Page 95 of Some Kind of Haunted

But there he is.

Jack, standing in the doorway of the diner, an apron tied around his waist.

I’ve crumpled so many times in my life. I’ve fallen down, fallen apart. I’ve cracked and cracked up and crashed out and freaked—and there are a thousand other ways to say I simply fell apart.

I don’t want to do it now. I won’t do it now.

For everyone who loved Cleo, I am going to hold myself together and figure out a way to get us all out of this. For Cleo, who deserved a whole lot better than what she got.

But then Jack is across the distance in a flash and his arms are around me, his hold so tight I can barely breathe—but it’s the most soothing thing that’s happened since I woke up on that wall.

A sob hitches inside me and I have to let it out. Into his chest, into him. He holds me. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t tell me it’s going to be okay, because that would probably sound like a lie right now, but he lets me cry, and it’s the release I needed.

I manage to pull back a little so I can look up at him. “I’m so sorry—”

Jack doesn’t let me finish. He kisses my temple, my cheek, and then my mouth. It’s desperation and comfort, grief and relief—a potent combination I want to get lost in.

But then I hear my brother’s voice.

“What the hell is this?”

Both Jack and I turn to look at my brother. The car is still running, but Logan is now standing in front of it. He looks like the series of events that might have led him to the feral state he’s been in today are nothing next to the sight of Jack Bellamy kissing me.

Or possibly me kissing Jack Bellamy back. Hard to say.

“It’s self-explanatory, I think,” I say, though I can feel how hot my cheeks are. “Especially for a fancy-pants lawyer like you, Logan.”

Logan looks for a minute like his eyes are going to pop out of his head. Like said head might actually explode—but instead, he runs both of his hands through his hair like he’d rather wrap them around both of our necks, gets back in the car, and drives off without another word.

“Come on,” Jack says gruffly.

He winds his arm around my waist and leads me inside, moving tourists out of the way with no more than a glare. We walk through the diner and across the way into the antique shop, but he stops me at the door before we get too deep into dead-eyed dolls and empty frames.

Jack turns me to face him. He puts his big, strong hands on my cheeks. He’s studying me intently. “Are you okay?”

I try to nod or smile, but it all kind of gets caught in a tangle. “Probably not, but I’m holding up.”

Before Jack can reply to that, we both hear the telltale thud of Harrison’s cane on the floor. I look beyond Jack as Harrison makes his way toward us.

“There’s a girl,” the kindly old man says.

My eyes prickle again, but I’ve gotten a hold on it. Still, I disentangle myself from Jack and cross to Harrison and give him a hug—a careful one, because I don’t want to crush him. He pats my back. I think he actually murmurs there, there.

Everything is horrible, but going through all this alone would be more horrible. And I am very much not alone.

“How’d Logan do it?” Jack asks me, but he’s already ushering me into one of the old chairs. He does the same with his grandfather, like he doesn’t believe either of us can stand on our own two feet.

I want to oblige him, but his question means I have to tell him about Nora. Both him and Harrison, who’s looking a little ashen as he leans hard against his cane while he sinks down into the chair Jack pulled up for him.

I hate that they don’t know. I hate that they have to know. I hate that I have to tell them.

But waffling about it isn’t going to make anything better.

“He didn’t get me out,” I manage to rasp out. “Nora did. She went in and confessed.”

The silence is deafening. I can see the slow realization cross Jack’s face. Then a kind of dark fury much like Logan’s descends, and he starts to move to the door.

I’m barely fast enough to jump to my feet to stop him, to put myself in his way, because I know he won’t bowl me over. He doesn’t.