He could have come back, and he didn’t.
That hate and rage was gone, and so were the last seven and a half years. They all seemed to melt away, now that he knew the truth of why he’d let him leave.
He understood that he’d been afraid, and had Michael just come back, this would have all been different.
Had he shared the truth, instead of keeping his man, his mate and lover in the dark, they would have had a different life.
Maybe they wouldn’t have had money, or a big home, but they would have had each other.
And in the end, that was what mattered.
Wasn’t that what he’d always seen with the greatest love stories that unfolded around him?
Elizabeth and Ethan had very little when they met. They had their homes, but they weren’t flush in cash.
The same with Callen and Elizabeth.
Or Ethan and Gene.
Their riches began with love, and Michael would have taken that small shit-hole apartment with this man over all of the cash he had in the bank now.
In.
A.
Heartbeat.
“What’s in the lake?” he finally asked, afraid of what his heart wanted him to do. This man had no obligation to forgive him for what he’d done.
Michael had damned him to his own private hell for all of those years.
Out of stubbornness.
Graham could hear from the lack of chattering that he was going to be okay.
“We don’t know,” he admitted. “All we know is that it’s evil, and it’s angry. We think it’s leaked into the castle. When I woke up, I found your note, and both Duncan and Ciarán were standing in the doorway. That’s when I heard you scream.”
Michael listened.
Before last night, he never would have believed any of this. He would have called it woo-woo bullshit, and called it a day.
But he’d seen them.
He’d also followed them to Graham the night before and in time to save him.
If that wasn’t enough, he also saw the box move toward him on the counter.
And the mug he’d given Graham all of those years ago turn in the cabinet on command.
That wasn’t his imagination—not in the least. That told him all he needed to know.
Ghosts were real.
More importantly, he knew that to be true because the ghost of their relationship past was waiting in the wings. He could feel it there.
And he was so goddamn confused.
What he wanted was to run.
