Swept Away (Wildfire Lake #3) - Skye Jordan Page 0,4

share of potholes, but the universe eventually guided me toward spirituality and amazing people who have helped me heal from the abandonment.

“I’ve traveled all over. I love seeing different countries and meeting amazing people. I’ve been studying spirituality and meditation for about five years. What started off as a need to heal and find meaning turned into my passion. Since the best way to master anything is to teach it, I’m on this retreat to help other people find peace and purpose and to deepen my own experience.”

“So, you really walk the walk,” Laiyla says.

I laugh, because, to be honest, I don’t know what I’m doing. “Every day is a struggle. I have to constantly bring myself back to my practice, as in, twenty times a day. It’s never a straight path, and I often find myself slipping into negativity, fear, even anger. But what I’ve learned over the last five years has drastically improved my life, my outlook, and my happiness. I’ve come to believe without question that everything happens for a reason and wherever we are in life is exactly where we’re meant to be. I’ve cultivated patience and acceptance and compassion—for myself and others. I’m legit terrified of where I’d be without the grounding beliefs I’ve developed over the years.”

“Wow,” Laiyla says, nodding like she gets it. Then she starts asking all the rapid-fire questions she and KT have already answered. “Biggest dream?”

“Maybe the whole Eat, Pray, Love thing. Someday, I’d like to touch every country with information and practices and tools that could help others.”

“Boyfriend?” KT asks. “Or girlfriend?”

I smile and shake my head. “I’m like you,” I tell KT, “a sexual nomad. It works for me. I don’t want to be tied down, partly because I know my journey isn’t finished, partly because I’m not thrilled over the possibility of being abandoned again.”

I finish up bandaging the last large cut on KT’s body and sit back on my heels. “That will have to hold you until we can get you to a hospital for real stitches.”

The roof of the cabin rattles, and we all look up and tense until the gust passes.

“One thing’s for sure,” Laiyla says. “I never expected to spend my birthday like this.”

KT and I swing our attention to Laiyla. “Today’s your birthday?” we ask in unison, then look at each other and say, “It’s yours too?”

Laiyla laughs at the spontaneous choreography, but then sobers. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-three,” KT and I say in unison again.

A familiar tingle starts in the pit of my stomach and grows into velvet butterfly wings filling my torso. It’s a sign. A sign I was meant to meet these women. I don’t know why yet, but I’ve seen the higher powers in the universe work more than a few miracles, and there’s no doubt, this is one of them.

KT looks at me and Laiyla in turn. “Are you guys shitting me?”

Laiyla and I shake our heads, and while KT and Laiyla continue to find this unbelievable, I grin.

“This is proof of divine intervention,” I insist. “This is how the universe or spirit or God—it doesn’t matter what you call it—shows us our path. There is no way all of us ended up trapped in this room together by accident or coincidence.”

Laiyla and KT look at each other, gauging the other’s reaction to this claim.

“I know you’re both skeptical,” I say. “Most people are. It’s difficult to accept that there is an unseen higher power at work for the greater good. One that yearns for us to be the best version of ourselves, but I hope you’ll continue searching once this retreat is over, because the more you look, the more you see.”

KT picks up her water bottle and holds it up. “Here’s to looking for miracles in all the wrong places.”

Laiyla and I laugh and tap our water bottles with KT’s.

“And we should pinky swear,” I say, “that we won’t ever lose touch with each other after this is all over.”

We all smile and join pinkies much the way we locked elbows just hours ago in the storm, using our combined strength to lead ourselves to safety.

In unison, we agree. “Pinky swear.”

1

Xavier

Eight years later

God, I love Wednesdays. It’s the best day of my freaking week.

I stand sideways at the deli’s sandwich counter, one hand resting on the Glock at my hip, the fingers of the other tapping restlessly against the Formica. I glance at my watch, then toward the front of the store and out the