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“Boy, relax.” She waved me off. “You’re still getting your little two-hour booty call, or what I call a deeply meaningful spiritual reunion.”

I laughed.

Her expression turned serious again. “But seriously, Lakelyn has to want you.”

I frowned. “What you mean she has to want me?”

“She has to willingly accept you. I can give you a body, Caspian, but I cannot make that woman choose what to do with it.”

“Oh, shit. I ain’t worried about that.”

“Perhaps you should be.”

My smile faded. “Elaborate.”

“Lakelyn misses you… that much is obvious. But missing someone and suddenly having that person standing in front of you after more than six years are two entirely different things. Think about it from her perspective. You disappeared, and she never received an explanation: no body, no goodbye, no certainty about whether you were alive or dead. She had to build an entire life around a question nobody could answer. Now imagine that after all those years, the man at the center of that question suddenly becomes warm, solid, and touchable in her bedroom.”

My jaw tightened.

“Even if a person desperately wants something to be real, the impossible can still frighten them when it actually happens,” she continued. “Her mind may protect itself by telling her she’s dreaming. Honestly, with us needing to keep your true identity hidden until Halloween, that may be the safest explanation for her to believe for now.”

I looked toward Lakelyn.

“Then let her think she’s dreaming.”

Miss Veda sighed. “For tonight, perhaps. But from this point forward, you need to be careful with that girl’s heart and her mind.”

I frowned. “What? I always am.”

“Not in the way you look at it.”

That got my attention.

“Believing the boyfriend who has been missing for more than half a decade is suddenly touching you again would shake anybody. But if you keep giving her pieces of yourself without answers—letting her smell your cologne in an empty room, watch the mattress move when nobody is there—you’re eventually going to make her question whether any of it is real. That girl spent six years learning how to live without knowing what happened to you. She has a child depending on her, a sick grandmother, a sister, bills, a career she’s trying to restart, and enough responsibility sitting on her shoulders already. Do not add Maybe I’m losing my damn mind to that list.”

“I’m not trying to hurt her.”

“I know. That is exactly why I am warning you. You love her, so you’re thinking about how badly you want her to know you’re still here. You’re not always stopping to consider what receiving those little pieces of you feels like from her side.”

Damn.

I looked toward Lakelyn.

“I just want her to know I’m here.”

“Then when you become strong enough to show her in a way that doesn’t leave her doubting herself afterward, show her. Until then, stop haunting that woman halfway.”

I let out a breath. “I just need tonight. After that, I’ma chill until Halloween… try to anyway.”

Miss Veda gave me a long look. “See that you do.”

I nodded.

“Now…” She glanced toward the bed, then back at me. “You have spent half your precious two hours arguing with me.”

My head snapped toward her.

She burst out laughing. “I’m just kiddin’.”