Chapter Eight #2
He shrugs and angles himself away, bending down to collect the cans that are still rolling around the floor. “Couldn’t help myself,” he says. “And you were thinking so loud, I doubt you would have heard me anyway.”
“Well, try next time,” I grumble. He reaches around my leg for a wayward container and his forearm brushes against my calf. Goose bumps pebble my skin. “Where have you been?”
Nolan stands to his full height, my box against his chest. He scans the shelf briefly then slides it back to its proper spot, keeping his hand propped up against the post afterward like he needs the support. The inside of his biceps is half an inch from my face.
“I’ve been around,” he says evasively.
“Around.”
“Yep.” His mouth pops around the edge of the word.
“It’s been five days.” I pause, embarrassment lighting me up like a solar flare. “Not that I’ve been—not that I’ve been keeping track.”
Nolan, thankfully, doesn’t seem to notice my misstep. He reaches for his scruff with his free hand, dragging his palm along his jaw. “Apologies. I had a bit of a … situation.”
The way he says the word situation sounds like I disposed of a body in an alleyway and then feasted on its soul to sustain my life force. I lean back against the shelves and try to read his face in the dark.
“What sort of a situation?” I ask.
He sighs, his warm breath brushing across the top of my forehead. “Nothing nearly as dramatic as what you’re thinking, I’m sure.”
“Did you kidnap someone?” I whisper.
“No,” he says slowly. “I did not kidnap anyone.”
“Eat any souls?”
“What? No. Harriet, I—” He shakes his head. “That mind of yours,” he says, with fond exasperation.
“What were you up to, then?”
He grumbles again, something deep and nonsensical.
I can almost feel the vibration of it against my chest. What would he do, I wonder, if I leaned into him.
Would he curl around me like he did in the tree field?
Would he spread his fingers wide, like he’s trying to touch as much of me as possible?
Or would he push me away? Cut me down with another sharp remark?
“My cat hurt her paw,” he finally says.
I blink into the darkness. “What?”
“My cat,” he says again, slower this time. “Builín. She hurt her paw.”
“You have a cat?”
“Yes.” He nods. “I told you I take care of the strays.”
“Taking care of the strays is different from I have a cat.”
“Not to me.” He pauses. “They’re the only company I can keep. I want to make sure they’re doing well.”
Well, that’s … cute.
“Was it bad? Five days is a long time.”
The metal shelf creaks ominously behind me. I try to picture Nolan nursing a kitten back to health. His big hands. Tiny pink toe beans. A hurt little paw. A fuzzy body cradled close to his bare chest.
In this mental pathway, Nolan is apparently shirtless.
I banish the thought.
“She’s fine now,” he says. “But she was being dramatic about it. I didn’t feel right leaving her.”
“That’s sweet.”
I keep getting flashes of softness from Nolan. Glimpses of the man he might have been before, maybe. It makes me greedy for more.
I shift and brush against the front of him. He’s standing so close, practically caging me up against the metal shelf.
After not seeing him for a few of days, his sudden presence in this tiny space is jarring.
I’m a tactile person by nature. I like hugs.
Holding hands. Cuddling on the couch. Samantha used to fill that need for me when we were younger—my aunt Matilda, too—but I’ve been horribly bereft as an adult.
I wonder what Nolan would do if I just wrapped my arms around him and squeezed. He looks like he could use a good hug.
“I’m glad she’s okay now. Your cat.” I pause, sawing my teeth across my bottom lip. “Her name is Builín?”
“Aye,” he says. “It means loaf of bread. She looks a bit like one.”
I wait for him to say something else—to explain why he’s here, to give me the usual speech about my soul hanging in the balance—but he doesn’t. He just … stands there, the two of us tucked together in the darkness.
I imagine the two missing spoons from the display case in the front. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be back,” I try, testing the waters. His face tilts toward mine, though I can’t make out any of his features. Warm air puffs against my forehead. Coffee, again.
“We haven’t figured out what you’ve done yet,” he replies. “I’m—”
“Bound to me.” I sigh. “Yes, I know.”
Something in my chest squeezes. I hate the way he says it, equal parts derision and resignation.
I can’t tell if he doesn’t like being a ghost, or if he doesn’t like being paired with me.
Neither option sits particularly well, but I firm myself up with an internal pep talk.
I’ve dealt with more difficult things than a surly ghost who plays fast and loose with his haunting commitments.
“I was about to buy a Ouija board,” I say lightly.
His laugh rumbles between us. The thrill of turning his mood around surges like electricity through my veins. He pushes off the shelf at my side, the metal rattling behind me. “So that’s why my ears were burning.”
My eyes widen to saucers. “Wait. Really?”
He shakes his head. “No, Harriet.” I can hear his smile in the dark, the way it works around the edges of my name. I bet his dimples are doing something obscene right now. “Those don’t work.”
“How should I get in contact with you, then? If I need you?”
His boots scuff against the floor and in the dark, I feel something lightly touch my wrist.
“Been needing me?”
“You said you’re on a deadline,” I tell him, trying to sound like I’m not affected by the way he’s brushing his fingertips along the inside of my wrist. He’s trying to rattle me on purpose. I’m sure of it. “I’m just trying to be helpful.”
“Helpful.” He hums. “Helpful Harriet.”
“Yes,” I agree, wary. There’s something about the way he says it, like it’s not something I should be proud of.
Like I should try harder to be something different, when helpful is all I’ve wanted to be.
Helpful, easy, accommodating. I’ve given all of myself to the people around me, broken myself down into minuscule pieces to try to be exactly what everyone else has needed.
I’ve tried to shape myself to other people’s expectations, but it’s only ever left me broken in the end.
And for what? The universe decided it’s not enough, anyway. I’ve been deemed a bad person. Right up there with men who catcall women on the street, apparently.
I swallow around the balloon in my throat. “I try to be helpful. I try to be good.”
“I know,” Nolan says softly. A rare concession. His hand catches the cuff of my sweater.
Soft, I think I hear him mutter, except I don’t think I was supposed to hear it at all. He lets go and I rub at my wrist.
“There won’t be any more interruptions,” he says. “I intend to see the rest of this haunting through. I’ll be around if you need me. Just … think happy thoughts, and I’ll appear.”
I roll my eyes. “Okay, Tinker Bell.”
He’s silent for the stretch of three heartbeats. “Who is Tinker Bell?” he finally asks.
“Never mind.” I hold my hand out to him, palm up, wiggling my fingers. “I’m ready to go now. Let’s go watch me ruin the third-grade musical performance of ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ by tripping into one of the elves and tearing down the entire backdrop.”
He sighs, wistful. “I’ve never wished more for the ability to select a memory.”
“Think happy thoughts, and maybe it’ll happen.” I nudge his chest. “C’mon. Let’s seize the day.”
I’m emboldened by my new theory, energized by the idea that maybe I can be the one to help him.
It’s a balm to the sharp burn of my bad person designation.
An alternative solution to this whole, ridiculous situation.
He hasn’t been assigned to me because I’m bad.
Maybe he’s been assigned to me because I’m good.
Because I’m the only one who can help.
“Easy.” He grips my wrist, holding my palm away from his. “I’m not grabbing your hand while it looks like that.”
“What’s wrong with my hand?”
“It’s covered in grime.” He pauses. “Also, you could use some lotion.”
I gasp, offended. “Excuse you, I use very expensive hand lotion.” I buy it at the same sale I get all my fancy, matching pajamas. “I think you just hate Nordstrom.”
“I still don’t know who this Nord Storm is and why he peddles in ridiculous scraps of clothing.”
“Nordstrom,” I say. “Nord-strom. It’s a— You know, what?
Never mind.” I reach for the polish rag I tossed in blind fear when he made his sudden appearance, tap-tapping my way blindly across the shelf with my palm.
“I apply twice a day,” I tell him. “After my shower and before I go to bed at night. Maybe your feeble ghost hands are—oh. What are you doing?”
Nolan has my hand in his, his grip gentle around my wrist. He carefully turns my palm up, cradling it with his.
“Feeble hands,” Nolan says, reaching somewhere over my shoulder for the rag I couldn’t find. His chest brushes against mine as he leans forward. “That’s not what you said the other night,” he whispers close to my ear.
My breath hiccups at the innuendo. A flash of heat starts at my temples and spreads down until I feel like I could melt into the floor. Like maybe I could be poured into one of those polish containers.
“What did I say the other night?” I breathe.
“You called me rugged, I think.” He pulls my hand closer.
He starts with my pinky, wrapping it in the rag and working the polish off with firm strokes.
I’ve never had such an innocent touch feel so illicit before.
I feel like my clothes could disintegrate right off my body.
“I was high on expired peppermint tea,” I explain, surprised to find myself breathless.
“You can’t keep using that excuse.”
He moves to my ring finger and I shiver. I want him to stop. I want him to never stop.
“Okay?” he asks.
I make a garbled, gibberish sound in response and Nolan chuckles. He bends his head between us as he moves to my middle finger, watching his work. I examine his face in the light that filters through the crack in the door.
The thin scar above his eyebrow. The sharp line of his jaw. The dark, messy hair that falls over his forehead and the set line of his mouth as he concentrates.
By the time he gets to my thumb, my breath is a rattle in my chest, my body weight resting fully against the shelf at my back. If Nolan notices my semi-liquid state, he has the decency not to say anything about it.
“There,” he says, bringing my hand closer to his face to inspect his handiwork. My belly decides to jump toward my throat. I never knew I had so many sensory receptors in my palm, but I swear I can feel the stroke of his touch everywhere. “All tidied up.”
I don’t move out of his grip. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” His fingers flex around mine. “Ready to take my feeble hand and be on our way?”
“I haven’t let go of your feeble hand.”
“Right.” He adjusts his grip until we’re palm to palm. The butterflies in my belly turn into an avalanche. I blame the world that’s starting to fall away beneath my feet, and the sharp tug of magic at the base of my spine. I close my eyes and brace myself, relieved when Nolan holds my hand tighter.
“Away we go, then,” he says, his voice barely more than a whisper in the growing roar around us. “Hold on tight, Harriet.”