Page 85 of Some Kind of Haunted

He laughs. Actually laughs. Which does nothing to help the giddy feeling coursing through me.

I stretch, happy and sated. Content, maybe. A state I am not familiar with. “Sex was probably a good start, though.”

He snorts, then looks around the diner. “Shit, Lexi. What are we doing?”

I laugh then. “I’m not sure I’ve ever known what I was doing.”

Jack looks at me then, his gaze as soft as I’ve ever seen it. “That isn’t true.”

That shudders through me like another kiss. I swallow at the sudden lump in my throat.

“Well,” I manage to scratch out.

He runs a hand over my hair. “You should get some sleep. We’ve got a lot to figure out tomorrow. Maybe . . . Maybe we need to go to that rock. I want to think about it, talk it over with Grandpa, but I think that’s the next step. You and the rock. I think your dreams are telling us something.”

It’s a terrible thought, because my dreams have been hideous. Always. But I am exhausted.

“Are you going to rest?” I ask pointedly, nodding at his books and my written accounts of my dreams, still spread out along the counter.

His frown is back. I can tell he’s deciding whether or not to lie to me. In return, I decide not to tell him that I can read him now. “I have to put the journal back, but I’ll give it a rest for tonight. I’m not getting anywhere anyway.”

I accept that. I even believe it. Then I let him walk me to the stairs, like we’re teenagers, walking each other home.

Though home tonight is me going upstairs to a creepy antique store display room festooned with hair.

I decide that I’ll deal with that epic come-down from the most spectacular sex of my life once I get into my shabby-chic bed and try to hide from the hair of it all.

In the meantime, there’s this. The two of us alone in this hallway, where no one can see us. Where it’s only the two of us. So I smile at him, telling him all those things that words can’t fit.

All the things we both know now. Like it or not.

His mouth curves, and he fits his hand to my cheek. “Night, Lexi,” he says, and then he gives me a little nudge up the stairs.

“Good night, Jack.”

I don’t look toward the window at the clock tower. Instead, I pad up the stairs in my bare feet. I pause at the top and look over my shoulder at Jack, still standing there at the bottom.

He stays there, watching me, the whole way.

I feel warm and giddy, deep inside, like that feeling plans to stick around.

I have to order myself not to skip down the shadowy hallway to the room Nora assigned me. The last thing I need to do is wake up anyone who might expect explanations I don’t want to give. I slip inside the crowded space and then, with only a little trepidation and no glance toward the hair wreaths I hid away, I crawl into bed.

I don’t even take off my sweater—Nora’s sweater. It’s too cozy. Plus, Jack helped me put it on.

I’m exhausted, but in a good way. Less maybe I’m sick and more I am deeply and eternally relaxed. It feels better than anything has in a long time. I feel better than I have in a long time. Maybe ever.

And there are a million things to contend with tomorrow, but that’s tomorrow. Tonight I’m going to bask in my post-Jack glow, get some good sleep, and believe for the first time since we got to Midas that it’s all going to be okay.

Maybe even good.

I believe that. I really do.

Until I wake up on the flood wall.

Surrounded by blood.

Chapter Twenty-Three