“The ghost of him is caught in a loop, forced to reenact his death for eternity,” my voice dropped at the end, memories forcing their way inside, reminding me of the coffin, the lack of air, the clawing up my throat, the burn of my lungs. Death had once trapped me, too.
At one point, he and I were the same.
“Why?” she asked, as desperate for answers as I was.
“I’m not sure, but I believe it has to do with why he took his life.”
“We can’t just stand here.” Her muscles were jumping under her skin, ready to pounce up the lighthouse stairs to stop him as I’d once done. “How do we help him?”
“We can’t. There’s nothing we can do about it.”
Then the ghost fell from the top of the lighthouse.
In an instant, the sun died with him at three in the afternoon.
All fell silent, and winter stirred around us.
“Kiss me before you go,” I whispered to her in the dark.
She turned in my arms, smiling. “You kiss me.”
And I dipped my head, my mouth catching hers before my hands found her face. Her breath was warm, and my fingers moved to the corners of her mouth, tracing our kiss, remembering it. Then my thumb pulled down her lower lip, and my tongue slipped in. And I was set ablaze.
The kiss made me dizzy when I pulled away.
And our hands slipped away as she walked toward the boat.
“And Circe,” I called.
She turned back around, and the lighthouse beam captured the snow between us.
“Don’t kill anybody today, darling.”
She laughed, and I wished I could see her entire face in the dark.
“Hey, Stone.”
“Yes?”
A beat of silence.
A shiver.
She wrapped her fur coat closer around her. “It kills me every time I see your scars because I’m disgusted by what those men did to you,” she said to me. “So, you should know it was never you I was cringing at, it was them. It just so happens, I fucking love your cock.”
It was too dark to see our smiles, but I could feel them.
My god, could I feel them.
CHAPTER 28
ADORA
December 9, 2020
50 days until the Crimson Eclipse
53 days until the Cantini-Sullivan wedding
