Page 128 of Ghosted

Romance, apparently. What a stupid fucking disease.

The water keeps moving long after they stop touching it, little ripples licking the tile while blue light shakes across the ceiling. Chlorine burns clean in my nose, sharp and smug, like this place thinks it’s better than the rest of us.

It isn’t.

Water doesn’t make shit clean. It just hides the mess until something floats.

After Jagger leaves, I follow Alice to the showers.

Quietly, obviously. I’m not a fucking amateur.

She doesn’t look back. That’s either trust or stupidity, and after tonight, I’m leaning toward both. She walks barefoot across the tile in her bra and panties, wet hair dripping down her back while the blue pool light follows her like it’s reluctant to let go.

Cute.

She carries it with her into the locker room, and I stay back in the dark just far enough that she doesn’t see me when she turns on the shower.

Water hits tile.

Then her.

I watch her tip her face into the spray and close her eyes, washing the pool off her flawless skin. Washing away the chlorine. Washing away my brother’s hands. His mouth. His pretty little almost-love.

The whole tragic fucking performance he left all over her.

Or trying to.

That’s the funny thing about being touched by a Cutter.

Soap doesn’t do shit.

She scrubs her hands over her face, then drags them through her hair, breathing slow like she’s trying to put herself back inside her own body. Like she can rinse off the night and walk out clean.

Poor Alice.

Still believing in clean things.

By the time she shuts the water off, I’m smiling again.

She towels off quickly, shoulders tight from the cold, then pulls on her clothes with sharp, tired movements.

Little thing thinks she’s leaving.

She thinks my brother walked out and the worst part of the night went with him.

That’s almost adorable enough to forgive.

Almost.

Alice steps back into the pool room with damp hair, her bag over one shoulder, and her keys already in her hand.

I wait until she reaches the edge of the blue light.

“Didn’t take you long to crawl back to the good brother,” I say.

Alice goes still, then turns her head and looks at me over her shoulder. “There is no good brother.”

I step down onto the tile, hands loose at my sides, smile already in place because fuck her if she thinks she gets to see where that lands. “No. But there is a favorite.”