Chapter Nine
Nolan
We land back in the closet with flailing limbs, a muffled curse, and a small explosion of fig jam.
“I don’t understand why you felt the need to grab the entire jar.” My sticky hand catches in her sticky hair while our sticky sweaters smash together against the now sticky shelves. “There’s a reason you don’t bring things back from the past.”
The trip was a waste of our time—again. Not a single nefarious thing was revealed about Harriet, except perhaps an extreme sweet tooth. We watched her make holiday jam with a woman in a catering uniform, wrapping each mason jar with a single gingham bow. She didn’t even try to lick the spoon.
An absolute waste.
“Maybe that’s something you should have mentioned when I grabbed it.”
“I said stop.”
“That could have been in regard to, like, a million things, Nolan. You weren’t specific!”
I clench my jaw so hard my teeth snap together. This woman.
“I’ve been trying to find that recipe for ages,” Harriet continues, her voice muffled in the front of my sweater as we continue to try to extricate ourselves. She shakes her wrist, a clump of jam landing with a wet sound on the floor. “I didn’t realize the jar would explode on impact.”
“The jar did not explode on impact. The jar exploded somewhere in our travels, as evident by the current state of things. We’re lucky you didn’t embed shards of glass into my skull.”
“You’re a ghost,” she hisses. “As far as I’m aware, you can’t die again. And if glass ended up anywhere, you probably would have deserved it.”
The jam must have multiplied as we were rolling our way through time. I have no other explanation as to how it’s … everywhere. It’s on my neck. It’s dripping down my chest beneath my shirt. It’s on my hands and in my hair.
And Harriet is clinging to me with the same tenacity as the jam, her arms wrapped tight around my waist. She plastered herself to me as soon as I tugged us out of the memory, afraid I’d leave her there.
I can feel all of the places her body is a perfect fit for mine.
The curve of her hips and the soft press of her breasts.
Every time she wiggles, I lose a little bit more of my sanity.
This. This is why I made up the excuse about the cat and stayed away. I hoped the time away would give me some clarity. I hoped the time away would allow me to straighten myself out.
I’m afraid it only made everything worse. I didn’t stop thinking about Harriet once.
“Harriet.” I grip her hips tight and squeeze my eyes shut. “Stop moving.”
“You’re the one who squished me up against the shelf.” She twists some more, arching her back. My hips nestle between her thighs, her hair in my face. She smells like honey and sugar. Like one of the sweets she’s never without.
“It was accidental,” I grind out. She didn’t mean to cause an explosion mid-travel. I didn’t mean to press her bodily against the wall. Yet, here we are. Two stubborn fools. “My foot must have slipped in your damned jam.”
“Well, you’re not slipping now,” she replies.
She finds her footing with one hand braced on the metal shelf, her body finally— thankfully—going still against mine.
Our chests heave against each other as we try to regulate our breathing.
My body feels heavy, my pulse pounding at the base of my throat and in the palms of my hands.
It would be so easy to drag my hand from her hip to her thigh, flex my fingers around her delicious curves, fill my palm with her gorgeous ass, and lift.
I could have all of her wrapped around me in a heartbeat, her mouth half an inch from mine.
Would she taste like the jam she decided to confiscate from the past?
Or would she taste like something darker? Richer?
I don’t move. Neither does she. It’s the two of us pressed together in the dark. I’m standing at the edge of a choice, temptation tugging at me.
“Good?” I ask.
Her laugh is a whisper against my neck. My skin prickles in awareness.
“Yeah, I’m good,” she says. “I just watched my childhood self make Christmas jam with a woman my mother hired because she couldn’t be bothered.
I’m covered in a jam that I’ve been trying to re-create for twenty years.
I tried to grab one thing for myself and now it’s—now it’s everywhere but where I want it to be. ”
“Where do you want it to be?”
“On toast, preferably.” She looks at the jam smeared across her sweater sleeve and sighs. “I didn’t even get to taste it,” she adds mournfully.
I blame the look on her face and the loopy, hazy feeling that’s still snug tight around the base of my skull from ricocheting through time.
The ferocious, yawning ache in the middle of my chest. There’s no other explanation as to why I reach for her, cupping her face in my hand so I can gather the heavy streak of sugared fig just under her chin.
Her skin is warm and the jam is warm, too. Sticky. A complete and total mess.
I lift my finger to my mouth and suck it off.
The taste is muted, but there. Sweet and tart. A sharp burst that sparks, then fades. It’s the closest I’ve come to experiencing a flavor in decades.
I immediately want more.
“Tastes good,” I tell her.
“I thought you said—” She swallows, her eyes heavy on my mouth. “I thought you said you can’t taste things,” she finishes.
“Sometimes I get a hint,” I tell her, my voice sounding like it’s coming from somewhere very far away.
I’m wandering down a path I have no business being on, but Harriet’s lips are parted and she has more jam on the long line of her neck and it’s been so long since I’ve let myself feel anything other than self-induced apathy.
“Oh,” she says.
Harriet hesitates, then reaches for my hand with hers.
She traces her fingertips along the base of my palm, lingering over a scar I don’t remember how I got before scooping some wayward jelly.
She keeps her head down as she brings her pointer finger to her mouth, cheeks hollowing as she sucks it off.
My hand twitches in hers. I have to clench my teeth to keep myself from doing something reckless.
She makes a surprised sound.
“What do you think?”
“Tastes good,” she repeats, a laugh caught somewhere in the back of her throat, her eyes shining bright in the tiny, dark room as she gazes up at me. They look like whiskey in the dark. A glass half-filled, a single cube of ice at the bottom. “Almost worth all this mess.”
I shift and feel the jam on my chest again, sticking to my shirt. “Almost,” I agree. “Can I get rid of it, or do you want another taste?”
“I’m good,” she says, something husky still in her voice, her hands twisting in front of her.
I don’t know if she’s uncomfortable because of the situation, my inability to hold my restraint in check, or the jam currently making a home in her hair, but I don’t want her twisted up because of me.
I reach for the place inside myself that holds my magic and I yank on it.
The stickiness on my chest and arms and neck disappears. Harriet blows out a relieved breath.
“Another riveting trip to my past, huh?” She smooths her palms down the front of her sweater, checking for any spots I might have missed.
“Aye.” I reach forward and pretend to wipe some jam from one of her curls. Her hair is so soft, it feels like silk. I tuck it behind her ear and let my hand drop. “You continue to be a paragon of good behavior.”
She snorts. “Try not to sound so surprised.”
“I’m not surprised, I’m—” Confused. Irritated.
I’m doing everything exactly the way I’m supposed to be doing it and nothing is changing.
She’s not the person she’s supposed to be.
We’re trapped in a limbo where I can’t move on and neither can she.
I’m so tired of being stuck. “I’m trying to figure out how this ends for the both of us. ”
She hesitates. “I’ve been thinking about that.”
I narrow my eyes. “About what?”
She twists the hem of her sweater over her fists, spreading her fingers wide then closing them again. “Maybe you’re not here for me,” she says slowly. Her eyes peek up at me to check my reaction. “Maybe you’re here for you.”
I rub my hand over my mouth. “What does that mean?”
She pushes off the shelf. “Maybe—maybe there’s something you need to do.
To move on, you know? You said you’ve been here for a while …
maybe I’m supposed to help you.” She presses her lips together, thinking.
“I own an antiques shop. I don’t think you were paired with me by accident.
” Excitement lights behind her eyes, her features brightening in enthusiasm.
“Maybe there’s something here that belongs to you.
Like a talisman or something. Maybe it’s holding you in place, or—I don’t know.
Maybe there’s something you’re supposed to see with me. We could work together to find it.”
A rough sound rolls out of me, too sharp to be a laugh.
The idea of moving on after a hundred years spent in one single place is …
comical, at best. Devastating, at worst. There is nothing to move on to.
There is just this. An aimless, driftless existence where I don’t get to hold on to anything.
Where I lose all the things that once made me human, slowly and painfully.
And for Harriet—a woman I barely know—for her to somehow be the key to moving on, it’s—
It’s too much.
It’s a joke. It must be.
Except the hopeful look on her face doesn’t flicker or waiver.
“Did I say something funny?” she asks.
“You’re serious.”
“Of course, I’m serious,” she says. “What gave you the impression that I’m joking?”