Love The Way You Kiss Me - Willow Winters Page 0,4

“a life is at stake,” combined with the phone call, feel like ice at the center of my gut.

The conversation continues but dims and seems to blur into nothing as I stare ahead absently. My attention is on my own pulse. Steadying myself and refusing to allow any unwanted emotion to surface. I can’t meet the rest of this day with a knot in my stomach.

I can’t meet the rest of this day with the delicate curve of Eleanor’s neck on my mind. Or the way her sleeves flutter near her wrist in a simple, classic detail that makes me want to trace her bare skin there all the way around.

I can’t, and I won’t. I will not think of her that way. Not ever again. She is beautiful and tempting, but she is not mine to have.

With the pen held tightly in his hand, the judge signs a paper in front of him and taps his gavel in a perfunctory way that seems anticlimactic for all the work we’ve put in. As soon as his decision is finalized, there’s a flurry of motion. Aiden leaves his place at the front first. “Quick call,” he says on his way past. “Then I’ll be available.” The lawyer nods, and with a thin smile his hand lands on our client’s shoulder, gaining her attention. A heat rises up my chest, but it’s quickly displaced. Cade leans over the partition to talk to the lawyer. Silas and Dane get to their feet next to him. Then Damon. I’m quick to follow, taking great care not to give much thought to how slowly the lawyer’s hand drops back to his side.

Eleanor bends to lift her periwinkle wool coat from where it sat folded over her chair and pulls it on over slim shoulders. My palms ache in the strangest way. Like I should be helping her into that garment.

She doesn’t look at me as she dutifully follows her lawyer out of the courtroom.

Damon’s hand comes down on my shoulder, giving me a short squeeze. “You ready?”

Ella

The Firm will provide each client with twenty-four-hour care and security. All clients’ needs will be identified and addressed by the partners directly.

There’s an emptiness that’s unsettling. I’ve stood in this exact spot more than a dozen times, taking in the sight of this home. One of several I’ve lived in over the years, and truthfully, it was once my preferred home although with everything that’s happened, it was never an option for it to be more than a refuge.

I don’t believe that places can be haunted. Haunted houses and such … I’ve never given much credence to the notion. Do I believe in ghosts? I do … ever since I was a little girl. That sense of wonder and shiver of fear never left me. I think we all do to some extent; it’s simply a matter of what has happened to each of us that leads us to believe.

But I’ve never thought that ghosts can haunt a physical place. My aunt, who I haven’t seen in nearly a decade now, once told me that spirits don’t haunt locations; they haunt people. She told me there was no such thing as a haunted house.

She said lost spirits follow people who they miss, the ones they have unfinished business with, or a long-lost soul they wish would remember them. So I’ve never been scared of ghost stories. After all, my mother and father didn’t want a damn thing to do with me when air still filled their lungs; surely they didn’t give a shit about me once they were buried six feet under.

Never once have I felt the presence of any being … But as I stand in the foyer, I can’t help questioning my beliefs. Every corner of this house seems to hold a memory that’s desperate to come back to life. Even with my eyes closed, the laughter from events long gone echoes in my mind as if it’s all so close. As if I could reach out and my hand wouldn’t meet cold air and proof this home has been vacant for nearly two years now. If only it was so easy.

No. My aunt wasn’t right about spirits and ghosts.

There are no haunted houses; there are no ghosts at all. There are only haunted people.

“When was the last time you were here?” The deep timbre brings me back to the present and the voices go silent. There’s only a creak of the floor as my memories