Page 65 of Some Kind of Haunted

He smiles back, so kindly that I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Or why Jack is keeping secrets from him in the first place. “Don’t forget those books about the orphan trains.”

“Right, yeah, I’ll come back and get them once we’re done,” I tell him, and hope we both forget. Then, with a wave, I leave the antique store and make my way outside, where the gaggle of geriatrics has moved on.

But Jack’s there, waiting in front of the diner next to his motorcycle. I really thought he’d have a car. Or one of those giant trucks that makes too much noise and is always belching out smoke in defiance of all climate concerns.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never been on a motorcycle before,” he says, as if I’ve made great previous claims to biker bitchdom and am backing down now. I realize he might be getting this impression from the way I’m standing here eyeing the motorcycle like I’ve never seen one in my life.

When, in fact, the problem is that I just saw it in great detail in a vivid little fantasy sequence I had in front of his grandfather.

Besides, his gruff tone puts my back up.

“Please. I’ve ridden motorcycles through traffic you can’t imagine in cities you’ve probably never heard of.”

“Cool,” he mutters, but it almost sounds like I’ve insulted him. He swings onto the bike in an easy, fluid move that I really wish wasn’t mesmerizing. He looks back at me, his gaze unreadable. “Let’s go.”

“But you’re afraid to be close to me.”

His gaze flashes, then darkens. He studies me, standing here on the curb. “I’m the one trying to get you on the back of this bike. If anyone’s afraid, princess, it’s you. Now, let’s go. Clock’s ticking.”

Then he holds out a helmet he pulls from a saddlebag.

And he’s not totally wrong. I’m not sure I’m afraid, but I’m definitely something that’s making it hard to get my limbs to move. But eventually I do, taking the helmet and pulling it onto my head, then gingerly sliding onto the back of his bike.

Meaning my legs are straddling his and unless I want to heave my ass off the back of this machine, I need to relax into that. Into him.

Just like that little fantasy moment inside.

A laugh wants to bubble up in my throat because this is patently ridiculous, but I’m afraid it might sound hysterical, so I choke it down.

“Hold on,” he tells me.

The engine roars to life and I have no choice but to curl my hands into the sides of his jacket as he eases off the curb and onto the street. My body tilts into his and I decide not to fight it, because I think that might call more attention to how close we are somehow.

The leather of his jacket smells entirely too good. His shoulders are remarkably wide.

I tell myself I’m gathering these details the same way I learned about streetlight campaigns and potato wedges as mud-cleaning agents in the diaries. It’s all information. Information is good.

The fact that the leather jacket and wide shoulders belong to a man I already find entirely too attractive is neither here nor there.

We don’t witness any crashes as we go, and I almost wish we did so I could think about something other than Jack’s body. Though I do count more dead cats and the remains of something larger yet indistinguishable on the way out of town, as we go hurtling into the pretty October blue sky and golden stalks of what must once have been corn.

“Is that just normal roadkill?” I shout over the sound of engine and wind, but he doesn’t answer. I assume he can’t hear me. I try not to think of screeching opossums being dragged into the shadows leaving nothing behind, not even some fur. And I looked.

We ride into the soft Iowa wilderness and everything looks shockingly picturesque today. Not like our first drive into town, all empty and threatening.

Has the landscape changed, or have I?

Jack pulls off the highway and onto the gravel lot of the Kirkpatrick Airfield. There’s a truck parked in front of the main building and some kind of smaller vehicle with no doors over by another building. Otherwise, there’s no sign of people.

We both get off the bike and Jack pauses, frowning at the building.

“It isn’t my business to tell, and normally I wouldn’t, but I feel like having a little background here is only going to help.” He turns that green gaze of his on me, and it feels even more intense now that I know what it feels like to wrap my legs around him. Now that I have sensory input regarding the muscles in his thighs—but he is not talking about that. “Cleo’s mom—”

Something in me deflates, because I understand all this now. “Yeah, Nora told me what happened to Cleo’s mom.” I smile thinly. And everything clicks into place. He read my dreams. My lifelong dance with psychotic breaks. “So that’s why you brought me. Firsthand nutcase experience.”

He looks down at me, startled, and his brows draw together. There’s some real confusion there. “Who thinks you’re a nutcase?”

Everyone? But not here—a fact I can’t seem to get used to. Not here and not him and that . . . does something to my heart that I don’t want to examine. I shake my head. “Never mind.”