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“You’re not going to get that, because it is not haunted.”
“You don’t know that,” she said.
“Well, the problem is, I fucking do. Because ghosts don’t exist.”
He was just glad to be having this argument with her, because at least he was on stable ground.
And it wasn’t about... Any of the things that had happened before.
“Let’s go back upstairs,” he said. “We’ll look for raccoon entries in the morning.”
“Okay.”
They had kept the movie playing, but it didn’t matter, since they’d both seen it a whole bunch of times. She drank another glass of wine, and he didn’t say anything, because he was actually hoping that they might just get past all that. That she might forget it had happened. And she seemed to have.
When the movie ran out, she fell asleep on the sleeping bag. And he lay back on his own. He was lying on his side, and he could see her, in the moonlight coming through the window. The gentle swells of her breasts rising and falling with each breath.
And he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
She was beautiful, and he’d always known that. But...
It was like a cascade of things he had held back for any number of years were suddenly rolling through him.
He had kept any thought of her as being a woman—a woman who was available to him—entirely subdued for all these years.
And she had undone it all with that tipsy offer. Because suddenly, he couldn’t stop making it real. Couldn’t stop seeing it as something vivid and specific and possible. Pushing his hands up underneath her shirt and revealing her skin. Had no one ever done that? Would his hands really be the first hands to...
No. He protected her. That was what he did.
He shielded her. From hard emotions, and held her when it was all unavoidable.
And there was no way in the damned world that he could protect her if he was...
He turned over onto his side and faced away from her, desperate to do something to find a way to get his mind out of the damned gutter.
And then she made a little whimpering noise, and he sat up. He couldn’t take it. He crossed the room and got up on the bed and lay down on his back. He didn’t care how dusty it was.
He needed some space. He just needed some space.
Cara felt dizzy when she woke up. And she couldn’t figure out why she woke up, because it was still the middle of the night.
And then suddenly, she saw what looked like a light. A floating orb in the middle of the room. It was low, at eye level with her on the ground. She sat up and looked around, and she saw that Jace wasn’t on his sleeping bag. She scrambled up, her heart thundering. And then she noticed him on the bed, sleeping.
She scrambled up on the bed beside him, but he didn’t move. He was snoring. “Go away,” she said to the floating light. It zigzagged in the room. “Please go away. You’re scaring me.”
The light seemed to respond. It stopped, and then she swore she saw...that it wasn’t an orb or just a light, but it was a butterfly. A bright white butterfly.
And she sat there blinking, completely uncertain of what she had seen. Maybe she just had something in front of her eyes because she was a little bit hungover or whatever from just having drunk too much wine. All she knew was that it creeped her out. She grabbed the ties on the curtains, and let them fall around the bed. She and Jace were completely boxed in there in the canopy.
She curled up in a ball and lay beside him, trying not to breathe too hard.
She just wanted to go back to sleep. And she wanted to hear nothing. So she focused on the sound of her breathing. His breathing. Tried to make it loud so that she wouldn’t hear anything unnerving.
Hoped that orbs couldn’t come through curtains.
She swallowed hard, trying to get a hold of herself.
And finally, she drifted off into a fitful sleep.
