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‘You have nothing to apologise for, goddess. We both fucked up by keeping our feelings a secret. What happened with Blake… I…’ I paused, those old insecurities pushing forward, demanding to be acknowledged.

I let myself slide out of her wet channel. I dropped her back to her feet and put some distance between us, not because I wanted to – every atom of my being screamed at me to hold onto her and never let her go – but because I needed the answer to this question more if I was ever going to move past it.

My voice cracked with emotion as I asked the question that had haunted me for the entirety of my adult life. ‘Why him, Kali? Why Blake?’

Her shoulders drooped, and she caved in on herself like she didn’t want to think about it, but this was a conversation long overdue. I couldn’t back down. Not now that I’d laid myself bare in front of her, my vulnerabilities exposed for her to do with as she pleased.

‘Do you remember the first time you invited me over to your house?’

I nodded. ‘That was the first time you two met.’

‘I thought when you asked me over, inviting me into your space, introducing me to your family, that we were finally going to move past our friendship into something more. But then… well, you sort of ignored me. I kept trying to get your attention, to brush up against you, anything to get you to see me as more than a friend, but it was like I was suddenly invisible to you. I didn’t know what changed, and everything went back to normal between us the next day, but I couldn’t shake the certainty that you didn’t want me the way I wanted you.’

‘Kali…’ I started, but she cut me off with a shake of her head.

‘No, let me finish.’

I slammed my mouth shut and waited for her to continue, my heart bleeding as I raged internally at how stupid and oblivious I had been as a teenager. She’d beenright there, and I’d let her slip away like sand through my fingers.

‘When I left, I sat outside and cried. Blake found me. He sat with me. He didn’t ask what was wrong, didn’t try to make me explain myself. He just held me. Then he told me I was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, and whoever made me cry like that didn’t deserve me. He made me feel seen, and I guess I sort of just… latched onto that.

‘He made it clear that he wanted me, and it felt good to be wanted.’

I let her explanation settle inside me, my own inaction a festering wound that her words ripped open with cutting precision. But there was one thing I still wanted, no,neededto know.

‘Did you love him?’

Her smile was sad, and it told me everything I needed to know without the words that came out of her mouth next, the very words I dreaded and tore my heart straight from my chest. ‘Yes. I did love him.’

I swallowed thickly. ‘More than me?’ I joked weakly, but it didn’t have the effect I expected. It seemed to set her off, and she glared. But I could tell that it wasn’t directed at me. She was suffering through her own traumas, dredging them up just for me.

But when she turned the full force of her anger on me, it took my breath away. She rounded on me, closing the distance until I felt like I was simultaneously as small as an ant and as tall as a mountain. I preened under her attention and wilted beneath her rage.

‘I have never loved anyone the way I love you, Chance. What I felt for Blake was but a fraction of what I feel for you. What I’vealwaysfelt for you. No one, not even Blake, could compare to you. What I had with him, at least for me, was nothing more than a band-aid on the gaping wound that you left behind. He was my attempt to get over you when I thought we would never be more than friends, but you have always been it for me, Chance. And fuck me for ever making you doubt that.’

And with that one speech, she reconstructed my entire being. The truth in her words, her open expression, the way she was so angry at herself for everything we had missed out on, the pain of choosing the wrong path, filled in every hole, smoothed out anyimperfection, until I felt more whole than I ever had while I was alive. In one fell swoop, she had dissipated all of my insecurities, answered any question, and batted away all of my lingering doubts.

This woman was mine just as much as I was hers.

But the feelings of warmth and sheer joy her declaration had brought forth were quickly doused when another voice interrupted the moment. A voice I recognised well from the spirit box, right before he’d tossed it at us and smashed it against a tree.

‘I thought I told you,she’s mine.’

Chapter 13

Mortimer

My cock ached painfully as I watched the scene unfold before me. I was hard all throughout their declarations of love, the sexual tension between them a physical thing that even managed to touch me, and I climaxed with my ghost girl both times the man’s mouth made her come. Still, I remained stiff and needy, my entire body throbbing in time with his thrust when they finally came together.

Even now, I was still hard and ready, eager to take the woman I had claimed as my own. And yet, despite already having informed the man of my claim, he still dared to fuck her right in front of me.

But that wasn’t what had pissed me off. Their coupling was the hottest thing I had ever seen, and, surprisingly, it didn’t chafe the way I thought it would. No, what truly sent me into a rage was the way they held each other so tenderly, the love between them so blatantly obvious for anyone to see. They were so wrapped up in each other that neither of them had even noticed I was here, and that was unacceptable. I was not the kind of monster that would be sidelined without a fight.

The whole scene made me realise something I wasn’t willing to admit, yet they were forcing me to regardless. I might haveclaimed Kali for myself, but she hadn’t accepted that claim. Not yet, anyway. But more than that, she wasn’t truly mine. I held no real power over her, yet there she stood, wrapped around her lover with his cock still buried inside her where mine had been not so long ago, clinging to each other and irrevocably tying their souls together, and I wasn’t a fucking part of it.

She held all the power here, and I wasn’t used to it. I didn’t like it. I held more strength in the tip of my pinkie finger than both of them combined, and yet, she was the one who had burrowed herself so deeply beneath my skin and hooked herself in place so securely that removing her would be like cutting off a limb. Somehow, she had become an essential part of my being, and I had no fucking idea what to do with that.

For some inexplicable reason that I couldn’t even begin to fathom, my heart lurched when the man let her down and put space between them, his expression downcast and guarded while hers twisted with unrestrained rage.