Page 96 of Haunt Me, Maybe

“Then why?” My thumb traced another tear as it slipped free. My stomach twisted. “You’re crying.”

She laughed, small and embarrassed, and the sound broke something in my chest.

“I’m not…I mean, I am, but it’s not—” She swallowed, her eyes flicking down like she couldn’t meet mine while she said it. “It’s not bad tears. It’s…everything. The maze. The chase. The way you made me come so hard I forgot the orchard, forgot Gideon, forgot to be scared.” Her voice wobbled on the last word. “I just…I didn’t expect to feel safe like this. Not tonight. Not after everything.” Another tear slipped free, and she huffed a frustrated little laugh at herself. “And now I’m crying like an idiot and ruining it.”

I exhaled in relief and pulled her close, tucking her face into the crook of my neck so she could hide like she wanted to. My arms wrapped around her, one hand cradling the back of her head while my fingers threaded through her hair.

“You’re not ruining anything,” I swore. “You’re allowed to cry, Aven. Especially when it’s because something felt good. Because you felt safe.” I kissed the top of her head, breathing her in. “If anything, that’s the highest compliment you could give me.”

She sniffed against my skin, arms looping around my waist, and held on like she never planned to let go.

“Still feels stupid,” she mumbled.

“Not stupid.” I tilted her chin up gently and forced her to meet my eyes. “You can cry on me any time you need to.”

She sighed, and her body relaxed fully into mine; the last of the tension bleeding out of her. The ancient tree rustled overhead. I held her there in the autumn moonlight, her cheek pressed to my shoulder, her tears drying on my skin. And in the silence, the night didn’t feel haunted. It felt like ours.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Aven

Sunlight slanted across the attic floorboards in lazy golden bars. Birds chirped outside, and if I tried hard enough, I could smell the crisp autumn breeze as it leaked in from the crack at the windowsill. It was the kind of morning that felt stolen from someone else’s life.

My body ached in places I hadn’t known could ache: sweet, unfamiliar soreness between my thighs, the faint bruises on my hips where Wes’s fingers had gripped, the memory of his mouth still warm on my throat. I stretched slowly, and the quiet thrill rushed through me all over again.

I lost my virginity to a ghost in a cornfield.

And I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

The thought made me smile into the pillow. I peeked at the man beside me and saw that Wes was already awake, perched on the edge of the mattress with one knee drawn up. He watched me like I might vanish if he blinked.

His hair stood in soft disarray, shirt untucked as the faded ribbon at his wrist caught the light with every small movement.

He looked gentler like this; less the sharp-edged shadow who’d hunted me through the corn and more a man who’d once been alive to feel this kind of quiet.

“Morning, Trouble,” he said, voice smoky and tender.

My face heated at the intensity he speared me with. “You’re staring.”

“You were moaning in your sleep.”

That was it. I was going to smother myself with this pillow. I didn’t…but I really, really wanted to. Instead, I half hid under it.

“Shut up,” I mumbled.

He laughed and brushed his fingers along my shoulder. That touch nearly undid me more than last night had, the tenderness of it. It felt bittersweet because…tonight— Tonight we would try to kill Gideon.

The weight of what was coming pressed in with brutal inevitability. Wes reached out again to move a strand of hair from my cheek, and my throat closed. Would I ever feel that happiness again?

“Hey.” He pulled the pillow away to get a better look at me. “Are you okay?”

I knew he didn’t mean the physical kind of okay. He meant the everything kind. I nodded, then shook my head, then laughed.

“I don’t know. Maybe?”

Wes shifted closer, stretching out beside me so we were face to face on the narrow mattress. His hand found mine beneath the blanket, and our fingers laced.

“Talk to me,” he whispered. And that was all it took for my walls to crumble and everything to come spilling out.