Page 77

That begged for her. Reached for her, twisting and stretching for even just a glimpse of her light.

For a moment, he saw his life as it could have been—if he’d been alive.

He could have sat at the table beside her, arm draped causally around the back. His fingers would twine through her hair, wrapping those loose waves up and down the length of his knuckle. He could stare at her openly, unashamedly, and the world could witness it. Witness the rising tide swelling inside him, the affection and devotion beginning to creep into his gaze.

Could a ghost have a soulmate?

“I was waiting for the subway one day,” Avery said, ripping him from his thoughts. “I tend to people watch. It’s hard not to,” she added ruefully. “The next train came and this guy was sprinting toward it. I caught the barest glimpse of a woman inside. She lifted her head just long enough to make eye contact with him and then the doors closed and the train was gone. I don’t think they knew each other. They were just strangers.” Her eyes met his. “But I started thinking about connections—how long does one take to form? Can it be immediate? Can you know someone is meant for you without even knowing their name?”

“How romantic,” Moira sighed dreamily.

Avery sucked in a long breath. “From there, I started thinking about the city. For as big it is, for as many people there are, you tend to run into people time and time again. Near misses.”

Wolfe’s fingers curled around the edge of the counter. A creeping, prickling sensation began to form against the nape of his neck.

“Two people who existed within arm’s reach of each other, but weren’t able to finally bridge the gap until two years later.”

“How did you figure out the timeline?” Nadine asked. “Two years is a long time to wait.”

“Is it?” Avery countered softly. “If it’s your person—your soulmate. Is two years too long?”

Wolfe flinched. Two years was nothing. Two years was a drop in the bucket of his life. If it was Avery he’d seen from the outside of the train, he would have searched and searched. Waited. Stared at—

Impossible.

Slowly, he lifted his head.

Everything inside him pulled north, toward her.

Could it be…?

“That one glimpse and he never forgot her.” Lisette propped her chin in her fist, gray eyes hazy and dream-like. “You created such a pull between them. Like they were magnets or something.”

Avery grinned. “Good. That’s what I wanted. I wanted it to feel like both of their worlds had been changed in just one glance. No matter where either of them went in the city, they could feel the other.”

“I love yearning,” Bianca sighed. “The fact that he was searching for her in every room and he didn’t even know her name. I just—” She pressed a ring-clad hand to her forehead and swooned right into Lisette, who caught her with a laugh.

“Sometimes you just know,” Avery said quietly, looking at him in a way he’d only ever dreamt of. “Your soul always knows—even when the rest of you doesn’t.”

And Wolfe knew then why he’d been unable to pass on.

Why he watched two hundred years’ worth of sunrises and sunsets. Why he spent all that time aching and wondering if the day would ever come.

He’d been waiting for her.

Chapter 22

I couldn’t remember a time I’d ever laughed so hard.

The women in Moira’s group were wonderful.

I hadn’t expected so many questions, so many thought-provoking topics, but we wove through soulmates, grief, longing and, most painful of all, loneliness. They each struggled with it in their own way. Half the table was married, but still found themselves feeling alone with their hearts hurting. Bianca was recently engaged and even during one of the happiest times of her life, she said she still found herself aching on certain days.

I felt seen then.

My loneliness wasn’t something that ostracized me. Instead, it was something that linked us all together. How could I ever be truly alone when so many of us felt this way?

Wolfe watched from the counter, hands braced along the edge. He never took his eyes off me, and I felt the weight of his gaze on the dip in my throat, the push of my wine glass against my lips. I wished for a moment that someone else could see him, to draw even a moment of his attention off me.