Pushing himself to his knees, Justin looped Rose’s legs over his shoulders and began to stroke in and out of her again. This time, however, there was no anger in his thrusts, no deliberate attempt to hurt her and Rose felt herself begin to shake. She could see Justin’s neck muscles strain and knew he was close to coming as well.
Reaching down, she found her clit and stroked it, something that James had never allowed when they’d been together. When Justin groaned in appreciation, she knew that she was making love with a modern man again and not the remnants of a ghost.
“I can’t hold out any more, Rose.” There was a sheen of sweat on Justin’s brow and she knew he was close to losing control. So was she. It was what she wanted. Maybe it would make the horror of what had just happened go away.
“Then come with me. Erase the bad and embrace the good,” she urged and tightened around him. That was all it took. Justin exploded inside her, hot and hard. Rose convulsed as she felt Justin come, her own orgasm close behind.
They stayed locked together for a few moments, breathing hard, until Justin slowly eased her legs off his shoulders and pulled out of her. Tucking her beside him on the fainting couch, her body quickly began to lose the firmness it acquired during sex.
If that bothered Justin, he didn’t say anything. Instead, his gaze drifted around the room, not really resting on anything, as if lost in thought. He was quiet for a long time and Rose found herself loath to break the silence.
“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I have no idea what happened. One minute, I was here, in control of my body, and the next…” He shook his head and Rose could sense the shame rolling off of him in waves. He was horrified and embarrassed by what had almost happened. “I was just gone. Then all of the sudden, I was back and I saw what I was doing, the things I was saying. I’m sorry, Rose. I would never hurt you. Never.”
“I know.” Her words were meant to comfort, but she knew they didn’t, mostly because she was still as confused as before. Having sex hadn’t made things better. In fact, it might have made them worse. “I think it was James who was with me, in your body, using it so that he could have me once again.”
He frowned and scrunched up his face. “But I thought I was James reborn. We’ve covered this.”
She sighed, not sure how to explain what had just happened because she didn’t completely understand it herself. Still, Justin needed to know the truth. “You are,” she said, settling on the basic approach, “but remember how I said that the universe changes things? There is a kernel of something, a bit of essence, that is unique to James and only him. It’s what allowed you to be your own man and not a carbon copy of James. I think that essence is trapped in the house with me and that’s what takes over your mind sometimes.”
Justin was silent for a moment. “That would explain what I felt, like I was still inside my body but not controlling it.” He shook his head. “There are so many memories – mine and his, and I have no idea where one ends and the other begins.”
Pushing herself up, Rose turned to face him. She reached out and ran a hand down his cheek. “When we were making love just now, for a time, it was like I was with James. I was so scared, yet I knew that if I could reach you – the real you and not James – then everything would be okay. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but it’s the truth.”
She ran a finger over his full lips. “I think this entire house is more heavily influenced by magic than we suspected. And the longer you stay here without figuring this thing out, the riskier it is. For both of us.”
That made Justin sit up and he slid his legs to the floor. “What do you mean? How bad is it going to get the longer I stay here?”
Rose ran a hand through her hair, now completely disheveled from sex. Conflicting thoughts and emotions assaulted her and she wanted nothing more than to disappear into the safe confines of the attic.
“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “You were right in what you said when you first arrived. My memories, they’re not right. It’s almost like they’re not real, as if someone replaced what actually happened with these images of how our lives should have been but never were.”
“There were times just now, before James took me over completely” he confessed, “that I thought something was wrong. I wanted to stop, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t remember why I should.” Shame was written all over his face again and he started to pull away from her, as if afraid touching her once more would bring back the ghost of a dead man.
“James had that problem,” she said quietly, trying to reassure him, but not sure how to go about it when her own thoughts and feelings were in turmoil. “I think. After tonight, it seems as if I should question everything I’ve told you since you arrived, especially about the man you used to be. I’m so confused and seeing you here is only making it worse.”
Reaching out, she stroked a hand through his hair, still trying to reassure him, but knowing it was futile. She needed time to process what had just happened and where they went from here. What she said next were some of the most difficult words she’d ever had to say.
“I need some time, Justin.” Before she could move on to a new existence with him, if that was even possible, she had to understand and come to terms with her past.
“I don’t understand what’s going on here, but I do know that I need time to figure it out, sort through what’s real and what’s not. Can you give me that? Please?” Rose’s heart ached at the thought of not seeing him, even if it was only for a few days, but she knew it had to be done. If she were honest with herself, she was hurt, angry and confused – not at Justin but at the universe at large. The only cure for that was time alone.
From the look on his face, Justin clearly didn’t like the idea, but, given his own odd behavior and embarrassment over his earlier actions, it was obvious that he felt as if he didn’t have any choice. Nodding, he slowly rose and gathered up his clothes where he’d tossed them around the room.
“I’ll give you whatever you need, Rose. I just want you to be happy. Truth is, I need some time to figure out what happened to me, too.” That was a little bit of a lie, but she didn’t need to know that. He meant what he’d said. All he wanted was for her to be happy no matter how much it hurt him in the process.
“Thank you,” she said as she made her own clothes reappear. “It won’t be forever, just a day or two so I can sort things out. I need to make sense out of my memories. Then we can continue on as we have been. Maybe we can even try to move forward, figure out a way to make this work between us.”
Rising from the couch, Justin leaned down and gave Rose a sweet, searing kiss, one that she felt all the way to her knees. “Call me when you want to see me again. I’ll be waiting. I’ll wait forever for you. I already have.” Then, with a small smile, he was gone, disappearing into the entryway and out the front door.
When the lock on the front door clicked, Rose relaxed a bit, sinking back into the couch, her thoughts still in a jumble. She half hoped her grandfather would appear but was also rather glad when he didn’t. There was a lot to think about, a lot to sort through. She was facing a very harsh reality that she had to come to terms with and she needed to do it sooner rather than later.
The rough, almost violent sex when James had briefly taken control of Justin’s body had shaken loose all of the repressed memories that had been hiding in the deep recesses of her mind. She had to deal with them. There was no other choice.
Now that the proverbial dam had been broken, additional memories continued to surface, not all of them good. In fact, some of them were downright horrible. If these memories were real, and she had no reason to doubt that they were, then Rose was certain of two things. One, James had been far from a saint. In fact, some might say he bordered on cruel. Two, someone had deliberately tampered with her memory, replacing harsh reality with a sugarcoated version of it. Of the problems before her, her altered memory was the far more disturbing of the two.
Altering a person’s memory was
difficult but it could be done. Altering a ghost’s memory? That was supposed to be nearly impossible. Only someone that the ghost implicitly trusted would have been able to get close enough to do it. There was only one person in her current plane of existence that could have done it – her grandfather. That thought disturbed her far more than anything else she’d learned.
If he had been willing to go that far, what else had he been willing to do? Somehow, Rose wasn’t quite sure she wanted to know.
Chapter Nineteen
That night as Rose sat at her dressing table brushing her hair, she wondered what tomorrow would bring. Only a few days ago, her existence was the same as it had been since her death – quiet, staid and more than a little boring. Now, not only had paranormal investigators invaded her house, but she’d also begun to question everything about her very existence. If her memories had been tampered with, what else had been done to her? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
This mess had started the night Sophia Hamlin tried to enter the house and it spiraled out of control when Tim and Justin arrived to investigate. Now, her once quiet existence was in shambles, new thoughts and raw emotions all tangled up in knots inside of her. She didn’t know who she was any more. In the span of only a few short days, she’d gone from being a ghost simply waiting for her beloved late husband to come and rescue her to a wannabe woman with a human lover and some very conflicted, very painful memories.
The only thing she knew with absolute certainty was that she loved Justin. She loved him far more than she had ever loved James, a man who was not the saint she’d once believed him to be. Now, she wasn’t even sure she had really known him at all. She did know Justin, though, right down to his very soul.
She hadn’t really wanted to send Justin away earlier, but she’d been so confused and scared that she hadn’t known what else to do. She’d just wanted time to sort through her feelings and make some sense of what she’d recently learned about James. Now that Justin was gone, however, she wondered how soon it would be before he returned. He’d said he’d stay away for as long as she wanted, but she prayed that the pull he felt for her was strong enough to overcome his common sense. If not, she’d just have to send her grandfather after him, she supposed, though she really didn’t want to do that. If he didn’t return by tomorrow night, however, she would have no other choice.
Sorting through her thoughts and emotions hadn’t taken long at all, actually, and now that she knew, or at least strongly suspected, the truth about James, there was no question in her mind. She loved Justin far more than she had ever loved James. James was an illusion and always had been. Justin was not. He was quite real.
However, the conflicting memories of her dead husband had shaken Rose badly. Before Justin had burst into her existence, she remembered James as being nothing but kind and loving, a peaceful man who never had a harsh word for anyone. He had adored her, done anything to please her. Now, she realized that her memories of him almost seemed too saint like to be real. She should have known better.
Not to mention that her sexual encounter with Justin that afternoon had been rough and coarse. If she hadn’t known something was wrong before, she had then. Justin and James had blurred in her mind as James’ essence, clearly still trapped in the house, had taken over Justin’s body, creating a man she didn’t recognize, but someone she suspected was more true to James’ nature than Justin’s.
That had all but confirmed her suspicions. If James had truly been the saint she’d believed him to be, the perfect gentleman she’d adored, then he would have been a perfect lover as well, not the rough and tumble man Justin had morphed into that afternoon.
After sending Justin away, Rose realized her own memories had shifted over the course of the day. She began to remember James as a man who was both cruel and kind. In some instances, he was hard and harsh, almost brutal. While he had loved her in his own way, he had also struggled to feel worthy of her. That often led to outbursts of anger, the same kind Justin had been successfully fighting off since the first night he’d arrived on her doorstep.
She and James had shared a great love, Rose was certain of that much. However it hadn’t been perfect, at least not as perfect as she remembered. She suspected that Justin was, in reality, closer to the man she she’d created in her fantasies than he was to the man James had been.
Sighing, she allowed her thoughts to wander back to Justin, just as they had ever since she’d asked him to give her time.
He wasn’t James. She knew that now and accepted it. She loved Justin as he was, perhaps in some ways even more than she had loved James. It felt wrong to say that, because she had loved her husband, but it was the truth. Unlike her husband, Justin, even while under the influence of the house, could control his anger and emotions in a way James never could. Even when the house affected Justin to the point of coarseness, he was still in control.
She also had to face that fact that her relationship with James hadn’t been the way she’d remembered it. Yes, there had been sex and lots of it, but had it been the picture perfect, sunny life she remembered? Rose doubted it. That afternoon, after Justin had gone, she’d wandered around the house by herself, touching things, remembering the way the house had looked while she had been alive. As she’d done so, she’d realized that her memories were no longer as sharp as they had been. Events that she’d long cherished in her heart weren’t clear anymore, as if they hadn’t occurred at all but rather been figments of her imagination.
Could she have imagined it? Could she have made her old life seem better than it had been? Or had someone, probably her grandfather, planted those memories there? If he had, then why had he bothered? What would it have hurt to allow her to remember James as he had been instead of creating the sugar sweet illusion she’d lived with for so long?
It suddenly occurred to Rose that her grandfather had enhanced many of her memories over the years. He would mention something and, even if she didn’t remember it clearly at first, the more he talked, the more she would see what he saw, remember the event as he did. Was it possible that Ben was playing with her mind?
“Figured it out, didn’t you, Rosie?” Rose didn’t jump when she heard her grandfather’s voice behind her. She knew he’d come to see her tonight; he was too nosey not to have known what happened earlier. Slowly, she spun away from her mirror and saw her grandfather standing before her, hat in his hands.
“I know that my memories aren’t my own, at least not all of them.” She regarded the old ghost thoughtfully. “Did you plant them there?”
He shrugged and settled into a nearby chair. “I didn’t so much plant anything as I just helped you remember it differently. Made you think it was better than it was. That was all.”
“Why?” Rose tossed her brush onto the dressing table and shifted so that she could face Ben directly. “Why would you do that to me? Why would you allow me to think James was a saint when I know now that he wasn’t? I get the feeling you didn’t even like him all that much!”
How much more was there that her grandfather hadn’t told her? Exactly how far had he gone to manipulate her memories? Suddenly, she was desperate to know the truth.
“Because, Rosie girl, you wanted him to be better than he was.” Ben’s voice was calm, which surprised her. Usually when questioned, her grandfather became defensive. “When you woke up in this house, Rosie, you were so confused. You didn’t know what happened and I didn’t have the answers to give you. You were lost and the only person you could think of was James. You literally wept for him, something no ghost is supposed to be able to do. I didn’t know how to help you and the beings that sent me here to guide you didn’t have any answers either.”
“You could have told me the truth,” she said sadly. “Instead, you lied to me, helped me paint a picture in my mind of a man who didn’t exist, who never existed.”
He scuffed a toe of his worn boot against the attic floor, even though no new visible marks appeared to mar the already worn surface.
“You believed in him so much when you were alive, honey. You never saw the bad, only the good. Or if you did see the bad, you never let on, at least to me. What was I supposed to think?”
“Tell me,” Rose whispered, fighting back the tide of emotions. She needed to be strong and stop hiding from everything. “Tell me the truth about James. Who was he, really? What was he like? Was he this anger-driven man I’m starting to remember? Or are those false memories, too?”
“No, Rosie, you have it right now.” Ben sighed and settled into his own chair more comfortably. “James was a hot-head and not always a very nice man. He was handsome, though, and oh, did the ladies love him. He knew it too, used it to his advantage whenever he could. You were smitten with him from the moment you saw him taking a beating from his pa in front of the harness shop.”
“I don’t remember that,” Rose confessed. “In fact, I don’t remember when I met James.”
“That was the day. You were both immediately attracted to each other, even as children. As you grew older, he came to see you as a pretty face and a chance to move up in the world through marriage. We, hell everyone in town pretty much, tried to keep you apart by sending you to finishing school in New York, but it didn’t much help.” Ben stroked his chin thoughtfully. “The moment you came back to town, you went looking for him. After you found him, from that day on, you didn’t want anything to do with other men. Only him.”
Rose absorbed the new information, sorting through it and matching it with what she remembered. “I had other beau. Others you and Daddy deemed more suitable for me. There was even one who offered to marry me, I think. But I didn’t want them after I was with James, did I?”
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