Page 10

Chapter 10

Donovan

M onday morning brought with it a chill wind and gray clouds. The local weather forecaster smiled brightly as she warned everyone to stock up on supplies, because all the makings of an early spring snowstorm were stirring up in the mountains. I wasn’t one to obsessively watch the news, but after the chaos of the last week, I needed the noise to keep my mind distracted.

After sleeping in and getting Will back to Lynn’s Tavern to pick up his car, I’d gone in to work for a few hours on Sunday afternoon to close up the case and finish the reports, just to avoid carrying it over into this week. We’d go over the details with Chief Cornell at some point and likely brainstorm ways the LCPD response time could be improved, but for now, I could start Monday with a clean slate.

Well, with one jarring exception.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone this long without talking to Alex since I’d asked him out that first time. Even in the beginning, we’d texted and met up for breakfast nearly every day. Some people might say getting some space might be healthy for us, given the circumstances, but it just made me want to crawl out of my skin. I missed his smile, his awful jokes, even that demon cat of his. The only way to fix this was to talk, though, and if he wasn’t going to reach out first, I would.

Alex had started getting up earlier these days, but with sunrise barely kissing the horizon, I’d be pushing it. Text was too easy to ignore, though, so I took a chance and hit his number. My heart thudded in my throat as it rang… and rang… and rang.

Just before it switched to voicemail, the ring stopped and his soft voice filtered through the line.

“Donovan?”

“Alex,” I breathed. I had to sit, my knees going weak with relief.

“It’s seven in the morning…”

He’d answered, at least. He’d answered and stayed on the line.

“I know. I wasn’t sure if you’d be awake, but I had to try. Can we talk?”

“We already are.” I heard rustling on his end, like he was moving around. Maybe he was still in bed?

“I’m sorry for what I said.” He deserved more than a simple apology, but it was all I could do right now. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just got carried away. I know you don’t like any of it and I shouldn’t have pushed you. It’s your power and your choice. I was completely out of line and all I can say is that I’m sorry and I hope you can forgive me.”

He stayed silent for so long I had to double-check to make sure he hadn’t hung up. The call was still active, though, so I waited. I owed him my patience, at the very least.

“Do you want to come over?” he finally asked, and he sounded so sad, so small, it broke my heart.

“I can be there in five minutes.” I didn’t even bother changing out of my flannel sleep pants, pausing only long enough to throw on a shirt as I went for my shoes.

“It doesn’t have to be now, if you don’t want to. You probably have to get ready for work and I get it. Just whenever you’re free. I’m off today, so literally whenever. Or we could talk on the phone, if that’s easier.”

“Alex.” I cut him off when he paused for breath. “I’m walking out my door right now. I’ll be there in four minutes, okay?”

He took a measured breath and I could almost see him sitting there, trying to stem the anxious flow of words likely bubbling up inside him.

“Okay. I’ll see you in four minutes.”

We disconnected and silence accompanied me through the early morning streets of Lowery’s Crossing. It took me three minutes to get to Alex’s house with a little cautious speeding. My heart rattled in my chest the entire way, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t change his mind when I arrived.

I had a key, but I knocked anyway, given the circumstances. The door swung open so quickly that Alex had to have been standing on the other side waiting for me to arrive. His too-long brown hair was mussed and shadows darkened those green eyes I loved so much. He was barefoot, in sweatpants and the LCPD sweater he’d shamelessly stolen from me last month.

Without a doubt, he was the most beautiful man I’d ever met.

He stepped back to let me inside and the second the door shut, I swept him into my arms, hugging him tight. He froze for a moment, startled, and I started to let go in case it was too soon, but then he hugged me back and my heart started beating again for the first time in days.

We stood in the darkened entryway holding each other, neither of us willing to let go.

“I missed you,” he whispered against my shoulder, and I hugged him even tighter.

“I missed you, too.”

“You’ll miss me more if you don’t let me breathe.”

“You’re ridiculous,” I chuckled, but loosened my hold and took a step back. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I needed that. At least until my oxygen supply got a little critical.” Sadness and pain still tinged his soft smile, but it was progress.

“I’m so sorry, Alex. I shouldn’t have said what I did. It was completely out of line. I just…” I shook my head. “I’m not going to make excuses. I fucked up.”

“Come on. I think we need to sit for this one.”

Alex led the way into the living room, sitting cross-legged on one end of the couch and leaving the other for me. He tugged the throw blanket down to cover his legs and bare feet, taking his time tucking in the ends, stalling for time.

“I shouldn’t have tried to tell you what to do with your ability,” I went on when he seemed to get stuck. Alex usually avoided confrontation, so I knew this wasn’t easy for him. “You’ve told me over and over how you feel about it, but I got carried away.”

“It’s not that. Well, it is, but not entirely,” he murmured. The sweatshirt didn’t have strings to play with, so he started fiddling with the edge of the blanket.

“Whatever else it is, I’m sorry, Alex. I never meant to hurt you.”

“I know. I needed some space to process everything, but even that night, I knew you didn’t mean it. I’ve had some time to think, and I think the hardest part for me is that you didn’t trust me.”

I frowned, confused. “I do trust you, though.”

“No, you don’t. Not about this.” Alex finally peered up at me, a lock of hair falling across his eyes. “I’ve been doing this for a long time. I know I don’t always act like it, but I know what I’m doing. What happened with Andre wasn’t normal. I knew it was safe to go into Jaime’s house and you didn’t believe me.”

Running back through the details of that night, I realized he was right. My instinct, both as a detective and a boyfriend, had been to be cautious, scope out any potential threats, and keep Alex out of it, which was impossible.

“I just wanted to protect you.”

“And I get it. If I were in your shoes, I probably would have done the same thing,” he admitted. “But some ghosts don’t have a lot of strength. Jaime was running out of time while we stood on the porch bickering. I don’t know what would have happened to her if she’d passed on with unfinished business. I need you to trust me when I do this.”

Could I do that? Could I take the word of a ghost and trust that they would be honest with Alex? The next time he got called out, would I be able to rein in my protective instincts and let him do what he needed?

On the other hand, though, how could I not? Alex was right. He’d been doing this since he was a kid. I didn’t understand any of it and I’d been trusting Alex’s word since the day I found out what he could do. The alternative would be… what? Not going with him? Letting him deal with this on his own?

When boiled down to the bare bones, my answer ended up being as easy as breathing.

“Alright.”

“Alright?” he echoed. “Simple as that?”

I nodded. “As simple as that. You’re right, and I can admit that. I should have trusted you. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy and I might slip up sometimes, but only because I wish I could protect you. I can’t keep the ghosts away, so all I can do is try to keep you safe from everything else out there.”

He quickly looked down, but not before I saw a glimpse of tears in his eyes, and when he spoke, his voice was thick. “Thank you.”

“I love you exactly the way you are, Alex. Our friends do, too. No matter what happens, no matter what you choose to do or not do with your power, you’ll never lose me.” I wanted so badly to pull him into my arms, to hold him tight and pretend it was enough to take away the hurts from his childhood. The way he sat, though, with his shoulders curled in, protecting himself, told me he wasn’t ready for that yet. Something was still bothering him. He pulled and twisted at the corner of the blanket until it broke free, the threads too worn to hold on any longer.

“I love you,” he whispered. “I owe you an apology, too.” He’d blinked back his tears when he looked back up at me. “I shouldn’t have tried to go out without calling one of you. I broke my promise not only to you, but to Camille and Raina and Will.”

“Can I ask why you didn’t?” I didn’t want to pick at the wounds, but it’d been bothering me this entire time.

“It’s complicated. I know in my head that you all said to call any time, but actually doing it is harder than I thought it would be. It was so late at night and I started thinking about how you and Will had been working so much and how early the girls have to wake up to work at the coffee shop. I felt like an inconvenience.” He paused, lips pressed together, the sentence dangling like he wanted to say more but was holding it back.

“And?” I prompted.

His hold on the blanket threatened to tear it in half and that small, sad Alex slipped back into his words when he finally spoke. “I started telling myself that you all would get sick of me if I kept calling at crazy hours of the morning. I know it’s stupid and none of you would do that, but my brain doesn’t make sense all the time and I just got scared that I’d be making your lives harder and it was just so late at night.”

I couldn’t stop his anxious rambling earlier when we’d been on the phone, but I could now. Closing the distance between us, I pulled him back into my arms and hugged him tight.

“You are not an inconvenience, Alex,” I whispered fiercely. “I know you sometimes don’t believe that, but it’s true. I love you so fucking much I can barely breathe sometimes. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, up to and including going out in the cold at three in the morning to follow ghosts. I’ll remind you as often as you need me to.”

With a shaky breath, the lingering tension in his body fled and he collapsed against me, shaking with silent tears. I held him through the storm, letting the pain and frustration and hurt of the last week slough away from us. For the first time in days, I could finally breathe. We still had so much to work out, but we were going to be okay.

***

Sunlight filtered into the room through the gaps in the curtains, illuminating Alex’s face where it rested on my shoulder. We were tangled together, stretched out on the couch with my arms around him. A gentle silence wrapped around us, allowing us to just exist in this moment. There was still work to be done repairing our foundation, but for this moment, we had each other and that would be enough.

Eventually, though, reality began to intrude. The sounds of Lowery’s Crossing coming back to life around us invaded the quiet, reminding us both that we’d have to leave this safe cocoon.

“How long until you have to be to work?” Alex asked, eyes still closed. I craned my neck enough to see the clock on the wall near the kitchen.

“An hour or so. There’s nothing urgent waiting for me, though. Rebecca Perez came home this weekend.”

He leaned his head back enough to look at me. “She did? And she’s okay?”

“Her mom says she’s fine, just under permanent house arrest. Ran off with a boy, which was kind of what we’d been hoping.”

“That’s such a huge relief.” He slumped back against me. “Since you told me she went missing, I’ve been so scared that something would happen and her ghost would come to me. Honestly, that anticipation is worse than just being surprised by it. It reminds me too much of when I was little and Nina Martingale was missing.”

How had I not realized how triggering this situation could have been for Alex? In my desperation to find Rebecca, it’d never crossed my mind that the very first ghost Alex had ever seen had been Nina, another missing girl. Unlike Rebecca, Nina’s story ended in tragedy and had deeply traumatized a young Alex.

“I should have been here with you. I’m so sorry.”

Alex reached up, his hand resting lightly on my cheek. “Hey, it’s okay. Don’t keep apologizing. We’ll never get past this if we keep bringing it up to hurt ourselves and each other, right?”

“You’re right. That’s pretty damn wise, actually.” I couldn’t help a little chuckle, and he smiled sheepishly in return.

“After the asshole, I read some of the relationship books at the shop. It took me going through three before I really started to believe that I wasn’t the problem. I picked up some tips on the way and I wish I’d thought of them the other night. I shouldn’t have asked you to leave. We should have sat down and talked it out.”

“What’d you just say about using it to hurt ourselves?” I pressed a soft kiss to his forehead. “We were both worked up. Getting some space was probably a good idea in the long run. We needed to get our heads together.”

“No more going to sleep still mad at each other from now on, though, okay?”

“Okay,” I agreed. “And I know you hate asking for help, but whatever I can do to help you deal with this ability, I will.”

“I’ve actually been trying to work on that a little,” he admitted, and he seemed almost embarrassed about it. “Camille took me to that shop I told you about and the owner gave me some books and supplies to start with.”

“That’s great. How’s it been going?”

Alex shrugged the best he could while still laying on his side, curled up against me. “It’s still early. They have me working on clearing my mind right now. It still feels weird if I think about it too much, though.”

“How so?” I asked, looking down at him. “I remember you said you were hoping you could learn to control it.”

“And I want to,” he nodded. “I just didn’t think it would involve me sitting on the floor counting and holding a rock in my hands.”

I knew next to nothing about this stuff, only what I’d gleaned from our friends and brief web searches, so I was far from an expert on this, but it sounded like whoever Alex had talked to was.

“If it helps, it’s worth it, right?”

“Yeah, I guess.” He snuggled a little closer, which was no mean feat considering how close we already lay. “I guess I was hoping it’d be a fast process. Unrealistic, yeah, but a quick fix would have been great. I can sometimes get the ghosts to wait for awhile, until I can get space, so I was kind of hoping maybe I could figure out how to keep them corporeal longer, so I don’t have to stop my entire life the instant they appear.”

“I didn’t know you could get them to wait at all,” I said, surprised. Looking back, though, I really shouldn’t have been. I’d avoided asking questions about his ability because I knew he hated it and I didn’t want to upset him.

“It’s not much. I can usually get a few minutes before it gets bad, but for the most part, I pretty much have to drop everything and help them.”

Alarm bells went off in my head. “What do you mean by ‘it gets bad’?”

“It’s nothing malicious,” he said quickly, like he wanted to reassure me. “The spirits that have come to me have always been people who either didn’t think anyone would find them or, a few times, they didn’t want their family to find them first. That’s what happened with Mrs. Kostek.”

“I’d wondered why she was one that you’d called in.” The idea of them hurting Alex had me on edge, but I made myself wait. This was Alex’s story and his ability, so he could tell me at his own pace.

“She was afraid her son would come looking for her and find her there, I think. But in general, it’s usually people who are afraid they won’t be found at all. When they realize I can help them, I think they kind of latch onto me, as close as I can tell,” he said. “They’re scared and desperate. Once or twice I tried to ignore them, hoping they’d go away.”

“I’m guessing they didn’t.”

“That would be correct. I basically ended up being haunted. I didn’t know this until Charlie told me, but apparently ghosts draw energy from me to stay in this world, so the longer they were there, the more they pulled. The first thing I noticed is that I was colder than usual. Not nearly as bad as you saw, though. Probably because they weren’t pulling as hard as…” he hesitated, Andre’s name sticking in his throat. He’d admitted before that, even after the months that had passed, it hurt to think about him.

I gently stroked his cheek, my thumb brushing his soft lips. “It’s okay. I know who you mean.”

He managed a weak smile. “Thanks. Um… yeah, so it wasn’t that bad, but it was annoying. I started getting really bad headaches, then migraines. It took me two days to realize that it had to be because of the ghost. As soon as I helped him and he passed on, my symptoms cleared up. However, I’m a stubborn brat sometimes and thought it was just an anomaly, so I did it again. Not my smartest move ever. Plus, Charlie called me stupid when he figured out I did it twice. So I’ve learned my limits and now I basically just drop everything and help them as soon as I can.”

“Which makes it hard to go about your day-to-day life.” No wonder he so desperately wanted to find a way to control it.

“Luckily, I own my own business and can close down for a bit if I need to. And it doesn’t happen that often. It’s a small town, so it’s rare that someone goes missing.”

“Thank God. Part of the reason I moved to Lowery’s Crossing was the low crime rate,” I muttered, and it got me the little laugh I’d been hoping for. Some of the darkness in Alex’s eyes eased, and I even got a hint of a smile. “How long had it been since you dealt with a ghost before you met me?”

“Over a year, actually. Before Mrs. Kostek, it’d been so quiet I started to let myself believe it’d never happen again. Which is kind of dumb, because there were bigger gaps when I was a kid.” He wrinkled his nose. “No one ever accused me of being the sharpest tool in the shed.”

“Hey, don’t do that.” I leaned my head against his, catching his eyes. “Don’t put yourself down like that. You’re allowed to hope that it had gone away, after everything you’ve been through. There’s nothing stupid about that.”

“Yeah, but—”

I silenced him with a gentle kiss, lingering until he relaxed again. “No buts. You’re not dumb. You’re one of the smartest, bravest people I’ve ever met. How many other people do you think could have handled this alone their entire life and still manage to stay sane and have a sense of humor about it?”

Alex’s soft laugh whispered across my lips. “Look, I’m going to need you to stop being so damn perfect, okay? You’re setting the bar way too high. I don’t stand a chance.”

“I’m pretty far from perfect,” I murmured. “Besides, I’m already crazy about you. You don’t have anything to prove, especially to me.”

We both pretended not to notice the tears in his eyes when he hugged me again. We laid together in silence after that, spending every second we could reconnecting before reality intruded. Together, we’d weathered the chaos and in that moment, I knew that the worst was over.