Chapter 15 Ghosts
Ghosts
ADRIAN
When I pulled into the driveway, the first thing that hit me was the empty space. Eli’s car was gone. Scrapped somewhere, twisted beyond recognition. The house looked the same, but it felt wrong. Hollow. Because I knew he wasn’t inside waiting for me.
I unlocked the door and stepped into the quiet. The fresh linen plug-in assaulted my nose. Citrus cleaner lingered from the last mopping. Familiar, domestic scents that should’ve felt safe. Instead, they burned in my lungs, a cruel imitation of normal.
The house smelled alive, but Eli wasn’t in it.
In the kitchen, my body moved on autopilot. I opened cabinets, the fridge, and closed them again without seeing a thing. My hand brushed over the pile of mail on the counter, the rhythm of ordinary life mocking me. I poured water but forgot to drink it. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
Then I saw it—the vase. The one I’d bought him years ago.
A blue swirl decorated the base of the blown glass.
I’d told myself it was thoughtful. Romantic.
But it had become a ritual of guilt. Every bouquet an apology for the half-finished conversations, cut short by a pager or a late-night call from the hospital.
Every bed made for two, but slept in alone.
The sight of it undid me.
“Fuck!”
I swiped it from the counter, the crash ringing through the kitchen like a gunshot. Water and shards scattered everywhere. I didn’t even feel the sting as glass cut into my palm. I just kept shouting his name over and over, tearing at my hair, sinking to the floor.
The sound that came out of me didn’t belong to a doctor or a husband. It was something feral, grief stripped down to the bone.
I stayed there on the floor, knees drawn up, back pressed to the cabinet, the tile cold under my ass. The water from the shattered vase crept toward me in slow streams, soaking the hem of my scrub pants. It didn’t matter. Nothing did.
I let my head fall back against the cabinet door and just breathed.
The quiet pressed in, thick and absolute—until it wasn’t.
For a second, I could swear I heard the clatter of a pan, the rhythm of a knife hitting a cutting board.
I almost laughed. The brain was cruel that way, dragging me through wreckage one heartbeat, and memory the next.
Steam. Garlic. The faint burn of olive oil in the pan. Eli shaking his ass as he stood barefoot in one of my old T-shirts, sleeves rolled to his elbows.
“Don’t hover,” he said without looking up. “You’re making me nervous.”
“I’m observing,” I’d told him, leaning against the counter, pretending I wasn’t just watching the way the shirt slid off one shoulder.
“Observing is what you do with your residents,” he’d said. “This is cooking. It requires joy.”
I smiled at that. God, that smile. “I thought it required instructions.”
He’d turned, holding a wooden spoon like a weapon. “You think everything comes with a manual.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“No, Adrian.” His voice had gone low, playful, a spark catching. “Sometimes you just feel your way through it.”
The rest came back in pieces—the flick of sauce against the stove. The moment he reached past me for the salt. The smell of basil and heat and something electric in the space between us.
I caught his wrist. “You’re making a mess.”
“Maybe that’s the point,” he’d said, eyes glinting.
Then it all blurred: the press of him against me, the gasp that escaped when our mouths met, the taste of tomato and wine and laughter. He’d pushed me back against the sink, breathless, grinning.
“Dinner’s going to burn,” he murmured against my mouth.
“Let it.” My lips brushed his. “We don’t need a manual for this next part. We’re gonna feel our way through it.”
His laugh vibrated against me, incredulous and full of life. God, I’d give anything to hear that sound again.
For one dizzy heartbeat, I could feel his warmth, his pulse, the impossible closeness of being seen and wanted in the same breath. Then it was gone. The kitchen was still again. The only heat left was the sting of tears on my face.
I looked around at the wreckage of our life: the shards, the loneliness, the space where love used to live. The air was thick with grief and citrus cleaner and the faint trace of something floral clinging to the counter.
My chest constricted. I couldn’t stay there, sitting in the mess I’d made. The floor pressed into my tailbone, the room spinning just enough to make me dizzy. I braced my hands on the tile and pushed myself upright, every movement scraping against exhaustion.
The house was too quiet. Every creak was an accusation that I hadn’t brought Eli home with me. The stairs loomed ahead, shadowed and endless, and I climbed them like a man walking toward judgment. My hand slid along the railing, slick with sweat, trembling as I reached the landing.
Our bedroom door was open. I paused in the doorway, heart catching.
Everything was untouched—his book on the nightstand, half a glass of water by the bed, the dent in his pillow.
The comforter still showed rumples from that morning, or perhaps the morning before; I couldn’t tell anymore. Time had fractured.
I crossed the room and sank onto the edge of the bed. My fingers found the edge of his pillow, dragging it into my lap. It still smelled faintly of him, linen and soap, a scent that meant home.
I pressed it to my face and felt something inside me collapse.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered into the cotton. The words came out broken, wet, half-formed. “I should’ve listened. I should’ve been here.”
I wanted to crawl beneath the covers and disappear. Instead, I stripped out of the blood-stiffened scrubs, the fabric tearing as I pulled them free, and let them fall in a heap on the floor. The shower ran before I even realized I’d turned it on.
The scalding water stung like penance—hot and hard, burning away everything but regret. The red on my skin bled down the drain, swirling pink, then clear. But the regret stayed.
By the time I shut off the tap, the mirror had fogged over. My reflection was only a blur, unrecognizable. Maybe that was fitting.
I grabbed a towel, sat on the edge of the tub, and let the silence swallow me again.
Two more hours, I told myself. Two more hours and I’d go back to the hospital. But right now, I just needed to survive the space where he wasn’t.
I stripped off the damp towel and let it fall, skin still warm and pink from the shower. In the bedroom, I meant to get dressed, but bypassed the dresser in a haze, moving toward the bed like muscle memory was steering me there, not choice.
I hit the mattress before I realized I’d moved that far. His scent and his memory surrounded me, but I’d never felt further away from him. The realization was a blow to the chest.
I reached for his pillow again. It was instinct, the same way I used to reach for his hand in the dark. My throat locked.
“I’m trying,” I rasped into the pillow. “I swear I’m trying.”
The silence didn’t answer. It just breathed around me—constant, indifferent—as if the world was already learning to live without him.
I curled on my side, naked and shaking, the sheets tangling around my feet. My tears soaked the pillow until the scent of him faded beneath salt and grief.
My eyelids grew heavy, my body too exhausted to keep fighting. The last thing I felt before sleep dragged me under was the imagined brush of his hand against my hair.
The bed dipped behind me, a familiar weight shifting the mattress. I didn’t turn right away—I was afraid if I did, he’d vanish. But then a hand slid over my waist, smooth and solid, and the breath caught in my throat.
“Hey,” he whispered against the back of my neck, his voice sleep-soft, the way it always was in the quiet before morning.
I turned, and there he was—Eli. Warm skin, a drowsy smile, and eyes that saw straight through me. The moonlight spilled over his shoulder, silvering every inch of him until he looked almost too perfect to touch.
“You’re supposed to be resting,” he murmured, brushing his thumb across my cheek.
“So are you,” I whispered back.
He laughed, low and easy, and the sound rippled through me like a heartbeat I’d forgotten I still had. His mouth found mine—gentle at first, then deeper, more certain, until the world narrowed to the heat of him, the scent of skin and clean linen and everything we used to be.
His cock pressed into mine, hard and hot. Warm breath ghosted my cheek. Time disappeared, obligation dissolved. There was only him and me and sweet, hot friction and raw need. Eli’s body demanded satisfaction, and neither of us was leaving this bed until we’d found it.
We moved together as we had a thousand times, bodies remembering what minds had almost lost. His breath tangled with mine, soft curses and promises pressed between kisses. Every touch said what we’d stopped saying aloud: I love you. I’m sorry. Don’t go.
When he whispered my name, it broke something open inside me. I clung to him, desperate to stay in that suspended moment where nothing hurt, where we still had forever.
And then—
The light changed. The warmth faded. The sheets cooled beneath my hands.
I woke to an empty bed; the lack of sound so absolute it roared in my ears. The pillow beside me was still damp with tears. For a heartbeat, I could still feel him—the weight of his hand, the press of his lips—but it slipped away like breath on glass.
I buried my face in the hollow he used to sleep in and sobbed until my body gave out again, whispering into the dark, “Come back. Please just come back.”
When I finally lifted my head, my chest felt hollow, scraped clean. I rolled onto my back and blinked toward the window, gray light bleeding through the blinds. Panic clawed at me. I reached for my phone on the nightstand. 10:07 p.m.
“Shit.” My voice was raw. “Four hours? Jesus Christ.”
I swung my legs over the side of the bed and nearly lost my balance. Still naked from the shower, towel twisted somewhere on the floor, I dragged on my pants, stumbled, and tripped again. “Goddammit.” I didn’t even know who I was mad at—myself, the world, time. All of it.
I had to get back to the hospital. I needed to be there when he woke up. If he woke up.
I made it halfway to the door before freezing. What if Eli opened his eyes and I had nothing for him? Nothing to hold, nothing that said I’m still here. I didn’t give up.
I turned back, grabbed a duffel from the closet, and started throwing things in—laptop, charger, a clean pair of sweats, deodorant. Then I stood there, staring into the bag as if it could answer me. There wasn’t a damn thing in this house that could make up for what I’d done.
I crossed to Eli’s nightstand and yanked open the drawer. Chapstick. Receipts. A pen. And then, at the very back, something small and brown caught the light.
The bracelet.
I sank down hard on the edge of the bed; the air leaving my lungs all at once. The grapevine had dried to a brittle twist, the gold wire dull from time and sweat. I turned it in my hands, and memory flooded back in a wave.
Our first anniversary. The Vineyard. We’d taken a long weekend, just the two of us, a honeymoon a year late. Three days of lazy mornings and too much wine, wandering between the vines with his hand in mine.
That second night, after midnight, we’d snuck out to the fields—barefoot, half-drunk, and stupid in love.
He laughed when I pulled him down into the grass.
I could still see him there in the moonlight, all skin and smile, twisting into me as I stripped him bare.
The moon shone silver on his skin, making him look otherworldly.
My lips closed around his cock, and he whispered, Make it last. Make it good.
I could still feel the dream of him on my skin.
His warmth. His weight. The slow, inevitable pull that always drew us back together, no matter how far apart we drifted.
I couldn’t wait to slide inside him, and when I did, Eli clung to me like our first time, wanting to get closer, begging for more, bathing my face in kisses.
I whispered his name against his throat, and he arched toward me, whispering mine back like a prayer.
His ass was a tight, hot glove that milked the pleasure from my body in minutes.
His fingers curled at the back of my neck, guiding me closer until our breaths tangled, until I forgot where I ended and he began.
After, we’d laid there wrapped together, trading secrets we never had time for during the weeks I was always gone.
“Promise me we’ll come back here every year,” he begged.
“Here?” I asked.
He smiled softly. “To this place. To this feeling.”
I’d reached down, plucked a bit of grapevine from where it had fallen beside us, and twisted it into a thin bracelet. “I promise. Until then, this’ll remind you,” I said, sliding it over his wrist.
We never did.
I pressed the bracelet to my forehead now, the memory cutting like glass. “You idiot,” I muttered to myself, voice cracking. “You selfish, blind idiot.”
All the excuses—double shifts, late calls, emergencies—they sounded empty now. I had everything I ever wanted and still managed to lose it. I had him.
I tucked the bracelet into the bag and zipped it shut. My hands were shaking, but my resolve wasn’t.
“Hang on, Eli,” I whispered. My throat burned, my voice rough from all the words I should’ve said when I had the chance. “I’m coming back. I’m not leaving you again.”
I slung the bag over my shoulder, took one last look at the bed—our bed—and forced myself out the door, down the stairs, and into the night.
I was going to bring him home. Whatever it took.