CHAPTER EIGHTEEN PRESENT DAY
I wake up to a loud clattering noise.
Ouch. My neck twinges from the awkward angle of my head. I’m frozen stiff, too rigid even to tremble.
Another noise strikes a bright match of terror inside me, but the flame sputters out before it can properly burn. I’m too tired. I just want to go back to sleep.
The train groans with new movement. Footsteps pad against the carpeted ground.
Maybe it’s the other ghosts. They’ve banded together to welcome me to the afterlife. Any minute now, a kindly old man with an open, bloody gash across his throat will hold out his hand and tell me to hurry along.
“Mansour, you here?”
Oh good. It’s Jesse. I can sleep if it’s Jesse.
The egregious clomp of his boots stops. The seat next to me depresses, and a stream of curses follows shortly after. “Mansour, hey! Can you hear me?” He shakes my shoulder. If I had the willpower, I’d tell him to quit it.
“You’re freezing. Shit, shit,” Jesse swears. A knuckle passes gently over my numb cheeks and neck. “How long have you been here?”
I make a feeble attempt to protest as my body is dragged onto the other seat and then onto Jesse’s lap.
He unzips his jacket and tucks me tight against his chest, closing the leather around my quaking body.
Warmth envelops me instantly. “Unbelievable. I went around asking people if they’d seen you, you know that? You made me talk to people.“
I rub my cheek against his soft cotton shirt. Jasmine and rain. The signature scent of the boy who wouldn’t have glanced twice at me a week ago. The boy who’s currently saying some stuff about hypothermia in a livid tone.
The warmer I get, the harder it becomes to control my shaking, but Jesse’s arms simply tighten around me.
He jumps when I press the cold tip of my nose to the dip where his throat meets his collarbone.
I should tell him that I finally remember how I got home.
I remember the housekeeper’s daughter patting my face to wake me up.
Crouching next to me in the middle of the floor where I had sprawled out and calling for her mother, who ran up the stairs and blanched at the sight of us.
She’d shouted at her daughter to get out of the villa and then helped me to my feet.
“Are your bags packed?” she’d asked. When I nodded, she swiped open her phone and tapped on the screen.
“Good. Your ride to the airport will be here in fifteen minutes.”
“J-J-Jesse?” I slur.
“Yeah?”
“I h-hate t-trains.” Whoops. I was supposed to tell him something else. What was it?
His low laugh brushes against my forehead. “Duly noted.”
My eyes drift shut. Lulled into a trancelike state by the steady rise and fall of Jesse’s chest. Jesse keeps talking, and I do my best to focus, hoping it’ll distract me from the unpleasant tingle of blood returning to my toes.
“You also hate the color beige, greasy cheeseburgers, the spelling of any word with ‘gh’ in it, the smell of cigarettes, and the rain. You order takeout on Fridays and leave the delivery person thank-you cookies in disposable containers. I am regularly forced awake in the middle of the night by you setting off the fire alarm—which I’m guessing is thanks to the warehouse of candles you’ve got squirreled away in your room—and the way you parallel park is bloodcurdling. ”
I’m collecting the energy to argue about the poor ventilation in my room and the oversensitive fire alarm when everything he said registers. I wedge open one eye to squint at him. “You g-got all that from a w-week?”
Jesse sweeps his thumb over my brow, gazing down at me with an unfathomable expression. “I’ve been your neighbor for years, Sour Patch. I know you think I didn’t like you, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t notice you.”
Jesse is only saying this because my brain currently resides in a puddle of soup. Easy to bank on me not remembering. I tighten my fingers in the fabric around his waist, pressing myself like a brand against him. I want to get warmer, fast. Get my brain back in fighting form.
The closeness has the opposite effect. My muscles slacken, one by one. A primitive part of me registers the safety in Jesse’s arms and relaxes. Fully relaxes, in a way I haven’t in too long.
“I’m hard to ignore,” I joke, basically handfeeding Jesse the opportunity to break the tension. The elephants in my stomach have begun to perform a complicated dance worthy of a gold medal, and Jesse’s steady gaze isn’t helping.
But he doesn’t take the bait. If anything, the corners of his eyes tighten, and he sounds pained when he whispers, “You are.”
I study Jesse, startlingly clearheaded for a minute. “You’re being too nice.”
“Aren’t I always?”
“No,” I retort, but I sense the lie as soon as I say it. Jesse might be surly and occasionally rude, but he’s also been patient. He’s been thoughtful. He—
“You talked to people,” I say slowly. “You talked to people until you found me.”
He finally looks away, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. “Don’t remind me. Worst experience of my life.”
My torso has thawed enough for a laugh to break free. An actual laugh, when moments ago I’d been prepared to tragically freeze against the window.
What good is a soul if someone like Jesse Talbot doesn’t have one?
He is angry—always, always angry—but it’s an anger he never directs toward anyone it might harm. An anger he seems to have forged, link by link, into chain metal standing between him and the rest of the world.
I wish I knew how to convince him that the world was worth it. That it was worth putting down his armor and standing in the sun.
“Mansour?” Jesse sweeps the hair from my forehead, his hand coming to curl around the side of my face. His other arm remains tight around my middle, preventing me from tumbling oft” his lap. “You’re spacing out again.”
My fingers tighten on the collar of Jesse’s jacket, and before I can think about it too long, I draw his head down toward mine.
Too fast, and way too clumsy. He pulls back in time to avoid smacking into my nose, but my death grip on his collar keeps him from straying too far.
Any remaining lethargy evaporates like mist in a hundred-degree day, and I suddenly wish I’d been right about the train ghosts finishing me off.
What was I thinking? Jesse hadn’t so much as glanced at someone for longer than half a minute since he moved to Ward.
The one time a girl had shored up her courage to ask him to Sadie Hawkins, he’d shut her down.
Politely, I’d heard, but thoroughly. Afterward, the whispers had been vicious, and they hadn’t stopped until someone started one about Jesse preferring the romantic company of corpses to that of the living.
Jesse had tracked down the guy who started the rumor, a mouthy athlete with a superiority complex, and allegedly filled his car with yellowjackets.
The students kept their speculations about Jesse’s love life to themselves after that.
And here I was, just grabbing the guy and going for it like a character in those ‘90s sitcoms Lucia loves.
Dark eyes swimming with amusement roam over my face and the blush scorching over it. “Were you trying to kiss me, Sour Patch?”
“Please don’t talk.” I pause. Squeeze my eyes shut. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
Laughter rumbles in the chest I’m currently plastered against. I try to wriggle out of his arms, but he only tightens his hold. “Wait, wait. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to ruin the moment, but you were about to use my head to break your own nose.”
Well, the angle might have been a little off, but … “I was delirious. Possessed. This train is haunted, you know.”
“Oh, we’re blaming the spirits now?”
“I’m not blaming—would you just let me go?”
“Do it again.”
I stop wriggling. Jesse watches me closely, not a trace of humor left.
At my bewilderment, he traces the curve of my chin with his thumb. “Do it again, Mina.” Low and husky. Heat scorches the back of my neck.
My heart judders like a motor struggling to kickstart, and I desperately wish I had any frame of reference to rely on. Kissing Alex had been easy, simple, about as unnerving as a sunny day.
He hadn’t held my eyes like he might cease to exist if I looked away. He hadn’t touched me like he wished he could fuse me to his bones.
I grab Jesse’s collar with both hands, the soft leather bunching in my fists. My breath emerges in stops and starts, and Jesse’s brows begin to furrow, concern overtaking everything else. Always concern, and always for me.
Business colleagues. So many lies out of such a beautiful mouth.
“Mansour, you don’t have to—”
I slant my lips over Jesse’s, cutting off whatever unnecessarily honorable words he’d been about to offer.
For a second, when Jesse’s lips stay slack beneath mine, I commit myself to wandering into the woods to live among the frogs and fish forever. It’s the only rational solution. The trees will keep my secrets, and I can wither away in humiliation.
I pull back a fraction, resolved on my new life plan, and Jesse finally reacts.
I gasp as he swings me upward. My legs dangle over the side of the seat, my torso angled to the right. The mild discomfort of the position quickly wanes when Jesse grabs my arms and pulls me flush against him, smothering my next gasp with a kiss that reaches the very tips of my newly thawed toes.
The next few minutes pass with the hazy cadence of a fever dream. I rake my fingers through the waves of Jesse’s hair, my nails sliding over his scalp. He fists the fabric at my hip, holding on to my blouse so tightly that no iron or steamer has a hope of smoothing out the creases he’ll leave.
Before today, I would have sworn that I’ve been kissed. That I’ve known what it’s like to want someone so badly, you can scarcely breathe through it. Kissing is fine, this Mina would have said. I just don’t quite see what all the fuss is about.
What a silly girl.
“Mina,” Jesse groans, the single word so decadently tortured. It’s raw, stripped of any sarcasm or imperiousness. Just bare Jesse, and it goes through me like a shot of adrenaline.
I crawl higher on his lap, my mouth moving to the long column of his throat, determined to wring out a million more of those sounds.
Except as soon as I lean forward again, the solid body beneath me vanishes, and I find myself alone in the seat.
Jesse bows forward in the aisle, gripping the seats on either side of him while he catches his breath. “Damn it, Mansour. Damn it.”
“Did I do something wrong?” It comes out wobbly and a little frightened, but the whiplash has temporarily knocked my pride away.
“Yes.“ A beat passes before Jesse finally looks at me. “No. No, you didn’t do anything wrong. It’s my fault.”
“Your fault for what?”
“That shouldn’t have happened.”
The looming threat of tears abates, replaced with indignation.
“Why not?” I don’t appreciate being yanked around like this. Eighteen is too old for him to have the emotional maturity of a soccer ball.
“You’re seeing someone, Mansour. Or you will be, when we get rid of this curse. I’m not interested in being a rest stop on your journey back to your boyfriend.”
Taken aback, I stare at him openmouthed. He thinks I’m planning to get back together with Alex?
Which … isn’t an unfair assumption, considering I pretty much said so the minute I told Jesse about the curse.
Jesse just shakes his head and fixes his collar. “We should go. It’ll be night soon.”
The train creaks with his departing strides. After a couple more stunned seconds, I get to my feet and glance across the empty seats.
“I hope you enjoyed the show,” I mutter, and I let myself imagine I hear a ghostly laugh trailing behind me.