Ghosts of Halloween: Chapter 41

I leave Harlow upstairs so I can give myself and the knife a quick wash. I can’t help it. The thought of her bleeding out from this knife soon makes me desperate to at least make it less grisly. The blood on the blade bothers me, as does the slippery wetness on the handle. It should be dry and easy to hold for this to be quick.

When I go back, she stands by the window, her naked back hunched and shaking as she hugs herself. I put the knife away and come closer, embracing her from behind. Harlow sinks into me with a sigh, soaking up the warmth from my body.

“How… How will we do it?” she asks, her voice hoarse. She’s trembling. “So I can be a ghost like you?”

I sigh in frustration, because even though I came up with this idea, I’m not at all certain it will work. But it’s the only one we have, so I guess we must give it a shot. I bite down the terror that spreads its tentacles in my chest. Terror of real death. Of disappearing. Or, even worse, of staying behind when Harlow’s truly gone.

“It’s really simple,” I say and clear my throat so my voice sounds more certain. “We stayed behind because we made a promise to Noah. So I’m thinking… What if you also make a promise? If you promise to stay with me, for example… in life and in death… that might do it.”

I swallow and tighten my hold around her, desperate to feel every inch of her skin. Now that I finally have her, I can’t let her go. The thought this might not work makes me nauseous with anxiety. Fuck.

Harlow snorts in disbelief, dragging me out of my morbid thoughts. “You want me to make a marriage vow?”

I grin, releasing a fast breath that fans the tendrils of her hair. “Nah. Marriage vows say ‘Till death do us part.’ That wouldn’t work. Plus… You’d have to promise it to each of us. So we can all stay.”

She shivers, pressing closer, and my cock twitches eagerly. I look down, eyes snagging on her right shoulder. Fuck. This is my last chance to take that artificial arm off her and kiss every inch of her skin that no one has touched with affection before.

“What is it like?” she asks quietly. “Being a ghost.”

Wondering how to answer, I lean my chin on the top of her head while my cock swells, pressing firmly into the curve of her ass. She makes a surprised sound and rubs against me, so I let out a husky laugh.

“Not great,” I say, one hand sliding to her hip to hold her still. “As actual ghosts, we… We can feel things and even lift small objects, but… It doesn’t feel like being alive. You don’t have a body, and everything is sort of… muted. We didn’t sleep, so time went by twice as slowly. And I guess Silas and Caden fucked a lot, so it’s possible, but they told me it doesn’t feel as good as the real thing.”

I swallow worriedly, wondering if I put her off this idea. But Harlow only nods and wraps her fingers around my forearm before leaning down and kissing it.

“But we’ll be able to leave this place, right?”

I hesitate for a moment before settling on the truth. “I don’t know. I don’t even know if it will work. It’s likely we’ll all just… be gone.”

She’s silent, her fingers tightening and relaxing over the tense muscle in my forearm. When she finally speaks, her voice is hoarse. “So this might be our last chance to be together like this.”

“Yeah,” I say with an uneasy laugh, because now that we’re alone, when I finally have her all to myself with the prospect of death looming just ahead, I can’t help but choke with emotion.

Fuck. How I wish it was all different. I wish she had come that night. Maybe we’d all have gone home before Vladimir’s goons came. Maybe we’d have somehow been safe and survived, and instead…

“Why didn’t you come that night?” I ask, my throat tight. “Did something… hold you back? Or did you just… not want to?”

I hate feeling so uncertain. This is all so fucking unfamiliar to me. Sure, I had girlfriends, I fucked a lot, but I never felt like this. So exposed. It feels like I’m offering her my naked heart, no defenses, and if she chooses to, she can rake her nails across it and make me bleed.

Harlow tenses, lowering her head so her hair falls into her face, hiding her profile from me. “You don’t want to know.”

I grunt, not liking her answer one bit. When she tenses further and tries to shake off my hold, I press her to me, gritting my teeth.

“You didn’t want me,” I say through clenched teeth, my heart pounding. “Tell me, Harlow. I want to hear it from you.”

She shakes her head, her back curving against me as she hunches as if to protect herself. “It’s not that, Jack. I wanted to come. So very much.”

“Then why?” I hiss, my hurting heart drumming with anger. “You didn’t have the balls to break up with the loser?”

She shakes her head but doesn’t answer me.

“Then why the fuck…” I begin, but then a haunting suspicion hits me like a punch to the gut, and I fall silent, horror dawning. It’s too awful to think about. Too perverted. But…

She told Silas when he asked. She told him those two names, and I don’t know why I didn’t make the connection. How could I be that fucking blind? Maybe I didn’t want to see it. Or maybe I was just so horny, my fucking brain didn’t work, but it works just fine now. And I hear the echo of her quiet voice as she admitted it.

Michael and Greg.

Michael. Her boyfriend. The one I told her to break up with.

“No,” I growl, desperate for the truth to be different from what I’m suddenly sure must have happened. “No, no, no… Harlow, you didn’t. You called him on the phone, right? You didn’t… go to see him.”

I can’t even swallow, my throat is so tight as I wait for her answer. Harlow exhales, lowering her head even more.

“I wanted to do the right thing, you know?” she says, words falling out in a rush now that she’s finally talking. Except I want her to stop. I don’t want to hear it. It’s too fucking awful. “I thought I was being a good girlfriend. Doing it in person, but… He didn’t like me breaking up with him.”

She laughs shakily, and I grit my teeth so hard, a sharp pain tears through my jaw. When she whimpers in surprise, I realize I’m gripping her too hard, so I force myself to let go and step back, breathing hard. My clenched fists are at my sides, nails digging into my palms as I vibrate with fury.

Harlow stands alone, her arms around herself, shaking wildly. She doesn’t turn to me when she speaks again.

“And Greg was there, still salty after I walked out on him in the middle of fucking a few months earlier. They were drunk, but not too drunk to… Yeah. It happened fast, if that’s any consolation.”

I can’t handle it. Fuck, I’ve gone through so many fucked up things, but this? I can’t bear it. I hide my face in my hands, shaking, as hot anguish rises in my chest until I can’t hold it back. I sob, my face wet, and Harlow turns but doesn’t touch me as I struggle to contain my tears. She should be the one crying, for fuck’s sake. Not me.

“I heard the sirens when I was walking back home,” she says hoarsely, like it’s a struggle to continue. “I cried in my bed, just waiting for Noah to come home… He didn’t. Instead, the police came. And you know what’s funny?”

I look up, jolted by that word. Funny. As if anything about this could be worth a laugh. I stare at her, taking in the tension around her brown eyes, the slightly scowling tilt to her mouth, the way her jaw works. She looks like she’s about to lose it, and I try to calm the fuck down so I can at least be there for her.

Two fucking years too late.

“The policeman who told me about Noah was Michael’s father,” she says, a bitter smile on her face.

I blink, not getting it for a moment. And then I do, and she’s right. It is funny. So funny I’d want to kill myself if I wasn’t dead already. Guess I know why she wants to die now.

“The morning after his son raped me, the father came to tell me my brother was killed. Funny, right? I mean, what are the odds?”

“Don’t do this,” I grit out, grabbing her hand. I don’t even fucking know what to say or do as the enormity of it crashes into me. And I can’t help but think it’s my fucking fault. I should have just killed the guy. Wouldn’t have been that hard. Instead, I talked her into breaking up with him.

“Do what?”

“Don’t make light of it,” I say, throat tight with the screams I hold in. “Don’t… Fuck, Harlow. I should have been there. I should have… come with you, supported you, smashed his fucking skull in. Please, don’t say you broke up with him only because I told you to.”

Like hell. Of course, that’s why she did that. All of this is on me. And yet, I stare at her with desperate hope that I know she’ll have to crush. Harlow looks away, her throat working, and when she looks back at me, her face is set.

And I know. A sick, painful feeling winds up my spine and lungs, and I let out a sound, something so pitiful and broken, her eyes soften.

“I wanted to be with you,” she whispers, fiercely looking at my face that I know must reflect everything I feel because I don’t even know how to hide this kind of thing. “You grew on me, you know. And it seemed like… Like I could finally have something good. Something mine.”

Fuck. I breathe out shakily, choking on a sob I desperately try to hold back. Harlow’s shoulders drop, and next thing I know, she presses into me, shaking in my arms, all naked and jittery. I press her close, swallowing time and again to keep myself calm. She’s the one who should rage and weep. And I should take it all. Absorb her pain.

I force deep breaths into my lungs, pushing my rage, guilt, and regret down and deep, hiding it away. I never had to force myself to ignore something this awful, but I’m good at suppressing bad things. With every deep breath, the pressure inside me eases until everything is buried. Ready to unleash when I need it but peaceful for now.

Tense yet calm, I wait for her to cry or rage, ready to take it all and kiss her after.

But Harlow is quiet, her shaking subsiding slowly. She burrows into my arms, that sick, guilty feeling inside me tinging with helpless tenderness. God, I love her so much. And now that everything is out in the open, now that she knows how she hurt me and I know how she suffered, it feels like there are no more obstacles to my love.

If only I could kill those two… I don’t even know what to call them. The ugliest words I know don’t do them justice.

“It’s okay, Jack,” she finally says, wrapping her arms around me, one warm, one cold. “It’s over. And I really don’t want to spend my last hours on Earth thinking about that night.”

She pulls back, looking at me with determined eyes, her brows pinched tight. “Give me something beautiful, Jack. Make me feel good. I know you can.”

I suck in a breath, pulling her closer so I can hold her for a while longer, my fingers already itching to give her all the sparks in the world. Because she’s right. I can make her feel good. I know exactly what she needs.