Page 7

Chapter 7

Alex

F or the first time in longer than I can remember, I didn’t go to Buns ‘n’ Roses before work. I didn’t put it past Donovan to wait there for me, even if it made him late to work. Eventually, we would have to talk, but right now I couldn’t handle it. His words ran in circles in my head, taunting me while I walked to work, purposely taking the long way to avoid walking past the coffee shop and the police station. It meant going several blocks out of my way, but it gave me time to think. Too much time, probably.

I’d started all of this by breaking my promise to him, true. I could admit that I’d fucked up, and I could also admit that, despite the tension, it’d been amazing to have someone else there with me while I helped Jaime move on. What would I have done if I’d had to deal with Levi Smalls alone? Just because I’d once been a traumatized child, that didn’t mean I knew how to comfort one. Case in point: I was still a mess almost twenty years later.

Arguing with Donovan about how to approach the situation may not have been ideal, but we could have worked past that eventually. He’d only been looking out for my safety and in his place, I probably would have freaked out, too. We would have talked it out afterward and gone to bed for a nap, curled up in each other’s arms.

Instead, I was walking to work alone in the frigid cold of a Colorado spring morning, trying to keep the cracks in my heart from shattering completely.

They’d kill to have a tool like that in the arsenal.

As if this cursed ability I had was the same as keeping a bloodhound on the roster. Oh no, someone died. Time to wind up the psychic and send him toddling out to get answers.

Hearing that from anyone else would have just pissed me off. But for Donovan to say it… to hear myself reduced down to just a tool by the man I loved…

That hurt. The words were thorns, digging into my heart and piercing every protective layer I had left. I’d let Donovan through my walls, let him get close, and now I’d been brought low, attacked from within by one of the few people I trusted. Odysseus himself couldn’t have done it better.

Walking into A Likely Story always felt like being wrapped up in a hug from Aunt Lizzie, and today was no exception. The soft stillness of her shop welcomed me when I let myself in and I took a moment to just breathe. I let myself pretend for a moment that she was there and I’d find her in her office, relaxed in the comfortable leather chair I’d never replaced. She’d hold me close while I poured my heart out, then comfort me and somehow come up with the perfect solution, because Aunt Lizzie always seemed to have all the answers.

Except Lizzie was gone, had been for almost seven years, and when I stepped into the office, the chair was empty and I was alone.

The quiet haunted my every move as I went through the motions of paperwork, ordering, and getting the bookstore ready for the day. It wrapped around me, dulling the sharp edges of my emotions, leaving me in a fog of apathy. This was easier. One step at a time. Open the store, work, close the store, go home. Get through the day and then I could go home and lose my shit in private.

It worked, too.

It worked for exactly one hour and eleven minutes.

Then the front door of A Likely Story flew open and Raina walked in, her dark curls tangled from the wind and a flush to her cheeks. She held a cup in one hand, a bag in the other, but the look on her face told me I wouldn’t be getting either until we’d had words. I should have expected it, really, but I’d been so focused on Donovan that I forgot how persistent my best friend was.

“Good morning,” I said, trying and failing to muster a fake smile. Probably for the best. She would have seen right through it, anyway.

“Good morning. I love you. We’re sorting this out.” She dropped the bag on the counter without pausing, coming around and grabbing what I’d come to think of as her stool. She pointed to my chair. “Sit. Talk.”

“Woof,” I muttered, earning me a glare until I did as she’d ordered. “What do you want, Raina?” It came out more snide than I’d meant it, some of my frustration leaking out.

“First of all, I want you to lose the attitude.” Her eyebrow arched at my tone.

“You’re the one who came in here barking orders, so maybe you need to lose your attitude,” I reminded her sharply. I don’t know why I was trying to pick a fight with my best friend, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.

Raina pressed her lips together and took a slow breath, visibly trying to calm herself before she lost her temper. It was the smart thing to do, but exactly the opposite of what I apparently wanted right now.

“If you’re here to yell at me, you can leave,” I went on when she didn’t speak right away. “I’m really not in the mood to deal with anymore bullshit this morning, especially from you.”

“Alex… don’t,” she warned, locking eyes with me. “I am your best friend and I love you. I’m sorry I came in and started bossing you around. Let’s start over.”

“Wow, did that physically hurt you to apologize like that?” Stop it, stop it, Alex, she’s your best friend, stop lashing out at her! “Maybe I don’t feel like talking to anyone. You should leave.” Leave like I made Donovan leave. Like everyone always leaves.

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen.”

It was hard to keep up my anger in the face of her calm tone, but I did my best.

“I’m serious, Raina. I don’t want to talk to you or to anyone right now, okay? Just leave.”

“Look, I’m not going to force you to talk.” She slid the bag and the cup of coffee over to me, a peace offering if ever I saw one. “But I’m not leaving.”

“It’s going to be awkward to sit here and eat while you’re watching me,” I grumbled, but the smell of bacon was too alluring to resist, my stomach reminding me quite forcefully that I hadn’t eaten today. Opening the bag, I found two of Camille’s mini quiches inside, one bacon, one that looked like chorizo and peppers. “I thought Camille took these off the menu until summer?”

“She did. She made a small batch so you could have them today.”

Great. Now I was officially the biggest jerk on the planet. The lingering remnants of my anger, already weakened in the face of Raina’s apology, now flickered and died, leaving me lost in that sea of apathy.

“Will you tell her I appreciate it?” I hated how small I sounded.

“Yeah, no problem,” she murmured, then nodded toward the coffee cup. “I made you a brown sugar cinnamon mocha. I figured it was too cold for anything iced.”

“Thank you. You’re a good friend.” That’s what I meant to say. Instead, what came out was: “Donovan and I got into a fight this morning and he said something really shitty and I told him to leave and now I don’t know what to do because he really fucking hurt me and I don’t know how to not be mad at him for it even though I love him.”

Tears stung my eyes by the time I paused for a breath, my hands shaking and my heart hurting all over again. Raina blinked, absorbing my barrage of words. The moment it sunk in, she slid off her stool, closed the distance between us in one step, and silently pulled me into her arms, hugging me as tightly as she could. The warm scent of coffee, vanilla, and cinnamon wrapped around me, and the second my head hit her shoulder, I lost it.

The grief for Jaime, the agony of leaving Levi there, the deep hurt of Donovan’s words, all of it came rushing out in a torrent of tears. The harder I tried to pull it back, the worse it got, leaving me a sobbing mess. Raina held me through it without a word, letting me pour it out until I could finally breathe again, my throat burning and my eyes swollen.

“It’s going to be okay, Alex,” she whispered in my ear, rubbing my back as she held me.

“I hate this.” It sounded like I’d gargled broken glass, my words rasping and raw. “This curse takes everything away from me.”

The bell over the door jingled before Raina could speak. The one day I have an emotional breakdown would be the day I got an early Saturday morning customer, which almost never happened. Of course.

“Go to the bathroom, get a drink of water, and put some cold paper towels on your eyes. I’ll take care of him,” Raina promised, urging me away from the counter. I didn’t fight her. I needed the time and I trusted her.

I physically flinched from the reflection I saw looking back at me in that bathroom mirror, grateful again that Raina had stepped in. Except for the redness around my eyes, my face had gone completely pale. My green eyes were bloodshot and swollen, my hair a mess where it’d lain mussed underneath my hat. I’d never fixed it after getting into the shop.

I kept myself focused on pulling it together, doing exactly as Raina suggested and not letting myself think of anything but the next step. Cup my hands under the faucet to get a drink and soothe my throat. Wet a paper towel with cold water and lay it over my eyes to take down some of the swelling. Breathe. In for four, hold for four, out for four. Breathe again, then again, until my heart slowed to a steady pace. Remove the paper towels, wash my face, take another breath, then back out to face the world.

By the time I finished, the customer was gone and Raina had flipped the sign on the door to ‘Closed’. There was a note alongside it, but I couldn’t read it from here.

“This is going to take a minute, so I bought us some time,” she said when she saw me return. She had the bag and cup in her hands again and nodded toward one of the cozy loveseats scattered in the reading area.

“Don’t you need to get back to work, though?” I didn’t want her to leave, but I had to ask.

Raina shook her head. “I called Camille already. Rachel and Ashley have the front covered and she can back them up if needed. She ordered me to stay with you.”

“I don’t deserve you guys,” I whispered, squeezing my eyes shut for a moment when I felt the too-familiar sting of tears again. A soft touch to my elbow helped me ground myself and I allowed Raina to guide me over to the seat, settling in close to the middle with her pressed along my side.

“Here. Eat and get a little caffeine in your system, then tell me what happened and we’ll see what we can do to fix it, okay?”

My appetite had fled in the face of my tears and now the thought of food made me gag, so I reached for the coffee. It’d cooled slightly, but the taste of brown sugar and cinnamon warmed me from the inside out, loosening the knot in my chest enough for me to speak. Leaning against my best friend for support, coffee cradled in my hands, I told her everything, starting with Jaime’s ghost and my broken promise and ending with Donovan’s damning words.

She didn’t interrupt, though once or twice I could tell it was killing her not to say something. When I finally finished, somehow without becoming a blubbering mess again, she took a moment to compose her thoughts before she spoke.

“Well, that explains why Donovan came in this morning looking like absolute crap,” she said. “So, you both fucked up and now you don’t know how to work it out, is what I’m gathering.”

“I know I should have called someone, but I’ve gone out alone every other time I’ve dealt with this and been fine. Donovan went out with me one time and he’s already talking about exploiting this ability.”

“From what you told me, it doesn’t sound like he planned to do that. I can’t imagine him trying to force you to do anything you didn’t want to. Besides, can you really look me in the eye and tell me that the same Donovan Parker who openly worships the ground you walk on would really do something like that?”

“Raina, he literally said other cops would kill to have a tool like me in their arsenal.” Even repeating the words hurt, every syllable a jagged knife to the stomach.

She winced. “Yeah, that was a really terrible choice of words,” she admitted. “That’s one that you’ll have to talk about with him, but seriously, it’s hard to imagine him doing that. I was with him in the hospital after what happened with Nate, remember? I’ve never seen anyone so scared in my life. He didn’t leave your side the entire time.” She paused, but the silence felt loaded, like she wanted to keep going but was stopping herself. It wasn’t too hard to figure out what she wasn’t saying.

“You think he’s right, don’t you?”

“Not about you being some kind of psychic bloodhound for the cops, no. Absolutely not,” she said, shaking her head. “But… maybe working with the police wouldn’t be the worst idea.”

“I can honestly say I never thought I’d hear you say those words of your own free will.” I sipped at my coffee, but this time it couldn’t soothe the uneasiness building beneath my skin.

“Trust me, I never imagined I’d say that, either. I know that maybe it’s not the worst idea, though, and I love you enough to put aside my personal feelings if it’s what’s best for you. I was in that hospital room, too, and if there’s anything that can keep it from happening again, I’m all in.”

“What difference would it make? I’m the one who has to talk to them and help them do whatever needs done. That pain doesn’t go away just because I can call the police directly instead of anonymously.”

“Maybe not, but now you have us to help with that pain,” she murmured, resting her hand on my knee. “If you take Donovan or another cop with you, that means you never have to see the actual bodies again. You said that was the worst part and that’s why you reacted so badly to Andre Marcel. Wouldn’t it be easier if you could get most of the way there, help the ghost, then let the people who are actually paid to deal with bodies do the rest?”

It was essentially what Donovan had said, but without the heat of an argument warping the words in my mind. I hated how logical she made it sound, but only because I felt stupid for not realizing it earlier.

“As my best friend, aren’t you supposed to be on my side in a fight?” I grumbled instead of answering.

“As your best friend, I’m supposed to look out for you, and in this instance, that means pointing out that Donovan’s idea is a good one,” she said with a shrug. “Will you at least think about it?”

“Yeah, fine, I’ll think about it.” Even I wasn’t stubborn enough to shoot down a good idea just because it made me wrong. Mostly, at least. I’d still probably drag my feet for a few days before admitting defeat.

“Good.” Careful not to knock the cup out of my hands, she gave me a quick hug. “Now. Let’s circle back to you going out on your own, because I distinctly recall that you promised you’d never do that again.”

Of course she’d remember that. I’d hoped it would be forgotten in light of everything else, but I really should’ve known better.

“I didn’t want to bother anyone. Donovan and Will have been working nonstop trying to find Rebecca Perez, and it was almost time for you and Camille to get up for work, so I didn’t want to make you late if it took awhile.”

“Every single one of us knew what we were agreeing to when we said we’d go with you,” Raina said sternly. “Losing an hour or two of sleep wouldn’t have killed me and neither would getting to work late. I mostly go in that early to keep Cami company while she bakes. She would’ve been fine alone for one morning.”

“Maybe, but… it’s my problem, not anyone else’s. Why should I make you guys suffer and lose sleep when I can handle it on my own? How many times will you guys get a late night call and have to come out in the cold or the rain before you get sick of it? How long would it take for you to start resenting what I can do?”

How long would it take for you to start resenting me? I didn’t say those words out loud, but they were there, echoing in the back of my mind.

“Alex. There is nothing on this planet that could make me resent you, especially for something you can’t control.” Raina said each word slow and clear, her dark eyes locked with mine. “You could call me every single night, rain or shine, and I would never get upset with you.”

“That’s easy to say now, but it’s not always a quick walk out to the park and back,” I protested, but it was weak. “With… what happened in December, I walked all the way out to Silver Lake and through the woods in the freezing cold. It took over an hour. How can I ask someone to go through that with me?”

“How can you ask any of us to make you go through that alone?” she countered immediately. “Look, I’m going to say something you’re not going to like, but as your friend, I think I have to.”

“That doesn’t sound very promising.”

Raina took the nearly empty paper cup from me and grasped both my hands in hers. “Me and Camille and Donovan and Will… we are your family. We love you and I need you to understand that we are not your parents.”

I tried to jerk my hands back, but she held on tight, never breaking eye contact with me.

“I know that,” I protested. Something shuddered inside me, panicky, a trapped bird battering itself against the bars of its cage.

“I don’t think you do. What they did to you was wrong , Alex. They made you feel like you were a burden and they left you when you needed them the most. That fucking sucks and I hate them for that. I hate them for making you feel that way all these years later and making you think everyone will be the same as them.”

The trembling spread through my body and my hands would have been shaking if Raina weren’t holding them so tight. “I know you’re not like them,” I said, but it came out soft, the whisper of a frightened child.

“You know in your heart, but maybe not in your head, and I don’t blame you for that,” she said with a faint, sad smile. “I’ll prove it to you as many times as I need to. You are not a burden, Alexander Copeland. Can you promise me you’ll call me if and when it happens again? Promise me and mean it.”

Making that promise had been easy in the hospital. Still reeling from the trauma of being kidnapped, shot, and possessed, agreeing to call them had been easy, a balm to soothe my fear. Now, with a clear head and decades-old wounds seeping, the words were almost impossible to say. The pain in Raina’s eyes made the decision for me, though. She wanted to keep me safe and protect me, just like Donovan did, and he’d worn the same pain this morning. By breaking my promise to them and trying not to be a burden, I’d hurt them both. Could I live with myself if I did it again?

Slowly, still shaking, I nodded. “I promise. I’ll take someone next time, no matter what.”

“And you’ll talk to Donovan,” she prompted gently.

“And I’ll talk to Donovan.”

Raina drew me into a hug and I let her, leaning against her slender shoulder, all the while silently praying I would never have to put that promise to the test again.

***

For the second time in less than a day, I broke a promise.

My phone sat in front of me on my coffee table with the text thread to Donovan opened, but no matter how long I stared at the screen, I couldn’t bring myself to type anything. And honestly, the longer I stared at the screen, my emotions simmering and roiling up inside me, the less I wanted to. Why should I be the one reaching out first when Donovan had been the one to say those things? Yes, I’d fucked up, too, but mine had been a general fuck-up. Donovan’s had been personal.

Raina’s words from this morning tried to sneak through the miasma of hurt, anger, and fear encircling me, slipping in to remind me that this was a two-way street, but it was far too easy to let the chaos within me wash those words away.

“This sucks,” I groaned and Louis looked over at me. He lay sprawled across one of the bags from Esoteric Oddities, which had to be uncomfortable, but I guess to a cat, a little discomfort was worth causing a minor inconvenience.

Maybe I needed a distraction, then I’d be ready to talk to Donovan?

Getting Louis off the bag was too easy. A shake of his treat bag and he was winding around my feet, yowling like he was starving.

“Charlie always said you trained me well,” I said to the cat and a bittersweet swell of grief slid into the tangled mass of emotions I was trying to hold back. In the nearly seven years I’d moved back in, not a day had gone by without him and I couldn’t get used to his absence. It was easier when Donovan stayed, but at times like this, I missed my best friend with a ferocity that stole my breath.

“I hope you’re driving all the angels crazy up there,” I murmured, pausing by the front window. He used to spend hours people-watching from here. He deserved whatever happiness I knew he had to have found.

Distraction. I desperately needed a distraction.

I grabbed the two bags before Louis, having gulped his treats, could nap on them again. Between Ori’s directions and Camille’s suggestions, I’d ended up with far more than intended. One small bag held nothing but various types of crystals, each in their own little mesh bag with a little card describing its attributes. Simple enough, even if I still didn’t quite believe in all that.

Because apparently, despite my own psychic abilities and Nate’s proven use of crystals to block Charlie, I remained skeptical that rocks could have some sort of mystical powers.

The second bag tested my limits to the breaking point. I’d ended up buying a book on psychometry, which was apparently the ability to find someone just by holding something of theirs. Camille gifted me a brand new tarot deck, because apparently it was good luck for your first deck to be a present? According to her, it would help me find answers, whatever that meant.

Incense, an evil eye necklace almost identical to Camille’s, and a few other things I’d already forgotten the name of made up the rest of the bag. At some point while I wasn’t looking, Ori had slipped in a slim book on meditation and visualization, hiding it beneath the other book like they knew how I felt about it.

“Maybe I should start with that? It seems pretty straightforward, right?”

Louis stopped licking his butt long enough to fix me with the kind of dry, judgmental look only a cat could give, then promptly went back to his bath.

I pulled out the book and pushed everything else to the side, out of the way. Surely meditation would be the easiest thing to start with. All I had to do was sit here, right? I flipped through the introduction, where the author talked about her journey to finding inner peace or whatever, and found the ‘how to’ section.

“Okay, sit somewhere comfortable. Easy.” I was already cross-legged on my living room floor with my back against the couch. “Unfocus my eyes and turn my mind inward. What the hell does that mean? Observe your breath and allow your mind to be set free.”

It went against my personal code as a bookseller to throw a book, but this one was testing my limits.

Still, I’d promised Camille I would at least try. I put the book aside, out of reach just in case, and closed my eyes. That seemed easier than trying to unfocus, whatever that meant. I’d learned how to breathe through panic attacks as a kid, so I tried that. In for four, hold for four, out for four.

After a few slow breaths, my heart rate slowed and the embarrassment faded, so I tried the next step. I had no idea how to set my mind free, so I just kind of drifted, trying not to pay attention to anything. So naturally, my mind had other plans.

This is so stupid. How do I not think about anything? I should stop thinking words, right? Okay, just drift. What was that sound? Probably Louis. Why have I never noticed all the background noise in my house? Is the fridge supposed to be that loud? Should I have Donovan look at it? Except he’s not here, is he? I screwed up, as always, and now he’s gone. Not surprising. I should have known I’d screw this up. I always do. I’m the common denominator here, after all.

“Oh my God, brain, shut up,” I groaned, opening my eyes to find myself under intense scrutiny. Louis was no stranger to my weird bullshit, but apparently this pushed the limits even for him, because my fat cat was staring at me like I was a complete idiot.

“You’re not allowed to judge me. You were literally just licking your own ass,” I reminded him. He flicked his tail and I’m pretty sure he would have rolled his eyes if he could. “This is a lot harder than it looks, okay?” Maybe I shouldn’t have attempted this while fighting with Donovan.

Still, it was this or sit and stare at the last message from him, so I reluctantly pulled the book closer, looking for some tips. In a later chapter, the author suggested picturing a flame and pushing any random thoughts that wandered into my brain into that flame.

“Okay, mental arson. That sounds a little easier.”

I took a few more breaths to calm down, then closed my eyes and pictured a flame. Well, I tried to, at least. I made it about five seconds before my asshole brain started changing it, because a disembodied flame is kind of weird. It should be at the end of a candle or something, right? Maybe a red candle, like at the restaurant we’d gone to for Valentine’s Day. Even though we’d only been together a few months at that point, Donovan had spoiled me and we’d gone to Denver for a nice dinner. We’d planned to watch a movie on the couch after we got back, but ended up spending the rest of the night in bed. I certainly didn’t mind that. Still, was it normal to know you loved someone in that short a time? Despite what Donovan’s mom had told me back in January, it sometimes still felt like it was too soon.

“Fucking fuck, I did it again!” I groaned, realizing the flame had long since disappeared from my mind and I’d wandered off on another tangent. “Why is this so hard?”

I sighed on instinct, waiting for a dirty joke in response, only to be met by silence. Charlie couldn’t deliver the jokes and innuendo I’d grown used to because Charlie was gone. Years of having him with me every single day, of groaning at his bad jokes and secretly enjoying his rants about dating shows, and now all I had were the memories.

Tears stung my eyes and I leaned back, staring up at the ceiling. “I miss you, Charlie,” I breathed into the silence. The grief grew easier to bear every day, but I didn’t think it would ever disappear. Charlie and Aunt Lizzie would share space in my heart for the rest of my life. Without them, I wouldn’t have this life that I loved. I wouldn’t have Raina and Camille and Will. Worst of all, I wouldn’t have Donovan. I took some comfort in the memory of Charlie’s wicked smile right before he’d passed on. Whatever had been waiting for him, whatever he’d seen, it delighted him, so I had to assume he was off causing more chaos in whatever came next for ghosts.

A heavy thud jarred me out of my thoughts. Louis, apparently sick of my angst, had jumped off the coffee table and now proceeded to clamber into my lap, his paws digging into my inner thighs and leaving me wincing. He didn’t lay down, because that would be far too easy. He stood on my left thigh and made biscuits on my right leg, reminding me (quite painfully) that he was overdue for a nail trim.

“Fuck, you need to go on a diet.” I was going to have paw print bruises on my legs at this rate. “We both need to go on a diet. Time to lay off the snacks, huh?”

That was a word he knew and he pushed off my legs, scrambling to get to the kitchen, because just saying the word was a contractual obligation to snack time.

“Might as well. This meditation thing clearly isn’t happening. Snack break, then we’ll try again later.” Or not. Probably not. There was only so much humiliation I could handle in a day, even if there was no one to see it but me.

I left my phone on the table, still open to the texts with Donovan, and pretended not to notice when the screen faded, then went to black, without a single new message between us.