The Ghost

by Jessica Gadziala

He was doing something to me.

  Thawing me.

  Hell, melting me.

  I felt gooey inside.

  For the first time in my life.

  "I was in my new place," I told his neck, unable to fight the urge to get it out of me. "And he broke in. With a knife. And he was ripping off my clothes. And telling me he was going to use the knife to... to..."

  I couldn't even say it.

  I didn't need to.

  "Fuck," Gunner hissed quietly under his breath. "Just let it go, duchess. Don't hold onto that shit. It wasn't real. It is never going to be real. I won't let it," he added for emphasis. And, what's more, I believed him. I trusted him. He would make me safe.

  But here's the rub.

  He would make me safe.

  And then he would leave me.

  Forever.

  "I know," I said, letting him pull my knees until they were over his lap, his body literally cradling mine. "I trust you," I added, those words pretty monumental for me.

  I hardly trusted anyone.

  I barely even trusted myself.

  But I trusted him.

  Implicitly.

  Without hesitation.

  That, well, was terrifying.

  Because I could get used to it.

  And I was only going to lose it.

  Sooner rather than later.

  "What time is it?" I asked, not even pretending to fight it when my hands moved down, curling around his center, holding on tight.

  "Three," he supplied, and I could have sworn I felt his lips on my hair.

  But that was crazy.

  Impossible even.

  Wishful thinking maybe.

  "Should we get going?" I asked, knowing he was likely already up and had our stuff packed up.

  "Got a bit," he said, arm giving me a squeeze.

  He didn't say it.

  Apparently, he didn't need to.

  Because we both understood.

  We were going to sit here just like this.

  For as long as we could find an excuse to.

  Then, like clockwork, just as you could just make out the slits of sunlight around the room darkening shades, he gave me another squeeze, and without saying anything, we both just unfolded from each other and went our separate ways.

  I came out from the shower to find he had made egg sandwiches and had cleaned up already.

  We ate.

  We grabbed coffee to go.

  We packed the rest of my luggage into the SUV.

  And we left.

  Watching that cabin disappear into the rearview somehow felt more final than leaving my apartment back in the city.

  Maybe because the city, that life, all that hollow I had worked so hard to accumulate was just that... empty.

  But what I had for such a short time in that cabin felt like more. Felt weighted. Important. Felt like it could have been infinitely more.

  "Haven't said a word in three hours," Gunner said around eight in the morning as I stared out the window, watching the world pass me by.

  "I have nothing to say."

  It was a lie, of course.

  But everything I had to say would make me sound crazy.

  Like... I think I like you.

  Like... I wish we could give this a chance.

  Like... I barely know you, but I know I am going to miss you.

  I simply couldn't say any of that.

  So I stayed silent.

  EIGHT

  Gunner

  Something was up with her.

  She wouldn't admit it.

  When I asked, her tone implied I was being irritating or irrational or annoying.

  But something was up.

  The real question, though, wasn't why something was up; It was why I cared.

  I did.

  That was clear.

  Cared, that is.

  I had never cuddled a woman in my life before.

  Not after sex.

  Not when a client was crying.

  Never.

  I'd never even had the urge to.

  But this morning, Sloane waking up out of a twisted nightmare, clinging to me like her life depended on it, the urge was there.

  And I acted on it.

  What's more, I didn't want to let go.

  That was some crazy ass shit.

  And wanting to know why she was silent for seven and a half goddamn hours was too.

  It wasn't that I wasn't used to long, silent car rides. I was. Alone or with other people. I usually insisted upon it. Nothing was more useless than small talk. And nothing was more irritating than whining or complaining or demanding to know how long until we reach the next destination.

  The silence was usually the only way I could deal with a client.

  But with Sloane, it was bothering me.

  I wanted to know what put her in this mood. Was it the nightmare? Was it the idea of the next leg of the journey? Was her stomach hurting? Just fucking... what?

  She didn't have anything to say, my ass.

  She had plenty to say.

  She just wasn't going to share it.

  With me.

  Hell, we hadn't even stopped for lunch, and she hadn't said anything about it.

  Sure, she wasn't a big eater as a whole, but I'd heard her stomach growling a few minutes before. Yet she'd said nothing. Just kept staring blankly out her side window.

  "Wanna eat somewhere, or get food to take back to the hotel?" I asked, finally not able to take the quiet for another minute.

  "Take it back to the hotel," she said, voice sounding far away. Like her mind apparently was.

  "Any preferences?"

  "Whatever is nearby the hotel is fine."

  It was like pulling teeth to get any kind of discussion out of her.

  "Here," I said, tossing my phone onto her lap, smirking when she stared at the damn thing like I'd dropped a toad there. "Look for places in Fredrickson that have decent enough reviews," I said, for some reason needing to see her doing something other than just staring off into nothing.

  With that, doing so somewhat reluctantly, she started searching. "The Chinese place is the only one that doesn't sound like we'd catch a new strain of salmonella," she concluded.

  "Like anything in particular?"

  "Vegetable lo mein," she supplied. "What?" she asked when I must have shot her a surprised look.

  "Expected something on there that I can't even pronounce."

  "Highbrow Chinese from a takeaway place doesn't really exist. At least from what I could remember. I haven't had it since I first moved to the city. But the lo mein was my favorite. I can order if you want," she volunteered. "So we can pick it up on the way. No one would have to go back out."

  I was going to have it delivered, but I was liking the sound of her talking too much to tell her not to do more of it.

  "Sure. Go ahead. Order me some shit. I'm not picky."

  That kept her talking for a few minutes, throwing out options, then demanding to know my opinions on shrimp, chicken, pork, and various vegetables.

  It wasn't what I wanted, but it was conversation.

  I would take what I could get.

  "Come on," I said, parking in the strip mall where the Chinese place was located.

  "We have five more minutes," she insisted.

  "Drinks and snacks," I said, jerking my chin toward the convenience store. "And don't say to just grab you something. Come pick your own shit," I said, going around the car to yank open her door, waiting for her to move outside.

  With that, we stocked up on drinks. I found out she had a sweet tooth from childhood that meant she liked Devil Dogs and Swiss Rolls. And I swear to God, this woman squealed when she found a small box of Star Crunch.

  "I thought they stopped making this!" she told me while she, I shit you not, hugged the box to her chest. "I actually looked at the grocery store by me. They didn't carry it."

  "Think snacks are regional. They don't sell Banana Pudding Rolls in Navesink Bank.
"

  "Well, because they sound revolting," she supplied, walking over to pour herself a large coffee from the bar.

  "Did I make fun of your Star Crunch?" I asked, watching as she grabbed a second cup... and started making a coffee for me.

  "Well, no. Because Star Crunch is chocolate, crispies, and caramel. There is nothing to make fun of."

  "Can't argue with that," I agreed, thankful that she seemed to shake the mood that had plagued her the whole ride. We grabbed the food, then made our way to the hotel.

  "This is really nice," she said as we made our way into the elevator, leaving the bags to be dealt with later.

  "Did you think I'd make you stay at a sleep-and-fuck?"

  "A... what?" she asked, turning to me with brows drawn low.

  "Sleep-and-fuck," I supplied. "A motel right off the highway where truckers pull off to catch some sleep in an actual bed. Or..."

  "Where people pay to fuck," she finished for me.

  My head never whipped around so fast in my life, lips already twitching. "What did you just say?"

  To that, her lips twitched too. "You heard me."

  "I'm afraid I missed it," I told her, both of us knowing I was bullshitting.

  "I am assuming you were referring to the type of establishment that is cheap enough that people - likely people having affairs, or men paying for a prostitute - can excuse paying for it for just an hour," she supplied. "To fuck," she finished, giving me this teasing smile that looked way too damn good on her face.

  "Look at you," I said, elbowing her arm, "with the foul fucking mouth."

  "Your poor, virgin ears," she shot back as we walked out of the elevator and down the hall to our door.

  "Apparently, I need to let you splurge like a five-year-old in the snack aisle more," I told her as I slid the card into the door, letting her move inside first.

  To be honest, I usually didn't do hotels. I went for the kind of motels that were a single step up from sleep-and-fucks. Usually doing two rooms that connected through the bathroom. Because I had no fucking interest in being near my clients longer than I needed to.

  This hotel, this fancy ass hotel that took a lot of work to find, yeah, this was all for Sloane. I knew that soon, she wouldn't have the finer things anymore. She'd be set up in a small apartment in a decent area with furniture we could get immediately from a local box store. She'd eventually get her supply of nice shit when it was safe to ship it to her. But there'd be no more blowing money on fancy hotel rooms, designer clothes, all the accoutrement of her nice life she worked for.

  I wanted her to have a fancy place to rest her head while she could.

  That was some sappy, sentimental shit. Especially for me. But I did it anyway.

  "Wow," she said, doing a slow turn in the oversized room with two queen beds.

  The colors were muted - a faint off-white wallpaper, champagne-colored silken sheets and comforters, deep brown nightstands, a dresser, and a small desk beside the giant floor-to-ceiling window. There wasn't much of a view, not in this town anyway, but it would let the light filter in in the morning.

  To the left inside the door was the bathroom that was the same size as the whole common room in the cabin, all sand-colored tile on the floor and in the walk-in shower with full glass doors. There was a tub that looked big enough for four.

  I didn't look away fast enough not to picture her in there. To think of joining her. And what would happen then.

  "You're just gonna have to get used to eating in bed," I informed her as she looked around a little helplessly after putting her bags down on the desk.

  "I can certainly try," she agreed, kicking out of her heels. Seeing that, oddly, felt almost as intimate as having her curl up on me to keep warm at night. I guess because, for her, they weren't just heels; it was part of her persona, the image of her, instead of the woman she was underneath it all.

  So we took our food to the beds, eating while fighting over the TV. Since we hadn't had one before, I never realized she would be such a pain in the ass about it.

  "What is the point of it though?" she asked when I tried to insist on watching the seventh of the Fast & Furious movies. "Shouldn't they have gotten their point across in the first movie?"

  "The point isn't about them making a point." At her blank look, I shook my head. "It's action. It's about the... action. You've seriously never seen a single one of these?"

  "I mean... I've seen that actor before. The bald one."

  "Vin Diesel," I supplied.

  "Yeah. He played the lawyer in Find Me Guilty."

  "Jesus Christ," I said, choosing the first in the series, and putting it on before she could object. "Only you would find the single goddamn serious role that man has played. And bring it up in conversation as though everyone knows that shit."

  "He looked rather silly with the wig on," she admitted, giving me a small smile before the movie started.

  Then, yeah, I got the woman hooked on the least likely series you could imagine a girl like her enjoying.

  "I think three is good for the night."

  "But they are just getting all back together!" she objected, having absentmindedly plowed through her Chinese... then a handful of her snacks. I was pretty sure in those six hours, she ate more food than she had in the past three days.

  "It's getting late," I suggested, never having binged that many of the movies at once. And, well, it was enough.

  "It's barely eight!"

  "You don't want to try out that tub?" I tried.

  And the way her eyes went all dreamy told me that I had said the right thing.

  "You'll stay, right?" she asked, making me start, turning back to look at her.

  "What?" I asked, watching as she slipped off her glasses, rubbing at the bridge of her nose. She'd actually found a small stash of her contacts in one of her bags, but had opted for the glasses for the day. I couldn't help but wonder if that was maybe because she was starting to feel comfortable around me.

  "I know you need to get the luggage," she supplied. "But can you stay while I take a bath?" she asked again, not able to make eye-contact. "I know. It's stupid," she agreed even though I hadn't said anything. "I'll get over it," she added.

  "Duchess, it's only been a few days. It's fine to still feel weird."

  "But you said..."

  "That you need to shower," I agreed. "And you did. The avoiding of it is the problem, not the needing to know you're safe when you do it. Go take your bath," I said, sitting back down on my bed.

  So then she ran her bath.

  I tried as hard as I could not to think about her in there.

  And since I failed, I grabbed my phone, calling the office.

  "You have reached the offices of Quinton Baird & Associates. Jules is away from her desk right now. I pale in comparison, but can try to help you."

  "Fuck's sake, Kai," I scoffed. "Are you seriously answering the phone like that?"

  "Caller ID, man. Knew it was you. How is the job going? Heard you got snowed in at the cabin. Sounds romantic."

  "It's a job," I insisted, maybe a bit too forcefully.

  "I saw the picture in her file."

  "Yeah, and?"

  "And Ranger may have let it slip your, ah, innovative way of using full-body protection."

  "She was cold."

  "Mhmm," he agreed, sounding like he was rearranging the divider of office supplies - pens, brads, paperclips - on Jules's desk because when she got busy, the shit flew everywhere. And Kai, the poor fuck, liked making her life easier. I'd never get his unrequited shit. Or Jules's cluelessness about it. She was clueless about it too. I'd once heard Miller saying something about how much attention Kai pays to her, and Jules had insisted that he was just like that with everyone, that he was sweet, helpful, that it was nothing more than that. "So, are you in the Grand Ole' Ioway?"

  "Ohio," I corrected. "Tomorrow is Iowa. How's everything going on that end?" I asked, knowing that someone there - likely either Quinn or Jules - was hand
ling the paperwork since I couldn't do it on the road.

  "According to Jules," he started, and I could just picture him picking up the file, leaning back in her chair, and kicking his feet up on her desk, something we all knew she hated, "the apartment options and PO Box are all set up. You'll just need to sign the lines and show her ID at the post office when you get there. Jules set her up a new email with her new name and sent her all the local job listings that sounded like she wouldn't hate them. She also emailed a list of all the local stores, eateries, and entertainment. She needs a raise," he said absentmindedly. "Jules, not the client," he clarified.

  "She already makes three times what a receptionist makes," I reminded him, knowing what Quin paid everyone.

  "Yeah, but she does the work of eight secretaries," he reasoned. And, as much as Jules and I weren't the best of friends, we could both acknowledge each others' worth. She handled a shitton of work in that office. Half the time, without having to be asked to do things. Quin had made a smart move when he'd hired her when she was barely more than a kid with no comparable work experience, wearing what had to be her mother's work clothes. But she'd proven her worth. Even I could admit that she handled my cases without a single slip-up. Though maybe a part of me wondered if she did so well because she didn't want to have to interact with me. I'd never had her call me about a case. Everything was done by email or text. Informal. So we didn't keep rubbing each other the wrong way.

  "You ever gonna move on?" I asked.

  "I don't see how it affects you," he shot back, not bothering to play coy. He knew that we all knew.

  "What's gonna happen when that man of hers pops the question?" I asked, all of us knowing that was likely coming sooner rather than later.

  "Nothing," he said, but there was a guardedness to his tone that you never heard there. "Nothing happens. I wish her the best."

  "You're so fucked up," I said, smiling a little even though he couldn't see me.

  "Coming from you, that is almost a compliment."

  "Do me a favor, go out tonight and get yourself some pussy."

  "Right, that's the cure," he said, sounding strained.

  "In my experience, no matter the ill, pussy is always the cure. If your ass can learn to keep your heart out of it, that is."

  "What's the point then?" he shot back. As he often would if you discussed something that he referred to as 'sport sex.' And, for the first time ever, the words actually did sink in.