After This Life, We’ll Never Meet Again

My husband and I had been reincarnated twice, and not once had we ever been apart. Yet, somehow, he hated me. Kevin Johnson hated me with a kind of quiet, bone-deep fury that no one else seemed to notice. And I felt it every time he looked at me. But I also knew him better than anyone ever had. I knew that under all that anger, Kevin had the softest damn heart. He’d never admit it. He’d probably laugh in my face if I said it out loud. But I saw it. I always saw it. And honestly, if he didn’t have that kind of heart, how else could you explain what he did? How could he have thrown away the ashes of Tiffany Leighton—the woman he loved so deeply—just to protect me when a group of thugs dragged me into that alley? He died to save me. Stabbed over and over, right there in front of me. And still, with his last breath, Kevin reached out, gathered Tiffany’s ashes in his bloodied hand, and looked straight at me. That smile. God, that smile. Half cruel. Half gentle. All broken. The kind of expression that wouldn’t fade with time. One that would sink into your bones and stay there. “Avery,” Kevin said, voice barely holding on, “I don’t regret saving you. But I hope we never meet again in the next life.” Kevin’s parents came to collect the body. They didn’t let me see him. Not even once. Not even for a second. No goodbye. No closure. Just a slammed door and silence. They treated me like I had put the knife in him myself. His dad, Gregory, looked at me like I was the reason his son was on the ground. And maybe in some twisted way, I was. The man looked ten years older than the last time I saw him. His posture was weak, his hair turned white, reflecting the grief that had gutted him. But Gregory didn’t break. Not fully. He just stood there, hollowed out, looking at me like I was a bad decision he never got to undo. “If your father hadn’t made that promise to me before he died,” he said, voice low and rough, “I would’ve never stopped Kevin from marrying Tiffany. Never. But I owed him. And Kevin… Kevin kept saving your life like it meant something. Like it was fate. But this, whatever this is between you two, ends now. It has to.” Then came Eleanor, Kevin’s mom. God, the way she looked at me like I was poison. She didn’t yell or cry. Eleanor just stared at me with those sharp, tired eyes that had probably spent the whole night awake. Eyes that had seen their son brought home in a body bag. “Avery,” she said, her voice cold and measured, “if you have even a shred of conscience left, let my son go. Let him rest. Don’t follow him into the next life. Don’t make him suffer for you again!” Then Eleanor folded her hands like it was Sunday mass, and she said it. “Please. Let him go. We’re begging you.”