Chapter 16

1 A.M. Same Night.

When Kyle got home late that night he went straight for his laptop. He didn’t know why, but the woman he had seen earlier that night at the diner piqued his interest. He felt a strange case of deju vu the moment he saw her face when she lifted her head up as she got in her car. She seemed vaguely familiar and he could not place where he might have seen her. When he logged onto the internet he went to Google to try his luck with their search engines. He didn’t have any clue on how to find what he was looking for. He’d only heard the NBA player call her Torian. No last name was said.

“There’s got to be a billion Torians in Los Angeles.” Kyle said out loud. He decided to try his luck anyway. He typed ‘Torian Los Angeles’ into the search box and clicked enter. Hundreds of results showed up but none on the first page seemed interesting.

“Guess I gotta look through all of these results. I got all night. Ain’t s*** else to do.”

Kyle scrolled through result and result, each time coming up short until he came to a headline that read “White named General Manager of Lewis & Associates” about 10 pages into the results. Curiosity made him click the link. It was an article on the website of the company in question. Next to the article was a picture of the woman from last night. He skimmed the first line of the article.

“Advertising executive Torian White was promoted to general manager of Lewis & Associates earlier this morning after landing the company’s biggest client yet…”

“Bingo.” Kyle said smiling. “So her name is Torian White. Well, Miss. White, let’s see what Google can tell me about you.” He headed back to Google’s homepage then typed her full name into the search box and hit enter. He found a few results related to the company she worked for. A further search happened upon some articles dated at least five years back. The different headlines hit him like a train, but they all bore the same message: Four college friends shot in schoolyard shooting. He clicked the first one he saw.

“Tragedy has rocked the city of Inglewood as the news of last night’s schoolyard massacre spread. Three young friends were forced to kneel against a schoolyard wall and were shot to death at close range, a fourth was found alive only a few feet away with stab wounds and a gunshot wound to the head. The shooting happened just days before they were to return to college.”

“That’s horrible.” Kyle said as he continued to read the article.

“All were from the area and attended the University of Southern California. The four friends were leaving the schoolyard at Orville Wright Middle School shortly after 11 PM when they were attacked. The schoolyard was a popular hangout for youth in the area. Police said the attackers shot one young woman, then lined her three companions up against a wall, made them kneel and shot each in the head. Torian White, 20, was listed in fair condition at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, authorities said. Police identified her slain companions as Chris Brown, 18, his sister Chalea Brown, 19, and Shad Moss, 20. As of today no arrests have been made.”

The article continued on for a few more paragraphs but Kyle never made it that far. Under the last paragraph he read which named the four victims, their pictures were posted. Kyle found himself going into a state of shock. He rubbed his eyes, looked again, saw what the f*** he thought he saw the first time, and stood up so fast that the chair he’d been sitting in flipped over.

“What the f***?! Impossible!”

XXX

Tori stirred in her sleep. She felt herself being bathed in a feeling of warmth. It was a good feeling, one she hadn’t felt in a long time. A familiar scent filled her nose and made her smile. The urgent need to open her eyes made her sit up in bed and open them.

“What the?” She looked around the room. The whole room was white. Everything. The walls, the bed and it’s covering, the sheer curtain that wrapped around the bed, the pillows. Everything. The room had no windows or doors and that’s what freaked her out.

Okay, this is definitely not my room, Tori thought. She looked down at herself and noticed she was wearing a white cotton nightgown. She hadn’t gone to bed in that!

“Torian.”

Tori heard the familiar voice that came out of seemingly nowhere, looked up, and almost leapt out of the bed. Standing at the foot of the bed was Chris. Well, a slightly older version of him, anyway. No, no, Chris was dead. She had to be dreaming.

“You are dreaming, Tori, but let me explain.” The thing that had Chris’s face spoke to her. Okay, if she was dreaming, then he, whatever he was, couldn’t harm her. “Baby, that has not and will never cross my mind.” He spoke to her again.

Okay, she was beyond freaked out now. He could read her thoughts? That was dangerous. And he had called her ‘baby’?

“I’ve always called you that. In my mind anyway.” He smiled as he came toward her.

“Don’t come any closer!” Tori yelled. He stopped in his tracks, saw that she was really freaked out and knew that he had to try another approach.

“Okay, I know this is getting weird for you right now-”

“Is getting?” Tori stared at him in disbelief.

He smiled a smile that nearly made Tori’s knees shake under the sheets.

“All right, is weird, but let me explain everything to you. You’ve known me forever, so you should know that I would never do anything to hurt you. Still yourself for a minute, look into my eyes, do you sense any kind of threat in them?”

Tori gazed into beautiful brown eyes, seeing through them to what seemed like infinity. A feeling in her heart told her who it was that stood before her, and that he wouldn’t hurt her.

“I know you wont hurt me.” She finally said. He nodded and came close to her. When he sat next to her on the bed, she wanted to hug him but was afraid to. Chris heard what her mind said. She was afraid to hug him. He would not tell her it was okay to do that. Not yet. Not until he had explained what he needed to. He was also fighting his own urge to hug her, hold her, kiss her. He made no move to do any of that, for fear of freaking her out more.

“You said I was dreaming?” Tori spoke, a question in her eyes.

“Yeah…you are.” He answered.

“So this isn’t real?” She asked. He saw the sadness in her eyes.

“No, it’s real, but it’s another kind of reality. A dream reality. Baby, you were sleeping. You called out to me in your dreams, you mourned me, missed me, loved me. It’s because of these things that I am finally able to come to you. You cry yourself to sleep at night hugging a pillow close wishing it was me. Your cries reached Heaven, girl.” Chris said, fighting the urge to wipe away the tears that were now coming from her eyes.

“Why did you leave me?” Tori cried.

“Baby, I never left. Physically, yes. But spiritually I was always with you. You do not know how much it hurt me to see what happened to you after what happened to us. I may not have there physically, but I was there rubbing your cheek in the back of the ambulance willing you to live after you slit your wrist. If I wasn’t already dead, you committing suicide would have killed me. But none of that matters now. Your soul called out for mine and I came. I come only to a place where you are the happiest, in your dreams. Where we are now is an astral dream realm between Heaven and Earth.

“Okay.” Tori nodded. She wasn’t sure she understood everything he’d just told her. She was still very sure she was just dreaming this up in her head. He couldn’t have just manifested in her dream from Heaven like that. But then again, she’d never had a dream like this before. And if it was true, and Chris had come down from Heaven to sooth her pain, then he was an angel.

“I’m hardly that.” Chris smiled. “I’ve got a little while to go to earn my wings. I’ve got a very challenging task ahead of me. If I succeed then I’ll be a true angel, but for now, I’m an apprentice.”

A question burned in her mind. Chris answered her before the words even formed in her mouth.

“Chey and Shad are fine. They send you their love and can’t wait till’ we’re all together again like old times.”

Upon hearing her slain friends’ names she broke down into a heap of tears. Chris threw caution to the wind and grabbed her into his arms to embrace her. He let his touch send a calming sensation through her body. Tori held him closer, needing to feel more of that sensation. The serene warmth radiated against her skin like a humid summer breeze and stilled her cries.

“Baby, don’t cry for us. It hurts us more than you’ll ever know.” Chris pulled away from her to look into her eyes.

“Why have you come now?” She asked innocently.

“To take your pain away. We were parted before we ever--before we ever got to see where love could have taken us. Now we have a second chance.”

“A second chance?” Tori asked him. “How? I mean, you‘re d--.” Tori stopped herself from saying that word.

“Let’s just say the Man upstairs did me this one solid since I kept all my vows to Him, my mom, and you. I get to do what I never got to do while on Earth, and that’s make love to you.”

“But…will you feel it? I mean, will we?” Tori asked. Due to the fact the he was dead and she was dreaming, she wasn’t sure he’d feel anything. And that’s not how she ever envisioned their first time to be, devoid of feeling.

Her answer was in his hard kiss. He captured her mouth, stole her breath, and sent prisms of warmth through her. Well she definitely felt that.

When he pulled out of the kiss he stared into her pretty face. “You are so beautiful.” He ran a hand over her face, tracing the somewhat faint scars on her jaw line. “Yes, even with the scars.” He said before she thought of something negative to say about them.

“Chris, I missed you so much.”

“You don’t have to tell me. I know.” Chris wiped the tears that formed in her eyes. “I love you.”

He smiled a half smile as he said it. Then his hands with to the straps of her nightgown and slid them down her shoulders. His fingertips sent more of that calming warmth through her each time they came in contact with her skin. More tears escaped her eyes. She never thought she’d hear Chris say those three words to her, thought she’d been forever denied that closure.

“I love you too.” She finally replied back to him as he guided her to lay down on the bed. “But you must be so disappointed in me, Chris. I stopped going to church, turned my back on the Lord, tried to kill myself, and shut everyone out. I’m so sorry. But when--the only explanation I have for my actions is, when I lost my soul mate I became a lost soul…for so long.”

What could have been no longer mattered to Chris. In a place where there was no space or time, just them, only the moment mattered. He smiled a smile that could only be described as sad but it was gone as quickly as it came. In that moment he bared his very soul to the woman he loved. What came from his mouth next was pure and total honesty. “So did I.”

TBC...