A breath shuddered out of me and I opened my eyes, half-expecting him to be gone. But he still stood by the gray granite counter looking uncertain. Looking like a dream. “What does that mean?”
“It means I’m dead. I’m a soul.”
Dead. The word floated around in my head, not feeling real. Dead was what my dad was. Dead was a cold, rotting body in the ground. I looked at Finn. At the warm color of his lips. The worried look in his vibrant green eyes. I couldn’t make the word fit with him.
Finn took a step closer. I backed away, but he followed.
“I’m not lying,” he whispered.
I stared at his chest so I wouldn’t have to look at his face. It didn’t move. It. Didn’t. Move. The only breaths I could hear were my own. Fear started a slow, steady burn in my chest. My heart felt like it was in my throat, raw and achy. A few minutes ago, all I wanted was this. Now I didn’t know how to feel. God…I couldn’t…I couldn’t…
I took a deep breath and threw open the cabinets in front of me. Then I grabbed a mixing bowl and plopped it onto the counter along with my favorite muffin tin. I needed something to do with my hands. Something to do with my mind, because I felt very close to losing it.
“Say something,” Finn said behind me. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
I spun around, keeping my back pressed against the counter.
“I…” I bit my lip and exhaled a shaky breath. “I don’t know what to think. I don’t even know where to start.”
He hooked his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans, dragging them lower around his waist.
“How about you tell me what you want to know, and I’ll talk.”
Before I could form a question, another memory knocked the breath out of me and clouded my thoughts.
The sky looked cold. A dull pewter color that blended with the swaying silver wheat surrounding me.
Finn stepped over me, blocking the sky. He hooked his thumbs into his jeans and grinned down at me.
My stomach fluttered and my knees forgot to support me. I sagged against the counter. “I know you.
I want to know how I know you.”
Finn grabbed the back of his neck and groaned. “Can we talk about something else first? Anything else.”
“Are you doing this?” I gripped the wire whisk in my hand so tight my palms felt numb. “Are you showing me these things? The dreams?”
I waited for him to tell me what a wackjob I was. That I was imagining things. God, I actually wanted him to tell me I was crazy. Because nobody was going to believe the alternative. The alternative would mean I’d spent a summer in a psych ward for nothing.
“I’m not showing you anything,” he said. “I’m just a soul, Emma. I don’t have the ability to make you see things.”
Then it was all real. I didn’t know what to say. I had so many questions, but I couldn’t stop my head from spinning. I pulled flour and sugar out of the cupboard and set them on the counter so I wouldn’t have to look at him. I couldn’t think straight when I was looking at him.
Finn pulled out a stool and sat. His gaze swept over the mess cluttering the counter. “What are you doing?”
“Making blueberry muffins,” I said. It sounded normal. I needed normal.
“Now?” His brow arched.
I tucked my hair behind my ear and felt my cheeks heat. “I…I bake when I’m nervous. It helps calm me down. Helps me think.”
His lips lifted into a small smile. “My mom used to do that when she couldn’t sleep. We’d wake up and find enough pies to feed a small country. She’d stay up all night baking and only keep one for us.
She always gave the rest away.”
“You said she used to.” I chewed on my bottom lip and played with the whisk handle. “Why doesn’t she now?”
Finn’s gaze dropped to the cluttered counter but I could tell he was seeing something else.
Something I couldn’t see. He finally broke the silence and said, “She died.”
“I’m so sorry.” I didn’t know what to be more sorry about. The fact that his mom was dead, or that he was. It was too crazy to even think about.
“Don’t be. Everybody dies,” he said, a hard edge to his voice. He watched me measure out flour and dump it in the bowl, my hands shaking so hard that most of it ended up on the counter instead. “Am I making you nervous?”
“Yes.” I set down the flour. “But maybe I wouldn’t be so nervous if you would stop sitting there like this is normal. Because it’s not. This…this is so monumentally not normal.”
Finn nodded, his eyes consuming me with every blink. The fan I’d set up in the kitchen earlier rotated, blowing a few strands of hair into my face, where they caught on my eyelashes. I couldn’t help but notice that Finn’s hair didn’t budge.
Unable to process the image, I pulled the mixing bowl against my stomach and started dumping in the rest of the ingredients. At least it was something to keep my mind off how completely unhinged I felt. Something to take my mind off the fact that I was standing here having a conversation with a ghost. If that’s even what he was. I watched the flecks of flour and blueberry swirl and fade into the batter. If only life was as simple as this.
Finn was standing beside me. I whirled around and my breath caught in my throat. I hadn’t even heard him get up. “What are you doing?” I said, my voice shaking almost as much as my knees.
“I thought you wanted answers.”
I closed my eyes letting the low timber of his voice melt me. “I do.”
“Then touch me.”
“That’s okay.” I pressed into the counter behind me, cursing myself for backing myself into a corner. “You say you’re dead. I believe you.”
Finn’s gaze shifted to my mouth then back up to my eyes. “Touch me anyway.”
Chapter 12
Finn Emma didn’t say anything right away. I watched her bite her bottom lip, no doubt contemplating whether this was a good idea.
She raised her hand uncertainly. “Don’t move. I’ll scream if you move. My mom has a gun and lives by the ’shoot first ask questions later’ motto, just so you know.”
I smiled. “Wouldn’t hurt me anyway.”
Her fingers brushed my chest. Dove deeper until her palm was stirring the space in between my lungs. Warmth whispered through me. I closed my eyes and suppressed a groan. This feeling. This was what I’d been missing.
Emma jerked her hand back. “You—You’re breathing.”
I looked down at my chest, pumping like I’d run a marathon. “Yeah.”
“You weren’t breathing a minute ago. D-d-do you need to breathe if you’re…”
I watched the steady rise and fall of my chest. “No, but sometimes I can’t help it.”
It took about five seconds for the color to drain from Emma’s face and two more for her to register this as a nightmare rather than reality. She made a choking sound in the back of her throat and edged around me, backing away. Her back hit the refrigerator and she froze.
“I would never hurt you. Don’t be scared.”
“Oh my God…you…you’re a ghost. I’m talking to a ghost. I really am crazy.”
“You’re not crazy. I swear.” She looked up at me, eyes flooded with moisture and hope. “I’ve been protecting you for two years. Since your dad’s accident. You just couldn’t see me before.”
“My dad?” Her voice broke. “You know my dad?”
“No,” I said. “Not exactly. I only met him once.”
“But you said—”
“I met him when he crossed.” I lowered my voice as if it might make the words easier to hear. “I met him when he died.” I couldn’t stop the disappointment from washing over me. Even with me talking to her, she didn’t remember me from that day.