Chapter Nine
Nolan
e land back in the closet with flailing limbs, a muffled curse, and aW small explosion of fig jam.
“I don’t understand why you felt the need to grab the entire jar.” My sticky hand catches in her sticky hair while our sticky sweaters smash together against the now sticky shelves. “There’s a reason you don’t bring things back from the past.”
The trip was a waste of our time—again. Not a single nefarious thing was revealed about Harriet, except perhaps an extreme sweet tooth. We watched her make holiday jam with a woman in a catering uniform, wrapping each mason jar with a single gingham bow. She didn’t even try to lick the spoon.
An absolute waste.
“Maybe that’s something you should have mentioned when I grabbed it.”
“I said stop.”
“That could have been in regard to, like, a million things, Nolan. You weren’t specific!”
I clench my jaw so hard my teeth snap together. This woman.
“I’ve been trying to find that recipe for ages,” Harriet continues, her voice muffled in the front of my sweater as we continue to try to extricate ourselves. She shakes her wrist, a clump of jam landing with a wet sound on the floor. “I didn’t realize the jar would explode on impact.”
“The jar did not explode on impact. The jar exploded somewhere in our travels, as evident by the current state of things. We’re lucky you didn’t embed shards of glass into my skull.”
“You’re a ghost,” she hisses. “As far as I’m aware, you can’t die again.
And if glass ended up anywhere, you probably would have deserved it.”
The jam must have multiplied as we were rolling our way through time. I have no other explanation as to how it’s … everywhere. It’s on my neck. It’s dripping down my chest beneath my shirt. It’s on my hands and in my hair.
And Harriet is clinging to me with the same tenacity as the jam, her arms wrapped tight around my waist. She plastered herself to me as soon as I
tugged us out of the memory, afraid I’d leave her there. I can feel all of the places her body is a perfect fit for mine. The curve of her hips and the soft press of her breasts. Every time she wiggles, I lose a little bit more of my sanity.
This. This is why I made up the excuse about the cat and stayed away. I hoped the time away would give me some clarity. I hoped the time away would allow me to straighten myself out.
I’m afraid it only made everything worse. I didn’t stop thinking about Harriet once.
“Harriet.” I grip her hips tight and squeeze my eyes shut. “Stop moving.”
“You’re the one who squished me up against the shelf.” She twists some more, arching her back. My hips nestle between her thighs, her hair in my face. She smells like honey and sugar. Like one of the sweets she’s never without.
“It was accidental,” I grind out. She didn’t mean to cause an explosion mid-travel. I didn’t mean to press her bodily against the wall. Yet, here we are. Two stubborn fools. “My foot must have slipped in your damned jam.”
“Well, you’re not slipping now,” she replies. She finds her footing with one hand braced on the metal shelf, her body finally— thankfully—going still against mine. Our chests heave against each other as we try to regulate our breathing. My body feels heavy, my pulse pounding at the base of my throat and in the palms of my hands.
It would be so easy to drag my hand from her hip to her thigh, flex my fingers around her delicious curves, fill my palm with her gorgeous ass, and lift. I could have all of her wrapped around me in a heartbeat, her mouth half an inch from mine. Would she taste like the jam she decided to confiscate from the past? Or would she taste like something darker? Richer?
I don’t move. Neither does she. It’s the two of us pressed together in the dark. I’m standing at the edge of a choice, temptation tugging at me.
“Good?” I ask.
Her laugh is a whisper against my neck. My skin prickles in awareness.
“Yeah, I’m good,” she says. “I just watched my childhood self make Christmas jam with a woman my mother hired because she couldn’t be bothered. I’m covered in a jam that I’ve been trying to re-create for twenty years. I tried to grab one thing for myself and now it’s—now it’s everywhere
but where I want it to be.”
“Where do you want it to be?”
“On toast, preferably.” She looks at the jam smeared across her sweater sleeve and sighs. “I didn’t even get to taste it,” she adds mournfully.
I blame the look on her face and the loopy, hazy feeling that’s still snug tight around the base of my skull from ricocheting through time. The ferocious, yawning ache in the middle of my chest. There’s no other explanation as to why I reach for her, cupping her face in my hand so I can gather the heavy streak of sugared fig just under her chin.
Her skin is warm and the jam is warm, too. Sticky. A complete and total mess.
I lift my finger to my mouth and suck it off.
The taste is muted, but there. Sweet and tart. A sharp burst that sparks, then fades. It’s the closest I’ve come to experiencing a flavor in decades.
I immediately want more.
“Tastes good,” I tell her.
“I thought you said—” She swallows, her eyes heavy on my mouth. “I thought you said you can’t taste things,” she finishes.
“Sometimes I get a hint,” I tell her, my voice sounding like it’s coming from somewhere very far away. I’m wandering down a path I have no business being on, but Harriet’s lips are parted and she has more jam on the long line of her neck and it’s been so long since I’ve let myself feel anything
other than self-induced apathy.
“Oh,” she says.
Harriet hesitates, then reaches for my hand with hers. She traces her fingertips along the base of my palm, lingering over a scar I don’t remember how I got before scooping some wayward jelly. She keeps her head down as she brings her pointer finger to her mouth, cheeks hollowing as she sucks it off. My hand twitches in hers. I have to clench my teeth to keep myself from
doing something reckless.
She makes a surprised sound.
“What do you think?”
“Tastes good,” she repeats, a laugh caught somewhere in the back of her throat, her eyes shining bright in the tiny, dark room as she gazes up at me.
They look like whiskey in the dark. A glass half-filled, a single cube of ice at the bottom. “Almost worth all this mess.”
I shift and feel the jam on my chest again, sticking to my shirt. “Almost,” I agree. “Can I get rid of it, or do you want another taste?”
“I’m good,” she says, something husky still in her voice, her hands
twisting in front of her. I don’t know if she’s uncomfortable because of the situation, my inability to hold my restraint in check, or the jam currently making a home in her hair, but I don’t want her twisted up because of me. I reach for the place inside myself that holds my magic and I yank on it.
The stickiness on my chest and arms and neck disappears. Harriet blows out a relieved breath.
“Another riveting trip to my past, huh?” She smooths her palms down the front of her sweater, checking for any spots I might have missed.
“Aye.” I reach forward and pretend to wipe some jam from one of her curls. Her hair is so soft, it feels like silk. I tuck it behind her ear and let my hand drop. “You continue to be a paragon of good behavior.”
She snorts. “Try not to sound so surprised.”
“I’m not surprised, I’m—” Confused. Irritated. I’m doing everything exactly the way I’m supposed to be doing it and nothing is changing. She’s not the person she’s supposed to be. We’re trapped in a limbo where I can’t move on and neither can she. I’m so tired of being stuck. “I’m trying to figure out how this ends for the both of us.”
She hesitates. “I’ve been thinking about that.”
I narrow my eyes. “About what?”
She twists the hem of her sweater over her fists, spreading her fingers wide then closing them again. “Maybe you’re not here for me,” she says slowly.
Her eyes peek up at me to check my reaction. “Maybe you’re here for you.”
I rub my hand over my mouth. “What does that mean?”
She pushes off the shelf. “Maybe—maybe there’s something you need to do. To move on, you know? You said you’ve been here for a while … maybe I’m supposed to help you.” She presses her lips together, thinking. “I own an antiques shop. I don’t think you were paired with me by accident.”
Excitement lights behind her eyes, her features brightening in enthusiasm.
“Maybe there’s something here that belongs to you. Like a talisman or something. Maybe it’s holding you in place, or—I don’t know. Maybe there’s something you’re supposed to see with me. We could work together to find it.”
A rough sound rolls out of me, too sharp to be a laugh. The idea of moving on after a hundred years spent in one single place is … comical, at best.
Devastating, at worst. There is nothing to move on to. There is just this. An aimless, driftless existence where I don’t get to hold on to anything. Where I lose all the things that once made me human, slowly and painfully.
And for Harriet—a woman I barely know—for her to somehow be the key
to moving on, it’s—
It’s too much.
It’s a joke. It must be.
Except the hopeful look on her face doesn’t flicker or waiver.
“Did I say something funny?” she asks.
“You’re serious.”
“Of course, I’m serious,” she says. “What gave you the impression that I’m joking?”
I drag my hand through my hair, then anchor my hand against the back of my neck. I squeeze, hoping the pressure will distract me from the buzzing in my chest. “Your complete unfamiliarity with my existence, for one.” I sigh, trying to shake off some of the venom lacing my tone. But I can’t. I can’t because she has no idea how much it hurts to have the thing I want most dangled like a treat in front of my nose, knowing I can’t ever have it. “You didn’t know ghosts even existed a couple of weeks ago. These things don’t work like that.”
“I know there’s a lot I don’t know, but think about it. We’ve visited my memories and you haven’t discovered anything horrible about me. We’ve gone to my past several times, and every time it’s something completely
mundane.”
“Harriet—” I try.
“I don’t think I’m a bad person,” she says, raising her voice and cutting me off. “At least not the type of bad person you typically deal with. I’m just a person trying my best, occasionally making mistakes.” She tilts her head to the side. “Tell me the truth. Have you seen anything that warrants a
haunting?”
“I haven’t, but—”
“Then I think this is the answer!” Her face lights up, her eyes wide and bright, shining like copper. She stops twisting her hands and waves them between us. “You said you’ve been stuck, that you thought there’d be something different. You said there aren’t any mistakes. Maybe we’ve just been looking at it from the wrong angle.”
“The wrong angle,” I repeat, a creeping numbness in my chest. She nods.
“Maybe this is something that can help you. Not me.”
I consider it. When I first became a ghost, this was the sort of thing I hoped for. I spent hours, days, weeks, agonizing over it. And then weeks became
months and months became years. I combed over the details of my life, looking for the part where I earned this fathomless existence. I painstakingly picked everything over until the details became muddled. Until I could barely remember the person I was. The things I did.
I kept waiting for a choice—a chance.
But when one never materialized, I realized I was a fool.
There is no happily ever after for me. There is no … light at the end of the tunnel. There is only this.
After a decade, I let go of my hope. After a century, I released my expectations, too.
And now Harriet has decided she can fix it. That she can fix me. “How long have you been thinking about this?” I manage to ask. Her smile wavers.
“Well, I was just talking with Sasha this morning and—”
“This morning,” I repeat, frustration welling up in my chest. It spills over until I’m coated in it, just like the jam she insisted on bringing back from the past. She has no right. No right to give me hope when I’ve been without it for as long as I can remember. “You’ve been contemplating something you know next to nothing about for an hour, and I am to believe you suddenly have an answer?”
Her shoulders inch up toward her ears. “Nolan—”
“Thank you, Harriet,” I say, the frustration twisting into something darker.
Rougher. Wilder. My magic licks at the inside of my chest in warning, hot and punishing. I ignore it. “I’m so relieved you’ve found the solution to this absolute hell I’ve been living.”
“Nolan,” she says again, her voice a whisper. There’s not an ounce of enthusiasm left in her face. I’ve pulled out all of her light and crushed it in my fists, but I can’t help myself. It feels like the ultimate cruelty, what she’s just done.
“A woman who has existed for a mere blink of my lifetime is somehow the key to my salvation. I don’t know how I didn’t see it before,” I continue, my sarcasm like a blade between us. “Thank you, Harriet. You are oh so helpful.
I can see why you have so many people willing to be around you.”
The hit lands the way I intended. She flinches and sucks in a sharp breath.
“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to help. That’s not the reason I’m alone.” She pauses. Swallows. Her eyes turn glassy and wet. “You don’t have to be cruel,” she finishes with a whisper.
“I don’t want your help. I never asked for it. You have no idea what you’re
talking about,” I explain. Ten minutes ago, I was desperately trying not to kiss her. Now I can barely stand to be in the same space as her. She’s the one being cruel, and she doesn’t even know it. She’s offering me things she can’t follow through with.
“You can’t—” I try to calm down. “I don’t want you to bring that up again.
Not ever.”
Her laugh is stripped of any amusement. Sad and hollow. Her arms hug herself. “You don’t have to worry about that.”
My magic roars in my chest. I can’t catch my breath. I need to not be here.
I need to be away from her.
“Good,” I snap.
She nods, teeth sawing over her bottom lip. She gives me her back while she collects her cans of polish and the rag I flung on the top shelf, her face hidden by her hair. She sniffles once and my stomach freefalls all the way to my toes. The first bite of regret plucks at the consciousness that should have been abandoned as soon as I became a ghost.
I’m grateful for her turned back so I don’t have to see the look on her face.
Maybe with enough determination and blind optimism, I’ll be able to forget I hurt her on purpose.
But pride keeps me from apologizing. My own hurt.
“I’m going to go,” she says, once she’s collected all her supplies. When she turns, she barely makes eye contact. I’m so used to her expressive face watching my every move, that the sudden absence of her attention feels like a tether that’s been cut. A light that’s been snuffed out. She forces a tight smile, her gaze stuck somewhere around my neck. “I’m sure I’ll see you in a day or two.”
She doesn’t wait for a response. She shuffles past me to the entrance of the closet, then pauses for a moment, her head turned halfway.
“I’m glad your cat is okay,” she whispers.
She leaves without another word, keeping the door to the storage closet open. I stay behind in the dark, staring hard at the place she just was. Even when I’ve lashed out and done my best to hurt her the way I’ve been hurting, she rises above it to be the better person.
Muffled voices drift from the front of the shop. Low conversation and then a burst of laughter. I yank on my magic as soon as I hear Harriet’s low, raspy chuckle spinning its way through the shelves to the tiny closet at the back.
I don’t want to hear it.
I’m not sure I deserve to.
