Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
QUINN
Florence blinks at me, her eyes wide and wild and half full of tears.
I don’t know what happened just then, what upset her, but she was definitely talking to someone, someone who wasn’t me. But there’s no one in this pool other than us. No one in this whole place that I’ve seen. And now she’s crying and I don’t know if it was because of something I did.
She seemed upset with me about the kiss. About me apologising for it, specifically. But I told her the truth. I don’t regret it for a moment; I only regret that it made things weird between us.
She drags in a deep, unsteady breath and it makes something clench tightly in my chest. Every instinct I have is telling me to gather her up in my arms and pull her into me, but I’m not sure what the etiquette is for hugging someone in swimwear.
Don’t get me wrong, it feels like the kind of activity I’d usually participate in with enthusiasm, but Florence is already upset and the last thing I want is to make her feel uncomfortable.
So instead, I take her hands in mine and walk her a little further into the shallow end, where she can stand comfortably. I lean back against the wall and stretch my legs out so we’re at the same height.
‘Sorry,’ she says after a few minutes, dabbing at her eyes with a damp forefinger. It doesn’t help, just spreads the moisture around a little. ‘I’m just having a moment.’
I shrug gently. ‘Have all the moments you need.’
She smiles at me, but it’s such a tight, mournful expression that I can’t bear to smile back. ‘I don’t even know why I’m crying,’ she says with the tiniest wobble to her chin. ‘You must think I’m a total mess.’
‘Actually,’ I say, gently tipping up her chin with my forefinger, ‘when you’re a mess yourself, you don’t really notice when other people are. It’s a bit like if you both eat garlic.’
She breathes out a watery little laugh. ‘Well, I wouldn’t know about that.’
I grin at her, my thumb tracing a light path along her jawline. I have a vague memory of doing something similar when we kissed. And that’s when I remember what Cam said earlier, about Josiah. It was the reason I came to see her, but I never got around to my carefully rehearsed speech.
I wonder if that’s who these tears are for.
‘Is it Josiah?’ I ask carefully. ‘That you speak to, I mean. Is it him?’
Her eyes dart to mine a little too quickly. For a moment I think she might be angry with me for talking about it, but that’s not it at all. And when she nods, just slightly, the expression on her face is something closer to relief.
‘I haven’t always heard him,’ she says quietly. ‘It’s a recent thing. I don’t know how, or why now, but it’s been happening mainly since I came back to Whitby a few months ago.’
‘You lost him here?’ I ask, but I already know the answer to that. I can see it in the hunch of Florence’s shoulders; in the way her hands are grasping at nothing under the water.
She nods. ‘At the foot of the cliffs beside the abbey.’ Her eyes dart away from me then, her head cocked to one side, like she’s listening to something. After a few seconds she nods, and then she looks back at me with a smile that’s almost sheepish.
‘I know it sounds crazy,’ she says, ‘but sometimes I can hear him talking to me. It’s as if he’s right next to me, whispering in my ear.’
‘Like just then?’ I ask, and she nods.
‘Florence, our first encounter was when you thought I was Josiah, even though he’s been dead since the 1800s.
Since then, we’ve also covered you being a vampire and me maybe being on my way to being one, too.
’ I smile fondly at her while a matching emotion runs amok inside my belly.
‘You having a ghost fiancé actually feels kind of on brand at this point.’
Even if I were good with words, I couldn’t possibly describe the smile that takes over her face. It’s a thing of such beauty that all I can do is stare, hoping that, in some way, I’ll be able to hold on to even a little bit of her light.
‘It’s just,’ she starts, her shoulders lifting out of the water a little with her shrug, ‘you worry about things being haunted, and, well … he’s often around.
I can’t, in all good conscience, tell you these places aren’t haunted because they definitely are.
By him.’ Her smile turns sheepish. ‘Or maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m the one who’s haunted.’
A tiny cold shiver snakes its way down my spine. It probably doesn’t make any sense to be scared of ghosts when I’m swimming in a deserted pool in the middle of the night with an actual vampire but try telling that to my fight-or-flight response.
‘Ok,’ I say, more confidently than I feel. ‘But are we talking like a Caspar situation or something more, I don’t know, Freddy Krueger?’
A wrinkle appears between her brows. ‘I don’t know what either of those things mean.’
I simplify. ‘Is he planning to scare me away?’
‘I don’t think so.’ A smile appears and twists her mouth ever so slightly to the side. ‘He seems to like you.’
Disproportionate pride floods my chest. ‘Obviously got great taste,’ I say, grinning first at Florence, and then around the room, like I might be able to befriend a ghost I can neither see nor hear. Then I remember that this is about Florence and not about me. ‘You must miss him.’
‘All the time,’ she says, and though there’s still pain in her voice, it’s beginning to fade. Even so, I would take all of it away in a heartbeat if I could.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say, and she smiles across at me.
‘I know.’
She’s silent for a moment before her mouth curves into a smile, and she adds, ‘And Josiah knows too.’
* * *
We stay in the pool until we – well, I – have wrinkled fingertips. Florence is just as perfect as ever. And by the time she hauls that flawless body out of the water, her mood has improved to the point that I don’t feel at all ashamed about unabashedly ogling it.
It really is a work of art.
My eyes catch on all the obvious areas, of course, but it’s the other parts of her that hold my attention: the curve of her spine, the small, jagged scar behind one shoulder, the pool water that’s gathered in the dips above her collarbones.
I map her by the parts of her I want to explore, everything I can see as well as everything hidden beneath the deep-red fabric of her bikini.
My skin burns just from thinking about it.
I almost feel bad, but when she turns back to look at me there’s fire in her gaze too, that haunted expression from earlier completely gone.
I wonder if that means her ghost is gone, too.
I send out a silent apology for even thinking it, but it feels like whatever’s burning between us in this moment is meant only for us.
It’s something private, something sacred.
Something that’s going to change everything.
We dry and dress ourselves in separate changing rooms, but somehow we walk out at exactly the same time, her hand slipping into mine as we push through the glass doors and out into the night.
There’s something special about Whitby at this hour.
Now that it’s pretty much deserted, it’s like a completely different place.
There’s magic in the sound of waves crashing onto a silent shore, in the way the streetlights’ warm glow picks out only the highlights of buildings, leaving the rest to the shadows.
And there’s magic in the way Florence’s hand feels in mine – her cool skin soft against my palm, our fingers knotted together.
We don’t talk about where we’re going – we don’t talk at all, in fact – but we end up on Flowergate anyway, and I feel the subtle tightening of Florence’s grip on my hand as we duck through the alley.
It feels like a question, or maybe it’s a promise.
We don’t discuss her coming in, but she follows me up the stone steps anyway, as if she can read my mind.
There isn’t a single part of me that wants her anywhere but here.
The door slams behind her with a surprising amount of force, and she stares at it for a moment or two before she looks back at me.
She nods an answer to a question I don’t think I’ve asked and a wave of cold air sweeps past me and then dissipates, vanishing into the night.
Florence’s ghost.
‘He was here?’ I ask and Florence spins to look at me, shock lining the edges of her expression. It’s the first time either of us has spoken since we left the leisure centre.
After a few beats, she nods, worrying her lip with her front teeth. ‘I think he gave us his blessing.’
There’s a weight to her words, a crackle of tension that fires between us as I realise what she means. Her eyes are fixed on mine, a blaze of copper and caramel searing every spot they land on.
I fall into her orbit immediately. I don’t even put up a fight. In two short strides I’m in front of her, my hand reaching for her, settling under her jaw. I see the way she shivers as my fingertips graze her neck, the way she leans into my touch.
‘What did he ask you?’
Florence blinks back at me, pausing a moment before she answers. But something’s different now. The way she’s looking at me is different. There’s nothing guarded about her expression the way there used to be. Instead, she meets me head on.
‘He asked if I wanted him to go.’
I suck in a sharp breath. ‘Florence, you didn’t have to—’
‘I didn’t have to,’ she interrupts. ‘I wanted to.’ One finger traces the edge of a button on my shirt, at once hesitant and bold. ‘This … it’s about us. Nobody else.’
My heart roars in my chest, warmth and pride bubbling up through me. I stroke my thumb over the delicate skin below her lower lip, watching as the contact makes her eyelids flutter, a tiny sigh blowing cool air over my forearm.
‘This?’ I ask, even though I don’t need to. Because I know exactly what she means. I just want to hear her say it.
‘This,’ she repeats, taking a step back and drawing me with her.
‘Whatever it is that happens when I’m with you.
’ She steps back again and her back bumps the edge of the breakfast bar.
She doesn’t even flinch. ‘The way I haven’t had a pulse in a century and a half, but when you look at me like that, I can still feel the ghost of it deep in my belly.
’ Her eyes darken, teeth dimpling her lip.
‘It makes me feel like someone scooped out my insides and replaced them with molten lava. Is that a human thing?’
I laugh softly, barely more than a breath, and then my hands find her hips and hoist her up onto the breakfast bar in one fluid move.
‘No, Florence,’ I grit out, resting my body between her spread legs. ‘I think it’s a me-and-you thing.’