Page 52 of Rescuing Ally, Part 2 (CHARLIE Team: Guardian Hostage Rescue Specialists #8)

FORTY-FIVE

Living with Ghosts

ALLY

The house swallows us whole the moment we cross the threshold. Hank’s presence saturates every surface.

His coffee mug still sits in the sink, half-full and growing a skin of mold because neither of us has the heart to clean it.

His jacket hangs on the hook by the door, one sleeve twisted as if he just shrugged it off.

The book he was reading still rests on the coffee table, bookmark exactly where he left it on page 247.

“Jesus.” Gabe’s voice cracks behind me.

Gabe stops in the entryway like he’s hit an invisible wall. I watch his eyes track over familiar objects that have become artifacts of a life that no longer exists. The house feels like a museum exhibit. Everything exactly as he left it, frozen in time while the world exploded around us.

“I’ll make coffee,” I say, because silence feels dangerous right now.

“I’m not—” He clears his throat. “I’m not really hungry. Or thirsty.”

“Neither am I.”

But I go to the kitchen anyway, needing something to do with my hands. The coffee maker sits next to Hank’s favorite mug— black ceramic with “World’s Okayest Operator” printed in faded white letters. A joke gift from last Christmas that he used every morning.

I reach for a different mug. Two different mugs. The mathematics of grief playing out in coffee cups and empty chairs.

Gabe wanders into the living room, then out again. Restless energy with nowhere to go. He picks up Hank’s book and sets it down. Touches the remote, pulls his hand back like it burned him.

“Maybe I should stay in my room,” he says suddenly. “For a while. Until?—”

“Until, what?”

“Until it doesn’t feel like we’re betraying him just by being in the same space.”

The coffee maker gurgles to life, filling the silence. Steam rises from the carafe, carrying the scent of the dark roast Hank preferred. Another ghost to add to the collection.

“He’s not here, Gabe.”

“Isn’t he?” He gestures around the kitchen. “His fingerprints are on every surface. His voice echoes in every room. Hell, I can still smell his cologne on the couch cushions.”

I can too. Sandalwood and cedar, faint but persistent. Like he just stepped out for a run and might come back any minute, sweaty and grinning.

“So what do we do? Burn everything? Pretend he never existed?”

“I don’t know.” Gabe slumps against the counter, exhaustion written in every line of his body. “I just know that every time I look at you, I see him too. And every time I think about—” He stops, shakes his head.

“About, what?”

“About touching you. About kissing you. About anything that used to feel natural.” His voice drops to barely audible. “It feels like cheating.”

The words hit like a sucker-punch of reality.

Because I feel it too—the wrongness that settles over us whenever we get too close.

The way his hand pulls back when he reaches for me.

The careful distance we maintain on the couch, on opposite sides of a space that used to hold three bodies in easy intimacy.

“We can’t live like roommates,” I say finally.

“Can’t we?” He looks up, eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion and grief. “Maybe that’s what we are now. Maybe the other thing—the us thing—only worked because he was the bridge between us.”

The coffee finishes brewing with a final hiss. I pour two cups, add cream to mine, and leave his black the way he likes it. The way he’s always liked it, since before Hank and me, since the early days when they were just partners learning to trust each other with their lives.

“You don’t believe that.”

“Don’t I?” He takes the coffee but doesn’t drink it, just holds it like a prop. “Think about it. When do we work best together? When he’s there to translate between us. When do we fight? When it’s just us trying to figure out what the hell we’re doing.”

“That’s not?—”

“The first time we had sex, all three of us, remember? You were terrified, but Hank made it okay. He made everything okay.” Gabe’s voice cracks. “What happens when there’s no one to make it okay anymore?”

I set down my coffee mug with shaking hands because he’s voicing the fear that’s been growing in my chest since we walked through the front door. The fear that, without Hank’s steady presence, Gabe and I will discover we’re just two broken people who don’t actually fit together.

“So we give up? We let his death destroy what he helped create?”

“Maybe what he helped create was always dependent on him being here to maintain it.”

The words hang between us like smoke from an explosion. Heavy. Toxic. Impossible to take back once they’re spoken.

I walk to the living room, sink onto the couch where we used to pile together for movie nights. The cushions still hold the impression of Hank’s body, a shallow dent where he always sat. I curl into that space, breathing in the lingering scent of him.

“I miss him so much it feels like dying,” I whisper.

Gabe follows but doesn’t sit. Just stands in the doorway like he’s afraid to contaminate the memory with his presence.

“I miss him too.”

“But I miss us too. The way we fit together. The way you used to look at me like I was something precious.” I meet his eyes across the room. “Now you look at me like I’m a problem you don’t know how to solve.”

“Because I don’t.” The admission costs him everything. “I don’t know how to be with you without him here to show me how. I don’t know how to touch you without feeling like I’m taking something that isn’t mine. I don’t know how to love you when half of what I loved about us is gone.”

The truth of it settles over us like a ghostly shroud. We sit in Hank’s house, surrounded by Hank’s things, trying to figure out how to be Ally and Gabe instead of two-thirds of something larger.

“Maybe we’re thinking about this wrong,” I say finally.

“How?”

“Maybe we’re not supposed to figure out how to be us without him. Maybe we’re supposed to figure out how to be something new. Something that honors what we had while accepting what we’ve lost.”

Gabe considers this, jaw working silently. Outside, the ocean crashes against the cliffs, eternal and indifferent to human grief.

“I’m scared,” he admits.

“Of what?”

“Of touching you and realizing it doesn’t feel the same. Of kissing you and tasting only loss instead of love. Of trying to make love to you and discovering that what I thought was desire was just proximity to him.”

The fear in his voice breaks something open in my chest. I’m afraid of the same things. Afraid that without Hank’s hands on my skin, Gabe’s touch will feel foreign. Afraid that without Hank’s voice murmuring encouragement, our intimacy will feel hollow.

“What if it is different?” Gabe takes a sip of his coffee.

“Then we figure out if different can still be good.” I cross the room to where he’s standing. “But we can’t figure that out by avoiding each other.”

“Ally—”

“No.” I reach for his hands, feel the tremor in them that speaks to fear and want and confusion all tangled together. “We’re going to spend the rest of our lives wondering if we could have made this work, or we’re going to find out.”

“What if?—”

“What if we honor him by refusing to let his death steal our chance at happiness?” I step closer, close enough to feel the heat radiating off his body. “What if we owe it to him—and to ourselves—to try?”

Gabe’s eyes search my face, looking for certainty I’m not sure I feel. But I know one thing for sure: this careful distance is killing us by degrees. Better to risk heartbreak than guarantee it through inaction.

“I don’t know how to do this without him,” he whispers.

“Neither do I. So we learn. Together.”

I rise on my toes, press my lips to his in the softest possible kiss. A question more than a statement. A request for permission to try.

He freezes for a heartbeat. Then his hands come up to frame my face, thumb tracing the line of my cheek with the reverence I remember from before. Before grief. Before loss. Before everything got complicated.

I close my eyes and let his warmth seep into my bones, let his heartbeat remind me that life continues even when it feels impossible. Tomorrow we’ll figure out how to live without Hank. Tomorrow we’ll start the long process of healing.

Tonight, we hold each other and remember that love doesn’t end with death—it just learns to exist in a different shape.

It’s not the future we imagined. But it’s the one we have.

“It feels wrong,” he breathes against my mouth.

“I know.”

“Like we’re betraying him.”

“I know.”

“But I need you.” The admission tears from his throat. “I need to know we still exist when it’s just us.”

“Then let’s find out.”

I take his hand, lead him toward the bedroom—Hank’s room. Each step feels monumental, like we’re climbing toward either salvation or destruction and won’t know which until we reach the top.

The bedroom door stands open, revealing the California king that seemed perfectly sized for three and now yawns empty as a canyon. Gabe stops in the doorway, staring at that empty space.

“We don’t have to do this in here,” I say.

“Yes, we do.” His voice carries newfound resolve. “If we’re going to do this, we do it here. In our space. All of ours.”

He’s right. Running to another room won’t change anything. The ghost of what we were will follow us wherever we go. Better to face it head-on, to claim this space for what we’re becoming instead of what we’ve lost.

Afternoon light filters through the windows, casting everything in golden tones that should be romantic but feel melancholy instead. We stand beside the bed, suddenly awkward as teenagers, unsure how to begin something we’ve done a hundred times before.

“I don’t remember how to do this,” I admit.

“The mechanics are the same.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“I know.” He reaches for the hem of my shirt, then stops. “Can I?”

The formality of the question breaks my heart a little. When did we become strangers asking permission for touches that used to be as natural as breathing?

I nod, and he lifts my shirt over my head. His eyes track over skin he’s kissed and marked and worshipped, but now they hold uncertainty alongside desire.

“You’re so beautiful,” he says, as if he’s just remembering.

“Touch me.”

His hands settle on my waist, thumbs tracing the curve of my ribs.

Familiar territory mapped by fingers that know every sensitive spot, every place that makes me gasp.

But something’s missing—the easy confidence that came from being part of a unit that knew exactly how to drive me to the edge of sanity.

I reach for his shirt, pull it over his head to reveal the body I’ve explored countless times. Scars I’ve kissed, muscles I’ve gripped, skin I’ve marked with my nails. Still beautiful. Still mine. But somehow foreign now that half our dynamic is gone.

We undress each other slowly, carefully, like we’re handling something fragile that might shatter if we move too fast. When we’re finally naked, standing beside the bed where we’ve made love hundreds of times, the silence feels heavier than before.

“This is weird,” he says finally.

“Really weird.”

We ease down onto the edge of the bed, but even that feels too loaded. Like we’re trespassing in a memory.

Gabe lies back first. I follow, but instead of straddling him, I curl into his side, resting my cheek against his chest. His heartbeat stutters under my ear, not from arousal, but uncertainty.

Loss.

This isn’t lust humming between us—it’s the echo of something we’re both afraid we’ve lost for good.

His fingers drift up my spine, trembling slightly. I press my mouth to the spot beneath his collarbone, where I once left teeth marks in a moment of passion.

Now my lips linger there, not from desire—but searching. Waiting for something to feel right.

It doesn’t.

His breath catches—not in pleasure. In hesitation. His palm stills on my skin.

“I can’t,” he whispers, voice frayed at the edges. “I’m trying so damn hard to want this the way I used to, but—it feels like acting.”

My eyes burn, tears pressing hot behind my lids. Relief and grief twisting together like vines.

“I’m glad you said it,” I murmur against his chest. “Because I was pretending too.”

He exhales a broken sound—half laugh, half sob—and covers his face with both hands. I sit up, pull the sheet over us, and we lie there in a silence that’s finally honest.

Not pretending. Not forcing.

Just being.

“I wanted to feel close to you again,” he says, voice muffled. “I thought if I touched you, it might bring him back.”

I nod, throat too tight to speak.

We stare at the ceiling. The air between us feels less charged now, less full of failure and unmet expectations. Maybe just—understanding.

Grief doesn’t follow a straight line. Sometimes, it loops back on itself. Sometimes, it lies in your bed, naked and aching and too scared to move forward.

I reach for his hand and lace my fingers through his.

“Let’s just sleep.”

His grip tightens.

And for the first time in days, we do.