“A crush?” I mumble, glancing away.
“Yeah. A big one.” He reaches out and brushes his knuckles across my cheek. “I think you may know her.”
I gulp back the lump that’s formed in my throat. Looking back at him, I shake my head in the smallest possible way so as not to deter him from what might happen next. Because maybe I do know, but I can’t presume to know anything right now. Is he about to kiss me?
He drops his face toward me, and on instinct, I close my eyes. After that, it only takes a millisecond for his lips to join mine. The sensation is more perfect than I ever imagined—firm, yet soft and sort of urgent—as if he’s been holding this back for a long time, and he just can’t anymore. It’s everything a first kiss is supposed to be—tantalizing, ecstatic, provocative, topsy-turvy. He tastes like oranges and salt. My hands rest on the bare skin of his shoulders. Our lips part, and our tongues meet.
I pull away. “We can’t…” I mumble in a breathy whisper.
“Why not?” His blue eyes are dark with lust, his breath hot on my cheek.
“Because… we’re going to be—”
“Related? I don’t care who gets married. That doesn’t make us related.”
He cradles my face in his hands and stares into my eyes, but I’m too stunned to answer. What he said is how I feel too, but the concept also seems oddly offensive. So instead of answering or agreeing or arguing, I kiss him. I tilt my chin up and find his lips with mine, and I don’t even think about stopping again.
My body’s on fire—my lips, my limbs, the nape of my neck. I lace my fingers in his hair, working my mouth against his and pressing against him where our bodies meet between the two seats. Finally, he pulls away to catch his breath. He rests his forehead against mine, panting and clearly overheated, and I don’t dare look down at his board shorts.
“You’re a great kisser,” he says.
“Thanks. So are you.”
“Are you going to tell me now?”
“Are you trying to kiss it out of me?” I ask, giddy about flirting with him and astonished that this is really happening.
“Maybe.” He chuckles and kisses my cheek, making me melt a tiny bit more.
“You won’t want to kiss me after I tell you,” I warn him.
“Why not?”
“Because. It’s bad.” I look down at my feet, hoping I don’t have to ruin what’s going on between us.
“How about we cool off with a swim first?” He runs his hands up and down my arms, raising goose bumps all along the way.
“Okay.” I’m flooded with adrenaline and tingly heat, and more time will be good—more time to think about how I can say what I need to say.
Charlie releases me and steps up on the side of the boat. He cannonballs into the water without a moment’s hesitation. My mouth falls open in surprise that he executed the maneuver so fast, without a thought or a care.
He pops back up, smiling and shaking his dark hair off his face. “Your turn,” he calls, treading water.
I strip out of my T-shirt and shorts, revealing my black-and-white-patterned bikini. From the sly smile on his face, he’s enjoying the show. My hair is secured in two long braids that hang over my chest, reaching the bottom of my breasts. I’m wearing my key necklace, too. I can’t help but feel as if it’s supposed to help me somehow, as though Aunt Livvy is watching over me. I need all the help I can get with Lacey and with the rest of my life.
I climb up on the side of the boat to jump. I pause, teetering on the edge. “Is it cold?”
“A little. But nice.”
“Okay.” I count to three in my head and go, holding my nose like a total geek. The water is jarringly cold. I swim for the surface and gasp for air when I emerge. “It’s freezing!” I should have known. It’s not even July yet.
Charlie greets me with his crooked grin. “It’s not that bad.”
He swims closer while I tread water, and when he’s right in front of me, he reaches to take my hand. He leans in to peck a kiss on my lips as if he’s testing me—seeing if I’ll let him keep doing it. The kiss is wet and salty. I don’t put up any resistance. Why would I want to stop doing something so fantastic?
“How do we get back in?” I ask, shivering a little.
“The swim platform.”
I follow him around to the back of the boat, and we use the same platform from when we got out of the dinghy. A small step flips down to make our climb easier. Charlie hands me one of the towels from the bag I stowed under the console, and I wrap myself in it.
“Let’s go inside,” he says.
I follow him into the tiny cabin. The ceiling is so low we have to stoop. Cushioned benches line the walls with a tiny space for standing in the middle. The cushions meet in a V at the front of the boat.
“Two people can sleep here,” he says, sitting down on one side. “See? This pulls out, and then you put that triangle cushion on it.”
I sit across from him, wondering if he still wants to know about the nightmares or if he’ll just let it go now. Maybe I could try kissing him again to distract him.
“Will you tell me now?” he asks, adjusting his towel.
“If I tell you, do you promise to believe me?”
His eyebrows pinch together. “I guess. Why wouldn’t I believe you?”
“Because… it’s not normal. What happens to me is not… normal.” I can’t think of another word to describe my situation. “What do you think is going on?”
“I don’t know. I thought maybe you were taking drugs, but you seem fine most of the time.”
I chuckle. “I’m not taking drugs.”
“Then I thought maybe you’d been hurt. Like in the past. And this is like a post-traumatic stress thing.”
I smile weakly. “It’s not that.”
“It’s not?” He looks surprised.
I guess his theory would make the most sense. Poor little Jade was molested by a priest or fondled by one of her mom’s old boyfriends. “No.” I shake my head, nervous energy rising up in me like a tide. Can I tell him? Is there even a small possibility he’ll believe me? Maybe he’ll laugh and tell my mother I’m a nutcase. Or he’ll think I’m a liar or just plain crazy. I touch my key and say a little prayer.
Chapter 9
“There’s a ghost in your house. And I can see her.”
Water splashes soothingly against the side of the boat. I close my eyes because I don’t want to see his reaction. He might laugh. If he does, I’ll laugh too and tell him it was a joke. I was just kidding with you, I’ll say and slap his arm. Ha, ha. So funny. I don’t hear any laughter, so I open my eyes.
“Not my…” He looks ill, and after a moment, I realize what he’s asking. His mother.
“No! An old-fashioned lady. A whaling-time lady, I think.”
He stares at me. I keep my eyes mostly down, but glance up at him every few seconds, wondering what he’s thinking, what he’ll say. He has to believe me. He just has to. There’s no other good option.
He tilts his head to the side. “You think there’s a ghost in my house?”
I nod, pleading with my eyes for him to believe me. I feel like a puppy at the pound. Please, someone see me—the real me—and still want me.
“And this supposed ghost gives you nightmares?” Charlie scrunches up his face as if I just told him Superman is real.
“Yeah. Listen, I know it’s hard to believe. I wouldn’t believe it either if it didn’t happen to me. Really. I know it’s—”
“Out there? Yeah, Jade. You sound pretty out there.” His voice sounds harsh now, sarcastic even.
I grip my hands together in my lap and study his face, looking for any sign of what I should say next. The way his puckered forehead and pinched lips look make me panic, terrified I’ve made
the worst mistake of my life by telling him.
“I can’t believe you’d mess with me like this. After I told you how I feel about you.” His voice gets louder with each word, and I can’t tell if he’s red from anger or just from the sun.
But anger and disbelief are more than I can take from him right now. Tears sting my eyes. “Just forget it. Forget I said anything.”
I storm out of the cabin, and Charlie doesn’t follow. Yanking on my clothes, I sniffle and swipe at my nose with the back of my hand. I stand by the motors and inwardly berate myself for being so stupid. What an idiot I am for inviting him into my personal freak show of a life! Maybe I should jump in, swim to shore, and walk home. Or maybe I’ll run away to Ally’s until my dad says I can live with him. That might be my best option at this point.
“Can you prove it?”
His voice makes me jump. I look over my shoulder, and he’s standing at the console, watching me with his arms folded across his chest.
I shake my head. “Just forget it. I’m going to try to live with my dad.” My voice cracks at the end.
“What happens in the dreams?” He moves toward me, seeming unwilling to just forget it as I’ve asked.
“They weren’t the same.”
He’s standing beside me now, looming over me. He pushes his sunglasses up on his nose and rubs his hand up the back of his neck. “What happened in the first one, then?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He reaches for my hand. “You can tell me.”
“No,” I answer, almost on reflex, and slap away his hand.
His eyes widen in surprise. Before he can say anything else, I stride back into the cabin, and flop down on one of the benches. My head throbs, and my ears ring. Fear is making me crazy and sick. Charlie appears in the doorway, obviously determined to hound me.
When he sits on the other cushion, I turn on my side, facing away from him. “Just take me back. I wanna go home.” I sound like a pouty little girl, but I don’t care. I can’t put on any sort of show right now.
Charlie sighs. “If something happened to you, you can tell me.”
Should I make up a traumatic event? He seems to want my problem to stem from something like that. That would be more appealing to him than spirits, I guess. I can’t get my brain to think fast enough to come up with a story, though.
He rests his hand on my side at the dip of my waist. “Please, Jade?”
I sigh.“This is why I didn’t want to tell you. I trusted you. That took a lot for me, and to have you…” I’m not sure how to describe what he’s done. My eyes stay fixed on the glossy-white interior wall of the boat. I search for a blemish of some kind, but the fiberglass is pristine—not one speck of mold or dirt.
“I know. I’m sorry. I’ll listen now.”
I glance back at him and see that his face has softened. His lips are turned down, his eyes filled with concern. I roll over to face him, which makes him remove his hand. Unfortunate. I kind of liked it there, but now he’s using it to support his chin, resting his elbow on his knee.
“Tell me what happens. I promise I won’t interrupt.”
“I think she hung herself because she was hanging in the corner in my room last night when I got home. And in the dream, she flew toward me and almost hit me, and that’s when I woke up. I don’t know what to do. I’ve never experienced a ghost like this before. I’ve never had to live with one, so I don’t know what’s—”
“You’ve seen other ones?” His eyes are wide, filled with curiosity and disbelief.
“Yeah. And no, I’m not psychotic. I don’t hear things or see things that aren’t there. The ghosts are real. I just have to find a way to prove it. And figure out how to make Lacey go away.”
“Lacey?”
“That’s what I call her. Because of her bonnet.” I sit up and face him, our legs touching in the small space between us.
Charlie blows out a breath, both hands destroying his damp hair. “You can see how this is kind of crazy sounding, right?”
I smirk. “Yeah. I can see that.”
“I want to believe you. I do. But your story… it’s kind of out there.” He looks as if he’s thinking really hard, as though he’s in school and taking an extremely difficult test.
“I’ll figure out a way to prove it to you,” I say. I hope this will settle his questions for now, because I want to go back to reveling in the fact that Charlie kissed me. We could swim and laugh and kiss some more. And perhaps we can figure out what we’re going to do about liking each other.
“Maybe if I stay with you in your room, I can wake you up before the dreams get scary.”
My face flushes at the idea of sleeping in a bed with Charlie. “Maybe.”
“What do you want to do now?” he asks. “We could swim to the beach and hang out there. Or go fishing up toward Great Point.”
“Would you mind if I took a nap? I didn’t sleep much last night.”
“Okay. I’ll wake you up if you start to have one of them.”
“You won’t have to. The nightmares only happen at Fair-Ever. That’s one way I could prove it to you, I guess. Not having one here.” I’m glad we’ve both calmed down and can talk rationally about something so irrational.
“Oh… yeah. I guess…” He reaches for one of my braids, playing with the end of it. I watch his face—his cleft chin, wide-set eyes, faint brown stubble. Charlie has a lot of facial hair compared to the other boys at school. “I could use a nap too,” he says. It’s a question more than a statement.
I smile. “Okay.”
Charlie makes the bed with the slide-out panel and triangular cushion. He barely fits on the bed, having to curl his legs up so they don’t hang off the end. Once we’re both lying down and settled in, he wraps his arms around me, pulling me loosely against him, my face to his neck.
“Sorry,” he says softly into my ear.
“It’s okay,” I murmur, inhaling the smells of salt and musky cologne, heady and humid as I drift off to sleep.
Chapter 10
I don’t want to go back to Fair-Ever. The closer we get—in the boat and the dinghy and then the jeep—the more I feel myself shutting down. My insides get jello-y and churn like a cement mixer. I tap my fingers on the armrest and tug on my wet, frizzy braid.
Charlie parks on the street in front of Fair-Ever. Mom gets the second driveway spot now even though she’s not currently home. We meet at the back of the jeep to retrieve the bag and cooler. I pick up the bag just as a man gets out of the car parked behind us.
“Hello!” he calls.
I freeze. Martin Fitzgerald—the Nantucket Ghost Hunter— is standing in front of my house. He’s found me.
“Are you the residents of this fair home?” He smiles like a lunatic and stops on the sidewalk, gesturing at the house with a flourish. He wears one of his costumes—a black bowler hat, a white linen shirt buttoned all the way up to his chin, dark pants, and wingtip shoes.
“Yeah,” Charlie says, eyeing Martin up and down.
“Ah, good. I’m Martin Fitzgerald, and I’ve often wondered if there are any tales of haunting associated with this abode. Maybe you’d be willing to share some with me?” His lips, underscored by a red goatee, are lifted in a fake smile, and his brown eyes are locked on me, narrowed and definitely seeing my discomfort.
“Did you…?” My voice cracks. There’s no way his being here is a coincidence. I grip the canvas tote bag like a lifeline, as if I might be able to pull a cord and an escape hatch will appear, or I’ll be jettisoned off to safety. If only.
“Let’s go inside,” Charlie says to me. He maneuvers me toward the side gate, his arm around my shoulder.
Martin trails along behind, tripping on a brick in the sidewalk but recovering before he falls. “You hav
e nothing to fear from me. I want to help you.”
“Leave us alone,” Charlie says.
The gate pops and cracks loudly when Charlie shoves it open. I keep my eyes down as we hustle to the door.
“I mean no trouble for you! Email me again!” Martin yells.
Charlie slams the slider behind us and peers out at Martin.
I wrap my arms around my body as if I need to hold something in, like maybe my last ounce of sanity. Yeah, I might lose that any second. “He must have found a way to look up my IP address from my email. That’s the only way he could have done it.”
“You emailed him?” Charlie looks like he does when he’s pissed off at Brendan, a vein poking out of his forehead. His eyes swim with animosity. I’m almost afraid he might run outside and tackle Martin to the pavement.
I nod. “Yeah. About the ghost. But I didn’t give my name. He must have hacked my e-mail.”
“That’s really crazy!”
I’m not sure if he means that it’s crazy that Martin tracked me down or that I emailed the guy in the first place, but I decide to believe the former. “I know. I can’t believe he found me.”
“He’s leaving. He’s walking away,” Charlie says, leaning to watch the street in front of the house. “That was weird. Like really, really weird.”
“I know,” I mumble. I’m trying to get my brain to slow down and come up with a plan of how to handle the incredible stalker tendencies of Martin Fitzgerald.
“Do you think he’ll come back?” Charlie asks.
“I don’t know.” My mind swirls with a million panicked thoughts, my mouth dry with fear. What if Martin reveals my secret to the world on his website?
“What’s up?” Brendan asks, appearing in the door to the mudroom.
I jump, like visibly lurch in my flip flops.
“Nothing.” Charlie spins toward Brendan. “We went boating.”
Ever Near (Secret Affinity Book 1) Page 5