Tempted (2 page)

Jackson shook his head as he walked, clinging to Mason’s leash with one hand, and the brown paper bag with bottles clinking together in the other. Maybe the old Jackson would have done those things. The young twenty-year old who had joined the Army with his entire life and career ahead of him had women falling at his feet. The young, foolish private would have had the sexy cashier in his bed by now. But that would have been before.

Now, an invitation to his place would have to come with a disclaimer: “Oh yes, sexy cashier girl,” he mumbled under his breath as he arrived in front of his apartment, “I’d love to have you over for dinner and maybe some casual sex. Oh, by the way I’m a drunken veteran who has night terrors so you might want to sleep with one eye open. Yeah Jackson, real sexy.”

He could not flirt and smile at the attractive cashier behind the counter. He could not ask for her phone number or take her to his place like a normal person. He could not allow himself to be close to her, or anyone else for that matter. If he didn’t keep people at arm’s length then they would know.

They would know about the crushing anger and grief that greeted him every morning when he woke up. They would know about the nightmares that haunted his sleep, dreams so terrible that he could not get a decent night’s rest without drowning himself in vodka first. Dreams so raw and so real, that he often woke up screaming his horror. They would know about the voices, the accusing, damning voices that reminded him cruelly every day that people had died needlessly at his hands.

And so he walked home alone, with Mason loping along at his side, and two bottles of vodka clinking together in the paper bag in his hand.

Two hours and another half bottle of vodka later, Jackson decided that he was finally inebriated enough to go to sleep. His vision swam hazily before him as he stumbled toward his room, the half-empty bottle still clutched in his hand. He took one last swig from the bottle before leaving it on the nightstand, relishing the warmth that the liquor left in its wake. He kicked off his shoes and pulled his shirt over his head, depositing them in the mountainous pile he had going in the middle of the room.

He snatched his cell phone out of his front pocket before sinking down onto the bed. The blue backlight cast a dim glow across the room as he studied the screen. His thumb slid over the number one, which was the speed dial for Rochelle. He stared at her name numbly for all of five minutes before the letters started to swim across the screen. He blinked and shook his head, focusing his eyes back on the screen. After a few more indecisive seconds of screen-staring, he quickly pressed the ‘call’ button before he could change his mind.

His heartbeat accelerated with every ring that sounded on the other end. He held his breath, waiting for the tell-tale click of the receiver being picked up and Rochelle’s familiar voice on the other end. His heart sank as the ringing stopped and the voicemail switched on.

“
You have reached Rochelle Smith,”
her voice said mechanically, “
I can’t come to the phone right now, so please leave a message at the tone.”

Jackson snatched the phone away from his ear and ended the call before tossing the cell phone angrily across the room. It landed on top of the massive pile of clothes.

Jackson fell back onto the mattress, closing his eyes against the whirling sensation of dizziness that clouded his head. Rochelle rarely answered the phone when he called. And who could blame her? He was no longer the man she had fallen in love with. He was no longer the man she had married. As he drifted off to sleep alone in his tiny, one-bedroom apartment, he knew that the body he was in was merely a shell of its former self; the coffin encasing the dead soul that had once been Jackson Bennett.

Chapter 3: Windows to the Soul

More than one week had passed since Nathaniel’s fall from grace, but for some reason he lingered on the edge of Sarah’s mind. It wasn’t that she was naturally a sympathetic person. Most angels weren’t by nature, unless they spent a lot of time around humans. As a messenger of sorts, Sarah’s contact with humans was very limited. Most of her messages were delivered to other angels.

For Sarah it was almost always ‘out of sight, out of mind’. But, after she had left Nathaniel lying on the rooftop of the old brownstone apartment building, she had been unable to chase the image of him lying there, his wings now charred stumps, the glowing, upside down cross burning itself permanently into his skin.

She had seen it so many times, but for some strange reason Nathan’s fall struck a chord with her. She had seen angels fall, but none of them was as close to her as Nathan. One friend of hers had come very close, but Amir had been resilient enough to resist temptation. As a reward for his resistance and self-control, Father had given Amir a choice between divinity and mortality. Unable to live without the woman he loved, Amir had chosen mortality. He had been given the chance to trade in his other-worldly powers for a human body and he had gladly taken it.

Sarah supposed she was happy for her friend. Last she’d seen him, he was binding himself in marriage to the woman who had captured his heart. Stories like Amir’s were rare; things like that hardly ever happened in the world that existed somewhere between heaven and earth. She supposed she was happy enough for Amir. At least he was not damned forever like Nathan. At least now he had a chance at happiness, a concept that Sarah found to be completely subjective. She did not need another person bound to her for life in order to be happy. Nathan had expressed pity for her, but Sarah felt that the pity should be reserved for him, or any other angel who was foolish enough to fall.

It was one of the reasons for her chosen human form. Every angel was capable of creating and altering his or her own human appearance while on earth. Many angels, like Nathan, chose a very attractive outer appearance. Many had often asked her why she chose to appear so plain. With waist length, mousy brown hair that was often in a ponytail, and fairly common features, Sarah was the kind of woman most people would not look twice at. It was because of the human tendency to place so much importance on physical appearance that Sarah had chosen to remain the way she was while on earth.

Her one concession to vanity had been her eyes. A deep mahogany brown rimmed in amber with green flecks at the center, Sarah’s eyes were the only feature she possessed that might be considered beautiful. But outer appearance was not important to her.

As she walked down the busy city street, setting out to deliver her messages for the day, she reminded herself what was important. No matter how badly she felt for what had happened to Nathan, it wasn’t as if she had any control over the actions of others, or the resulting consequences. She could only hope that others would follow her example of steadfastness and dedication to their cause.

As she walked, mulling over her ever growing list of messages to deliver, she glanced down at the pavement, watching each line in the asphalt as they passed beneath her sneakers. It wasn’t until she collided with something solid that she thought to pay attention to where she was going. She toppled against someone, a man, who had stepped directly into her path. Or maybe she had stepped into his; she really wasn’t sure. She faintly caught a whiff of his musky cologne and registered the feel of his cotton t-shirt against her face before his hands shot up to grip her upper shoulders.

When he had steadied her so that she would not fall, he pushed her away from him, looking down at her with a scowl. Her eyes connected with a pair the color of storm clouds. She nearly gasped at the raw pain and misery she found there, and felt a shiver roll down her spine at the turbulent emotions radiating from this man. He stared back at her silently for several seconds, just long enough for Sarah to notice his smooth brown skin and the ripple of chest muscles beneath his shirt.

“
Watch where you’re going!” he barked before stepping around her. Within seconds he was out of sight, his long-legged gait propelling him further and further down the sidewalk until he was swallowed up by the crowd.

Sarah stood there, staring dumbly after him, her nerves rubbed raw from their interaction. She had come in contact with many hurting souls. She had looked into the eyes of people who were suffering sickness and disease; people who were dying inside and falling apart. Yet she had never, in all the years she had walked the earth, come in contact with a human more inflicted by pain. She felt a lone tear slipping down her cheek as she turned to continue on down the sidewalk.

One interaction with a human, and an angel could take on every emotion the person was feeling. At the moment Sarah felt as if she could just fall to the pavement, curl up into a ball, and die. She felt like crying and screaming and cursing. She felt so many unfamiliar emotions that she barely knew how to contain it.

As the conflicting emotions waged war inside of her, she increased her pace to a run until she was alone in a nearby alley. It wasn’t until she had stopped and braced herself against the brick wall beside her, that she allowed herself to double over and empty the contents of her stomach. Her insides shook with the force of the sickness until she was spewing it out onto the pavement. She had taken on too many unfamiliar emotions at once, all of which were extremely volatile. That many emotions in a human were crippling; to an angel, they were like poison.

When the heaving stopped in her stomach and her head stopped spinning, Sarah sank to the ground, leaning back against the cool brick. There was no way she could ever figure out all of the foreign emotions that had just raced through her in the short span of a few minutes. All she could do was wait for them to pass, wait for the crippling feeling of an inner death to be chased from her mind. Then she would go back to being her old self.

But as she sat in the alley, her hands pressed to her throbbing head, she could not chase the image of stormy gray eyes from her mind.

Jackson sat on the park bench and pretended to read the newspaper clutched in his hand. He peeked over the top, watching the elementary school from the park across the street. Mason lounged lazily at his feet, his head resting between his paws. The chiming of the bell rang out through the open doors as children rushed up the steps to make it inside. The paper crinkled noisily in his hand as he spotted the child he had come to watch, as he did every morning.

Rochelle’s familiar black Nissan came to a stop at the curb before the driver’s side door flew open. Her patent leather high heels and shapely calves made an appearance first, followed by her head popping up from behind the door. He watched as she went around to the back passenger door and opened it.

He smiled as he watched little Jack running up the steps toward the school. Rochelle stood beside her car, waiting as she always did for him to disappear inside. He stopped in the doorway, turning around to flash his million-dollar smile and wave. Jackson felt a tear coming to his eye as he realized that Jack had lost another tooth.

As his son disappeared into the building, and Rochelle pulled away in her car, Jackson dropped the newspaper to the bench beside him and lowered his head into his hands.

He was missing it. Everything that a father was supposed to be there for, he was missing. He couldn’t take his son to the park anymore and throw a ball around with him. He couldn’t laugh with him at Saturday morning cartoons over bowls of sugary cereal. He couldn’t tuck his son in at night and read to him from their favorite books.

He couldn’t be a decent father to Jack, and it was all because of his dysfunction. He was so messed up inside that he couldn’t even be a decent husband or father. He could only take things one breath at a time, and pray he made it until the end of the day. That was no way for a woman to live. It was no way for a child to live. As Jackson stood and turned to leave, he could not walk fast enough to escape the crushing feeling of failure that weighed so heavily on his shoulders.

Chapter 4: Heavenly Gates

Sarah closed her eyes and spread her arms wide as she floated languorously through space. Unlike the noisy, crowded planet Earth, the open universe offered solitude and peace. Twinkling stars surrounded her, and some even shot alongside as she moved slowly through the dark night. As she traveled further and further through space, a bright star grew larger and large in the distance.

Heaven. Home. The place where souls were blessed to travel after death. The place where sadness and suffering did not exist. As she neared the star, a blinding flash of light enveloped her, and then the bright blue of heaven’s clear sky appeared. She spread her wings wide as she slowed, looking down over the winding streets paved with glittering gold.

Rolling green hills dotted with tall trees and flowers spread as far as the eye could see. The city, with buildings that shined like iridescent gems, loomed in the distance. Sarah smiled and waved at the children running below her. Their little faces upturned, they laughed and waved back to her as they ran. They continued to follow her as she flew over a field covered in flowers of every color.

Sarah swooped down until she was flying alongside them. The children laughed and squealed, and reached up to run their hands along her wings, which were outstretched over their heads. Sarah lifted one into her arms for a hug before placing the little girl back on her feet. She then reached down and gathered up a handful of the colorful blossoms.