16
Tristan
She’s looking at me. ? ?She sees me.
I’ve been so caught up in my worry for Demi that when she speaks to me, I almost don’t register it.
“There you are,” she says to me with such relaxed amusement, such quiet joy that my mind can’t make sense of it. Her smile, more precious than any gift I’ve ever received, snaps me back to reality.
She can see ?me.
“Uh..hi?” I say. The shock and enormity of this moment have rendered me utterly moronic.
Even sick and frail, Demi St. James is so damn pretty it’s impossible to look away from her. Those blue eyes glitter at me with curiosity and interest.
“Is this real, or am I fever-dreaming about you?” she asks.
I lean closer. I can’t help it, being pulled to her like a magnet.
My palm rests against her forehead. The heat of her skin is harsh, radiating outward in waves.
I turn my hand over and press the back of it to her temples, one then the other.
She sighs, and her eyes flutter closed. The gratification of helping her feel better is beyond words.
“Pretty sure it’s real,” I say.
Demi opens her eyes and smiles again. “I like your voice.”
“Do you?” I ask, with a smile of my own .
“Yep,” she says, nodding, eyes lighting up. “And your face.”
Jesus Christ, this sweetness from her might reduce me to nothing.
“You like my voice and my face?” I chuckle.
“Mmm,” she confirms. “And your laugh. It’s rumbly.”
Boldly, I reach for her with both hands and cup her face. Her intake of breath is sharp. I wonder how much of what she’s saying is influenced by her illness. The fever, I can tell, is bad.
I’ve been at her side and frantic with worry since she woke.
Her cough, loud and horrible, drew me in a rush across the Manor to her bedside sometime around dawn.
It was a wicked sound, like the rip of a chainsaw.
And when I saw the state she’s in, I panicked—sweating but shivering.
Delirious. Unable to get up, barely able to open her eyes.
The worst part, aside from how terrible she feels, is that there’s nothing I can do to help. But this, my hands on her face, my company, seems to be doing something — bringing life back to her eyes.
And she can see me.
“Now I kind of don’t want the medicine to kick in. What if you disappear when my fever breaks?” she asks, with an arched brow.
I know she’s trying to be funny, but there’s an edge of truth in her tone. While the thought of my visibility to her being short-lived makes me feel like my heart is breaking, I’d give it all up just for her to feel better.
“I’m not going to disappear. Even if you can’t see me, I’ll still be here,” I say .
Her eyes soften. “That’s really fucking sweet.”
“And you’re really fucking sick,” I say, trying to brush off her compliment because it feels too good, too hopeful. Too much like one more word from her could make me fall in love.
“Blame my sister.”
“I do.” ????????That makes her laugh, but it doesn’t last long. The laugh turns into a cough, then another, and another. It sounds so painful, and it seems like it’s hard for her to catch her breath when it dies down. I don’t like that. Not one bit.
“We should get you to a doctor,” I say.
I press one palm to her forehead again, and the other to the side of her throat, curving my fingers around the back of her neck. She shudders.
“Oh, that feels good.”
With effort, I shove down the strange, primal urging that rises.
Something about Demi looking me in the eyes, really seeing me, and telling me my touch feels good makes my brain misfire.
I shouldn’t be slipping into thoughts about how it might feel to hear her say it feels good while my shoulders wedge between her thighs.
A decent man wouldn’t think about hearing her say it feels good while my hands slip beneath her shirt.
Not while the woman in these fantasies lies before me, sick and suffering.
I feel like a criminal.
Her eyes are heavy-lidded now, and she’s struggling to keep them open. Thankfully, it seems like her medication is starting to work.
“I think I’m falling asleep,” she says.
“That’s good. ”
“Will you stay with me?”
The way she says it, soft and vulnerable, coupled with the way she looks me right in the eyes, has me feeling like I would agree to anything she asks right now.
Swim across the sea? Sure. Sleep on a bed of nails? No problem.
“I’ll stay with you,” I reply.
Demi nods. “You can lie next to me. If you want.”
If I want? This woman has no clue how much I want.
“Are you sure?” I ask. ????????At this, she reaches for me, and the phantom heart in my chest stumbles.
She touches my shoulder, and I can almost ?feel it.
I look down at where her hand rests. My body isn’t solid, but more like mist given form.
It seems like it would be solid, would be real, except for the aching transparency and the fact that her fingers sort of…
pass through me. But it’s enough. God, it’s more than enough, the hint of her touch.
“I don’t really want to be alone right now,” she says.
I nod. “I’ve got you.”
Without another thought, I circle her bed and climb in behind her. Mittens gives me a look I can only describe as suspicious but plops herself into a loaf on top of Demi’s feet.
This close, lying next to her, I can feel the heat of her fever more acutely. I wish I could feel her body on mine, the curve of her against me. Lifting the blanket, I pull it higher and tuck her in.
“Tristan?”
“Yeah? ”
“Do you think you could put your hand on the back of my neck?” Demi asks but doesn’t wait for my response as she clumsily pulls her long hair into a mass on the top of her head and ties it off with the satin scrunchie that was around her wrist.
The graceful slope of her neck is so inviting that I can’t think of anything else in the world I’d rather be doing than this. I rest my hand along her nape, my fingertips comb up into her hair at the back of her head. She trembles when I massage her scalp, then I feel her whole body relax.
“Thank you,” she sighs.
Before I can come up with a worthy response, I hear her breathing deepen and slow, and I know she’s fallen asleep.
~
Hours later, Demi rolls over to face me. Her fever broke pretty quickly after she fell asleep, but I stayed right where I was, by her side. I’d be perfectly content to lie next to her for days, weeks, on end.
When she opens her eyes, they’re unfocused, and I have a moment of panic. Maybe it really was the fever that allowed her to see me. Maybe I’m invisible to her again. That would be a particular hell. To have a taste of her true attention, only for it to have been a symptom of her sickness.
But then, her gaze finds mine, and she gives me a sleepy grin.
“You’re still here,” she says.
“I told you I would be. ”
“To be honest, there was no way for me to know if any of that was real.”
“Fair.”
“I vaguely remember flirting with you,” Demi says, without an ounce of self-consciousness. I like that about her.
“You did, a little bit.”
Demi looks at me with the kind of awe I haven’t earned, and she reaches for me. Her fingers flutter over my shoulder again. I wish I could feel it.
“How is this possible?” she asks.
“No idea,” I say, and in my head I want to beg her to keep touching me. Even though I can’t feel it, even though she can’t feel me, I never want her hand to stop touching me.
“Has this happened to you before? Being seen?”
“Not like this.”
“Like what, then?”
I smile. “Kids on Halloween.”
Demi’s eyes widen conspiratorially. “Tristan Beaumont, you spend Halloween scaring the shit out of children ?”
“Not on purpose.” The chuckle that comes out of me is genuine, and it feels so good.
“Right,” she drawls sarcastically, pursing her soft lips. “I bet you put on a bed sheet and float around moaning.”
“That’s a stereotype.”
“Justice for ghosts.”
She’s funny. I first got a taste of Demi’s quick wit the day she moved in, and I eavesdropped on a conversation between her and Blue. It’s one of the reasons I feel so drawn to her. There is life in humor, life in laughter, and Demi St. James is so very alive .
“You seem like you’re feeling better,” I say.
The color has returned to her cheeks, and from what I can tell, she’s no longer burning up. That terrifying effort it took for her to catch her breath seems less now, too.
“Yeah. I should probably take some more medicine to make sure it stays that way.”
“What do you need? If it’s in the house, I can get it for you.”
The corner of her mouth lifts, and so does one perfectly shaped eyebrow.
“How does it work? You carry things and move them around, but when you touch me, it’s just a sensation. When I touch you…” she makes her point by demonstrating, fingertips moving down my arm. “It’s like smoke.”
“I don’t really know how it works. You don’t get ghost training when you die. All I know is that I think people are different.”
“Different how?”
“Objects don’t have energy or life. I think that’s the difference. But I don’t know the science behind it.”
“I don’t think it’s about science,” Demi states, her blue eyes glittering, like she knows a secret I don’t.
“What’s it about, then?”
“Magic.”
She says it with such surety, such confidence, that it’s hard not to be convinced.
“You believe in magic?” I ask, mostly just to keep her talking. Her mind fascinates me, and her voice is like music .
“I come from a long line of women who’ve been called witches. Plus, I’m talking to a ghost. Seems like magic to me.”
“I guess I can’t argue with that.”
Demi holds up her palm to me. “Give me your hand.”
I’d give you anything.
I mirror what she’s doing, holding out my hand, palm out, and she places hers on mine. Palm to palm. Her hand is so much smaller than mine, and admiring the size difference sparks a very male satisfaction within me.
“Can you feel anything?” she asks.
“Physically? No.”
Her gaze cuts to mine at that, and I wonder if I shouldn’t have been so obvious. My social skills are admittedly a little rusty. But the look on her face tells me that she’s curious and…interested.
The air between us becomes charged and breathless. Much like in the foyer when she came home and asked me to touch her, everything around us disappears; we’re in a vacuum full of sparks. I zero in on her—only her—but truthfully, there’s nothing else that commands my attention the way Demi does.
She slips her fingers between mine, and I follow her cue, entwining my fingers with hers. Holding her hand. If I concentrate hard enough, I can almost ?feel it. I dissolve around her movements like mist or smoke, then coalesce again, and she watches in awe.
“Can you feel anything?” I ask, my voice taking on a deeper tone.
Something in her eyes heats, and she gives me a nod .
“Tell me.” My voice is deeper still, my demand unexpectedly insistent. She bites her lip, and my gaze tracks the movement, the way her white teeth sink into the pink pillow of her bottom lip.
Oh, God, she’s so sexy like this: lying next to me, holding my hand (theoretically), no makeup, no armor, with her hair a mess. Biting that fucking lip. Even sick, she looks like a movie star to me.
“It started off cold. But now it’s warm. I feel it against my palm, between my fingers,” Demi says.
I want to kiss her, I want to kiss her, I want—
Demi’s face changes slightly, and she pulls her hand away to cough into the crook of her arm. It sounds better than before, but it's still not very good. It still sounds painful.
Now my only motivation is to help her feel better again.
“What do you need?” I ask. “Medicine. What else?”
“Water. Oh, and I left my phone in the kitchen.”
I slide out of bed. “Got it.”
“Are you sure? You don’t have to wait on me.”
From the doorway, I give her a look that feels stern but seems to amuse her. “Just let me help you, okay?”
With a soft smile, she says, “Okay.”