Chapter 34
Present Day
I skip class the next day.
Exhaustion bleeds from every one of my pores, even after sleeping for a solid ten hours. The bowl of Apple Jacks at two in the afternoon isn’t doing it for me either. I sigh as I force myself to eat the food, so I don’t waste, and then rinse my bowl in the sink. I eye the tiny dining table, wondering if I should clear it like I’ve been meaning to, so I don’t have to keep standing in the kitchen or using the coffee table in the living room to eat.
A yawn breaks through and I decide it can wait.
Last night, after Gabriel passed over, I spent hours working with three more ghosts, whom I had seen before that night Chris attacked me, but had never spoken to.
Archer, indeed, was stuck here because of his inability to proclaim his sexual orientation as homosexual. He and I had talked for at least an hour about his family, the devout religious people who judged everyone by their standards. It had taken at least as long to finally get him to admit that he was gay. Archer had ignored it, shoving it aside out of self-preservation. The church he attended, he had told me, had classes to ‘educate’ those who were attracted to others of the same sex. But the way he said it, the tone of his voice and the paling of his face, made me think these classes were better suited to be called brainwashing.
In the end, he had admitted his truth to me. I had accepted it and that was enough. Archer began to glow as soon as I accepted him for who he was, tears in his eyes, and gratitude pouring out of his mouth.
Ezra and Wyatt were simpler yet.
Ezra simply wanted me to get information to his estranged sister about a crypto wallet that had hundreds of thousands of dollars on it—or at least it had when he’d died however long ago. When I looked up the current prices when he asked me to, his eyes had bugged out of his head, and made me double- and triple-check I had written down the seed phrase down correctly. Whatever that was. I sent an email to his sister from an anonymous email and VPN—idea courtesy of Tilly—before he even started glowing.
Wyatt made me laugh with his request, but my laughter quickly died when he scowled at me and explained further. Using that same email and VPN, we composed a message to the entire company he worked for, calling them out for the illegal, nefarious behavior he had been trying to bring notice to before his death. Not to mention the rampant sexual harassment the CEO had committed and gone unpunished. We CC’d every major news outlet we could think of.
With each, the second they started glowing, I had made a point of keeping my distance. With Gabriel, the urge to go with him, wherever he was going, was so strong; felt so right. Like I was returning home, not leaving it. I didn’t like it. Not one bit.
Because that small part of me did yearn to go.
Tilly stayed with me until I finished, and I made her promise to text me when she made it home safe since I had to kick her out when we were done.
The look on her face when she asked what my sister would really do about it if she came home and found her there was unnerving to me. Like she was looking for a missing puzzle piece and couldn’t quite grip it between her fingers. I didn’t like that either.
As sufficiently as Archer had turned the other cheek to his sexual orientation, I chose to ignore this strange desire to escape into whatever lied beyond death and Tilly’s questions that made me as edgy as when people would question me about Dad at home. I have never known why I felt the need to protect Dad from the scrutiny, but I had, and I needed to extend that same courtesy to Rhea. Like Dad, they’d both had hard lives marked with death and tragedy. Shoot, Rhea is the one who had found our mother when she’d overdosed. She had only been eight, and was never the same again after that.
So instead of dwelling on it, I go back to my room and crawl into bed. Hard as I try, though, I can’t go back to sleep. I take stock of the room, noting the lack of chill. The guys have all been good about giving me my own space, even if more than one of them looks like that idea is horrendous.
I may have been uncomfortable by Tilly’s curiosity, but my own flares as I eye my phone. Quietly slipping it off my nightstand, I pull up the search engine, typing in the first name I think of.
Archer Walton.
The search acquires over seven million hits on the man I helped move on last night, his last name given to me during our long talk. I half-heartedly scroll, pausing when I spy a page for an Arizona news station from eight months ago. The headline reads: Tucson Man Now Missing for Thirty Days.
I click on it and am greeted by an image of Archer, his smile easy and casual. Scanning the article, I find a basic breakdown of the case. Archer was last seen by his friends after an advanced calculus class at the University of Arizona. His friends had notified his family after being unable to get ahold of him for two days. The family had filed a missing person’s report. But it seems that no one had seen Archer again. He’d just vanished without a trace.
Like a ghost, I think wryly, then blanch at my morbidness.
There’s a little link at the bottom of the article for an update that repeats all the same information, then notes that the police have stopped actively working on the case.
Less than satisfied by what I’d found—what I was looking for, I’m not sure—I type in the only other first and last name I know of from the ghosts.
Koda Parker.
I blinked as the results populate. More than twenty million results stare back at me as I start to scroll down, pictures of my Koda grinning back at me. I go back to the top, clicking on the first link.
The webpage I find details how Fool’s Gold, a single that Doctrine 27 released well over a year ago, skyrocketed to the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 list for twelve straight weeks after the small indie band had already dissolved. The reason? Their lead singer had disappeared without a trace following a show. Because of Koda Parker’s predilection for heroin, even though he’d had several rehab stays throughout his young adulthood, his missing status had been chocked up to a slip back into drugs, and he was forgotten.
I clicked through article after article, growing more nauseous by the moment. Every article mentioned his disappearance, and every article dismissed it with a snotty comment about his prior drug use in the same breath that it mentioned he had been working on a personal trainer at a gym—something his band mates said he started doing to occupy his time and hands in between trying to make it in the music scene.
“Stalking, Nova baby?”
I yelp, my phone shooting up into the air as I attempt to lock my hands around it before it finally tumbles to the floor and cartwheels across the room. Scowling, I look over my shoulder at Theodore. He grins back at me, blue eyes sparkling with laughter, as he leans casually against the wall with his arms crossed.
I realize now, too late, that the room has chilled, raising goosebumps on my bare arms.
Rolling onto my other side to face him, I don’t miss how his eyes trace over the lines of my body. “Why are you sneaking up on me?” I demand, still glaring.
He lowers himself to the bed, his butt barely perched on the edge. With fascination, I realize the bed doesn’t dimple with his weight. His hand reaches out, settling in the valley where my waist dips in before flaring out at my hip. Now the bed dips.
“I wanted to check on you because I know last night was stressful,” Theodore answers, those full lips giving me a smile. “But now I think I might ask if you want to look into my dog since you’re feeling like being a snoop.”
“I was not being a snoop,” I answer primly.
He grins like he knows I am definitely lying, then leans down, his lips cool against my cheek as he kisses it. Both of us pause, eyeing one another, his mouth still hovering above me.
“I…You feel like…” I stop after I trail off, not wanting to say it wrong.
“Say it, Nova,” he murmurs.
“You feel like my greatest friend and protector,” I blurt out, and am promptly mortified. “Not like a friend, as in I don’t find you attractive. Like—”
I break off as he takes my chin between his thumb and pointer finger, forcing me to lift my chin to meet his eyes. He says nothing before he leans down, kissing me deeply, sensually. It is slow and gentle, but not tentative. No, Theodore has zero problem with kissing me. But the way he does it, I feel as safe and protected as I just word vomited about at him.
Kissing someone with his facial hair feels different. Jimmy has facial hair, but it is neatly trimmed close to his skin. Theodore, on the other hand, has a beard and mustache that is longer, softer, but still out of the way so our lips meet without getting caught between us. I lean into the kiss, finding myself more and more desperate the longer he takes his time.
That part of me that is growing smaller by the day—the part that has Dad’s voice and ugly words—tries to call out and shame me for the things I want, which are going through my mind in vivid color.
I choose to ignore it.
His hand sliding up my ribs, bumping over one at a time, makes me very aware that I’m not wearing a bra. I can feel how my nipples have hardened, poking through the thin material of my t-shirt I slept in last night, which I’m sure is doing nothing to hide my arousal. All the while, Theodore kisses me slowly, sweetly, like he’s savoring me.
“Theodore,” I murmur into his kiss, his name tinged with need. Need that I hadn’t realized was near insatiable until I had found them.
To my displeasure, he stops kissing me. “Your door is open,” he reminds me, his hand poised just below my breast, the skin of the underside tingling with his closeness.
I lurch up, smiling at the look of surprise when I hook my arm around his neck, kissing him with much more fever than he just showed me. “Then let’s shut the door,” I suggest.
He huffs a laugh. “What happened to that innocent girl who moved in here?”
“A bunch of ghosts corrupted her,” I tell him, then heave myself off the bed. I go to the door, closing it. I frown at the lack of lock before taking the wooden desk chair and hook it under the knob, wiggling it to ensure that Rhea won’t be able to wander in here by accident.
When I spin around, Theodore’s eyes are definitely not on my face, but lower. “Were you looking at my butt?” I accuse.
He doesn’t even attempt to deny it. “Absolutely. Yes, I was looking at that cute ass.”
My face burns, but I keep my head up. Basing my next move on instinct, I tug at the hem of my t-shirt before lifting it above my head and tossing it to the ground. My hair swings and settles around me, tickling my bare skin. Theodore’s expression goes from mildly amused to predatory as he traces his gaze over my uncovered breasts.
“Fuck, baby girl,” he breathes.
I feel my stomach muscles contract at the new name from him, pleasure delighting in me at it. Before I can talk myself out of it, I hook my thumbs into the waistband of my sleep shorts and panties, pushing them down so they pool around my ankles.
I’ve read romance books where the heroines talk about their toes curling when their counterpart does something arousing or sexy. I thought it was silly nonsense meant to try to explain instinctual reactions.
But no. My dang toes curl into the thin carpet as a low growl rumbles through Theodore’s chest, his eyes drinking in my body.
I will send formal apologies to every author I ever doubted about toe curling men.
“Come here,” he orders, and there’s something about his voice that is different.
I obey, openly studying him. Theodore is always in control—Koda has made more than one joke about him being everyone’s father. But this tone he’s using now is not one I’ve heard. This is one that commands my attention and makes me want to bow to his every whim.
He stays perfectly still, in his perched position on the bed, twisted around from where he was watching me. As I come around the bed to him as ordered, he rights himself when I’m standing in front of him, spreading his legs apart further—an invitation to step between them.
I do, searching his eyes, unsure what I’m supposed to be doing.
“You don’t need to do anything,” he says like he might be able to read my thoughts. He sweeps my hair back over my shoulder, away from my breast so it is no longer covered. With fingers that don’t quite touch my skin, he traces up the length of my arm, across my collarbone, and down between my breasts. When he circles the right globe, a whimper escapes and my body rocks, trying to force him to touch.
“Are you being impatient?” he asks, looking up at me.
I don’t have the chance to give him a witty answer before he strikes, taking my nipple between his fingers and pinching. He tugs and twists, making my body writhe in kind until he pins me with his strong legs, holding me in place. He takes my wrist with his other hand, drawing it to the front of his pants.
“I am dead,” he says, pressing my hand against the hard length of him through his pants. “I have no blood flow, yet I am harder than I have ever been in my fucking life right now.”
I can feel my hips and inner thighs throbbing with every one of my heartbeats, the desire to slide down on the hardness, to have it fill me in a way I crave, pounding through me. I can already tell that he’s thicker than either Koda or Jimmy, and I wonder how that will feel in comparison.
“If I can keep myself restrained, Nova baby,” Theodore rumbles, “and properly wreck you, instead of acting like some horny little teenage boy, then you can be patient, too.”
My breath hitches as he releases my hand and immediately grips my thigh, his thumb pressing into my bikini line. He massages the flesh, squeezing and rolling until the action sends new trembles coursing through me; until my breaths are coming out as whines and pleas to touch me.
I can see the building frenzy rising in Theodore, him toeing the line of his self-control and starting to fail. I want to break down that control. I want to see it crumble because he can’t stand to not touch me for another second.
I roll my hips, seeking the friction of his fingers against the wetness I know he can already feel, and it is his breaking point. Before I can blink, Theodore is wholly naked, slamming me down on the bed as he crawls over me. His hardness presses against my entrance like our bodies already know this dance.
“Next time, I won’t be a horny teenage boy,” he relents with a smirk.
And then he slams into me.