Page 89 of Dead Vengeance

“I’ve had a lot of time to adjust to what happened,” I argue with him, though it feels a bit like talking to a brick wall. “And it still hurts, what it showed me, but can you even imagine what it could do to someone with a fresher wound? Someone with deep trauma?”

“I’m not disputing that,” he replies softly.

“You hired me for this job. This is my entire purpose in being here. Listen, I know I haven’t filled you with confidence so far—”

“I have complete confidence in you.”

“Then let me do this. Let me do it without…” Then it hits me. He’s always been protective of me, since day one. And maybe now… now it’s just a different way he’s showing it. Because we got close. “If I hadn’t kissed you last night, would we be having this conversation?”

“No.” He shakes his head on the word. I’m just about to make some ridiculous comment that I’m just as capable as I was before he saw me as a sex object, or that I have no interest in being with a controlling man, which it seems he switched to the second he got a foot in the sex door, but Archer talks first. “I tried to fire you last night. I thought I had fired you last night. And then all of that happened and… I didn’t have the heart to tell you not to come back this morning.”

My breath catches at the confession. It’s like the room spins away from me. “Have the heart?” He was breaking it off. Whatever we had—whatever I thought we had… “Is this like… a guilty breakfast?”

“What?” Finally his eyes show the emotion I’ve missed from him for the last few arduous minutes of this conversation. “Liam, no, it’s not like that.”

“The breakfast of shame or something?”

“No! I’m not ashamed. I just—”

“You didn’t want that…” The full horror of the situation hits me, the background fear I’ve had all night that I came on too strong. “Oh my god. You weren’t even into me… I thought—”

“Liam, stop.” He’s got my hand now, tight, wrapped up in both of his. “I wanted to kiss you last night. I wanted that to happen. I just also wanted to fire you. The two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive.” I pull back a little, but he holds onto me. “It’s okay for me to want to keep you safe.”

“Then it must be okay for me to want to keep you safe.” His lips draw tight, so I press him a little further. “I have skin in this, okay? I know it’s your ghost, and your house, and your job, and you’re the one paying Gerald. But I can’t just stop now. You can’t stop me. I’ll go upstairs, and I’ll do this thing on my own time. It’s done, all right? I’m fired. Now I’m just a man who needs to do this. Please don’t make me leave. Please just let me finish this.”

His eyes sharpen on me, some darkness in the depths of them that’s new. “Listen to me carefully. This situation is worse than you think. It’s worse than you know.”

“How can you know that?” That same old mistrust flares, warring with the warmth I thought I understood in him when I walked in the door this morning. “Why do you keep saying things like that, like you’re not telling me everything?”

And now it’s straight back to that averted, scrambling look. “It’s just an instinct.”

“Is it? Is that really all it is?”

“Of course it is!” Anger flares in his voice for the first time since we sat down. “What do you think, I’m some kind of secret ghost expert?”

“That would check out right about now, yeah,” I snipe at him.

“Well, I’m not. I’m just a haunted guy. A guy who’s met a guy, and that guy… I feel like…” He withdraws his hand from mine, wraps his arms around himself, some defensive posture that keeps me on my guard, even as his voice switches to a softer note. “Okay, cards on the table time. I feel like I’d like to get to know you. I’d like to go out again. But properly. I’d like to ask you out. Liam, would you please go out with me?”

It takes several seconds for me to process the words.

I was arguing. About a ghost. And then…

Then it’s this blush and this smile and this warm and fuzzy feeling inside.

And how does he do this to me?

“Unless I’m a one-night thing for you,” he continues, far too seriously. “And that’s okay. I’m happy to have been your one-night thing.”

I must be bright red when I reply, “You’re not a one-night thing. Not to me.”

He breaks that smile again, and I hate to say it, because truly, I was quite annoyed a second ago, but he fills my heart up to the top with it. “Well, that’s promising. So… would you agree? To go out?”

I dip my head, trying to hide the smile and my burning cheeks, but I don’t think it’s working. “Um. Yeah. I would.”

He dips his head to catch my eyes. “Would you agree to not die today, then?”

“I mean… yeah,” I laugh out. “I would.”