Pretty Guilty

by K. L. Cottrell

  Pretty Guilty

  a paranormal romance novella

  K. L. Cottrell

  Pretty Guilty

  by K. L. Cottrell

  Copyright 2016 K. L. Cottrell

  Cover design: QDesign

  In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, this book may not be reproduced in any form, in whole or in part, without written permission from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, and incidents depicted are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  1: Coralie

  2: Will

  3: Coralie

  4: Will

  5: Coralie

  6: Will

  7: Coralie

  Dear Reader

  More Works by K. L.

  1: Coralie

  While I try to wait patiently for my name to be called by the barista, I stare at my reflection in the mirrored wall next to the tiny table I’m sitting at.

  Closed-off expression. Flat hazel eyes surrounded by dark eyeshadow and liner. Arms crossed. Even my pale blonde hair appears cold.

  I don’t look like someone who’s celebrating her birthday.

  Probably because I’m not celebrating shit. This is just another regular day to me. As regular as my days have been for the past month, anyway, which...

  …well, I’ll just say it: it’s not normal to have a ghost haunting you.

  Across the table from me, Aaron makes a terrible gargling sound. I hate it when he does that. It sounds like he’s got blood in his throat or something—and, really, he probably does. Getting hit by that SUV tore him up. I move my gaze down from my reflection, careful not to glance at where he is, because the only thing worse than hearing him make that noise is looking at him while he makes it. I learned that the hard way.

  Besides, it’s just generally not a good idea to look at him while I’m around lots of people. He’s bloody and broken, hollow-eyed, always wearing the same tattered clothes from the night he died; in short, he’s distracting in the most horrifying way. But even if he weren’t so horrifying, it’s still not smart to stare at or—God forbid—speak to someone no one else can see.

  So it’s best to just keep this to myself all the way around.

  That’s why I spend the next few minutes studying my black jeans instead of meeting the literally dead gaze beating down on me like a decaying sun. That’s why I make myself breathe steadily. That’s why, despite that I don’t care about their conversations, I fill my mind with other people’s chatter and laughter so I don’t have to focus on Aaron making that awful sound again.

  I wish he would go away already.

  I’m sick of this.

  I’ve been sick of this.

  I don’t deserve this.

  Unfortunately, that doesn’t change anything. He’s here whether I want him to be or not, so I have to deal with him and his random ghostly schedule. I never know when he’s going to show up or how long it’ll be before he disappears again.

  At least he appeared in broad daylight today and not in the middle of the night like he did a couple weeks ago. That night, I’d gotten out of bed to use the bathroom and when I turned on the light, I found him levitating right in front of me. His busted head was tilted to one side, jaw slack, brown hair matted with thick blood, eyes staring into my soul in the worst—

  “Cora-lye!”

  Happy to forget the memory, I rush out of my chair and up to the counter, still not looking at Aaron. I don’t know how this is the same woman who took my order five minutes ago and she doesn’t remember the three times I sounded out Cora-lee for her. I barely mumble my thanks as I swipe up the lidded coffee.

  Outside, the late November morning is cold—so cold that snow has been falling for about an hour. My coffee is too hot to sip, but I still do it as I stride leftwards from the shop, towards work. Aaron can keep up, of course (I think even if I still drove a car I wouldn’t be able to lose him), but at least he doesn’t speak now that he’s dead. I’m immensely thankful for that. It’s bad enough that he’s around at all, because I couldn’t stand him even when he was alive. So when I hear him making a croaky sort of sound, it might as well be speaking for as much as it irritates me.

  No one is around us at this moment, so I tell him, “Go away.”

  He doesn’t make another noise in response, but I know he’s still following me. Even after a few seconds…many seconds…what has to be thirty whole seconds, I still feel him.

  “Go,” I grit out, “away.”

  Still there.

  A group of early Christmas carolers spills out of the church I’m approaching, so I shut my mouth. I walk and walk and walk and he floats at my side. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him passing through people, causing them to shiver and breathe unsteadily, but I know they don’t think much of it. It’s cold out here and the wind is blowing and snow is slowly piling up on trees and cars and trashcans; the last thing on folks’ minds is the possibility of being chilled by a ghost.

  They have no idea how lucky they are. I would give anything not to be bothered by him.

  I’m coming up on the front door of Tokens Of Love when I finally get a chance to talk again. I whirl around to face Aaron and snap, “Look, it’s my motherfucking birthday, so could you just back off and give me a little motherfucking peace? Or at least let me get through my work shift without you breathing down my neck?”

  Does no good, of course. He was stubborn when he was alive and he’s stubborn in death. He just stares at me, silent and looming, looking like something straight out of a nightmare.

  “You son of a bitch,” I mutter as I shove my way into the shop.

  I work at Tokens Of Love with my elder sister Catie, who owns the place. With occasional help from her husband, we hand-make everything we sell: keychains, bookmarks, jewelry, wall décor, quilts, headboards for beds, and more. Everyone in town loves our stuff because even though it’s a little pricy, it’s all beautiful. And I can never help feeling right at home when I walk in—it happens now, Aaron’s ghost notwithstanding. I sigh from the relief of it as I shut the jingling door behind me.

  “Cora, is that you?” I hear Catie call from out of sight.

  I head around the front counter so I can clock in. “Yeah, it’s me.” After I get my shift started, I pull off my coat and glare at Aaron, who’s drifting this way. He isn’t fazed, though, and why would he be? I may be pissed off, but he’s even taller than he was before since he doesn’t have to walk on the ground, turning my 5’2” frame into a bigger joke than it already was. Then there’s the fact that I couldn’t hurt him if I tried since he’s no longer a living—

  “Hey, I want to introduce you to someone,” I hear Catie say from much closer than before.

  I look her way.

  And, oh, wow.

  I’m embarrassed to say my mouth falls open, the guy next to her is so good-looking. He’s taller than her by quite a bit, which means he’s that much taller than me, too, since her height and mine are almost exactly the same. His dark hair is a nice short-to-medium length and it looks like he might’ve casually styled it before he left the house, but then he got out in the wind and now most of it’s ruffled. He’s the opposite of me as far as fashion goes: his look is clean and classic and bordering on preppy, while mine is some dark mix of grunge and punk.

  Even
as his bright blue eyes dig into mine like I’ve never experienced before in my twenty-four years on this planet—well, twenty-five now—he smiles at me in the gentlest way.

  “Did you hear me?” I hear Catie ask.

  I shake my head wordlessly. No, if she spoke a second ago, I didn’t catch it.

  “I said this is Will.”

  Now I nod. Funny how a name I always thought was kind of plain can suddenly sound so pleasant.

  He shuffles forward and extends a hand to me. “Hi. It’s nice to meet you.”

  I put my hand in his bigger one, swallowing hard like I’ve never touched a guy before…although, to be fair, no guy I ever touched was as handsome as this one. Seriously.

  Catie clears her throat and I realize I’m gaping at him like an idiot. I blink my brain into working order and say, “Hi, Will. It’s nice to meet you, too.”

  “Coralie, right?” he asks.

  Oh, man. Living where we do in the South, most people rush my name out, smush it up all annoyingly. But not him. That deep voice of his wraps around every syllable and it is nice. “Yes, Coralie is my name.”

  Wow, wow, wow, that smile. I am ninety-nine percent sure that’s only a half-hearted smile, and still—

  Catie clears her throat again. When she speaks, I hear that her tone has grown more solemn. “Cora, he’s here to talk to you about something, um…” I get around to looking at her fully for the first time since I got here, and I see she’s frowning, “…something important.” She mouths silently, ‘Aaron.’

  My heartbeat kicks into overdrive and my hand briefly tightens around—oh, God, what? Why am I still holding Will’s hand? My cheeks grow hot as I pull my hand back to myself.

  I look to where I last saw Aaron’s ghost, but I don’t see him there. Or next to me. Or behind me. For real? Do I dare to hope he’s actually gone?

  “Okay?” Catie checks.

  I nod and wet my lips as I look at her. “Mmhmm.”

  She looks like she’s heartbroken for me. It makes me feel bad because she’s like a lot of other people in our town: unaware that I didn’t care about Aaron. Hardly anyone knows that the extent of our romantic relationship was a date he pestered me into going on for actual years. I only agreed to it because I hoped it’d help get me out of his system.

  He was a football star when we were in high school, so people adored him. I appreciated not being on his or his popular group’s radar, because I saw how cocky and immature he was. But he finally noticed me at graduation and stalked me that summer before he left for college. I have no idea what he liked about me, but he frequently appeared wherever I was and stayed until I could lock myself into my house. He came to my job at McDonald’s all the time, even when he wasn’t hungry. He sent flowers to me weekly, begging me to go out with him. Et cetera.

  Most people who noticed it thought it was sweet. I hated it, but the police wouldn’t handle it because he’d never tried to harm me. My parents accused me of enticing him; they were the critical type, unsupportive of anything that wasn’t deeply religious, which included me.

  I enjoyed three quiet years after Aaron left town, but when a career-ruining injury brought him back, his infatuation resumed. People thought it was romantic and believed his delusional ass when he said I was his soulmate, that I was much warmer in private than in public…even Catie. No one bought that I thought he was annoying—or if they did, they thought I was just adorably fighting attraction. Because what girl wouldn’t want him?

  His closest friend Eddie was the only one who saw the situation for what it was: Aaron obsessing over a girl who didn’t want him back. Hell, even Eddie’s fiancée Mia rooted for us.

  So, yeah, Catie doesn’t know the truth. She believes I’m Aaron’s devastated girlfriend. She and I have always been as close as being thirteen years apart allows, which isn’t that close; this shop and our general appearance are all we have in common. She’s married with three kids and I’ve just got me. She’s constantly busy, and while I’m not lazy, I don’t have near as much going on as she does. So spending time explaining how aggravating Aaron was when I didn’t even want to think about him? Yeah, that never happened. And now he’s haunting me and I really can’t tell her the truth.

  I look away from her, and my eyes land on Will again.

  Why does he want to talk to me about Aaron? Did they know each other? When Aaron was around, I never saw or heard mention of Will.

  Well, one thing’s for sure: he isn’t here to chat about the ghost. No one knows about that.

  “Why don’t you two talk in the back room?” Catie suggests. “I’ll handle the front of the store for a little while.”

  Nodding, I pick up my coffee and walk out from behind the counter. As I lead the way to the back, I note that the feeling I get from being followed is warm this time, not upsetting at all. Still, I keep the door to the back room open once we get in. Whatever he has to say can’t be that private.

  At the table against the wall, he pulls out a chair for me. I nod my thanks and watch him remove his coat and hang it on the back of the chair opposite mine. His fitted navy blue pullover looks good on him—he’s one of those leanly strong guys. As we sit, I clutch my coffee and make myself look him in the eyes again, knowing I need to start talking before I forget how to function like earlier.

  “What do you want to talk about Aaron for?” I ask.

  His smile is long gone now. In fact, he seems rather nervous. He inhales deeply and flattens his hands on the table, looking like he’s trying to gather courage. “Well, I....” He holds his breath as he gazes at me.

  I stop breathing, too, but not from nervousness.

  The air huffs out of his lungs and drifts across the table to me. As it blows my hair a little, I smell the maple syrup he must’ve eaten with breakfast before he came here. Yum.

  “I’m here to make amends,” he says. He drums his fingertips on the table and chews on his bottom lip before he adds, “It’s my fault your boyfriend died and I want to apologize to you personally.”

  I realize I’m back to breathing again, too, when Aaron’s ghost reappears right through the middle of the table and makes me gasp. He’s at eye-level with me and his hollow gaze bores into mine, sending chills and then hot frustration down my spine. I grit my teeth and fight the urge to cuss at him out loud.

  Although his coloring is unnaturally washed-out, he’s not transparent, so I can’t see through him when Will sighs, “I know.”

  Shit, he thinks I gasped because of what he said.

  “I can only imagine how I sound to you.” Sadness and regret weigh down his voice. “I know you probably don’t want to see me, and I totally understand that. I’m so sorry to just drop in like this, but I—”

  I shake my head wildly. “No, no. It’s not that.” I want to lean sideways so I can see around Aaron, but I don’t do it. I just look forward at where I think Will is, which is at ghostly, blood-slicked skin and hair. “Just—um—” I bounce a leg under the table and try to picture Will’s face in the place of Aaron’s, “—it’s all right. He wasn’t my boyfriend, despite what people think.”

  “No?” He sounds puzzled, which doesn’t surprise me. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Oh. Well…oh.”

  “Yeah, and it wasn’t your fault he died.” I unearth a piece of information from my memories. “A drunk lady hit him with her car.”

  “Yeah, my stepsister Taylor. She was driving drunk because I didn’t DD for her like I said I would. I knew about her plan to go to that bachelorette party for an entire week, and then when it came time to go get her, I bailed because I was tired from work. So damn stupid. She said she’d find another way home, so I thought she’d find someone else to drive her, but….”

  He sounds so genuinely troubled that I tear my eyes away from Aaron, loosen the vice grip I’ve had on my coffee, and get out of my chair. I go stand right at Will’s side, where I can see his frown and sad blue eyes. I’m so short that even with him
sitting down, we’re pretty much at eye-level—and, God, is it better than being at eye-level with a gruesome ghost.

  In my peripheral vision, I see that very ghost turning to look at me, but I’m determined to focus on Will. So determined, in fact, that I drop a hand onto his shoulder as I say, “Listen to me, okay?”

  His eyes widen slightly at the contact. For a few moments, he just looks at me. When he speaks, it’s to half-whisper, “I’m listening.”

  Did not know such ordinary words could sound so alluring.

  Feeling Aaron’s stare keeps me from getting too distracted, pushes the rest of the words out of my mouth. “It’s not your fault he died. Not even your stepsister’s. I promise.”

  Will raises his eyebrows at me.

  I raise mine back. “What?” I take my hand off his shoulder and glance at Aaron for a second. “Yeah, driving drunk was a terrible idea on her part, but he’s the one who was walking in the street in the middle of the night. Want to talk about someone being drunk on the road? He was so drunk he couldn’t talk right, and he still tried to walk home by himself in the dark.”

  The gargling, blood-in-the-throat noise sounds loudly and makes me clench my fists. I keep my eyes on Will, who looks…torn.

  “What?” I ask again, more irritably. “Don’t tell me you’re really going to sit there and blame yourself for what someone else did to their own ass.”

  “I—I just…” he shrugs a little, “…don’t really agree with you.”

  No matter how good-looking he is, I scoff at that because it’s stupid. Then I go back to my chair. After I’m sitting with one of my legs swung over the other, I pick up my coffee and take a long drink, no longer caring that I can’t see through Aaron.

  “This is what I’m here for, remember?” Will asks. “I looked you up and came here to apologize because, yeah, I could blame Aaron for his actions and I could blame my stepsister for hers, but the truth is that none of it would’ve happened if I’d been the one driving.”