Page 15 of Chasing Ghosts
“It’s him, isn’t it? The cult leader?” She whispers the last.
“When Roxie called him Mr. Anders, he corrected her. Reverend can clearly be heard on the EVP.”
“Oh, God!”
“Right now, all we have to do is keep warm and keep from getting hit by lightning. Everything else we can discuss tomorrow.”
I can almost feel how tired she is. If she’s not been sleeping since we got to the island, she has to be exhausted.
“I don’t want to be…used.”
“I know. No one is going to use you. I’m not going to tell anyone.”
“Roxie found out. She knows.”
“I trust Roxie. She won’t tell anyone either. But let’s keep it between me, you, and Roxie. There are people here who would use it.”
“Drake.”
“And I don’t put it past Ripley to try to use it to her advantage, either. We’ll let Theo know later if you want to tell him, but not while we’re on the island. The fewer who know, the better. And the safer you’ll be.”
“Safer?”
“Someone, or something, is trying to tell you something. They’re trying to show you something. Until we find out what that is, I don’t trust anyone but Roxie.”
“And Tray?” I don't like that!
“Why do you say that?”
“Um,” she doesn’t want to tell me.
“Are you two…?” I can’t even bring myself to say it as a surge of anger and jealousy washes over me.
She looks at me with her lips curled around her teeth in an expression I am quickly coming to realize she makes when she is trying to hide something.
“Not me.”
I frown and try to follow where she is leading me, but it’s late and I’m just not making those connections.
“Tray…is in love with Roxie.”
No! No way! “How…?”
"I can pick up on things if I touch someone sometimes. Not all the time, and not anything they are thinking. It's more like glimpses of the past and what they did, not what they will do or what they are thinking about doing. It’s like the ghost thing. It doesn’t happen on command or all the time. I can’t go to a place and automatically just start doing it.”
“How long has he…?”
“From the start. She likes him too, but they aren’t going to do anything about it because of your rule about not…being with your co-workers.”
Well damn. Turns out I’m the asshole.
“I made that rule to protect people, not to…”
She gives me a little smile with a sleepy blink that is longer than it would normally be. “I know. You’re a good man.”
Now I feel even worse. “I’m not. I’m pretty sure a good man wouldn’t have put his hands on you. I can’t be called a good man when I had a handful of your ass and even spanked you for fuck’s sake.”
She blushes so prettily that damned if it doesn’t make me want to do it again. And that is why, no matter what she says about me being ‘good’, where she’s concerned, I’ll never be that good. I'll never be so good that I walk away from her, never good enough that my hands won't find a way to touch her little body and breathe her in.
