Page 57 of Ghosted (The Ravenwood #1)

FORTY-FIVE

She insisted on doing this, saying my nervous energy was, and I quote, “the most aggressive shade of tangerine,” she’s ever seen. This is supposed to calm me down or distract me, or some other such nonsense. As if hearing Wren curse the family line of whoever invented puzzles is relaxing.

It’s almost eleven at night, and Dean still hasn’t checked in. Jack called me a couple of hours ago letting me know that Richard had been arrested in New Hampshire, but that he doesn’t have any more details yet.

I click another puzzle piece in place, making steady progress on my corner.

Our strategy when we do puzzles together is to start at opposite ends and meet in the middle.

We used to build a lot of puzzles growing up.

It was our Saturday morning activity, and our parents suggested this strategy so we would stop arguing over who does what. It worked, for the most part.

After Wren and I press the final piece down together (another remnant from childhood), I sit back, popping my aching neck.

“He’s going to be back soon. You know that, right?” Wren asks, reaching her arms overhead in a stretch.

“I know. I’m not worried about Dean, really. Nothing can hurt him now. But what if he moved on?” I say with a sigh, thoughts racing.

She stands and shuffles into her kitchen to grab a glass of water. “Let’s be honest, do you really think Dean would leave you without at least saying goodbye? That guy is so into you, it’s almost sickening,” she says after downing her glass.

“It’s possible that he couldn’t control it. Once he’s completed his unfinished business, it’s very hard to resist moving on. It goes against nature,” I state, running my hands over the finished puzzle in front of me.

Wren grunts, knowing it’s pointless to argue with me about this.

She sits next to me, wrapping her surprisingly strong arm around my shoulders and engulfing me in her coffee and cinnamon scent.

“Let’s watch one of your dumb shows. It’ll distract you,” she states, reaching for her remote.

She turns on the TV and easily navigates to one of my “dumb shows.”

“Huh, that’s odd. I didn’t watch the third season over here with you,” I say slyly when I notice the “already watched” banner across the previous season of Love on the Slopes , a reality TV show about ski resort workers who are always in and out of relationships or friendships with each other and their high-profile guests.

Last season had a huge scandal because one of the leads started seeing a production assistant on the side.

It was very messy and very entertaining.

I don’t blame Wren for watching it without me, although I will start giving her shit the next time she complains about it.

“So weird. I think my TV is possessed,” she says quickly, clicking on the first episode of season four.

“I wonder if that blonde guy is going to be back on the show,” I say, leaning forward as the upbeat, royalty-free music starts along with a recap montage of the last season.

“I don’t think so. I haven’t seen anything about him in any of the pre-season interviews,” Wren says absently, smoothing her black throw blanket over her lap.

I bite my lip instead of shouting “Gotcha!” Wren would probably break her TV out of spite if I brought it up.

The episode is nearly over when Dean appears suddenly, grinning like a manic quokka. “They got him,” he says simply before falling to the floor and splaying out like a starfish in front of Wren’s TV.

I look down at Dean and ask hopefully, “They figured it out?” The relief at seeing him in front of me is nearly more than I can bare. My whole goal has been to help him move on, but I am so selfishly relieved that he hasn’t yet. How much longer can I make this last?

Dean draws my attention back to him when he says, “Get this.” He sits up faster than my eyes can process and continues, “He made it all the way to New Hampshire before he got pulled over. Okay, well, first there was a police chase?—”

“What!?” I exclaim, jumping to my feet. Wren looks at me curiously, and I promise to translate for her once I know the details.

Dean stands in front of me, warm-brown eyes crinkled with mirth. “I know! So he was originally going to get pulled over for littering. He threw a Gatorade bottle full of, well, not Gatorade out his window,” he says with a grimace.

He grabs my hand, interlacing our fingers together absently and continues, “I think he knew that if he got pulled over, they would have seen that he wasn’t supposed to leave the state, so he panicked.

” He goes on to explain all about the police chase, and he (oddly) has a lot to say about cows.

I’ve always thought they were kind of cute, but he’s insistent on how creepy they are.

“Why didn’t you come once they arrested him?” I ask, not able to keep the accusatory tone out of my voice.

His smile ticks mischievously, and he says, “I wanted to watch him get booked. I also went back while they were searching the car and saw them find a burner phone under the passenger seat. They were getting a search warrant for the phone and laptop he brought with him. When they informed him, he immediately started sweating, so I feel pretty good about them finding something on there.” I relay the gist of what he said to Wren while we all get comfortable on her sectional again.

“So now it’s just more waiting,” I say with a tired sigh.

“Hurry up and wait,” Dean agrees.

“I say we should get some sleep,” Wren says with a yawn. “Nothing interesting will happen until the morning anyway.”

“I’m not sleeping on this couch,” I say, standing up again.

“I’ll drive home. See you tomorrow.” I have made the mistake of not going home only a few times.

Wren has had this couch since she first moved out, and it was our parents’ before that.

I’m fairly sure I still have a spring-shaped indent on my back from the last time I slept over.

Wren states, “Suit yourself. Let me know what happens?”

“Of course,” I reply, shrugging into my jacket.

Dean and I are lying on our backs, moonlight playing across bared skin, fingers entwined atop messy sheets.

I scan him, noting the slight glow his skin gives off, and heave a contented sigh.

I never thought I’d find someone like him.

Someone who feels like they’re made just for me.

Whose angles line up perfectly with mine, like we were designed with the other in mind.

In a lot of ways, we’re nothing alike, but I think that’s what makes it feel so right.

He’s soft where I’ve been hardened, light where I feel heavy.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks, voice rumbling into the quiet of the night.

“You. Us, I guess,” I say, tracing his hand with a gentle fingertip, committing the grooves and ridges to memory.

“Yeah?” he asks. I smile, thinking that this is the true magic of Dean. He never makes me feel like he’s pushing me off some emotional cliff, but he somehow walks me right up to the edge without my noticing. Suddenly, I’m staring down at the vast canyon, and he’s right there, ready to leap with me.

I swallow around the silly anxiety bubbling in my chest. “Yeah.”

“Do you want to know what I was thinking?” He asks, capturing my hand and bringing it to his lips for a tingling kiss. I make a noise of assent, and he tugs me closer, so we’re chest to chest and can look each other in the eye. “I was thinking that I need to expand my vocabulary.”

I laugh a little. “Mm I don’t know about that. You’re already pretty verbose.”

He feathers his fingertips along my side, and I laugh harder. “Hush,” he admonishes. “I can’t help that law school taught me big words.”

“So why do you need a bigger vocabulary?” I ask, running a thumb across his ever-present five o’clock shadow.

His eyes soften. “Because I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you how much I love you so that it makes sense to you.

I can feel my tie to the world has been severed now that Richard is practically case closed.

I felt the light, like what you were talking about with Rebecca.

It smelled like my mom’s homemade peanut butter cookies, and I almost followed it.

But I don’t want to go, Rae. I want to be here with you.

I may not have to stay anymore, but I want to.

I choose you in this lifetime and the next.

Over and over, I’ll choose you.” My breath hitches in my chest, and he presses a finger to my lips.

“I’m no Shakespeare, but give me a chance to tell you why this is the right thing? ” he asks, searching my face.

I nod, blinking back tears, so he says, “Finding out you’re dead is a fairly traumatic experience, you know.

But the funny thing is, it hasn’t felt that way.

Even though we’ve been investigating my murder, it’s just been…

Fun. I haven’t had fun in so long, Rae. My life was one monotonous day after another.

I felt like I had to be a lawyer, and I had to have all this fancy shit.

I didn’t even know what I wanted out of life other than that I wanted to make my dad proud.

He’s a good man, and I’ve always looked up to him.

But I wasn’t happy walking around in his shoes.

Death might have been the best thing to happen to me. ”

“Are you nuts?” I ask, half-seriously.

He glares at me playfully. “No. Don’t get me wrong—I’m furious that I died so young. But also, if I hadn’t, I would have been promoted. And that would have been a kind of death too. I would have kept living an unhappy life full of expectation and working late nights.

In death, I got to get close to you in a way that would have been impossible if I had stayed alive.

I got to fall for you. I got to see you like I’ve never seen another person.

All the soft parts you try to hide, the way you help people even when it’s hard.

How driven you are. How much those around you love you.

Death took down that barrier for us. I’ve never felt closer to another person.

Being removed from the world gave me a clarity I didn’t know I needed.

A new meaning.” He tucks an errant lock of hair behind my ear, letting his fingertips linger against the underside of my jaw.

“Oh?” I ask, gently prodding him to get to the point. Not that I’m impatiently waiting on his second declaration of love or anything.

Definitely not.

“You,” he murmurs, tracing his finger along my cheek.

“You’re my new meaning, Rae. Every time I make you laugh, I feel an answering light turn on in my chest. Every time I kiss you, my heart feels like it’s trying to beat outside of my ribs so you can hold it closer.

Whenever you’re in my arms, I feel at home.

You’re everything to me. You’ve carved a perfectly Rae-shaped hole in my heart, and it won’t beat properly unless you’re there, too. ”

“Technically, your heart doesn’t beat anymore at all. Or at least, the one buried six-feet down doesn’t,” I can’t help but point out with a smile.

He laughs, and I ride the wave of his chest rising and falling, mesmerized by his dimple and the flash of white teeth in the moonlight. “Okay, I’ll give you that one. But the point is, my metaphorical heart is yours if you’ll have it,” he says.

“Well, you already have mine, so it seems only fair,” I reply, leaning down and pressing a kiss over his sternum.

“You sure? I don’t share, Alderwood. We’ve already been over this. So if you’re mine, that’s it. It won’t exactly be conventional.” He has the audacity to look unsure.

I laugh. “What part of my life is conventional anyway? I run an oddities and occult shop with my crazy aunt. Every woman in my family has extra-sensory abilities. And I frequently commune with the dead. A white picket fence has never been part of the plan.”

He tilts his head a little and asks, “So you don’t want kids?”

I shudder. “No. They’re great and all, but not for me. I’m about as maternal as a hamster.”

“Don’t they eat their babies?”

I bare my teeth. “Exactly.”

“You’re ridiculous,” he says, flopping his head back on the pillow.

“I prefer the term: having a deep sense of self.”

We lie in the specific, nearly complete quiet of two AM in a small town.

My head rests on his chest, and my eyelids feel like they’re slowly filling with lead, getting heavier and heavier by the second.

“You know,” I say sleepily. “I love you too. You make me feel seen and precious. No one’s ever done that for me before. ”

“I know. I can sense your emotions, remember?” Dean says, rubbing a soothing hand up my spine. I catch the edge of his smile before my eyes slide shut, and I burrow deeper in his chest, thinking about how nice this would be to have forever. That I might get to find out.

I grumble something drowsily about know-it-alls and slide under the tide of sleep that finally crashes over me.