Now I knew where I remembered the man in the garden from. “Porter. He’s immortal, too?”
That earned me a smile. “Yes, he is. Porter was…is a guardian and a teacher. He has helped mold and guide many immortals before and including me.”
“I can definitely see where things might have been confusing and even frightening for you, but you left and didn’t turn back. You just…forgot about me.”
Reaching across the table, he grasped my hand. “I was scared and confused, totally unprepared despite my parents’ attempts at preparing me. There was so much for me to learn so that I could serve my people. But I never, ever forgot you.”
I nodded, feeling an uncomfortable swell of emotion threatening to overtake me. “Can you take me home now, please?”
His eyes searched mine. “If that’s what you want, but I’d love for you to stay.”
“It is what I want. Take me home. Beam me back. Whatever.”
He sighed, his shoulders sagging a bit, and I wondered if he’d intended to keep me here forever.
Fuck that.
And again, fuck him!
Without another word, he held his hands out to me, and no sooner than mine made contact with them, we were back in his hotel room. I had on my own clothes, and I felt borderline normal again. We stood there, hands still connected, eyes on one another.
“Temple, there’s one more thing I need to tell you before you leave. It’s important.”
With a sigh, a slight nod, and a lump forming in my throat, I said, “Okay.”
8
Sampson
Sitting on the side of the bed in my suite the next morning, I felt the sense of loss and emptiness that had been a part of my wardrobe for two decades begin to cloak me again. A longing that was never fulfilled. A gaping, endless hole in my soul and heart that I couldn’t seal no matter how hard I tried.
I spent years studying at the school of immortality, trying to gain knowledge and understanding of myself and the kindred who walked Earth before and with me. I wrestled with this gift, or curse, and which to see it as. I missed Temple, but I didn’t have time to dwell on it. I ached for her, but it was always in the back of my mind that I had time to get back to her. I had all the time in the world.
But she didn’t.
I now knew that to be clearly evident, and though I’d sought her before only to find she had married another, this time, I wouldn’t back away as I did then. I wouldn’t wait for her to enter a third marriage. I couldn’t. Besides, it seemed my timing was good on this occasion. My revelation to her? Not so much.
Judging from her reaction to my words, my recklessness with her may have cost me her heart…forever.
Eight hours earlier…
“Temple, there’s one more thing I need to tell you before you leave. It’s important,” I said.
I watched her eyes cloud with trepidation as she gave me a little nod and uttered, “Okay.”
“We should sit down, love.”
She shook her head. “I don’t wanna sit down. Just say what you need to say, Sam.”
Biting my lip, I sighed. “Uh…all right. One of the things my parents told me repeatedly that I didn’t understand or believe was that immortals mate for life.”
“Okay, what does that mean?”
“It means…we mate for life, that when we connect with someone in mind, body, and soul, from then on, we belong to each other and only each other. It means that your marriages didn’t work because you belong with me. It means any other woman I’ve ever touched has served as an inadequate surrogate for you because I belong with you. It’s not true of just any union. The woman has to be my soulmate, and I have to be hers. We have to be fated, and evidently, we are.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re telling me that you fucking me when we were kids is the reason I haven’t ever had a successful relationship since? That’s why, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t fall in love, not even with the men I married? Not really fall in love? Because of you?”
I winced at the venom in her voice. “Because I love you and you love me, Temple.” I was damn near whining.
She stared at me for a moment before punching me in the nose, hard.
“Shit!” I yelled, holding my hand over my nose. I might’ve been immortal, but I could feel pain—both physical and emotional, and right then, I was in agony.
Without another word, she grabbed her purse and left.
Temple
Now…
I was thankful I didn’t have to work last night after my little adventure with Sam. Even now, hours past when I left his hotel room, I was still tired, exhausted from everything I’d experienced, the hours I spent with him in Africa. Shit, I was in Africa with him. I wanted to be confused about that fact, but I could still taste the damn food I ate. I could describe his chambers in detail to minutia. I could still feel the soft cloth of the black robe I wore as it kissed my skin.
I was there.
It was beautiful.
He was beautiful.
But he’d ruined my life. That was factual.
Nevertheless, his divulgence helped me make sense of a lot of things, like how no other man’s touch had ever made me feel like his did. Or how I kept comparing other men’s bedroom performances to that of a kid I gave myself to on his prom night. How I couldn’t love another man even when I convinced myself I could. No one made me feel like he had all those years ago. Sam was my King David, my Michael Jordan, my metric, a master lover other men just couldn’t live up to because it was impossible for them to. They weren’t fucking immortals. Sam had marked me like a dog would a damn tree.
Shit.
What was I supposed to do now? What did he expect me to do, teleport to Africa with him and live out my days learning how to talk to fucking lions?
HELL no!
Curling my legs up under me on my sofa, I sighed, because as upset as I was about the whole situation, I kind of already…knew. I knew I didn’t have the capacity to love any man other than Sam. I also knew I’d never stopped loving him. I was just missing out on the why.
Now I knew the why, too.
*****
It’d been a week since I stormed out of Sam’s hotel room, and I was no less confused than I’d been at that moment. As I sat in the studio, staring at the pre-programmed song listing, I felt an ever-present maelstrom of feelings ranging from anger to disappointment. Anger at the fact that he’d blown into my world after twenty years and upended everything I thought I knew about myself and life in general, disappointment because he hadn’t tried to contact me since that day. But truthfully, Sam might’ve had permanent residence in my head for all I knew, probably heard all of my thoughts, and was privy to the fact that I hadn’t been doing shit but thinking about him. In that case, why would he reach out?
As Raheem DeVaughn’s “Marathon” played, I thought about the saddened expression on Sam’s face, my last vision of him. I was pissed when he’d honestly helped me solve a puzzle I’d spent my entire adulthood grappling with. I’d thought something was wrong with me, that both me and my pussy had to be broken for relationships and love and happiness to be so elusive for me, when in reality, by giving myself to Sam, I’d inadvertently set myself up for failure.