Chapter Nine
Baxter
The shivering triggered by the rush of cold air as we stepped out onto the street told me that despite the huge amount of alcohol I’d consumed over the course of the day, and not having eaten anything since breakfast, I wasn’t half as drunk as I’d like to be.
Lake hovered a few steps away, his body language screaming indecision about what he was supposed to do next.
No reading of thoughts was required to know that.
I studied him, weighing up his attributes.
Handsome. Nice. Good company. All I knew was that if I went back to my flat, the walls would start closing in on me, and the pressure in my chest would explode.
Alcohol was supposed to make that feeling go away, or at the very least numb it, but it was still there—a knot in my chest that no amount of rubbing could ease.
If alcohol didn’t work, then sex was the next best thing.
“I’m going to call a cab,” Lake said, his phone already in his hand. “I can drop you off wherever you need to go.”
I shook my head. “No. Let’s go back to yours.
” I knew he was attracted to me. All night, countless thoughts had told me how pretty he found certain parts of me.
Eyes. Cheekbones. Lips. Throat. He seemed to have a thing about throats, his gaze often straying there when he thought I wasn’t paying attention.
He might have begun the evening dating another man, but that hadn’t stopped him from admiring me. And he had already invited me back.
“Sure,” Lake said, the slight shrug he gave too casual to be real. My phone rang, and I pulled it out of my pocket. Calisto again. He’d called five times while I’d been in the bar, leaving a message each time. I hadn’t listened to any of them and hadn’t returned the call.
I wrapped my arms around myself to keep warm, the chill sinking into my bones. I’d had a coat when I left home some seventeen hours ago, but I couldn’t recall what had happened to it. I might have left it at Blade’s. Or if not there, at the PPB.
A sudden warmth engulfed me as Lake settled his own coat over my shoulders. It was so gentlemanly that words tangled on my tongue, causing me to be mute for the best part of a minute while I wrangled them into some sort of order. “Now you’ll be cold.”
Lake smiled. He had a nice smile. It was ever so slightly lopsided, but that just gave it character. “We can take turns. But please don’t run off with it. I’ve already chased one man tonight and been unable to catch him. Twice in one night would be ridiculous.”
I laughed, and he laughed along with me, the corners of his eyes crinkling.
The cab arrived within minutes, both of us piling into the back, with me still huddled in Lake’s coat.
It smelled of the cologne he wore. Something modern that I hadn’t yet learned, my six months back in the land of the living having revealed many gaps in my knowledge.
Films. TV. Books. Fashion. Technology. It was all so overwhelming at times.
Maybe that’s why I spent most of my time drinking and having sex.
Nothing had changed with those two things.
Alcohol was still alcohol. And sex was still about reaching an orgasm.
After a fifteen-minute drive, the cab pulled up in front of a house that looked like most houses in London. I studied it while Lake paid the driver. He came to stand next to me, close enough that he was almost touching. “It’s not much,” he said. “But it’s home.”
“It looks good to me.”
I revised my opinion slightly when Lake led me inside.
There were people who preferred the minimalist look—Asher was one of them, although bit by slow bit Calisto was doing his best to change that—but this was something else.
The living room Lake led me into had a sofa and a rug, and that was about it.
I might have commented on it, but I had something else on my mind: the reason he’d invited me back here.
I understood my role. It was what I was good at. Shrugging Lake’s coat off my shoulders and letting it fall to the floor, I backed him against the wall. He blinked. “What are you—?”
I didn’t let him get any further, my lips coming down on his to put an end to the rest of the sentence.
He tasted of the cocktail we’d both shared.
I moved in closer, absorbing his body heat, like a vampire who feasted on warmth rather than blood.
The muscles of his chest were firm, one of my hands exploring while the other reached up to cradle his nape and pull him closer.
The kiss had remained fairly chaste up to that point, but that didn’t last long, Lake’s tongue meeting mine eagerly as I requested entry. He was a good kisser. No, scrap that; he was a great kisser. I let out a little moan, Lake liking it if the way he hardened against my thigh was any indication.
I had a stab at getting the buttons on Lake’s shirt undone blind. When I struggled, frustration had me ending the kiss to concentrate on it fully. I’d revealed half of Lake’s smooth chest when I realized my mistake, a stillness creeping into his body language.
Abandoning the buttons as a job half done I could come back to, I returned to kissing him, but the damage was already done. Where his lips had been warm and pliable, they were now stiff and unyielding. The hardness of his cock had me persevering, but it was to no avail.
“I don’t want this.”
There was no ignoring that thought. Not without feeling like a sex pest. I eased back, not liking the way Lake was looking at me. It reminded me of someone cornered by a wild animal they didn’t want to spook. “You were into that,” I said, injecting it with an accusation I hadn’t intended.
“Yeah,” Lake said, guilt written all over his face. “But that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. I’m too old for you, for a start. You’re what, twenty-two, twenty-three?”
I laughed. “The right thing? You were the one who invited me back here.”
He shook his head. “Yeah, to talk. Not to… Leaving you on your own just didn’t feel right.”
I backed away from him, rejection coalescing with all the other swirling emotions in my chest to form a solid ball. “I don’t need your pity.”
Lake frowned. “It’s not pity. It’s concern. That’s allowed, right?”
“You don’t even know me.”
“It doesn’t say a lot for humanity if you have to know someone before you’re allowed to feel concern for them.”
Smoke filled my head. Thick, acrid smoke that made it impossible to think rationally. “Don’t be nice to me!”
Lake frowned. “Why not?”
I kept backing away, not stopping until the opposite wall prevented me from going any further.
I was hot. I was cold.
I wanted to laugh. I wanted to cry.
My body felt like a skin I wanted to shed.
The solid ball in my chest had grown so large it clogged my throat. Any bigger and I wouldn’t be able to breathe.
And all the while Lake just kept staring, the slight furrow on his brow saying he didn’t understand what was happening here.
I wanted to read his mind and find out what he really thought, but I didn’t have the control over myself to do that.
Not and keep breathing at the same time. “You don’t understand,” I choked out.
“So tell me. I’m here to listen.” The extreme calm in Lake’s voice made it worse, making me feel like I was being hysterical.
The pressure built and built until it was explode or die.
I exploded, words tumbling out of me like water stuck behind a dam that had finally found an outlet.
“I died,” I said, “years ago. Only it wasn’t death, really.
It was something else, because I got to come back.
I had this link with Calisto, something to do with him being a necromancer and having one foot in both worlds.
Neither of us understood it then, and we’re no closer to understanding it now.
I could talk to him. I could follow him, but no one else could see me, so it was a kind of half-life.
I missed touch. I missed taste. I missed the feel of the sun on my skin.
I missed being hot. I missed being cold.
I just missed. There was nothing I wanted more when I was dead than to be alive again. ”
I wrapped my arms around myself, more for comfort than for warmth. I knew I should stop talking, but rational thought had ceded control to pure emotion. “But now I’m alive again, everything’s so hard. How do you get over being murdered? How do you get over losing nineteen years of your life?”
I let out a laugh. Well, half laugh, half sob, if I were honest. “You think you’re too old for me. That’s hilarious.” I jabbed myself in the chest. “This body might be twenty-four, but do you know how old I should be?” I didn’t give him space to answer. “I should be forty-three. Forty-three.”
I started to pace, the movement helping slightly.
“Calisto was the only friend I had for nineteen years. He wants to help. I know he does. And it’s Calisto.
He’s the nicest person you could ever meet.
He doesn’t have any intentions that aren’t good.
But I just can’t let him in, and I don’t know why.
Maybe because I was always the one telling him to keep it together, to do this, to do that, to live his life.
Or maybe I blame him for bringing me back.
But if I tell him that, he’ll feel bad, right?
So I avoid him. I ignore his calls and messages.
And I know that makes him feel like crap, but I can’t break the cycle.
I drink and I have sex. Anything so I don’t have to face up to how fucking difficult it is to have to wake up each day and be alive. ”