He found the high-waisted hem of her stockings, tight against her torso. Slowly, fumbling, he fitted his fingers beneath the nylon. Slid his hand along her thigh. Her palms braced against the mirror, and the heat of her skin left streaks in the glass.
His hand closed around the shard and she swallowed a small, broken breath. The sound of it clouded his head. It made him drunk. Drawing it free, he slid her dress carefully back into place. His chest was a knot. His hands shook with need.
“Colton.”
His name slipped out of her like a supplication. He wanted to tell her he was the last person to bear the weight of benediction. There was nothing inside him but death. But then she was tucking the broken shard into her bag and the moment was over, the impossible, maddening feel of her leaching out of his skin. She watched him in the glass as he came slowly back to himself, his breathing steadying.
“What are you?” she asked.
The light clicked on. The alarm tone cut out. A tired Brockton burr came in over the speaker. “Is everything all right in there?”
“Fine,” Colton said, scooping up her coat and jabbing a thumb at the intercom in one swift motion. “Elbow caught the button.”
“Yeah, okay.” The intercom crackled out. The elevator lurched to life.
Colton turned to allow Lane the chance to gather herself, feeling his chest crack as he did. He shouldn’t have done it. He shouldn’t have yielded. He couldn’t help it. Night after night of watching her sleep in his bed, in his clothes, in his arms. His resolve had splintered. It was the way she’d looked at him, her nose in the air, her eyes blazing.
“You’re unknowable.”
Behind him, he heard Lane’s breathing level. He remained facing the doors, watching the numbers climb between floors. Tugging at his cuffs until they sat just right. The watch at his wrist said they were ten minutes late to the showcase. He didn’t care.
Slowly, Lane crept up to stand beside him, readjusting her beret until it sat just so atop the sleek white of her bob. The air stretched thin and cold between them. The doors opened. Snatches of sound trickled into the elevator. The clatter of cutlery. The buzz of conversation. The tinkle of piano keys.
His heart was a riot in his throat. It beat so hard he thought maybe he’d choke on it.
Handing their coats to the waiting valet, he stepped out into the buzzing throng. Lane kept stride beside him, holding her bag tight against her stomach. Inside sat a fractured piece of a fractured boy, too cold and too unknowable. This time, when he offered her his arm, she took it. Her fingers felt impossibly small in the crook of his elbow. He knew, deep inside his chest, that he would spend the rest of his life yearning for this moment.
“Time for plan B,” he said, and led her out onto the floor.
He’d taken her to an art gallery. Delaney didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but it certainly hadn’t been this. The parquet was a dazzling array of beautiful people dressed in beautiful things, but Delaney hardly noticed. She moved through the throng as if carried along on a sequin riptide, allowing herself to be led by Colton.
Colton, who had boxed her in against the glass. Colton, who had finally,finally, admitted the truth, his mouth pressed to her pulse. Colton, who’d taken her mittened hand twelve long years ago and begged her not to let go.
Her stomach swam, uneasy. Every part of her felt unsteady—like glass about to shatter. Her head was a hum, full of voices, full of haunts. She couldn’t discern the dead from the living. Maybe she’d never been able to. The polite chatter of patrons and connoisseurs mingled with the dull ring between her ears, the murmuring pule of ghosts.
Ghosts.
For everything she’d seen, everything she’d experienced, she’d never believed in the dead. Not really. Ghosts were things for Ouija boards and séances, parlor tricks and horror movies and high school dares. They didn’t exist the way they’d appeared to her tonight—gaunt faces trailing ether like smoke, struggling to retain form in her periphery. She felt hollowed out, more than a little shaken. Nothing made sense.
It makes perfect sense, actually, sang that voice in her head.
She staggered to a stop beside an empty table. She shut her eyes. It didn’t shut out the flutter in her chest. It didn’t stifle the truth. It was the dead that spoke to her. It was the dead that clustered, restless in the shadows. It was the dead who descended upon her, kissing her awake, luring her into the dark.
Crawling at her feet.
Lane, they whispered.Lane, Lane, Lane.
Not friends, not allies, not the fanciful by-product of a little girl’s whimsy, but souls, severed and wandering. They gathered at the doors, beckoning her through. They clung to her ankles like cats. They drew in close, like she was a light, incandescent. Like all they wanted was to be warm and seen.Look at us. Look, look, look.
How had she never understood?
You weren’t looking, crooned that presence in her chest.You didn’t want to see.
She opened her eyes to find herself alone. Colton watched her from a nearby bar top table, his mouth a ruinous, tapering line, his gaze assessing. She joined him, the tablecloth fluttering like a specter in her wake, white satin gleaming in the bold throw of grid lights.
The space was stark and white and open, the walls struck with shadows that stained the empty spaces around the spotlit art in inverse circles of dark. She set her clutch atop the table and watched a fat, beaded flame sputter inside its jeweled votive, feeling as though anyone passing by could see what she’d done just by looking. What she’d let him do, pressed together in the dark of the elevator. Her face was aflame. Her heart hadn’t stopped racing.
Across from her, Colton was the picture of calm. Not a curl out of place, not a wrinkle in his suit. Smoothing his hand along his tie, he summoned a nearby waiter. Instantly, two glasses of champagne were set between them. She found herself staring into a flute of golden fizz, her face and the crowd reflected upside down along the brittle curve of the crystal.
