Page 87 of Chasing Your Ghost

“I—” Riley’s throat tightened around the rest of her words, and she could only shake her head. “I’m sorry,” she said before running to the French doors and yanking them open so she could escape to the pool house. To the place that was starting to feel more and more like her home despite the fact that her suitcases remained unpacked.

She came to a sudden stop outside her door, and her body tensed as she slowly reached for the doorknob. She knew it was wishful thinking, perhaps even delusional, but part of her expected to find Asher inside, lying on her bed and waiting for her like he’d done so many times before.

But, of course, when she opened the door, she found the room empty. It was the last straw. Riley closed and locked the door behind her. She went into the bathroom, got into the shower, and, under the warm spray, finally lifted her hand to her mouth and sobbed into her palm.

23

The next morning, Riley got up to go to the bathroom and brush her teeth, but that was about all she could handle. She was back in her bed within minutes, her raw throat, stinging eyes, and throbbing head the perfect companions as she listlessly pulled the sheets over her legs.

It was early, but she checked her phone for the second time, hoping to find a message from Ella. There was nothing.

Riley and the others hadn’t made plans to meet up again, but she knew she couldn’t live with herself if she let her emotions keep her from helping the boy who’d wormed his way into her heart with his kindness, humor, and vibrant green eyes. So, though she wanted to hide under the covers and pretend that her dad was still alive and that Asher had never been kidnapped, she couldn’t.

Without leaving her bed again, Riley pulled the book she’d been reading the day before from Ella’s backpack and opened it where she’d left off. She had to read most of the paragraphs two or three times before the information sank in properly and had to blink back tears and the blurry vision that accompanied them more than once, but at least she was doing something. At least she hadn’t given up.

Though she didn’t need to worry as much about her blood sugar levels anymore, Riley’s stomach growled loudly when she was close to finishing the chapter, demanding that she eat something. She finished reading the last few pages and was about to take a break and grab a quick breakfast from the kitchen when it happened.

“Riley?”

The barely audible word cut through the quiet of her bedroom with the force of a sledgehammer. Riley’s neck clicked with how quickly her head snapped up.

“Asher?” she breathed out, not believing what she was seeing. He was standing right there in front of her door, but it felt like a dream. The best dream she’d ever had, but a dream nonetheless.

“How long was I gone this time?”

The question snapped Riley out of her daze, and she was moving before her brain could catch up to what his presence meant. She flung the covers off her, stumbled out of the bed, and threw herself at him. Her arms wrapped around the back of his neck, and she pressed her face against his chest—a chest that, by all rights, she shouldn’t have been able to feel, yet was solid against her cheek.

She squeezed him tighter, as though afraid that he would be taken again and she could keep him there if she just held on tightly enough. “Are you really here?” she asked, tilting her chin up to look at him.

Those beautiful green eyes locked with her gaze, and he smiled. “I’m really here,” he replied.

“I thought you were gone,” she whispered, her head shaking from side to side, still not sure if she could believe he was truly there. Her arms loosened, and she lowered herself from her tiptoes, her hands resting on his shoulders.

“I thought…” The words trailed off, and Riley couldn’t even remember what she was going to say as she stared up at him.

Their chests were pressed together, and with only her thin sleep shirt covering her upper body, Riley became very aware of every place their bodies met. When Asher’s gaze flickered down to her mouth, she became aware of something else: the small space that lay between their lips.

Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe it was a terrible, terrible idea, but when Riley rose up on her toes again and closed the gap between them, nothing about it felt like a mistake.

Asher met her halfway. Riley’s eyes fluttered closed as his lips claimed hers in a kiss that was anything but gentle and sweet. There was nothing soft about the way their mouths crashed together, nothing tender about how Asher’s tongue parted her lips and stroked against hers, nothing light in the way he consumed her gasps and exchanged them for a quiet groan.

It was brutal and powerful, and Riley wasn’t sure if she would ever recover from it. But she was absolutely certain she wouldn’t recover from Asher ending the kiss early like he did, pulling away from her so quickly that she almost got a fright.

“Wait,” he panted out. “We can’t do this.”

Riley suddenly wanted to burrow back into bed and hide from the world forever. “What? Why?” she asked stupidly, genuinely confused about why he’d stopped what must have been the best kiss of all time. Had he not enjoyed it as much as she had? Did he not want her?

Despite her lack of experience, thanks to her standing as a social outcast, Riley knew that kiss was best-kiss-of-my-life material. People wrote songs about kisses like that. People started believing in God after kisses like that, counterintuitive as that might be. So why had he stopped?

“I’m a ghost, Riley,” he reminded her gently. “I’m dead.”

Her eyes widened. How could she not have told him her theory immediately? How could she have been so selfish? “That’s just it. I don’t think you are,” she told him, her fingers reaching out to touch his arm. “You can touch me, Asher. That’s not normal for a ghost. It’s also not normal for a ghost to get pulled away to somewhere they can feel pain. I don’t think you’re dead. I think you’re getting pulled back to your body.”

Asher frowned, his eyes frantically searching hers. “What?”

She explained what she’d found in the book she’d been reading. She was working up to telling him that his friends knew and had been helping her find answers, but he cut her off with another kiss.

“I’m not dead?” he asked as he pulled back again.

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