“I know. You’re psychic, you see ghosts—”
“I talk to them, I can’t see them, and it’s only one.” It only was one. “And you know what I mean. I’m not an easy, open person.”
“I’m not looking for normal or easy. I’m looking for you.”
Oh God. “What about—”
His voice cut her off. “You interrogating me or something?”
“I’m trying to feel you out.”
“There’s better ways of feeling me out, sweetheart.”
His knees creaked as he rose, leaves crackled beneath his shoes, then came the warmth of him within touching distance. She opened her eyes to find him stretched out beside her, his head propped on his hand, his blue eyes gray in the overcast.
“Only one thing matters, Max.”
They lay facing each other beside Cameron’s grave. “What?”
“Can you let your husband go?”
She propped herself on her elbow, too, and put her left hand flat on the ground. A band of white skin ringed her finger. Cameron’s essence pulsed through the earth, but she knew it was a figment of her imagination. “He’s already gone.”
Witt put his palm over her heart. “Is he gone from here?”
She blinked, took a deep breath and told him the truth regardless of the cost. “He’ll never be gone from my heart, Witt. If I could cut him out, I wouldn’t be who I am. And you wouldn’t love me.” She put her hand over his. “But there’s more than enough room for you in there.”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple rippling, then he touched her cheek with fingertips and wiped the moisture from her skin.
“I love you, Witt,” she whispered, liking the sound in the cool gray morning. “He would have stayed, but I asked him to go. Without all the things you’ve taught me, I don’t think I would have had the courage.”
He closed his eyes. His fingers stilled.
“You’re not a standin. I chose life over death. You over him.”
“But if he was alive, Max? Who would you chose?”
She cupped his cheek in her palm and forced him to meet her gaze, just as he had forced her so many times to see things she didn’t want to see. “I would choose what we have now over what I had with Cameron then. I’m different with you. You make me different. You make me better than I was.”
He rubbed her fingers over his eyelashes, then kissed her fingertips. “About time you figured that out.”
She was a little slow on the uptake. “Witt?”
“Hmmm?”
“Will you get on top of me?”
He laughed, a choked, almost involuntary sound. “Here?”
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to ask you to make love to me on Cameron’s grave. This is about something else.”
His eyes roamed her face, saw the seriousness, and understood what she needed. Witt’s weight on her in this place, his solidness, was part of saying good-bye to Cameron. Witt rose over her on his elbows, settled first on her stomach, then her chest. Finally his legs tangled with hers.
“Can you breathe?”
He was heavy. “Yes.”
“Are you scared?”
“Yes.” She looped her arms around his neck. “But not of this. And not of you.” Then, despite the cold seeping through her jeans and sweatshirt, she pulled him down to kiss her.
Epilogue
Riley Morgan’s hair was long. He ought to cut it, a buzz-cut like Witt’s. He was too dark, dark eyebrows, dark brown hair, chocolate eyes. Max preferred blue eyes, blond hair, and white eyebrows that disappeared in stark sunlight. She liked big hands.
Riley’s hand knocking on her door was merely average.
She’d parked behind his blue Camero. It wasn’t a Dodge Ram. Riley didn’t look like the Ram kind of guy; he looked like a Sutter kind of guy. And why the hell was he knocking on her door anyway when he assuredly knew she wasn’t there?
Witt would be here in a few minutes. He’d stopped to gas up the truck. She was supposed to change clothes and pick up more stuff to take to his place. After that, she figured they could rent Lost Horizon and go back to Witt’s place to watch it. Maybe she’d bring him Bullitt, too, for the car chase.
But Riley Morgan was on her doorstep, and she decided to stop running from him. “I hear you’ve been looking for me.”
He stopped mid-knock. “And I hear you’re psychic.”
With a deep breath, she tilted her head to the side, taking in the disbelief, almost disgust, on his face. His eyes fell to the plastic grocery bag of last night’s clothes clutched in her fingers.
“Yeah. I was possessed by those women. That’s how I knew who killed them.” Sort of, but that was leaving out a helluva big part of the story, the story he wouldn’t get from her.
He drew a notebook from his pocket and flipped it open, his pen poised. Two fat raindrops fell on the open page like a warning. He brushed them aside.