Total pages in book: 55
Estimated words: 52976 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 265(@200wpm)___ 212(@250wpm)___ 177(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52976 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 265(@200wpm)___ 212(@250wpm)___ 177(@300wpm)
“Yes.” I bring my arms around him at once in a tight embrace. “I’m sure. I’m very sure.”
He reciprocates, squeezing me back.
With my head on Byron’s shoulder, I stare past him at the candle across the room, anxiety building in my heart with every passing second it’s still lit.
“There’s … something I need to talk to you about,” he tells me.
My eyes are still on the tiny flickering flame. I need to blow that damned thing out. “Yeah?”
“But it can wait. Maybe later tonight or tomorrow.”
“No, it’s okay.” Anything to keep him from going past this door at my back. “Let’s relax on the couch for a moment. How’s that sound? You can tell me whatever it is you want to tell me.”
“I think I gotta pee, actually.”
Hell no, you don’t. “I want to hear what it is you’ve gotta say to me first.”
He gently rubs my back. “Really, it can wait.”
With desperation mounting inside of me, I turn our embrace into a gentle nudging of Byron away from the door and toward the couch—and closer to the candle I have to blow out. “Is it about the wedding? We don’t have to do orange and purple roses if it’s too much. It was a sentimental thing, from that beautiful bouquet you gave me last year on Halloween, and—”
“No, no, nothing like that. It’s uh … a very, very different concern.”
I’ve almost got him to the couch. The candle is just a few feet away. “So what is it? Tell me.”
Just then, a loud crash comes from the bathroom.
We both stop.
Silence.
Byron stares back at the door. “What the—?”
“Probably the soap dish,” I say at once. “I left it balanced precariously on the edge of the—Hey, where are you going?” I ask as he heads for the door. “Wait!”
Byron doesn’t wait.
With no options left, I race across the rest of the den and, in a blind panic, grab hold of the candle and blow every last bit of air out of my lungs and onto the flame like I’m going for a fucking Guiness record in the world’s quickest blowjob.
Then I wait, clenching my teeth, sweat on my brow.
Silence.
I turn around to find Byron standing at the opened bathroom door, frozen in place.
Did he see him?
Did he see Westley Harmeyer, even for just half a second, before he vanished?
Do I have some explaining to do?
Then Byron faces me with a perplexed frown. “It fell.”
I stare at him. “I-It …?”
“The shower curtain rod.”
The shower curtain rod.
I release my breath at once, relieved.
Close call. Way too close.
“I’ll fix it later,” he decides. Then, appearing full of troubled thoughts, he adds, “And I think I will tell you what I wanted to say earlier.”
It’s weird, that I feel more relief now than I did when a bus nearly took off my face. “O-Okay, babe.”
“I’ve been, um …” He swallows. This isn’t easy for him to say, apparently. “I’ve been keeping something from you.”
I’m still holding the candle. His voice has changed. I look at him, concerned. “You have?”
“Something big.”
“Big …?”
“It’s part of the reason I’ve been nagging you about moving out of this apartment. Maybe the whole reason.” He averts his eyes. “The truth is, my dads … they’re not English professors. I … I lied to you.”
I stare at him uncertainly.
Byron lifts his eyes from the couch and reluctantly meets mine. “They’re award-winning authors of over thirteen books about parapsychology and paranormal phenomena, specializing in spirits, ghosts … hauntings. They’re well aware of the dark history of this apartment and the young man who died here. And they …” He grimaces. “Griffin, they think we’re in danger.”
I stare at my fiancé through the twisting curls of smoke still dancing from the extinguished wick of the candle in my hand.
“Oh,” is all I can mutter, breathless.
-3-
I Guess We’re Taking Our Secret To The Grave
What am I supposed to say?
What am I supposed to do?
“I know it’s a lot,” Byron goes on. It’s been half an hour since he spilled the paranormal beans on his dads. He said a lot of other things that flew straight over my head, but I’m having difficulty processing anything. “I wouldn’t even blame you if you didn’t believe me.”
He doesn’t know the half of it.
He doesn’t know any of it.
And here I am, playing along, adding yet one more lie on the pile of lies I’ve lived on to spare my fiancé the truth: that I’ve known all along, that we’re not in danger of having our souls sucked out of our faces, that I not only know the ghost, but am best friends with it.
How can I tell him the truth now?
How can I convince him to disregard his fathers’ wishes by just insisting we’re not in danger?
“I tried to tell them you’ve exhibited no signs of someone who’s been possessed or exposed to a hateful spirit. If anything weird happened to you in the past two years, I know I’d be the first person you’d tell.”