Chapter Thirty-One
Nolan
There’s a cat sitting in the middle of Harriet’s kitchen.
Specifically, my cat is sitting in the middle of Harriet’s kitchen, offering me the feline equivalent of a smug and knowing look.
“Builín,” I greet her over my mug of coffee, blinking hard in the morning light and trying to figure out if I’m having an orgasm-induced bit of hysteria.
The window over the sink is open, presumably from where Builín let herself in, and her orange paw is raised against her mouth.
I haven’t seen her in a couple of days. I suppose now I know where she’s been disappearing to. “Did you … need something?”
The cat blinks at me. I blink back. Two arms twine around my bare waist and I feel a kiss pressed between my shoulder blades.
“Why are you talking to a cat?” Harriet mutters, sleepy and lazy, her lips pressed against my skin.
“Good to know you can also see the cat.”
“Of course I can.”
Harriet tilts her face toward my neck and sucks a quick, wet kiss to the side of my throat.
We’ve just barely managed to untangle ourselves from her sheets, but I’m eager to go back.
Given all the things we did to each other last night, I should be nothing more than an empty shell.
A husk, gasping for breath and sustenance.
Yet I feel Harriet’s lips against my skin and my cock gives an eager twitch beneath the red plaid pajama pants I stole from her dresser.
They’re far too short, cut just above my ankles, but they’re soft.
I don’t even care how ridiculous I must look.
The comfort is … unmatched. I can see why Harriet enjoys them so much.
“Oliver likes to let herself in for treats,” Harriet says, shuffling her way over to a tiny tin canister. She opens the lid and pulls out a treat, then holds her palm out to Builín. Builín gobbles it up, then butts her head against Harriet’s thigh in gratitude.
“She’s harmless, and I like the visits.” Harriet’s attention snaps over to me. “Oh! I suppose she can see you, huh? You said cats can always tell when there’s a ghost around.”
“She can,” I say slowly. “She does. For a multitude of reasons. One of which is that she’s actually my cat.”
Harriet’s brow furrows in confusion. “What?”
I gesture at the cat with my empty mug. “Builín belongs to me.”
“But this is Oliver.”
“No. That’s Builín.”
“Uh, actually—”
“Builín,” I croon. “C’mere.”
She nudges Harriet once more, then prances her way over, leaping off the edge of the dining table before perching on my shoulder. Her purr rumbles in my ear as she drags her soft nose against my jaw in affection.
Harriet stares at me, one hand on her hip. “Huh.”
“Aye,” I agree. “It appears we’ve both been duped.”
“Apparently.” Harriet brings the coffeepot over to fill my mug, pecking me on the underside of my jaw once she’s done.
It cracks open some needy, neglected part of me and I tilt my head, catching her mouth with mine.
Builín launches herself from my shoulder, soft feet padding across the kitchen floor.
But I don’t care, because Harriet tastes like mint and coffee and the fig jam that’s open on the counter.
It’s the start of every good dream I’ve ever had, and that’s exactly what it feels like, too.
A dream I’m about to wake up from. A dream I was never supposed to have in the first place.
Harriet pulls away with a laugh, shaking her head. “Keep kissing me like that and we’ll never get anything done.”
I loop my arm around her waist and blindly place my coffee mug on an overcrowded counter filled with gingerbread houses of various shapes and sizes. I take the coffee pot out of her hand and set that aside, too. I nose my way under all her hair and press kisses down the line of her throat.
“What do we need to get done today?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Harriet breathes. I walk her two steps backward so I can press her to the refrigerator.
The contents rattle. A magnet falls on the floor.
“Little things. The farmers’ market, if you want.
Solving the mystery of your afterlife, after that.
” She combs her fingers through my hair.
“Maybe dissuading your boss from sending me to burn in eternal hellfire.”
I pull away from her neck. “Eternal hellfire?”
Harriet shrugs. “We still don’t know what these very mysterious consequences are all about. Maybe your spirit friends will damn me to burn for eternity.”
I shake my head, amused. “That’s not what hell is like.”
“Oh?”
“I’ve been told it resembles a corporate waiting room, complete with fluorescent lighting.”
Harriet’s face pinches. “Gross.”
“There’s a water cooler that never stops dripping and the air-conditioning is perpetually set to seventy-eight.”
She gasps. “Why even have air-conditioning?”
“Precisely.” I lean back, propping myself against the fridge. “What’s the likelihood you let this go for the afternoon?”
“What? The mysteries of the universe? Not likely, buddy.” She reaches for my abandoned coffee. “We have an afterlife to get you to.”
It hits me like a slap. My afterlife. It’s not something I want to think about when I can still see the marks I worked into her skin.
I still haven’t told her about the compass. I left it beneath a crate on the top shelf of her supply closet because I don’t want to know what happens if it comes back into my possession. What happens if I touch it? I’d like my unfinished business to remain exactly that … unfinished.
I want to stay where I am. Here, in Harriet’s kitchen, in a pair of borrowed pajama pants with sunlight streaming in through the windows. Paper stars hanging from the ceiling and Harriet, in a pale pink robe with her eyes shining bright.
I don’t want to move on. I don’t want to be taken away from Harriet. It’s the cruelest twist of fate that the thing I’ve wanted most is finally within reach and I don’t—I don’t want it anymore.
I’m coming alive again, and for what? To leave it all behind when I finally claim my compass? To get one last tease of what it felt like to be human?
It’s not right.
“We could stay here today,” I offer, staring hard at the kitchen floor. At our legs, tangled together against the fridge. Harriet’s slippercovered feet and my ridiculous pants. “We could—” The rest of my sentence drifts as I struggle to figure out where we go from here.
She cups her hand around my chin and guides my face up until I have no choice but to look right at her.
“Pretend,” she says. “We could pretend. That’s what you want to say. Isn’t it?”
I exhale and nod. That’s exactly what I want. I want to pretend I get to have this for longer than a handful of stolen moments.
“And you want to go to the past,” I point out, my voice barely more than a rasp. “You want to keep looking.”
She presses her lips together and I want to kiss her so badly it hurts. But kissing her during this conversation feels like stealing something back that never belonged to me in the first place.
“What I want,” she says slowly, “is to keep you. But we both know that has never been in the cards for us. We knew that from the very start, Nolan.”
“We could spend our days like this.” I drag my knuckles over the front of her robe. “We could—”
She shakes her head, cutting me off with her fingers against my lips. I quiet, and her palm soothes along my jaw.
“If I don’t get to keep you, I want to at least make sure you’re happy.
Wherever you are. And that means resolving your unfinished business and sending you on your way.
” She wipes the sleeve of her robe under her nose, then under her eyes.
“So, yes. I want to keep looking. Because you deserve to be happy, Nolan. And it’s important to me that I get to be a part of that. ”
I am happy, I almost say. I’m happy with you. I’m happy like this.
But I don’t. Because she’s right. I don’t get to stay and I won’t hurt her by saying something different, just to spare her feelings. There are rules and I’ve broken every single one.
I can’t break this one.
I don’t even know how I would.
“I want to keep you, too,” I murmur, hoping she can hear the things I’m not saying. I brush some of her hair away from her face, then cup my hand around the base of her neck. I close my eyes and feel the flutter of her pulse, butterfly wings in the palm of my hand.
“We’ll go later today,” I say, reluctant.
She nods. “We’ll have breakfast first.”
“And lunch,” I add. “Then a nap.”
She leans back to look up at me. “A nap?”
Her eyes are red-rimmed but bright, the very tip of her nose pink.
But she smiles through it, just like she always does.
My hands tighten against her.
“An excuse to get you back in bed,” I explain. She laughs and I lean forward to lick the sound off her tongue. She melts against me. I tangle my fingers in the sash of her robe.
I pull, and the material slips free.
I won’t get to keep Harriet, but I will get to remember.
I intend to make the most of it.