Page 90 of The Spider & the Storm

“I have to unlock the gate in the morning,” I further explained, staring out into the empty hallway. “If I have any hope of waking up in the morning, I need to get to bed.”

Her silence was damning. The hallway, her room, the hotel surrounding us … it was all too damn quiet, and I was too damn aware of how fast and loud my heart was beating as I waited for her response.

“It’s not really that late,” she finally offered, unsure as she spoke.

“I'm on a schedule. If I don't go to bed at a certain time, I won't wake up. It's how I work; it's how it's always been.”

She uttered a thoughtful, “Hmm,” from behind me. “I guess you probably know better than I do.”

“About this? Yes, I do.”

“I’m pretty sure you don’t know me well enough to make that assessment,” she mocked, throwing my words back at me ina playful tone that made me long to have her body back within my hands.

“Fair enough. Anyway, have a good—”

“Charlie, wait,” she interjected hurriedly, her footsteps matching her urgent tone.

I braved a glance over my shoulder to watch her approach. She had kicked off her heels at some point, and I was reminded of our height difference. With her, I liked it. Not that I’d never been with shorter girls before—at six foot three, it wasn’t exactly common to find women close to my height. But with the others, I’d always found our vertical differences to be awkward and more of a nuisance. For a short time, Jersey had felt like my ideal in every way imaginable, including our modest four-inch height difference. We had felt like puzzle pieces, perfectly complementary and proportionately balanced, until she went ahead and soured every characteristic she’d held in my mind, to the point where I found it difficult to even look at women with platinum hair without the phantom pains of heartache tearing through my chest.

But Stormy didn’t feel awkward. She didn’t call out old pains lingering in the shadows of my past.

Instead, she reminded me of every reason I always hated to be alone, and in the moment, that was so much worse than anything else.

Her cool hand lay over my shoulder, and her other reached up to my cheek. With little persuasion, she lured me in, like a siren at sea. My mouth was drawn to hers, and as her fingers danced lightly over my bearded jaw, her lips moved against mine in feathery, dreamlike touches.

The kiss ended, but her hands remained where they were, one cupping my jaw and the other on my shoulder, as she tipped her head back and stared through my eyes, straight into the soul I’d kept hidden and silenced for what now seemed like an eternity.

“I don’t know what it is about you, but for some reason, kissing you feels like a privilege,” she whispered in the open doorway of her hotel room. “Thank you for that and thank you for tonight. Even though you’re still sad, even though you might shut me out again tomorrow, I hope that, somewhere in your heart, it means something to know that this was the best night I’ve had in a really, really long time. Because, honestly, as lame as it sounds, for me, it means a lot. Probably more than it should.”

Her voice weakened in strength the longer she spoke as her eyes misted and gleamed in the hallway light.

It hurt me to know that I—a man she hardly knew—could inspire such emotion. That she’d been denied something as simple as a good night for so long that this—a night of mixed signals and a push and pull I couldn’t help—was enough for her to feel grateful when, from where I stood, she deserved perfection.

I wrapped my hands around hers, lowering them away from my face and shoulder, as our foreheads touched, and my gaze looked to her lips, all to avoid seeing the hope in hers.

“The privilege was mine,” I replied in a voice hoarse and unused to talking.

Then, before she could reply and distract me again, I released her hands and hurried out the door and down the hallway to the elevator.

This time, I didn’t turn around.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

MASSACHUSETTS, PRESENT DAY

I had learned about the Salem witch trials when I was nine.

Mom wasn’t thrilled when I insisted on taking the book from the library. She thought I was too young and emotionally sensitive to handle the truth of what had gone on back in the early 1690s, and she wasn’t wrong. Because after staying up all night, devouring that book and educating myself on what had become of those men, women, and children, I snuck from my bed to find Mom downstairs on the couch, watchingCheers.

“Charlie, honey, what’s wrong?” she asked after seeing my face, sticky and red from crying.

“Why did they have to kill them?” I demanded to know, remembering the horrors from the book as I tucked my body around hers and rested my head on her shoulder.

Mom sighed in the way she always did when she was about to explain something she’d rather not explain at all. Then, she said, “Because they didn’t understand them, Charlie, and people … sometimes, they’re afraid of the things they don’t—or can’t—understand. They think it’s easier to fear than to accept.”

“But they just wanted to be left alone,” I muttered, knowing, even then, exactly what that was like.

God, Istillknew.

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