6. Charlie #3
The usual scowl had vanished. His features had… softened? His eyebrows weren’t drawn together in that perpetual expression of disgust. His mouth wasn’t twisted into a sneer.
He looked almost… concerned? No. Surely not.
“Charlie? Charlie? Are you okay?”
His hands cupped my face. Gentle. Cradling my head like it was something precious, something that might shatter if he pressed too hard.
I tried to speak. My mouth wouldn’t cooperate. The words tangled up somewhere between my brain and my tongue.
“Okay, alright, don’t try to talk yet.”
Brad shifted. Slid his hands under my shoulders, my head. Pulled me upward with surprising tenderness until my skull rested in his lap.
His lap.
Brad’s lap.
The ceiling swam above me. Crumbling plasterwork. Ornate cornicing. A spiderweb stretching between two corners.
We were on a landing. Halfway down the staircase, maybe? I’d fallen. Hit my head. Something had tripped me.
Children giggling. A maid with half her face missing asking if I wanted tea.
“M-maid,” I mumbled. My tongue felt thick. Heavy. “Children. Cupboard. Bite. They bit me.”
My breathing came in ragged gasps. Too fast. Too shallow. I couldn’t get enough air. My chest heaved. My whole body shook.
Ghosts. Real. The ghosts are real.
Brad’s hand settled on my forehead. Stroked backwards, fingers threading through my hair.
Again.
And again.
The motion was hypnotic. Soothing.
“It’s scary, isn’t it?” His voice had dropped lower. Quieter. Almost a murmur. “When you first see them. When you realise they’re actually there. That they’ve been there all along.”
I stared up at him. His face hovered above mine, backlit by the grimy window behind him.
He looked… kind.
When had Brad ever looked kind?
“But the ghosts won’t hurt you,” he whispered. “I promise.”
My breath hitched.
That didn’t make sense. Brad had told me—multiple times, with excessive detail—exactly how ghosts would hurt me.
He’d lectured about demons and cold spots and entities that could snap a person’s neck.
He’d kicked a cat and laughed when I screamed at a spider and made it abundantly clear that I was an idiot for not taking the danger seriously.
“But you said…” My voice came out horribly hoarse. “You’ve kept saying that they will hurt me. That I should be afraid.”
Brad’s hand stilled in my hair. His blue eyes locked onto mine. “No. I won’t let them,” he said. His gaze burned into me—intense, unwavering. “I swear to you, Charlie. Nothing in this house is going to hurt you while I’m here.”
Something fluttered in my stomach. Not nausea. No. Something else entirely.
Warmth spread through my chest, radiating outward until it reached my fingertips, my toes.
Brad’s thumb brushed my cheekbone. A feather-light touch that sent sparks dancing through me.
I didn’t move.
Couldn’t move.
If I stayed perfectly still, maybe this wouldn’t end. Maybe I could just… exist here, in this strange bubble where Brad was being oh so gentle and his thumb was tracing patterns on my cheekbone and my entire body had gone liquid and pliant.
None of it made sense.
But sense seemed like a problem for Future Charlie.
“You hit your head pretty hard,” he said softly. “I’m going to carry you to that long sofa in the lounge, so you can lie down, okay?”
“Okay,” I whispered.
He slid one arm under my knees, the other behind my back. Lifted me as if I weighed nothing.
I should have protested. Should have insisted I could walk. Should have done literally anything other than let Brad Harrington—homophobic, cat-kicking, insufferable Brad—carry me through Grimthorne Manor like some damsel in distress.
But my head throbbed. My leg ached where something had bitten me. And Brad’s chest was solid and warm and his arms held me with such careful tenderness that I couldn’t bring myself to object.
He cradled me against him. His heartbeat thrummed beneath my ear.
What is going on?
Was it possible that Brad had been so horrible because he was attracted to me?! Maybe he was closeted. Maybe all that aggression had been a defence mechanism, a way to keep me at arm’s length.
No. That was ridiculous. That was wishful thinking and a concussed brain making excuses for a bigot.
Didn’t matter anyway.
None of it mattered.
“Ghosts are real,” I mumbled into his chest.
He chuckled. Low. Warm. A sound I’d never heard from him before.
“Yes. Yes they are. Very, very real.”
We reached the lounge. Brad navigated around ancient furniture with surprising grace, then lowered me onto the sofa with the same careful tenderness.
He grabbed a pillow from an armchair. Positioned it behind my head.
The pillow was thirty percent dust. I could smell it—musty and stale and probably harbouring several ecosystems worth of mites.
But Brad had chosen it for me. Had propped my head up so gently, with such obvious concern, that I couldn’t bring myself to care.
“Thank you.” My fingers twisted in the sofa fabric. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”
“You need to see it to believe it.”
I frowned.
That wasn’t what he’d said yesterday. Yesterday he’d been angry. Contemptuous. Had called me a liability and suggested I’d get myself killed within the week.
But maybe the head injury was scrambling my memory.
Brad sank to his knees beside the sofa. His face drew level with mine.
He looked… pained. Tired. His eyes had lost their usual sharp focus.
“Charlie…” he whispered. He leaned forward, his fingers brushed my temple, tucking a lock of hair behind my ear.
The gesture was so intimate. So… bizarre. My traitorous pulse quickened. God, I really was desperate if I would happily lower myself to lapping up the affections of this asshole.
Yet as his expression contorted, I couldn’t help asking, “What’s wrong?”
“I…” Brad blinked rapidly. His hand trembled against my face. “I…”
His pupils dilated. Then contracted. Then dilated again, like a camera lens struggling to focus.
His whole body went rigid.
Then slack.
He swayed backwards, catching himself with one hand on the sofa arm. He rested his head on his arm.
Then his head snapped back up, those blue eyes locking onto mine again. Yet… different now. Eyebrows etched tightly together. The warmth drained from his expression.
“What the fuck?” Brad scrambled backwards. His knee cracked against the coffee table. He yelped, stumbling, catching himself against an armchair. He stared at me like I’d grown a second head. “What are you doing?”
I blinked. “What?”
He shivered violently, teeth chattering. “Why are you…” He gestured at me on the sofa, his face twisted in confusion and something that looked suspiciously like panic. “Why are you just lying there?”
My heart plummeted. “You told me to.”
“I told you to what?”
“To lie down. Because I hit my head.”
Brad’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
He looked around the room as if searching for hidden cameras. For some explanation that made sense. His gaze landed back on me, and the confusion deepened.
“When did you hit your head?”
“On the stairs. Just now. You—” My voice caught. “You carried me in here.”
He shook his head. Slow. Deliberate.
“You were stroking my hair and telling me the ghosts wouldn’t hurt me and—”
“What?” His voice came out strangled. He rubbed his arms vigorously, like he was trying to generate warmth. “Charlie, I was in the library. I was checking the readings on the SpecterTrack and you just… you bolted. Ran off screaming like a lunatic.”
“Because something bit me!”
“And then I followed you out into the corridor and you were gone. I’ve been searching the house for the last ten minutes trying to find you. Then I found you in here!”
I stared at him.
He stared back.
Neither of us spoke.
Brad’s hand moved to his temple, massaging it like he had a headache. Then he turned and left the room. Just walked out. His footsteps echoed down the corridor, fading into the depths of the manor.
I lay on the sofa, staring at the ceiling, my pulse hammering in my ears.
What the hell just happened?
Brad had been kind. Gentle. He’d cradled my head and promised to protect me and looked at me like he wanted to care for me rather than torment me.
And now he was acting like none of it had happened.
Like I’d imagined the whole thing.
Was this part of his sick game? Another prank, more elaborate than the spider? Push me to the edge and then gaslight me about it afterwards?
Or had I actually imagined it?
Maybe the head injury was worse than I thought. Maybe I had hallucinated the whole thing—Brad’s tenderness, his concern, the way his thumb had brushed my cheekbone.
Maybe I was so desperate for human connection, so pathetically lonely, that my concussed brain had invented a version of Brad that didn’t exist.
God.
I was an idiot.
An absolute idiot for letting myself believe, even for a second, that Brad Harrington might be capable of kindness.
And I was an even bigger idiot for caring.
For lying here on this disgusting dust-ridden sofa, pulse racing, replaying the phantom sensation of his fingers in my hair.
I groaned, pressing my palms against my eyes until colours burst behind my eyelids.
Stop obsessing about Brad, you freak.
It didn’t matter.
None of it mattered.
Because ghosts were real.
And they could bite you.
Or drive you slowly insane until you couldn’t tell the difference between reality and nightmare.
And probably a lot of other stuff too. A lot of horrible, dangerous stuff that Ted’s useless training session hadn’t even begun to cover.
And I was stuck here, in a manor full of them, with a psychopathic colleague who couldn’t decide if he’d rather kiss me or kill me.
Oh dear.
I really was royally fucked.