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He never moved off me. He remained in the exact same position. He never let go. His blue eye was so crystal clear and the brown was so warm, but then his eyes filled with striking emotion. He pressed his face into my neck and hugged me, making me feel tiny beneath his solid body.
I raised my hands, and even though awkward, pressed them against his arm, feeling him trembling beneath me. Tears escaped my eyes in total understanding. At my sob, he lifted up onto his forearms and stared down at me with tears in his eyes, too.
For all we'd been through, all the impossible circumstances we had faced, Kipp had lived. We had a life together. It’d all been worth it. We’d come out of it still intact, still in love, and still wanting nothing but each other.
I smiled, tears rushing over my cheeks. “We made it.”
Kipp’s eyes shut for a long moment before he opened them again. He leaned in and grinned with an emotion only belonging to a man that had faced death and lived through it. “We did.”
The End
Epilogue
You better get here. Right now.
I groaned at the text on my cell phone, knowing the hell that would soon rain down on me. When I looked up, Zach cocked his head, giving me a curious look. “Caley,” was all I said.
The side of his mouth curved as he placed his coffee cup on the table. “What’s that, the tenth call?”
Plopping down on my big comfy couch in my living room, I sighed. “Twentieth.” I considered the past two hours, and then corrected myself. “Actually, eleventh call, but ninth text.”
“She’s relentless.” Zach chuckled with a shake of his head. He took a seat in next to me, causing the couch to bounce under his drop down.
“Do you have to be somewhere?”
I glanced away from Zach to the woman in her early twenties with the shiny brown hair and big cocoa-colored eyes, who sat—floated—on my recliner in the corner of the room. “Nah, it’s all right, Mary Jane. No rush.”
Well, we were in a rush, but she didn’t need to know that. The last thing I wanted to do was add guilt to her emotional state, while we were trying to settle all her outstanding issues to cross over.
Mary Jane smiled, but like usual, a smile on a ghost appeared more mournful than bright with joy. Her lips parted to respond when suddenly, the solid nature of her shimmered.
I straightened up in my seat in the exact moment Zach’s phone rang. Not a second later, he had the phone at his ear, but I didn’t need the confirmation. The way Mary Jane’s body glittered with light, I knew a truth. “Oh, they’ve found Kenneth.”
The man, who happened to be her brother’s best friend, had killed her because she rejected him. Jealously did dangerous things, I knew that from experience, but match that with a crazy person and it was a recipe for disaster.
Mary Jane glanced at her hands, flickering with white light, before she looked at me with wide eyes. “Yes, they must have.”
The panicked part of me held my breath, waiting for a killer to barge through my front door with gun drawn. Yeah, I still suffered post-traumatic stress. I wondered if that worry would ever fade.
However, Kipp was ensuring it did. It wasn’t much of a shock he’d become protective in the month that had passed since he awakened. But to my happiness, life had done what I had hoped it would—returned to normal.
Well, of course, my totally messed up normal that included ghosts, but now also included a living-breathing man who I couldn’t get enough of. Somehow, the life I had once fought against was more welcomed than I ever could’ve imagined.
Kipp had put a new rule in place the day he returned to work: I wasn’t to be involved in cases. I was only to work with the ghosts, not the mystery behind it all, and I was never alone. The task now meant one of the guys became my babysitter, but no one seemed to care, including me.
Mary Jane’s case started with locating her at her family’s house, and then Kipp ordered that Mary Jane stayed with me until the case was solved. She’d stayed at my house—which Kipp now lived at, too—she came shopping with me, and she even sat around the coffee shop.
Just normal daily stuff, but that now included a ghost with me.
All communication came through the telephone line. The only time I went to the station was at the beginning of the case for a debriefing, and then sometimes for meetings with Max if they needed a deeper look into the case.
Kipp said I didn’t need to be involved any more than that, and if they had a question for a ghost, he could just call. Considering the past cases always put me in danger, I had no objections.
Besides, Kipp had said that we were making cases too personal. Going to homes where a killer lived, or may be near, wasn’t an option anymore. The men worked a case like typical police officers—and well, we all knew I was never a cop and didn’t want to be.
The light in front of me grew brighter as the sun peered through the window of our condo. Mary Jane’s body lost even more of its solidness, so I forced myself to stop thinking and focus on her. “Go in peace, Mary Jane.”
“Thank you.” She smiled, tears welling in her soft brown eyes.
