Chapter Twenty-Four #2
Colour rose to her cheeks before she could stop it, warmth blooming across her face.
She didn’t answer right away, but she didn’t need to.
Theo’s eyes flicked over her, catching the blush, understanding it.
“Yes,” she finally admitted. “I could touch more of you now. Probably. I think the more I experience in the memories . . . the more tangible you become here.”
“You saw more, didn’t you?” he asked softly. “When you went back . . . you saw more of me. More of us. You did more.” He stepped even closer. “More with me.”
Augustine drew in a breath, steadying herself — not because she was afraid, but because this felt like stepping across something irreversible.
“I was there,” she stammered. “For your first kiss. But . . . but it wasn’t me. It was her.”
The memory brushed against her again as she spoke — soft, vivid, not hers and yet somehow . . . somehow it felt like it belonged to her all the same.
“You kissed me,” Theo said. “You kissed me in those memories, and then . . . and then you waited for me here. Why?”
She opened her mouth to speak but no words came out. What could she say? I knew what kissing you was like. I knew what touching you was like. And I wanted to do it again, but not because of her. I wanted it for me. For us.
“Yes, I waited,” she confirmed. “But I . . . I don’t know why.”
“Liar.”
He took another step towards her, and for a heartbeat, Augustine thought he might reach for her.
She almost leaned into it, already remembering the shape of his hands, the warmth of his lips, how easily that had become something shared, something real.
But he stopped short. His hands stayed at his sides, and she tried not to miss the feel of him.
“You know why you waited,” he said, his voice low.
“It’s for the same reason I keep finding my way back to you.
There’s something here. Something between us.
” Augustine flinched — not at the words, but at how easily they struck at something true, deep inside her.
Suddenly, the air around them felt thick with something she couldn’t name, something she didn’t want to name.
Then she pulled back. Not abruptly or coldly, but with an obvious deliberateness, putting much needed space between them.
She let her hand fall and took a step away, then another, turning from him as if something in the room suddenly demanded her attention.
The familiar clutter of the shop gave her somewhere to put her hands, something to straighten that didn’t need straightening.
“So what if there is? You have a girlfriend,” she reminded him, letting the words settle between them, an emotional distance to add to the physical space she’d just created.
Theo didn’t answer.
“You want to find her,” Augustine went on, brushing her fingers along the edge of a display table, aligning a deck that was already perfectly square. “That’s why you’re here. That’s why I’m doing this.” She glanced back at him briefly, then away again. “I’m doing this for her. For you.”
“Augustine—”
“I still don’t know her name,” she cut in, sharper than she meant to be. She exhaled, steadying herself, but didn’t turn around this time. “I don’t know why someone murdered you. I don’t know what happened that night. There’s so much we still don’t know.”
Silence stretched behind her.
Then she turned, finally meeting his eyes again. “And we both know there’s only one way we can find out.”
Theo’s expression shifted, something like dread threading through it. “You want to go back, don’t you?”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t want to go back. But I think I need to.”
“You said there’s a price to pay for magic.” He hesitated. “That place I went to—”
“I don’t want you going back there, of course I don’t,” she interjected hurriedly. “But we—”
“I’m not worried about me going back there,” Theo wouldn’t let her finish. “I’m worried about you going there.”
His words stopped her short.
“Maybe I don’t want you to go back into the memories anyway,” he carried on, after another beat. “Maybe I want you to stay here.” His eyes lifted to hers again. “Here with me.”
There it was again, that quiet, impossible pull and for one fleeting, dangerous second, Augustine let herself imagine it.
Let herself fall into the fantasy of just staying, of letting all their questions go unanswered.
Letting the past remain buried, if it meant she didn’t have to step away from this — whatever this fragile, impossible thing between them was becoming.
A soft, wistful ache settled in her chest, because God, she would love that. She really would. Instinctively, she knew a lifetime with Theo would be enough for her. A lifetime of love and passion. A lifetime of happiness. A lifetime shared happily over the years.
No. Not a lifetime shared, she corrected herself. Only mine. My lifetime. His lifetime has already gone.
Theo was a ghost. He would never grow old beside her, or die with her. He would simply watch the years pass by until hers ran out, too. And then what?
Then he would be alone.
Forever.
Augustine had heard from her grandmother what happened to ghosts who lingered.
They faded and became trapped in the shape of unfinished things.
Augustine didn’t want that. For Theo to be trapped, or for her to be an unfinished thing.
She couldn’t bear the thought that loving her might condemn him to years of waiting, years of emptiness.
She refused to be the reason he spent eternity as a ghost.
As she gazed into Theo’s eyes, the ache in her chest sharpened.