Chapter Thirty #3
Like this is just life now. Spending the night at his house. Being his.
Maybe this is what normal people do in their sweet, normal lives, without all the nightmares and demons and harbinger shit.
I curl up in his wide bed, beneath a comforter I suspect he bought on sale at the kind of big box store I have never set foot
in, and am more content than I can remember being.
Ever.
When he comes back out, he’s running a towel through his wet, unruly hair. He doesn’t quite meet my gaze as he does this.
“You’ll be able to go back to New York now, if you want,” he tells me. This is clearly something he thought over in the shower.
“The demon deal is broken. They can’t keep you here. Nothing can keep anyone here or away.”
I’m fascinated by this. And curious. “Would you come visit me?”
Jack rakes a hand through his hair, then drops the towel into a basket. He crosses to the bed, but he doesn’t say a word.
“We could go to Times Square,” I tell him. I sit up and draw my knees up to my chest so I can hide my smile behind my legs.
“Everybody loves Times Square. You think Midas on a festival day is busy? You’ve never seen so many people in one place.”
He looks down at me and I can see another truth on his face. This man would rather fight demons nightly than set foot in Times
Square—which is fair, I only go to Midtown when forced—but if I wanted him to do it, he would.
For me, he would suck it up.
It’s better than a love poem.
I laugh and pull him down onto the bed. I kiss him and pour all my feelings into the kiss. When I pull away, I look deep into
his eyes. “I don’t want to go back to New York,” I tell him. “I mean, I will. To visit my dad. When I put together my next
textile show. But I don’t want to go back there for good. I like it here.”
He puts his forehead to mine and I can feel his relief. “Good. I didn’t want to say it, but here is where I want you, Lexi. Right here.”
“Maybe Dad will remember everything now that the deal has been broken,” I say.
I want to say that his parents might remember things, too, but don’t.
Because maybe he’s the one who’d rather forget them.
I keep going. “Maybe he’ll even come back here.
You can meet him.” I stop. “Oh. But you’ve already met him, haven’t you? ”
Because he would have.
Jack shrugs. “I was a little kid. I’d like to meet him again now.” His eyes are so bright, so green. “Tell him how great his
daughter is.”
I wrap myself around him and he holds me there, where I can feel his heartbeat inside me. “Nora needs help at the shop and
Amelia’s house has kind of grown on me. It’ll be good. It might even be happy.”
Remembering the people we lost here will be hard, whether I knew them as well as I wish I did or not. Yet, somehow I think
I’d rather accept it will always be a part of me and remember the hurt every day. Turning my back on it would feel too much
like that demon amnesia.
“I’m so sorry about Cleo,” I whisper, putting my palm over his heart. “And about . . .” It’s hard to even get his name out.
“Harrison.”
“I’m sorry about them, too.” His voice is rough. “I loved him. I respected him. I believed him, but I can also look back now and see all the places he sandbagged me. All the places he manipulated those feelings and
used them against me. All the ways I was blind, because . . . because I did love him.”
I can hear the regret in his voice, but I shake my head. I can’t help it. “You shouldn’t feel bad about loving him. You shouldn’t
regret love. Love is why we survived.”
He’s not ready to take that on board, and I understand. It’ll take time. Healing. Believing. Trust. It all takes . . . time,
experience.
Love.
“But you didn’t let him get away with it,” I tell him, fiercely. I hear that guilt seeping in, and I won’t allow it. Not for any of us. “You did what you knew was right, even when it went against what he said. You followed your heart.”
He stares at me intently, then reaches out and touches his thumb to the corner of my mouth. “So did you.”
I think about him believing me over Harrison at that critical moment.
I think about the Village Lamplighter and Edna Marie Darling’s cleaning solutions. I think of Amelia and Virginia. My mother, out there trying to save little kids
like Jack from the creeping dark. Generations of people passing down the pieces of the puzzle that came together and turned
into answers. The perfect words. Streetlights. Heart-shaped rocks. And woven into it, nobility and sacrifice, but only for
those who really mean it.
A group of men made a terrible deal with evil forces centuries ago, but there have always been good people willing to fight
that evil. Always.
I trace patterns over his chest. “I guess that makes us a pretty good pair.”
“Yeah,” he says, running a hand over my damp hair. “I guess it does.”
So we set about proving it . . . with all the lights on, just in case.
And when I wake up the next morning in his arms, in his bed, exactly where I went to sleep—no rituals, no pills, just us—I
know I’m home.
For good.