Page 61 of Haunted

There’s a beat of silence while he looks at me. He shakes his head and purses his lips, and then the sobs burst out of him, hard and furious, gasps of air that wrack his body. He puts his hands on my hips and then on my face, and then on my heart, as if he’s trying to map everything, secure it to him by touch alone. I kiss his palm and he lurches forward. I can taste the tears on his lips, but I don’t care about anything but calming the storm I’ve unleashed.

I tentatively put my hand on the side of his ribcage, where I can feel his heartbeat hammering against his chest, like it’s straining to touch my fingertips. He puts his arm down, trapping my hand there, and I realize I haven’t just been carrying around his bracelet. I’ve been carrying around a piece of Lance’s heart all along. Because a part of it has always belonged to me.

Chapter twenty-one

Lance

Ican tell the moment he’s awake. He doesn’t do it gradually. He opens his eyes, blinks up at the ceiling, and a shadow of a frown crosses his face as he takes in the cracks in the plaster. This is not the ceiling he was expecting. I shut my eyes so he doesn’t catch me staring like a creeper. I feel him shift to look down at our bodies and the tangle of sheets we’ve destroyed, and I know he’s doing it because I’ve done it at least five times in the past ten minutes.

“Shit,” he whispers.

“What is it?” I give up trying to pretend I’m napping. I stare at him. He’s still on his back, searching the ceiling.

“You realize we just really complicated our lives, right?” he asks without looking at me.

“Pretty much.”

“For a fuck that was epic but very short.”

“That was not the fuck. That was the appetizer,” I say.

“And what about when I go home?”

“We’ll cross that bridge in a couple of months.”

“I meant home as in across the street, not back to India.”

“Oh. That home.” This would probably be the wrong time to admit that I knew exactly which place he was talking about.

He rolls over to face me. “A woman died today. And I just got laid.” He checks the clock on my nightstand—it’s after three. “What is wrong with me?”

I put my hand on his face. “I’m going to talk to you like I would a buddy. Marine to Marine.”

“Neither of us are Marines. You’re a former Marine.”

I draw in my breath. “Just in case we work out, that’s not a thing. I’m still a Marine. I’m just not active-duty anymore.”

He nods.

“Alice’s death was senseless. But your need to feel connected to someone isn’t. Think about it as you reaffirming that you’re alive and me taking this time to make sure that you were alive and next to me.” I pause and touch the skin above his heart, where the phoenix’s beak is. “Even if this is all we ever do, I will hold it in my heart as the best decision I’ve ever made.”

He’s quiet for a moment. “Alice.” He says her name like he’s testing it. “You knew who she was, didn’t you? Before today.”

“Not well. I’d seen her on campus—she runs HR, I’m in the Comptroller’s office, we’d have crossed paths. And I used to watch the Phoenix Society memorial ceremonies online. From wherever I was posted.” I pause. “She was always on stage. Every year.”

“Why did you watch them?”

“I was looking for you,” I say. “You never showed up.”

He’s silent. Then: “I didn’t know they existed until Henry invited me.”

“Alice did. She was one of the founders. She cared about that community more than almost anyone.” I run my thumb across his cheekbone. “What happened to her was not because of you. And what happened between us was not dishonoring her. Those are two separate things.”

He doesn’t say anything for a while. I feel the tension leave his body in stages—first his shoulders, then his jaw, then his hands, which unclench against my chest. He rolls closer and lets me hold him. I am careful not to move, not to ruin it, not to be anything more than the warm body he’s chosen to rest against.

We lie like that for a few minutes. The afternoon light moves across the ceiling. I can feel his heartbeat against my ribs, slower now, steadier.

“I couldn’t sleep last night,” he says. “I kept trying to get at it. The party.”