Chapter Fifteen #2
“Things are changing. I can feel them changing. It’s like—it’s like the sky, yeah?
Right before it snows. When the night is holding its breath and everything feels heavy.
When it’s not truly dark, but— something else.
A lantern behind the clouds. That’s what I feel like.
Like a lantern has been lit. I don’t know how else to describe it.
” His eyes search mine, dipping briefly to trace the contours of my face.
I wonder what he’s looking for there, and if he’ll be able to find it.
His mouth pulls up on one side, the shadow of his dimples appearing in both cheeks.
“You’re the first thing in a hundred years to make me feel anything at all, Harriet York, and I don’t think that’s an accident. ”
I blow out a slow breath. It’s hard for me to hear those words and not become attached to the idea of it. I’ve never been special to anyone. I’ve never been of use to anyone. The only feelings I’ve ever managed to inspire in others is vague frustration and opaque disappointment.
Or worse, nothing at all.
It’s tempting to be something different for Nolan.
Still. I need more.
“What’s changed?” I ask.
His half smile sharpens. He reaches for one of my curls, twisting it around his pointer finger and tugging once. “You mean besides ending up in one of my childhood memories?”
I nod.
He blows out a deep breath, the rest of his hand sifting under my hair. He settles it around the back of my neck, his palm flush against the top of my spine. Steadying himself, maybe, or perhaps steadying me.
“I’m afraid,” he confesses.
I soften. “Of what?”
His eyes flick back and forth between mine. “I’m afraid if I say it aloud, it’ll no longer be true.”
“You can tell me.”
His fingers flex on the back of my neck. “My coffee was burnt this morning.” He swallows. “It tasted like absolute shite.”
“Um … okay?”
“I could taste it, Harriet. I could taste my coffee this morning and the lemon drop you gave me in the tree field. I burnt my hand in front of the fireplace at the ice-skating rink and I was cold this morning when I left my house. I’m feeling again.” His eyes search mine. “I’m feeling quite a bit.”
An ache pinches in the middle of my chest. “Anything else?”
“Is that not enough?”
“There’s something you haven’t told me about yet. I can tell.”
His mouth pulls into a grim smile, his jaw flexing and releasing. “I had a dream.” He pauses. “About you.”
“Me?”
“Aye,” he says. “You.”
“I thought you said you didn’t have dreams.”
“I don’t,” he agrees, his voice tripping into something lower.
“Oh.”
I think of the dreams I’ve had about him. The warm, buzzy feeling under my skin. The way I sometimes wake up with my hand low on my belly. Heat floods my cheeks. “Was it—was it a good dream, at least?”
His gaze takes a meandering path across my face. Lower, to the v in my pajama shirt and where I most definitely am not wearing a bra. His tongue appears at the corner of his mouth, and his hand tightens against the back of my neck. A sigh rattles out of me.
“It was a very good dream,” he rasps.
My stomach bottoms out. I wet my lips and Nolan’s attention shifts there. He traces another slow circuit across the knob at the top of my spine and I shiver in my matching pajamas.
I bet my pulse feels like a jackhammer right now. Like some sort of heavy machinery, picking up speed the longer I stand here like this, with him.
But I’m not embarrassed. I’m aware of my body and of his. Of the moment that is stretching between us until everything feels languid and slow. Lights from the tree and a horn across the harbor. Wind at the windows and a sticky peppermint stick wedged in my mouth.
“I think you’re bringing me back to life, Harriet.”
“That’s a ridiculous statement.”
He shrugs his shoulders. Barely half an inch. “Not if it’s true.”
I release a slow breath, studying him. He keeps his face open and honest, letting me look.
“I guess that’s a good reason, then,” I whisper, filling the space between us, trying to cut through the tension that’s gripped us both.
I want to approach this academically, slot another clue into its proper place, but I also want to lean forward and bury my face in his chest. “That’s—um.
That makes sense. If you’re, uh, experiencing things.
I get it now. I get why you’d have a change of heart.”
Some of the tension eases from the lines by his eyes, his face so earnest I could cry. “You’ll help me then?” He tries to crack a smile. “You’ll end decades of blind desperation and send me off into the afterlife of my dreams?”
I try to see through the bluster. “Is that what you want, Nolan?
Truly?”
The teasing smile slips from his face.
“I need this, Harriet,” he says. “I need to move on. I need something different.”
I try not to let those words sting, but it’s a bucket of cold water over the heat simmering between us. I tug out of his grip.
Of course he wants something different. He’s been here for decades with no hope to hold on to. He’s hated this existence.
I can’t be selfish with this. After all, what future could I possible have with a ghost? I’ve lost myself to a fantasy, and it needs to stop.
I need to bundle it all up and let it go.
“Of course,” I tell him, forcing a smile and ignoring the rubber band of disappointment slowly squeezing at the middle of my chest. I can do this.
I can help him without falling further into whatever this is.
I’ll help him move on, he’ll disappear, and I’ll return to my ghostfree life.
I’ll have fond memories of this … absolutely ridiculous series of events.
Like the brass bobbles that hang on my tree in the window.
I’ll box them up carefully at the end of the season and store them in the attic.
I’ll take them out every now and again to marvel over how pretty and special and unique they are, then I’ll tuck them away.
It will be fine.
I will be fine.
I always am.
I fix my face into a smile. “I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
I’ve always been good at being exactly what people need.