“Good,” he says after a moment. “And hopefully this is just me worrying for nothing. I have been stressed lately, drinking a little too much. Perhaps it’s a wake-up call to stop the booze. Maybe the hallucinations will go away.”
But I know that’s not the case.
It takes a lot to get a man like Daniel Palomino to admit he’s seeing ghosts.
Unfortunately, whatever message Ingrid is passing on is an important one.
Too bad we don’t know what it means.
Chapter 5
“So he doesn’t trust Jay?” Perry asks.
We’ve been driving for about an hour, and she’s been grilling me non-stop on the whole exchange with her father. Naturally, I had to cover the truth with a lie, one that she’d believe.
“No, he doesn’t,” I tell her for the millionth time. Not a lie either.
“No wonder he seemed so bothered by them coming to Seattle for the night. Wait, you didn’t tell him anything about the haunted house, did you?”
I give her a loaded glance. “Come on.”
“Okay, just checking.”
After Daniel dumped that secret on me, which I really want to chalk up to him just having too much to drink and hallucinating, the rest of us got going. Perry and I in our car, Jay and Ada smushed together in her Mini Cooper, which she just raced past us on the I-5 only moments ago.
Of course, Ingrid’s words are bouncing around in my head now.
Don’t let her. Don’t let her.
Who? What?
If it’s Perry, what isn’t she supposed to do?
Buy the overpriced Slayer vinyl she’s been eying on Ebay?
Or, like, go into this haunted house tonight?
Or is it something much deeper than that?
And if it’s Ada, same questions apply.
There’s just not enough to go on, and it’s not like I can stop Perry from doing anything in the first place.
You just need to protect her, I remind myself. Love her, fuck her, protect her. That’s always been my duty.
“So why did he talk to you about her and not me?” she asks, snapping me out of it.
I sigh tiredly and go back to lying. “Because he didn’t want you to worry about her. You already worry about her enough. I guess he wanted me to look out for her, you know, since I’m a big tough man and all that.” When she doesn’t say anything, I glance at her. “Don’t you dare laugh.”
She presses her lips together, eyes dancing. “I’m not laughing because I know you’re stronger than anyone has a right to be. But my dad doesn’t know that.”
“Look, just because he got a good punch at me once…”
Truth be told, I like that people underestimate me. They think because I’m not over six feet, and that I’m not crazy bulky, that I can’t possibly possess the strength that I do. But I do. And my favorite thing is catching people completely off-guard.
Not that I ever want to challenge her father to a boxing match or anything.
Not really.
When we finally get back to downtown Seattle, it’s just us two. Ada and Jay went to Target for some reason, and while I’m usually pretty lenient, I put my foot down when Perry said she wanted to join them. That place is worse than Wal-Mart. At least in Wal-Mart, you’re in and out, lest you get sucked in and become of those Wal-Mart people you see on the internet. Target is the same pig in a different shade of lipstick, and I have no idea how it captures women for hours, how they disappear inside the cavernous white walls looking for toothpaste and a bag of Cheetos and yet come out with five-hundred-dollars worth of crap, all disoriented, not remembering why they even went in there in the first place.
Did I mention how much I hate Target?
So we get back to an empty apartment. Fat Rabbit has been with our friends, Dean and Rebecca, since we thought we’d be celebrating at a fancy hotel tonight instead of going ghost-hunting.
Ghost-hunting.
I never thought those words would cross my mind again, and yet they are.
That’s what we’re doing tonight.
Call it a séance, call us mediums, call us two amateurs trying to talk to the dead.
But we’re hunting for ghosts.
Fuck-a-doodle-do.
This shouldn’t feel this good.
Ah…
And there it is again.
This strange electricity in the air between us as Perry walks in and throws her bag down on the sofa, her posture immediately relaxing now that she’s home. She pauses, her back to me, raising her arms above her head in a long satisfying stretch.
I can’t help myself. I walk over to her, my veins buzzing like I’ve just been plugged into a socket. Those raw, desperate feelings I felt earlier are back with a vengeance.
I put my hand at the back of her neck, grabbing her there, and pull her around to me. She lets out a gasp, spinning on her feet, and I bring her crashing against my mouth, kissing her hard and hungry.
She kisses me back, fueling the fire, my hands drift to her jeans, trying to unbuckle them, my fingers fumbling, not working fast enough.
But then her palms are on my chest, pushing me back.
We break apart.
I stare at her, feeling fucking crazy and wild, breathing hard.
She stares back at me in complete confusion.
“What has got into you?” she says, her eyes huge. “Dex.” She presses her fingers into my chest, as if she’s checking to make sure it’s me.
And it is me.
I’ve never felt more like myself.
“We’re alone,” I tell her, my voice going husky. Do I have to actually tell her that I just want to screw her like crazy right now, right here in the living room?
“Not for long,” she says. “Ada and Jay had a head start, they’ll be here any second.” She licks her lips, blinking. “Look, last night was amazing but…”
“But what?” I ask quickly.
Oh god, is that…rejection that I’m starting to feel?
Is this her payback for not letting us go to Target?
“I’m just not used to this,” she says carefully.
“Not used to this?” I repeat. “We used to fuck non-stop.”
“Yes, we did,” she says, her cheeks flushing, and fuck, of course that also turns me on. I couldn’t be harder, even when she’s turning me down. “We did. Back then. And then we got married and it slowed down and that was okay too.”
She’s leaving out the period when I was on anti-depressants where it didn’t just slow down, it completely stopped. We survived that lurch, but it wasn’t a lot of fun. Sure, my brain felt better, but when your dick doesn’t cooperate, and you can’t fuck your wife on the regular, it does wear on you. Our connection suffered.
Then again, I went down on her all the time, so I’m not sure she faired as badly as I did.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I…I don’t know what’s come over you, but something has. And it’s not that I don’t like it, I do. I’m just…a little caught off-guard.”
I place my hands on her face and hold her in place, running my thumb over her bottom lip. “Baby, I don’t know what it is, but lately, I’ve been feeling so damn alive. I can’t help it. Like all I want to do is feel alive with you. And part of feeling this alive is getting you completely naked and fucking you six ways from Sunday.”