by Minard, Tori
“Are you okay, Caroline?” he said. “You said it hit you in the back.”
“I’m a little sore, but I’ll be fine. I just can’t go in my room.” I glanced up at him. And caught him staring at me.
There was so much undisguised yearning in his eyes that I couldn’t look away. We stared helplessly at each other for an endless minute.
Max cleared his throat. “I’d better get started. You two stay out in the hall.”
“Can’t I watch?” Ivy said. “I was really hoping to watch.”
He gave her a faint smile. “I guess, but don’t blame me if you get smacked with something.”
“I won’t.”
He didn’t ask me if I wanted to watch. He just opened my door and stood in the opening, watching whatever was going on in my room.
“Are you the one who’s been throwing things around?” he said.
Ivy and I exchanged a wide-eyed glance. I couldn’t hear the answer he received. He took a step over the threshold.
“We’d like to come in and talk to you.”
Whatever it was must have given him the okay because he gestured to us to follow him before entering the room entirely. Ivy happily tromped after Max, but I hung back. I really didn’t want to be winged with another book.
I peered around the door and saw Retro-girl standing in the center of my room. Wait. She was the one who’d smacked me? I hadn’t perceived her as violent before, and it bothered me now to think she’d attacked me.
The air in the room felt refrigerator-cold again. She wore the same outfit she’d had on when I saw her at the sorority house—mini-skirt, high fringed boots, long red and green paisley tunic. Her hair was loose and ultra-straight. She had her arms crossed and was staring at Max.
I sneaked into my room and closed the door. Retro-girl glanced at me before going back to staring at my ex-boyfriend. She looked annoyed. Well, screw her. What did she have to be annoyed about? She wasn’t the one who’d been hit by a big-ass textbook and had her favorite mug broken into a million pieces.
I sat on my bed and glared at her. “Why are you messing up my room?”
“I’m here to talk to Max, not you,” she said in a perfectly clear voice.
“Well, la-di-da,” I said. “You broke my cup. You hurt me. I don’t like it, Retro-girl.”
The blonde frowned at me. “My name is Sharon, not Retro-girl.”
“Fine. Sharon. Whatever.”
“Caroline, stay out of this,” Max said.
“It’s my room and my stuff. I want to know why she attacked me.”
“You weren’t talking to Max,” she said. “I had to make you.”
“That’s why you hit me? Couldn’t you have just said something? You know, like with words?”
“I didn’t think you’d listen. You didn’t listen to Fred, so why would you pay any attention to me?”
Max turned his attention to me. “Fred came here?”
“Um...yeah,” I said, flushing.
“He wanted her to listen to what you had to say,” Sharon told him. “But she refused. I didn’t think she’d listen to me and I had to do something. Carter is desperate.”
Max sat down on my bed next to me as if his legs had been cut out from beneath him. “Carter.”
“He needs to talk to you. He has something to tell you, but he’s having trouble getting through. He needs you to reach out from your side.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” he said. “Why haven’t you spoken until now?”
“I was afraid. It takes a great deal of energy to do what I’m doing right now. I’ll be weakened for a long time afterward.”
“Would an offering help? Max said.
She tipped her head to the side, making her hair hang down like a golden curtain. “Maybe.”
“What would you like?”
“Flowers.” Sharon smiled. “Lots of flowers.”
“Okay. We’ll have flowers here for you by tomorrow afternoon.”
“Thank you.” Her smile turned flirtatious. “You’re cute, you know.”
He blushed. “Um...thanks.”
“I haven’t kissed a guy in forty years.”
What the hell? She couldn’t find a ghostly boyfriend somewhere? Why did she have to go after mine? Except he wasn’t mine anymore. I’d thrown him away.
Max dropped his head. “Look, Sharon, you’re very pretty, but...”
“Please? Just a little kiss?”
He glanced at me. I had no right to tell him not to do it, so I tried to keep my jealousy off my face. Max turned back to Sharon.
“Okay. Just a little one.”
She beamed at him. “Cool.”
He muttered something that sounded like “yeah, right.”
Sharon walked over to him and bent down. Max lifted his head. I couldn’t watch. It pissed me off to even think of him kissing someone else, let alone to watch it happen. Luckily, they didn’t make that lip-smacking noise that sometimes goes along with a kiss. If they had, I might have smacked Sharon in her ghostly jaw.
She sighed dreamily. “Thanks. I really like you. I’ll never forget you, Max.”
His face got redder and redder. “I—uh—”
That was kind of cute, actually. He was so tongue-tied. Self-possessed Max didn’t know what to say.
“Get in touch with Carter as soon as you can,” Sharon said.
Max’s face resumed its normal color. “Do we need to perform the ritual here or can I do it somewhere else?”
“You should be able to do it anywhere,” she said. “It would be better at the place where he died, but I guess that isn’t possible. Right?”
“It’s in Montana and my dad won’t talk to me,” Max said.
“So it doesn’t really matter what place you pick. Just reach out to him.” She looked at me. “Sorry I hurt you. I didn’t mean to hit you so hard.”
I gave her a stiff nod. “Apology accepted.”
“Okay. ‘Bye for now.” And she vanished.
“Wow. Oh, wow,” Ivy said. “I can’t believe I just saw that.”
“When are you going to talk to Carter?” I asked Max.
“I don’t know. Tonight, I guess, if I can get some supplies together that quickly.”
“Can I watch that one too?” Ivy said.
“No,” Max and I said simultaneously.
Her face fell.
“It’s too personal,” I said. “Max will want privacy. It’s not you, Ivy.”
“Okay,” she said in a small voice.
“Caroline’s right,” Max said. “Carter was my little brother. I don’t think I can handle having anyone I don’t know really well there.”
“Okay. I get it.” She backed toward my door. “Well, I’d better go. Thanks for letting me come into your room and everything.”
“No problem,” I said. “I’ll see you later.”
She left and I started picking up the stuff Sharon had tossed around. The coffee mug was a lost cause, but I picked up as many of the pieces as I could find. I needed to borrow the hall vacuum cleaner to get the rest of it.
“I’d like you to come with me,” Max said quietly. “When I reach out to Carter.”
I stopped in the act of picking up a piece of mug. “I don’t know.”
“Please.”
I sighed. He had come right away to help me, after I’d turned him away in a truly insulting manner. I owed him one. Maybe more than one, now that I thought about it.
“Okay,” I said.
He gave me a smile so faint I wasn’t sure I really saw it. “Thank you.”
“Can we have dinner first? I’m starving. I was about to get food when Retro-girl—I mean, Sharon—started lobbing coffee mugs and textbooks at me.”
He nodded. “Sure. What would you like?”
“Pizza?”
“Primo’s okay?”
“Yeah, that would be great.”
We took his car. It was the height of dinnertime on Saturday and Primo’s was pac
ked with mostly students. I felt so strange standing next to Max and waiting to be seated. It was just like we were together again, except different. Because everything had changed and there was this invisible wall between us, a barrier that kept me from reaching out and touching him the way I wanted to.
Max said something to me, but I couldn’t hear him over the roar of voices. “What?” I yelled.
He bent near me and I tingled all over. “We might be up really late tonight.”
“That’s okay.”
The hostess came to seat us. She gave us a window booth. Max slid in on one side and after a moment’s hesitation, I slid in after him. He looked at me with surprise on his face.
“It’s too loud to sit across from each other,” I said.
He nodded. “Okay.”
She handed us our menus and left. I already knew what I wanted, so I didn’t bother to open mine.
“Thank you for helping me today,” I said as he scanned his menu.
He gave me a sidelong glance. “You’re welcome.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d be willing.”
“Why not?”
“After the way I kicked you out of the dorm? I wouldn’t blame you if you never talked to me again.”
Max’s mouth flattened. “I didn’t blame you. What I did to you was wrong. It’s my fault we broke up.”
“Well, I—I felt bad about it afterward. Actually, I felt bad about it at the time.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He kept his nose in the menu, studying it as if it held the secret of eternal youth or something.
He didn’t want to discuss this at the moment. Okay. I could take a hint. I took a sip of my water. This wasn’t the best location for an intimate discussion anyway.
“I miss you,” he said in a voice so low I almost didn’t catch it.
I swallowed. “I miss you, too.”
Max set his menu on the table and looked at me. His eyes were desolate. “I’m so sorry I hurt you. I wish I could take it back.”
“It’s over.”
He bent his head. “I know. But I want you to understand that the revenge thing, that was only in the beginning. When I didn’t know you. As I started to see what kind of person you were, I dropped the idea of revenge.” He looked straight at me. “When we made love, it was real. All of it was real.”
Tears were threatening me again. How I wanted to believe him. I nodded without speaking, afraid my voice would break if I tried to talk.
He folded my hand in his. “I still love you. I’ll always love you, no matter what happens.”
Slowly, my fingers curled around his. “I love you, too.”
His eyes widened. “You do?”
“I’ve been so miserable without you.”
He lifted my hand to his lips. “Come back to me, Caro. Please. I’ll make it up to you a thousand times, just come back.”
Any second now, I was going to cry. “I—”
My denial died before I could verbalize it. The words refused to leave my throat. I closed my eyes and pinched my lips together to keep from crying.
Max took my upper arms and gently urged me against him, and I let him do it. I let him fold his arms around me and kiss the top of my head.
“Don’t cry, baby,” he murmured.
I didn’t want to give in. No, that’s not true. I believed that I shouldn’t give in. But his body felt so hard and hot against mine, he smelled like pure sex, and resting my face against the familiar soft knit of his navy-blue Henley felt like coming home. I put my arms around his waist and clung to him.
“Say you’ll come back,” he murmured.
I lifted my head and looked into his eyes. “Yes.”
For a moment, he just stared at me as if he couldn’t quite believe his ears. Then he took my face in his hands and kissed me in a hot and leisurely union of mouths. Lust overtook me with so much force I moaned against his lips.
He pulled back to cover my face with kisses. “I love you. I need you. If we hadn’t already ordered, I’d take you home right now and make love to you.”
“I love you, too. But I’m also starving. I don’t know if I can summon the dead on an empty stomach.”
He laughed. “All right. We’ll eat first.” His lips traced a path from my chin to my ear. “I’m so glad. So glad you said yes.”
When the waitress brought our pizza, we were in the middle of another scorching kiss. She set the food on the table without comment, but I saw her glance over her shoulder at us and smile when she got halfway across the restaurant. Great. We were providing a floor show.
“No-one is paying attention to us,” Max said. “They’re too busy with their own drama.”
“I’m not embarrassed,” I said, surprised to find it was true. “I’m proud to be with you.”
His eyes took on a soft glow. “Thank you. I’m proud to be with you, too.”
We leaned against each other in silence, eating and just basking in each other’s presence. I was so happy to be with him again that part of me wanted to laugh out loud with joy. But another part was already thinking about what we had to do later that evening. I was trying to picture how it would work, what would happen. How a ghostly preschooler was going to communicate with us in any meaningful way. Wouldn’t he just want us to play with him?
“Max, wasn’t Carter only three when he died?” I said, glancing at him in apprehension. I knew he hated talking about his brother.
“Yeah.” He took a bite of pizza and I wondered if he did it for the reason I sometimes took big bites of food during a conversation I found uncomfortable—so he wouldn’t have to talk while he chewed.
“I don’t understand how he’s going to have anything meaningful to tell us. I mean, he’s just a little kid, right? A ghostly preschooler.”
Max swallowed. “People change when they cross over. Sometimes, not always. It’s possible that Carter is more mature on the other side than you think. Spirits are eternal and all that.”
“Oh. I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
He put his slice of pizza back on the plate and pushed it across the table. “I’m really not hungry right now.”
I shouldn’t have said anything. Damn it, now I’d made him nervous again and he needed to eat. He looked so thin and pale it worried me.
“He doesn’t blame you,” I said.
He slanted a look at me. “Of course he does.”
“No. He doesn’t. He doesn’t blame you because it wasn’t your fault.”
Max’s breath gusted out of him. “Caroline, I appreciate what you’re doing, but you don’t understand. I fired the shot. It was my fault.”
I took him by the arm. “You were a ten year old boy. You didn’t know there were bullets in the gun.”
He shook his head, refusing to look at me.
“You need to eat. You look awful.”
“Gee, thanks.”
I kissed his jaw. “I’m only worried about your health.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to wrap up the rest of this and take it home.”
I blinked. “Okay. Sure.”
I flung my arm in the air and waved it wildly until I attracted the waitress. Max sat and stared moodily at his plate during this exchange. I hoped he wasn’t going to back out of contacting Carter, because it seemed like something he needed to do. Not only because of whatever message it was that Carter wanted to convey, but for the sake of his own peace of mind.
Carter would forgive him. He’d probably already forgiven him, but Max didn’t believe that and probably never would until he heard it from Carter himself. He would carry the crushing weight of his guilt and shame around for the rest of his life unless he faced his brother.
I slipped my hand into his. “I’ll be there with you, no matter what happens.”
He said nothing, but his hand tightened around mine.
Chapter 28
Max
I felt hollowed out and empty as I parked my car in the driveway of my house. Beside me, C
aroline was quiet. The sun had set. My street was dark, the streetlights blocked by the dense canopies of the big-leaf maples whose bare branches arched over the pavement all along its length.
Caroline and I walked quietly to the front door. Her presence gave me strength to keep moving forward in spite of the dread that had overtaken me in the restaurant. The last goddamn thing I wanted in the whole world was to look into Carter’s innocent blue eyes and see hatred reflected back at me. But it was overdue. I owed him much more than an apology; unfortunately, that was all I had to offer.
We put the pizza box on my little kitchen table and Caroline sat down to finish her dinner. I couldn’t put a bite in my mouth. The thought of food made me want to puke right now. But I sat with her and stared at the black window glass while she ate her food.
I needed some mugwort to help open the way between this world and the spirit world. I probably still had a little in my herb stash, but I wasn’t sure what was in there after the move. It had been a while since I’d done any work with the dead, other than talking to Fred, that is.
I shot a covert glance at Caroline. She seemed so calm, so easy, sitting here with me and eating pizza as if I’d never killed anyone. It always amazed me that she’d have anything to do with me, knowing the terrible thing I’d done. What exactly had Trent told her about that night? He might have lied or exaggerated.
No, make that he definitely lied and exaggerated. She deserved to hear the truth from me, even if it hurt to talk about it.
“I took the gun from a drawer in my dad’s desk,” I said, still gazing out at the darkness beyond the window. “His office. He usually kept the door locked, but that night it was open for some reason.”
“And you tried the door?”
“It...I think it was open. Just partly, a crack. Enough to tell me I could get in there and look at stuff I wasn’t supposed to touch.”
She made an encouraging sound.
My apartment felt so cold we both still wore our jackets. I hadn’t turned the heat on since she’d left me, and the only heat I got was what arose from the apartment downstairs.
“My dad’s office was always cold,” I said. “He liked to leave the window open all the time, even in the winter.”
“Was it winter when you went in there?” Her voice was soft, unobtrusive.