Page 24 of All Our Secrets

“What the fuck are you doing?” I grumbled, slapping a palm over my face. The sun peeked through the curtains to my left. On the right, beside the bed, Theodore had his arms crossed over his chest. “Please, don’t tell me you stand over Peyton while she’s sleeping too.”

His transparent shoulders stiffened. “She’s my wife.” I hit the nail on the head. That fucker. “Why wouldn’t I look at her?”

Because she’s a widow.A dead man standing over her at night was macabre. And I fucking hated it.“It’s creepy.”

“How?”

“You’re a ghost. She doesn’t even know you’re here. Hell, I don’t know if you’re really here.” I dropped my feet off the side of the bed.

“I don’t understand. I’ve been trying to throw that clock at your head for thirty minutes, and it won’t move.” Theodore slipped his fingers through the digital clock on the nightstand.

I blinked. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“I was trying to move it, dumbass. We’ve been friends this long, and you still don’t know when I’m joking?” Theodore frowned. “But really, sometimes, I can move things and other times, nothing.”

My body went rigid. “What are you trying to touch anyway?”

“I think you should tell Peyton I’m here.”

He tried to touchher.

The fury climbed up my chest and out my throat. “What?” I snarled. “No.”

“Yes.I need to let her know I’m still here.”

My head spun. “No. Peyton will think I’m crazy if I say that. Hell,Ithink I’m crazy.” I stood, then pivoted around Theodore when he neared me.

“King, my family needs me,” Theodore went on.

Fury gripped my insides. “What can you do for them, Theo? You’re a ghost. You can’t touch your wife or son.”

My words sent him stumbling back, as if I’d punched him.

I swore, rubbed my beard, and accepted the guilt eating away at my stomach. “Don’t ask me to do that to her.Don’t.”

“You don’t know Peyton,” he said.

Oh, but I fucking do.

“She’d accept this, accept what I am,” he continued.

I did know Peyton. And I knew if she one day saw Theodore, like he said, she’d be with him. She’d live without another’s touch, another’s kiss, or another’s love because that’s who she was. But that beautiful loyalty didn’t belong to a ghost. Even if that specter happened to be my childhood friend. The person who’d accepted my attitude and who I was long before others had.

My jaw clenched before I spoke. “You’d do that to her?”

“She’s not sleeping, King,” Theodore shouted, and my hands fell to my sides as I took in what he said.

Not sleeping? “I’ve offered to help with T.J.”

“It’s not that.” Theodore shook his head. “She doesn’t touch our bed. She dozes in the rocking chair.”

Wait. I exhaled as my anger skyrocketed. “The wooden one?”

Theodore nodded, and my chest cracked right down the middle. I pictured Peyton curled up in that hard chair, trying to get comfy, so exhausted she fell asleep despite being uncomfortable. My chest grew tighter with tension and a vulnerability that bugged me.

It fucking gutted me to imagine her being lonely or depressed and not reaching out to anyone.

“I’ve only been here a few days.” There was a tremble in Theodore’s voice. “It made me wonder… What has she been doing all this time?”

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