Page 35 of Sweet Silver Bells
He crawled into the driver’s seat, slammed the door.
“Finally.” Olivia clapped her hands. “It’s new, you know, not getting my way. I was a child running from a ball. Since then, no one says no to me.”
“I didn’t say no,” Hunter said, the glow of his phone blue on his face.
Sirens wailed in the distance. Help was coming. Too late for Mason. Too late for Hunter’s old life.
Get her out of here.
If he’d stayed away, convinced himself she wasn’t real, Mason would still be alive.
Guilt slithered through him.I could never have left her. Who could?
Hunter put the phone down. Help would arrive. Now he had to finish what he’d started: protect her, save her—whatever that meant now.
“I didn’t exactly kill him,” Olivia mused.
“What do you mean byexactly?”
“I gave clear instructions. Get back in his car and drive as fast as he could.” She flicked her hair like it was nothing.
Hunter turned the key and eased the car off the curb. They coasted past the wreckage. Neighbors spilled from a nearby hotel, shrieking as they realized how narrowly they’d been spared.
Blue and red lights flickered in the rearview mirror, fading behind them. Olivia sprawled back, legs up, dirty feet pressed to the window, humming happily, her knees bouncing with each note.
9
CHAPTER NINE.
“Your tree,” Olivia’s ethereal yet eerie voice seeped into Hunter's bones, “is not thriving.”
Hunter slid his thick skeleton key into his front door, hearing the heavy click as he turned it. She stood behind him, goosebumps prickling her arms while she lingered. Olivia blinked at the withering bare tree in his front yard.
Hunter was about to invite her into the home he and Sarah had built together. A place of peace and refuge that would now be a refuge for something more violent.
Are you really saving her?
“It’s just winter,” he mumbled, opening the front door and stepping into his home. “All the trees look like this when it’s cold.”
“Not the trees in the forest,” she replied. “They thrive in all seasons.”
Hunter waited for a sign, an omen of anger from Sarah’s ghost, before he stepped inside and let Olivia in. It felt like a betrayal, bringing a woman here who collected his stares, whose lips had stolen his breath.
A horrifying feeling crept into his heart, the certainty that once her toes touched his floor, nothing would ever be the same. He could never turn back.
But no omen came.
She’s only a guest. You're being paranoid.
Though when Olivia's near-naked body was bent over his in the car, no thoughts of her being "only" anything had crossed his mind. He hoped his silent prayer to any spirit listening would count for something.
Because he cared.
He cared so much that the ache it caused could not heal. There would be no recovery.
Besides, Sarah’s ghost wouldn’t haunt you. She would watch over you.
Olivia stepped inside behind him as he reached out to pull the cord on the lamp, illuminating the living room, scaring away the shadows that lurked. Shadows that Hunter assumed would watch with curiosity as this new monster had found herself with his crushed spirit effortlessly woven around her.
