Page 20 of Double Bucked

I push my lips together. “You know how when a little girl dies, their parents keep the room as a memorial to their daughter?”

“Yes.”

“That girl is dead. We don’t open her room. Understand?”

James nods. “Understood.”

What I can’t say to him is there is too much in that room. I’m afraid if I open the door of my childhood bedroom, memories will come flying out like so many black-winged moths, and I won’t be able to compartmentalize them.

I’ve worked very, very hard to suppress the rotten memories of growing up in Belleflower.

And yet…

Part of me is still drawn to them.

I look out the window again. I nudge the curtain back, but I’m too late.

Ransom has vanished like a ghost.

James comes up behind me. He slides my hair to the side. His mouth presses a small note of affection to my throat. I close my eyes, leaning into it. “I need sleep,” I admit. “Lots of it.”

His hand slips up the column of my throat. He covers my mouth with his palm and pinches my nose between his thumb and forefinger, closing off my air. The heat of his breath hits my ear.

“Should I suffocate you?” he asks. “It’ll be the deepest sleep you’ve ever had.”

James is an enigma. A tall, socially awkward, prim and proper geek.

And then.

He says things like that in a deep, dark voice that makes my pulse skip because I can’t tell if he’s kidding or not.

He holds me in this breathless embrace only for a moment. Just long enough to make my lungs ache. A whisper of the things he’s capable of. A gentle reminder not to stare at old boyfriends out the window, maybe.

He drops his hand, and I suck in air. I’m light-headed.

I twist to face him and slip my arms around his shoulders. “Put me to bed,” I tell him, and he lifts me off my feet.

8

CLAIRE

Running clears my head.

Normally, James and I wake up when the sky is still kissed pink with dawn light. We’re late today, jet-lagged, and we don’t make it out of the house until nearly nine. It’s a cool morning. My emerald-green, velvet tracksuit keeps me warm. James is dressed in matching green (I got us a set for Christmas) with a smart watch to calculate his movements and his AirPods. His bare neck and cheeks pinken in the chill.

In Paris, we run loops around the city parks. Here, we have actual woods.

He slows his pace to keep alongside me, and I pick up mine to match his.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” I say.

“Tell me,” he encourages, opening the door for me to vent.

As we cut deeper into the woods, the sky dims, hooded with thick oak trees.

“I couldn’t sleep last night,” I tell him. “So I started going through Daddy’s finances.”

“Alright.”

---