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He opened his arms. “Come here. Please.”
She stepped forward until she stood in his embrace, wanting it to be real so badly and terrified that it wasn’t. His strong arms wrapped around her and pressed her to his hard body. She inhaled his familiar scent of clean linen and soap, and spread her palms over his chest where she could feel the muscles and beat of his heart underneath.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered.
He tilted her head up and kissed the corner of her mouth. “Will you sit with me on the couch?” he asked with a twitch of his lips. “When I heard you speaking to Bob, I was jealous as hell but happy to discover I was jealous of an overweight cat.”
She laughed, some of the tension evaporating from her body.
“Come, Princess.”
He took her hand and led her back to the living room. As they sat down next to Bob, the cat gave them a dirty look before taking off.
Ivan touched her hair. “I don’t know where to start.”
“Wait. If you’re not dead, how did you get in here?”
“Your father gave me a set of keys and the code for the alarm.”
“He knows? I just saw him. Why didn’t he say anything?”
“We thought it would be better if I broke the news to you.”
“For how long? If he kept this from me—”
“I only found him this morning. He told me about the party, and I didn’t want you to miss out on it.” He brushed the hair away from her face. “I’m so proud of you. A record, huh? Grammy, too.”
“Performing on stage isn’t my thing. It’s easier for me when I’m alone in a studio.” She took his hand, still needing reassurance that he was skin and bone. “Where were you all this time?”
“For me, no time has passed at all.”
She shook her head. “Start at the beginning.”
“The beginning?”
“The end,” she corrected. “I saw your body. We went looking for Godfrey, and when we came back, you were gone. There wasn’t even a trace. It was as if you’d never existed.”
“When I died, I was in a big space, the size of an auditorium, with two—for lack of a better description—let’s say doors. Through the one, I saw my mother.”
“Your mother?”
“She was beautiful and kind. Beyond her there was this soft light. Peaceful.”
“And the other?”
“There was murkiness and chaos, but I knew I had to get through it if I wanted to close the portal. There were a lot of suffering souls gathered in there. It was like a station for spirits coming and going without hope. Some of them wanted to come back here to solve unfinished business.”
“You did it. I know, because I haven’t seen a spirit since.”
“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, even harder than dying, because I knew it meant never seeing you, again.” He brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “Then a woman came to me. She looked like a mix of a Roman goddess and an angel. She kept on changing, as if she could take on various forms, like she was both man and woman. She, or he, called herself a quantumancist. She asked me if I had one last wish what it would be, and I said I wanted you to know your mother was happy. I saw her myself, Alice. She’s singing, content, at last.”
He smiled. “All I could think was how much I love you.” He held her gaze. “Next thing I knew, I woke up on the stage in London. I thought I was gone for a day, but when I found a security guard at the exit and asked for the date, I realized how long it really had been. I went back to The Ritz, but Kate had booked me out and closed all my tabs. As soon as I found out from Johnny where you’d gone, I called Kate. It took me a while to convince her it was really me and to buy me a ticket to New York. Of course, I had to tell her I cracked under the stress and had gone AWOL to a private island. Thanks to my crazy disposition, people will believe anything.”
She gaped at him. “You mean to say someone called a quantumancist gave you back your life, and all of this happened in one day, but it’s been over a year in our time?”
“Something like that. I know it sounds crazy, but what else do you expect from someone like me?”
“Oh, Ivan.” She put her head on his chest. “I thought I’d never see you, again. I’m not sure how to deal with this, yet.”
He stroked her hair. “Nothing would’ve kept me away from you. I would’ve always found you, even if I had to wait eighty years or more for you to come to me.”
