because there is that one piece that’s missing.” I watch as her anger slowly fades from her eyes, quickly replaced by sorrow for me and though its slow, acceptance settles over her as well.
She sighs, running fingers through her own poker straight hair before saying; “Let me have a little time to think about this bomb you just released upon me. I’ll let you know tomorrow what my decision is.”
I give a quick nod and then stand from the couch. The last thing I want to do is push her any further on the topic. I will let her take time to process everything I’ve said in her own time and own way. “I better head out. I promised grandma that I would swing by to talk with her about something.” Jessica stands the same moment I do and wraps arms around me in a quick heartfelt hug before we separate and say goodbye to each other. Now all I can do is wait and hope she makes the right choice.
~
Jessica shut the door behind Dom as he left her house. Turning from the door, she walked back to her bedroom, flopping down on her queen-sized mattress. Pulling her hair back, she twisted it into a bun, sighing heavily. Her heart was broken into a million tiny little pieces after Dom shared the news of him having found his soul mate. She was so sure that once he had returned to the circle that she could be the shoulder he used to cry into, lean on and eventually he would realize that they were perfect for each other and even more than that, he was in love and had actually always been in love with her.
For him to tell her that he had found his soul mate and it had been Alina made her feel like she was somehow broken, unlovable even. ’When will it be my turn to be loved?’ she questioned the Goddess as tears slipped down her cheeks.
*
At 1:30 in the afternoon on Sunday, I found myself sitting at my grandmother’s kitchen table, stuffing my face with one of her famous deli sandwiches looking back and forth between her and Raegan, trying to listen to them talk in between bites of my sandwich.
“With Alina having just left you this note last night, we are taking this as a good sign. She doesn’t want to move on from the afterlife and in fact may not be able to move on. It has been many decades since there has been a bonded soul within the Silver-Heart Coven. My memory is a little rusty but if I recall correctly, there were complications when one soul mate passed and the other still lived.”
“What happened to them?” I asked, intrigued.
“Their life was one completely different from yours and Alina’s. I don’t quite remember what ended up happening with the two souls. However, yours and Alina’s story is a different one that in the which the way that your soul bond had been so abruptly severed.”
Trying to process what she was saying, understanding that our love story was a unique one, I asked; “So, have we figured out how to pull this all off yet?”
Raegan nodded excitedly; her blue eyes lit up like candles. Her red hair bounced around her face as she did so. “We need a necromancer to help bring Alina back home. Luckily, I knew just the person to call, and my brother Vincent will be arriving Tuesday evening.”
I don’t think her smile could be any wider than it is right now, and I let a little hope trickle out in a laugh. In my excitement for the possibility to come, I scooped Raegan up in a hug, spinning her around in a circle on Jean’s kitchen floor. After placing her back on her feet, Reagan, Gran and I all laughed at my jubilant outburst of emotion. I’m sure I’ve told you before that I’m a dork, right?