Page 11 of Road Trip With the Ghost Hunter (Love Along Route 14 #10)

Li

Voices.

I didn’t know how to describe them, but they felt familiar. I know that sounds wild, but I’d never been more sure of anything as I was in that moment when what felt like a warning flooded my entire body with chills.

“Li,” Lucas called out, close behind me.

No, no, no. I needed to stay away.

Rushing to the car, I yanked on the handle, but the door was locked. A closed-mouth scream escaped, feeling helpless and desperate to find peace and safety.

“Li,” Lucas turned me to face him.

“No,” I cried and moved away.

Shock held him in place. “What happened?”

I shook my head frantically. I could still hear the echo of them. I could feel the wrongness of that place.

“Li. Talk to me.”

My eyes welled up with heat. This is why you don’t talk about the dead. This is why you leave that alone. I felt Lucas approach cautiously. I had to heed the warning. I needed to stay away. I didn’t want to disturb lǎo lao in her peace.

“Li,” his voice broke.

Finally, I looked him in the eye. “I can’t.”

“What did you see?” he asked, gently.

I shook my head. I swore there were animals out in that field. I could see dark silhouettes. And the eerie chokehold of fear suffocated me and turned my insides cold. And in my head, familiar voices, my parents, my lǎo lao, other Chinese-speaking voices. I felt them warn me to leave.

“I’ll take us back,” Lucas said, carefully walking around me to open the car door. He waited for me to get inside. I needed to be away from him. His curious need seeped out of his pores. I couldn’t risk disturbing my ancestors’ spirits. I felt mad with confusion and fear.

“Come on, Li. I’m sorry I brought you. Let’s get back,” he tried coaxing.

Reason finally broke in. I couldn’t get back on my own. And this was the last place I wanted to be for another minute. I rushed around him to get into the passenger seat.

The drive back was dead silent except for the soft purr of the engine, the bumps along the road, and the occasional night sounds buzzing by. The inside of his car was thick with uncomfortable tension. My body was wound so tight.

The moment we got back to the hotel, Lucas had barely put the car in park when I jumped out and rushed to get my shit and go. Where? I didn’t know. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I shoved the few things I took out of my bag and packed them back up.

“Please. Talk to me. What happened out there?”

I shook my head and grabbed my suitcase and bags, then pushed past him outside to drop them at the side of the door. I was acting insane, I knew, but pure instinct was driving me in that moment.

“What are you doing?” he asked, following my every move while being careful not to get too close. Finally, he snapped as I tried to make it past him. “Talk to me!”

“No,” I yelled back. “I’m not supposed to talk about it,” I yelled. “I never should have talked about it.”

His expression was a mixture of anger and sympathy. “I shouldn’t have let you come. It was too much. You didn’t want to.”

“And you should have?” I challenged.

He flinched as if I’d struck him. “What?”

”Is that really what you wanted to experience? You want to face dark, haunting things in the night? For what? What is that supposed to accomplish?”

“I thought you understood,” he forced out, trying to keep from breaking.

“What would speaking with them one more time do? What would it fix, Lucas?”

He turned away from me, but I was too charged up not to have this confrontation. I chased him till he was forced to face me again. He huffed in annoyance.

“I had to get out of there,” I told him, my voice breaking again.

“They warned me. I had to get far away. Why? Because stirring up that shit in hopes of finding lǎo lao won’t change that she’s dead.

” My throat closed, but I pushed through.

“They’re dead, Lucas. We can’t change it. We can’t bring them back.”

His face twisted, fighting emotions.

“We have to learn to live with it. This is reality.”

“ I can’t accept that,” he cried out in my face. But his anger, I knew, wasn’t at me.

“We have to.”

“No. There are answers out there. I need to find them.” He turned around to get into the car.

“No,” I yelled. If we were going back to that God-awful place, I wanted my stuff out. I ripped open the trunk of his SUV.

“Li,” he reprimanded.

“No! I want my stuff. You can go run off chasing ghosts—literally!—I’m honoring her soul. I’m letting her rest in peace.” I was sobbing through my speech. “She suffered enough on earth. She deserves to rest.”

I took hold of the pottery vase I made her. Her intricate blue designs, painted so delicately, instantly flooded me with peace. Pulling it out from the back, I felt Lucas behind me.

“Li, please. Let me,” he started.

“Stop, Lucas. I’m leaving.” I wrestled away from his hold.

Swinging my body out of the trunk, I turned too quickly, bumping against Lucas, causing the vase to fly out of my hands.

Crash.

Shatter.

No, no, no, no, no. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t…

breathe. My name echoed around me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the shards of clay scattered on the dirty hotel parking lot floor.

I wailed, loud, high-pitched, animal-like.

My knees gave out, and I crashed to the hard, cracked pavement floor.

I heard multiple crunching sounds. I felt pain, but I blocked it all out.

Hands touched me, but I just screamed and pushed them away, reaching to collect all the pieces. So many pieces.

I frantically looked around for something, anything to put the pieces into. My shirt was too tight to use as a basket, which just made the wailing sobs uncontrollable. My vision blurred as I scraped my palms along the concrete, scooping every broken shard closer to me.

“Stop. Li. Stop,” Lucas gently but firmly took my wrists and brought them to my chest. I fought. I tried. “Shh. I know. I’m so fucking sorry,” he whispered as my body pitched forward and I used his chest to release a scream that came from the depths of my soul.

We rocked, back and forth, on our knees, in the dead of night, in the middle of this parking lot. I didn’t remember much of what happened next. I knew I felt pain in my knees, my hands, and my soul.

That was the only thing I had left of her.

Her jewelry, trinkets, things she sewed or knitted, I sold at a garage sale.

I had to pay off the insurance. I made peace with giving them away.

Eventually. But this vase was not just hers, it was ours.

It had both of us intertwined with its creation.

I’d run my fingers over the grooves the paint left behind when it dried just to feel close to her.

It’s ironic that me telling Lucas we had to learn to let go. Yet, here I was, holding on with a death grip to a piece of her.

I couldn’t move.

Lucas carried me inside, cleaned my wounds, then left me in bed. It all felt like a fever dream. I stared at the wall, unseeing. Was this my punishment for going to the ghost place? Did I disturb her honor, and as a balancing of scales, I lost what I had left of her?

At some point, sleep came. I thought I stayed awake all night, but between feeling Lucas get into bed and turn off the light, me staying stock still, staring at that hotel wall, and counting the chips in the paint, the room wasn’t draped in darkness anymore.

I was scared to go to sleep. I didn’t want to dream about that field or the creepy undead animals, or remember that tentacle chill that grabbed my body.

The room, when I blinked, had a faint hint of dawn coming through a broken sliver from the curtains. Turning over, I felt the tug and ache of broken skin. Sharp stabs of pain shot up my arm when I used my hand to hold up my weight. The bed was empty.

Fear of a different kind hit me.

Did he leave me?

My eyes darted around, looking for evidence.

Then I saw it. His backpack was still here.

The relief that washed over my body almost brought a sob.

Sitting up, something else caught my eye.

On the round table by the window was a large sports sweatshirt with all of my lǎo lao’s vase shards collected in the middle.

My bandaged hand covered my mouth as I whimpered, and instant tears fell.

He gathered them for me. He mended my scars and brought me back something precious, though broken.

In the light of a new day, I realized he and I needed to talk. It was me who insisted on going last night. I couldn’t blame him. He was grieving in his own way, too. Just as lost and desperate to move on.

I just wasn’t prepared to read too much into the fear I felt when I thought he’d left me. I couldn’t be falling for this equally broken man. We were strangers. He had a life he would go back to, while I was a nomad with nowhere to call home anymore. We couldn’t be more doomed to fail.