Page 163 of Love at First Fright

“Okay.” His voice was carefully neutral.

“It’s just… I guess it’s something I never really let myself think about, definitely never talk about. But it’s there, at the back of my mind. Has been since my niece got a bit older. I love Lily so much. She’s the best. Super sassy, always in trouble at school, just like me. But so intelligent, and witty and talented. Somehow, she makes me want to be a better person. Like, I want to be as amazing as she thinks I am.”

“You are amazing.”

“And she has a such a great relationship with my sister. And… and… I want all that too.”

Bat’s expression softened. “You can have that.”

“Can I, though?” The words tumbled out too fast to stop. “I’m getting older and older, and time keeps slipping through my fingers quicker and quicker. I feel like I’m watching everyone else live their lives while I’m stuck in place.”

“You know you’re thirty-five, right? Not fifty. Like me.”

“Hey, thirty-four!”

“Exactly! Plenty of time.”

“Yeah, but I’m nowhere near all that. Nowhere. Debt piling out my ears, no job prospects, no dating life or even the bloody motivation to date.” I stared at the ceiling, feeling the familiar weight of inadequacy settle over me. “When am I going to actually change my life?”

“Now?” Bat propped himself up on his elbow, looking down at me with sudden fierce intensity. “Charlie, listen to me. You think time is slipping away, but you’re alive. You can do anything. Go anywhere. Meet people, fall in love, have those kids you want. I’ve been stuck here, watching the same wallpaper peel for twenty-seven years, and you’re worried about being behind schedule?” His hand gripped mine even tighter. “You’re not stuck. You’re just… paused. But pauses end.”

I wanted to argue, to list all the reasons why it wasn’t that simple, but the part of me that loathed myself for moaning about my unperfect life to a dead person shut me up.

“You deserve all the babies, Charlie.” Bat’s quiet, sincere voice told me. “And I hope you meet someone amazing who you want that with.”

I had to look away then, because it was so silly, but I had this ridiculous image flash through my mind—Bat sitting cross-legged on a living room floor, a young, dark-haired child in his lap, tiny fingers plucking at guitar strings while Bat guided their hands, both of them laughing…

“Thanks,” I said, swallowing around the lump in my throat. “Sorry for being an insensitive asshole.”

“You’re not an insensitive asshole,” Bat said, his voice soft but with a hint of that familiar mischief creeping back in. “In fact, we both know your asshole is very sensitive—”

I whacked his chest, repressing the urge to giggle like a teenager. “Shut up.”

He grinned, unrepentant, but I was already drawing him closer. The joke had done its job—cut through the heaviness, brought us back to this moment.

We didn’t talk after that.

Bat slipped his hand under my stupid Spider-Man pyjama shirt, palm coming to rest against my chest, directly over my heart. His touch was strangely reassuring. My pulse thrummed steadily against his skin—did he feel it too? This proof that I was alive when he wasn’t, this reminder of everything that separated us.

But his hand didn’t move away. If anything, he pressed closer, and I let my fingers find their way into his hair, stroking through the slightly translucent black strands. They were softer than they looked, silky between my fingertips. I wanted to memorise the texture, the way his hair caught the moonlight filtering through the moth-eaten curtains.

My eyes grew heavy, lids fighting to stay open. The exhaustion of the day—hell, the exhaustion of my entire bloody life—was washing over me like a tide I couldn’t hold back. I tried to fight it, tried to stay present in this perfect moment with Bat’s hand over my heart and his solid body against mine.

But sleep was stronger than my will, and despite every part of me wanting to stay awake, to not waste a single second of this impossible thing we’d found together, the darkness pulled me under.

Brad and I ate breakfast in complete silence, the tension thick enough to cut with a butter knife. He stabbed at his cornflakes like they’d personally offended him, the scraping of his spoon against the bowl grating on my nerves. Every few seconds, he’d glance up at me with this look—like he suspected something but couldn’t quite put his finger on what.

I kept my eyes firmly on my own bowl. The cornflakes had gone soggy ages ago, but I kept eating them anyway, focusing on the mechanical crunch-squish rather than Brad’s increasingly hostile stare.

“Right.” Brad slammed his spoon down, making me jump. “We’re going in with the aggressive approach today.”

I looked up, trying to arrange my face into something resembling interest rather than the “oh, for fuck’s sake” expression that wanted to break free.

“We’re taking these spirits out one by one,” he continued, cracking his knuckles like he was preparing for actual combat. “By any means possible. Systematic elimination. No more pissing about. They’re only so strong because there’s so goddamn many of them. And we’re ringing Harrison today and getting permission to saw through that bottom basement door.”

Oh dear. Bat wasn’t going to like that.

“I’ll get a bulldozer down there if I have to,” Brad continued.