Always You

by Roxie Noir

  Darcy stands from her chair, puts her bass down, and stretches. Her dress rides up her thighs by a few inches, the top going tight around her breasts, and my mouth goes dry.

  “But you’re still together,” Darcy points out, and Joan laughs.

  “Ava once tried to set Nadine on fire,” she says, heading for the door. “They didn’t speak for a year. Trust me, you all aren’t doing so badly. At least when you got set on fire, Trent here put you out instead of literally fanning the flames.”

  “He’s still an asshole,” I say, putting my guitar down on a stand. “And he can be a real high and mighty motherfucker sometimes, like he’s never fucked anything up.”

  Joan just looks entertained as she opens the door.

  “You should try meditating,” she says. “It’ll help with some of the anger. See you guys tomorrow morning.”

  And with that, she’s gone, leaving me in a swirl of desire and irritation and sleeplessness that makes me feel like someone’s going at my brain stem with a cheese grater.

  I can’t play these songs right, I can’t talk to Gavin without getting into a fight, I can’t even fucking look at Darcy without popping a boner, and she can barely look at me.

  The two of us walk out of the room in silence, shutting the door and turning off the lights. We walk to the outside door of the old airplane hangar in silence, Darcy a step ahead of me as I try not to watch her legs in that dress.

  It’s a long fucking walk, or at least it feels that way, and every step is worse. Fucking excruciating.

  This can’t go on. It can’t. She pushes open the door to the outside — it’s raining lightly — and as the cool air hits my face, I think: I can’t undo this but maybe I can fix it.

  “Hey,” I say, and Darcy turns. She just looks at me, doesn’t say anything. “Can you catch a ride back with Gavin or Joan?”

  “Sure,” she says. “Why?”

  I have an idea of how to fix this. It might be a stupid idea, more stupid than throwing rocks into the river and yelling, but it’s something and I need to goddamn try.

  “I’m gonna take a walk. Clear my head. You know.”

  She opens her mouth, like she’s about to ask something else, but she just nods instead, then walks toward the parking lot, waving one arm at Joan.

  I watch her walk away for a moment, then duck back inside.

  Chapter Twenty

  Darcy

  I’m already in bed when someone knocks on the door. I’m playing a dumb game on my phone, though I’ve got my book next to me. I meant to read it, but what I really need is colors and lights flashing in front of my eyes and distracting me, not something that might let me think.

  I pause when I hear it. On my phone, a stack of jewels crashes down and shatters, but I’m hoping that whoever it is will go away and just leave me alone.

  But no. They knock again, and I sigh, because I’m pretty sure I know who’s at my door. There’s about a five percent chance it’s Gavin or Nigel and maybe a one percent chance that it’s Joan, which leaves an eighty-nine percent chance it’s Trent, if my math is right.

  And I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t know what to do around him, how to hold my hands or where to look or what face to make, because I still wish I’d said yes instead of no and despite everything, I don’t feel like I can reverse it.

  He knocks again, and I roll out of bed, wearing old boxer shorts and a t-shirt, and shout “I’m coming!” as I head through the bedroom and the living room, both dark.

  I yank the door open, already afraid he’s left.

  “Did I wake you up?” Trent says, looking over my shoulder into my dark suite.

  “I was reading in bed,” I say.

  There’s a long pause. He’s got a brown paper bag in one hand, and it crinkles when he shifts.

  Is he drinking?

  “What’s up?” I finally remember to ask.

  “Can I come in?”

  I step back and hit a light, my eyes still on the bag as he closes the door behind him.

  “I can’t stand this,” he rumbles.

  “Can’t stand what?” I ask, like I don’t fucking know.

  “So I came here to fix it,” he says, looking toward the window where the moonlight is on the trees. “You were right. I got carried away at the river, I was in a bad place, I was just being...”

  He drifts off for a moment, my stomach clenching, his face suddenly distant, closed off because fuck I don’t want to hear this. I don’t know what I fucking want to hear, but I only tried to kiss you because I was really upset isn’t it.

  “Reckless,” he finally says. “And it was stupid, and I’m sorry, and I came here to make things normal again.”

  I almost say you showed up at my hotel room at eleven at night, after I was in bed, to make things normal again? But it’s not like we’ve ever quite had a normal friendship, so I don’t.

  Instead I swallow and nod, not sure what to say, feeling like broken chunks of something I can’t identify are floating around my heart.

  “I’d like that,” I say.

  Trent walks to the dining table, plops the paper bag on it, and starts pulling things out: two headlamps, a flashlight, a length of rope, a meat thermometer, and a canister of baby powder.

  I find myself uncharacteristically speechless for a long moment, and Trent just looks at me, arms crossed, the shadow of a smile on his face.

  “Caving?” I hazard, because I have no idea how this is going to make things normal again.

  “Nope,” he says.

  I cross my arms in front of myself, because I’m not wearing anything under this very old, very thin t-shirt, and Trent doesn’t need to know my nipples’ opinion of him right now.

  It’s a positive opinion. Despite myself.

  “Coal mining?”

  “Still no,” he says, reaching into the bag again. He pulls out a long-sleeved black t-shirt that’s way too small for him, so it’s probably for me.

  “Mime school.”

  “Closer.”

  “Is it?”

  The smile’s still flickering on his face.

  “No.”

  “I give up.”

  He crumples the paper bag in his massive hands and tosses it into a trash can.

  “There’s a haunted mansion about twenty minutes outside town,” he says. “And after watching every episode of I Think My Cabana Has Ghosts or whatever it was, I figure we’re ghost experts.”

  “Right now?” I ask, even though I already know the answer. Yes, right now.

  “Unless you’d rather go to bed.”

  I can’t help but smile, because given the options of go ghost hunting with Trent or sleep, it’s not even a choice.

  “I’d rather find some ghosts.”

  “I thought so.”

  Trent tosses me the black shirt, the smile still playing across his face.

  “Go put that on, I can’t have you giving us away,” he says as I catch it.

  “I would never,” I protest. “Tell me about the ghost while I get changed.”

  I leave the bedroom door open and step behind it so I can hear Trent as he talks, standing by the table, not facing the door.

  And I think about it. Fuck yes I do. I think about stripping naked except for my bandages and walking out and saying something like try kissing me again, but this feels like it might finally be normal again, like we might have gotten over the madness that happened two nights ago and back to baseline.

  Baseline, where I think about Trent more than I wish I did and got jealous of a college student in short shorts earlier today. Someday that has to stop, I think.

  “This place was built by a lumber baron, Woodford Beechcourt, in the late 1800s on the side of a mountain. He apparently put it there so he could oversee all his workers from his front porch while he drank fine wine and counted his money.”

  I slide a tank top over my head, since I still can’t wear a bra, and grin at my bedroom.

  “And he was murdere
d by the men he overworked and fed into a woodchipper,” I call.

  “Better,” Trent says.

  “Better than murder by woodchipper?”

  “He was having an affair with a local woman, and his wife found out,” Trent goes on. “But when she went to confront the other woman, the two of them fell madly in love, so they conspired to murder the husband, collect his insurance, and then travel the world together as lovers. They used arsenic or something that was untraceable back then.”

  “And then they woodchippered him.”

  “There’s no woodchipper, and remind me never to do something behind your back,” he says, his voice low and laconic.

  I sigh dramatically, the knot of nerves that’s been in my chest for days slowly unwinding.

  “Anyway, the plan worked,” Trent says. “The wife was properly shocked, blamed heart troubles or something. She waited an appropriate amount of time after the funeral, then just took off one day with the mistress. Sold the house and no one ever saw the two of them again. The next owners turned it into a bed and breakfast.”

  I come out of the bedroom, practically skipping I’m so excited. I swear Trent glances at my chest for one second, but then it’s eyes on my face again as he leans back against the table, arms crossed in front of himself.

  “A few years later, the east wing was nearly burnt down in a terrible fire, rendering the whole place pretty much unusable. Rumor has it,” Trent says, a slight smile on his lips, one eyebrow raised. “That an unwed couple shared a room, and the very conservative Woodford’s ghost was so enraged that he set fire to the place.”

  “He had an affair and got mad about an unwed couple?”

  “I guess ghosts can be hypocrites too,” Trent deadpans, and I laugh.

  Then I stop.

  “Did anyone die in the fire?”

  The burn on my back tingles slightly at the thought, but Trent shakes his head.

  “Everyone got out and the fire was contained,” he says. “The rest of the mansion is virtually pristine.”

  I grab a headlamp and a flashlight from the table and shove them into my pockets. Trent does the same, I put on my jacket and shoes, and we’re out the door.

  Even if I’ve got a vague premonition that I shouldn’t be going places alone in the dark with Trent.

  Even if I know what happened the last time we did, even if it’s a miracle that things aren’t more strained between us right now.

  I don’t even know that I’ll say no twice. I don’t know if I can. That one word, don’t, felt like pushing a boulder out of my mouth. Maybe the hardest fucking thing I’ve ever said, because even though I knew it was a bad idea, I wanted to kiss him.

  Dear God, did I want to. Maybe more than I’ve ever wanted anything, or at least it felt that way, but I know better, and I know that people who kiss each other break up and I can’t, I just fucking can’t.

  And now here we are, again, and I’m dumb as a box of rocks — ten boxes of rocks, if that’s dumber than one — to be doing this, but I’m all out of self-control.

  “Do I really have to wear this?” I ask as we walk outside, pulling the headlamp from my pocket and putting it on.

  “You do now,” he tells me.

  I flip him off. He grins. Something warm and nice percolates through me, from my toes to my belly to the top of my head.

  This is exactly what I can’t lose, I think. Don’t fuck it up.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Trent

  “Why’d a lumber baron make his house out of stone?” Darcy asks, her voice quiet in the low light of Beechcourt Mansion’s enormous entryway.

  “Maybe he got tired of looking at wood,” I say.

  Darcy grins.

  “The Lumber Baron would be a great nickname for a porn star,” she says.

  I just raise my eyebrows at her.

  “He’s got a lot of wood?” she says, and grins at me. I roll my eyes, but I’m smiling. “Think of the porn setups a lumber baron could have. Hey there, can you inspect my wood? I’ve got too much wood, can you take some off my hands? Wood for sale, long, hard and...”

  She trails off, thinking and staring up at the ceiling of the mansion. There’s a hole in it, the stars shining through.

  “Splintery? Maybe don’t use that one.”

  “Because the others were solid gold,” I tease, walking toward the sweeping stone staircase on one side of the huge foyer. This place feels like an old hunting lodge crossed with a medieval castle or something, empty and made of stone, our voices echoing through it.

  I check out some of the stone work, little carved patterns along the railing, but I’m wondering if she watches porn. I’m wondering what kind she watches, whether she watches it at night, after I leave, and I can’t help but picture her.

  Screen glowing, Darcy in one of the chairs with the ugly bear-patterned fabric. One hand down her pants, moving quickly, the way her eyes might drift shut when she gets close, her other hand clutching the armrest, her lips parting.

  God damn it, I’m doing this again.

  Since she turned me down I feel like this is all I do. She’ll say something dirty, or even just salacious, or I’ll see a sliver of skin or a glance I’m maybe not supposed to see and I can’t stop thinking about her, Darcy, what if she’d said yes.

  I’m fighting the urge to kiss her neck when she stands in front of me, the urge to slide my hand into her jeans from behind when I tend to her burn, see if she’s as wet as I’m hard. Fuck, I watch her ass every time she walks away and think about the way it would bounce while she rode my cock in reverse cowgirl.

  The more time I spend with her, even after getting turned down, the worse I want her. The more I think about all the ways I could make her come and how fucking spectacular it would be when I did.

  I shake off the thoughts, yet again, and slowly circle the room we’re in. It’s on the first floor of the mansion, big stone blocks forming the floor, a sweeping staircase going to the floor above and then the floor above that. Walls made of cut stone blocks, doorways lined with smaller stone.

  It’s like we’re in a medieval castle, only we’re two hours outside Seattle. I think Woodford might have been slightly insane.

  “All right,” Darcy says, suddenly behind me as I stare into a doorway, half thinking about Woodford and half thinking about how I want to pull her hair and watch her eyelids flutter. “Which part is supposed to be haunted?”

  “The whole thing, as far as I know,” I say.

  She looks around, the pupils in her blue eyes wide and black in the darkness.

  “So we’ve gotta explore the whole place?”

  “I guess.”

  “And what time is sunrise?”

  I smile at her, just slightly.

  “You think you’ll last that long?” I ask.

  “What, you think there’s gonna be a weird shadow and I’m gonna run screaming?”

  “No, I think you might get tired and bored when there’s no ghost,” I say.

  Neither of us actually believes in ghosts. Or, at least, I don’t. Darcy says that she’s agnostic on the topic of ghosts, but has never seen any compelling evidence in favor of them. We’ve debated this about a billion times while watching trashy ghost-hunting reality shows.

  “If there’s no ghost it’s your fault,” she says. “You found this place.”

  “My options were limited,” I point out. “Let’s see if you can find me a more-haunted mansion in this small town on short notice.”

  She takes a step closer, smirking, as a gentle breeze blows through the broken windows and past us.

  Somehow, I manage to meet her gaze instead of looking to see whether her nipples stiffen in the cold. She’s stopped wearing the Ace bandages around her wound — doctor’s orders — and the tank top she’s wearing instead of a bra doesn’t do a whole lot to hide when she’s cold or excited.

  It’s another nail in my coffin, sheer goddamn torture. Two days ago, when we were drinking on the roof again,
talking about the tour coming up, there was a lull in the conversation and I caught her looking at me?

  Excited.

  Happy hour yesterday, when she drank two glasses of wine, I drank one, and she teased me for ten full minutes about the middle-aged woman who recognized me and might have been flirting?

  Also excited.

  “I think that’s Woodford right now,” I say, the breeze still moving her hair slightly. “He’s angry that we’re questioning him.”

  Darcy just laughs, her eyes flicking to my face in a way I don’t quite understand, and she twirls one finger in the air.

  “Turn around and let me get our ghost-hunting equipment out of the backpack,” she orders.

  Minutes later, we’re walking through a wide stone doorway and into another room, this one with a massive fireplace. Darcy’s got the meat thermometer in one hand, held out like a sword or something, and I’ve got the can of baby powder.

  The thermometer is for finding cold spots, which apparently indicate ghosts. The baby powder is... I’m not exactly sure. I just know that reality TV ghost hunters are always throwing powder everywhere, so I bought some.

  “This is stupid,” Darcy whispers.

  “It really is,” I whisper back.

  She hits the button on the thermometer, then peers at the tiny LCD screen. I sprung for the instant-read kind, because I’m fancy.

  “Sixty-six point six,” she says. “Satan’s temperature.”

  “That’s a good lead for sure,” I say.

  “I don’t think these are really designed to take air temperatures, by the way.”

  “I’m gonna tell you what I told you before,” I say, slowly looking around the room. “I’d like to see you do better.”

  She grins and flips me off before walking through that room and into the next, then the next, and I follow.

  Soon, we’re not really ghost hunting any more. We’re just exploring this crazy mansion. There’s not much left in it, hardly any furniture, but there are a few random knickknacks here and there. She finds a letter opener in a corner, and I find an old spoon lying under a sink that clearly hasn’t been used in a long, long time.