Rush (31 page)

The grief was still there, but it was
bearable now. I could move forward with my life. I would survive.

Chapter 26

Max

I spent the night in Brad and Marie’s
little guest room under the eaves. It still sported the same worn, little-girl
quilt that had probably covered its bed for the past thirty or forty years. The
thing was covered in a pattern of girls in giant, flowered bonnets and long,
ruffled aprons, circa 1975.

I didn’t mind the decor. The room was
chilly and rain pattered fitfully against the window glass, but through the
open door came the rich, dark smell of coffee. I could hear movement and voices
downstairs. Brad and Marie were already awake.

I got up and pulled on my jeans and
shoes. I’d take a shower later. Right now, I needed some of that coffee.

Caroline, and pain, lurked at the back
of my mind, but I ignored them. My mental reprieve would only last a short
while and I intended to make the most of them.

The old, bare wood stairs creaked as I
walked downstairs. I went into the kitchen and stopped short. Selene was there,
sitting at the table and chatting with Marie while Brad cooked scrambled eggs
on the stove top.

Selene looked up at me with a huge
smile. “Good morning, sleepy-head.”

I grimaced. “‘Lo.”

“Grumpy in the morning, huh?”

Marie indicated the coffee-maker with a
movement of her head. “Pour yourself a cup.”

“I’m surprised to see you here, Selene,”
I said as I opened a cupboard in search of a mug for my coffee.

“Didn’t I tell you? I’m moving down
here.”

I turned to stare at her. “I thought you
hated it here.”

Selene shrugged, giving me a flirtatious
look. “I decided to give it another try. Since Brad and Marie are here, and
you, too. It’s gotten lonely up in Seattle.”

“Hmm.” I turned back to the coffee.

“Selene got here not long after you went
to bed,” Marie told me. “I had to put her on the couch.”

“Sorry about that.”

“Oh, don’t apologize,” Selene said. “I
heard about what happened.”

Great. Now she’d renew her campaign to
get me in bed.

I brought my coffee to the table and sat
down across from Selene. Next to her would be way too close; she’d probably try
to grope me under the table or something. Brad finished with the eggs and
started setting plates in front of us. There were home-made muffins to go with
them.

“You two get up really damn early,” I
said. “But thanks. These look good.”

“It’s farm life,” Marie said with a
smile. “You know, roosters and all.”

“I see.”

“I heard the rooster this morning,”
Selene said. “I could hardly believe it. A real rooster.”

Marie laughed. “You’re not a country
girl, huh, Selene?”

“No.” Selene made a face. “I thought
Seattle was a small town when I got there.”

“Avery’s Crossing is going to be an
adjustment for you, then,” Marie said.

“Thank the gods for the Internet,” I
remarked.

They laughed.

After breakfast was over and we’d
cleaned up, Brad and Marie got to work on their endless farm tasks. I went back
upstairs to put on one of Brad’s sweatshirts so I could help out. Selene
shadowed me, grabbing my elbow on the upstairs landing and stopping me from
going back into my room.

“Max, I’m sorry about Caroline.”

“Me too.” I turned toward the bedroom.

“I’d be glad to, you know, keep you
company. Help ease the pain.”

“Thanks, but I’m fine.” I pulled out of
her hold.

She pouted. “You’re no fun these days.”

“I love her, Selene. I’m not going to
get over it in a day or two.” Probably not in a decade or two, either.

She tossed her long, black hair. “She
doesn’t deserve you. She’s not good enough for you and you’re better off
without her.”

I turned my face away from her. “You’re
not helping.”

“I’m just trying—”

“I know what you’re doing and I
appreciate your concern, but I don’t want a fuck buddy.”

Her quick intake of breath told me I’d
hit a nerve. And hurt her feelings.

“Damn,” I said. “I’m sorry. But I can’t
be your friend with benefits or one of your string or whatever it is you call
your sex partners.”

She laid a manicured hand on my arm. “Max,
that’s not what this is about. I really care for you. And I don’t have a string
anymore, especially since I just moved here. I don’t know anyone but you.”

“I give you two weeks before you have a
crowd of men following you around with their tongues hanging out.”

She looked hurt. “You don’t think very
highly of me, do you?”

“I like and respect you. But you and I
want completely different things out of a relationship. It would never work.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I’ve changed.
Honestly. I want to be exclusive. With you, Max.” She took both my hands as she
stared soulfully into my eyes.

Gods. The last thing I wanted to do
right now was hurt Selene. She was a good, kind person whom I’d always liked,
whether or not we were sexually involved.

I squeezed her hands. “Thank you for
being my friend. But that’s all I have to offer. I’m sorry.”

Her dark eyes glistened as if she wanted
to cry. She nodded, biting her bottom lip. “Okay. That’s okay. I understand. I—I’ll
see you later.”

Selene turned and ran downstairs. I
seemed to do nothing but hurt the women in my life lately. My feet turned
toward the stairs to bring me back to Selene and tell her I’d been wrong. That
I wanted her. But I stopped at the edge of the staircase, knowing I couldn’t do
it, that I couldn’t be with any woman but Caroline.

The woman I loved wanted nothing to do
with me. Fuck.

Chapter 27

Caroline

Aunt Jo left in the afternoon to drive
back up to Salem. I went back to my room to study. I’d been doing a lot of that
lately, since there was nothing else to take up my time. Being boyfriend-free
was going to be great for my GPA.

I put on some classical music and curled
up on my bed with the novel I was reading for French lit. Frankly, the story
didn’t interest me much and even my beloved French language couldn’t make up
for a dull tale, so it was slow going.

By dinnertime, I was nodding off
repeatedly. The book slid out of my hands and onto my comforter as I leaned my
head back against my stacked-up pillows and closed my eyes. My decision about
Max nagged at me every time my mind wandered, and it was wandering mercilessly
at the moment.

I shouldn’t call him. I shouldn’t even
want him. But I did want him, with everything in me. That’s how weak and silly
I was. The thought of a whole life without him was like preparing myself to
live without my hands. Or my eyes. He felt that essential to me.

God, what was I doing? I didn’t even
know who I was anymore. No-one had ever been essential to me until him, so
obviously I could get by on my own. I had to.

A slight tremor in my bed made my eyes
pop open. What was that? I’d been lying still, so I hadn’t caused the
sensation. It felt like someone had shaken the frame. I braced my hands against
the mattress, glancing nervously around the room for a sign of Retro-girl. I
was alone.

The bed vibrated again. I gasped. I’d
actually been able to see it moving that time.

“Who’s there? What do you want?” I said
in a low voice.

Naturally, there was no answer. At
least, not one I could hear. Sweat trickled down my sides.

The bed rattled and bounced in a frenzy
of shaking. I let out a cry and jumped off the thing. It jogged back and forth
like it was trying to get up and walk from the room.

“Stop it!” I said.

My coffee mug lifted off my desk and
sailed toward my head. I ducked. It smashed against the wall next to the door,
broken shards raining down on the carpet.

“Holy crap.” Whatever this was, it
seemed to be trying to hurt me.

The textbooks I had stacked on my desk
lifted, one by one, and hurled themselves at me. I dodged the first one, but
the second slammed me squarely in the middle of my back.

“Ow!” I grabbed my purse and ran from
the room, panting.

In the hall, I could hear banging coming
from inside. The ghost, or creature, or entity—I didn’t know what to call it—was
evidently still in there having its little temper tantrum. With shaking hands,
I yanked out my phone and punched in Jo’s number. She’d probably know what to
do.

All I got was her voice mail.

I leaned against the wall. Now what?
Paige would be no help, and I sure didn’t want her getting hurt by a flying
book or my extra coffee mug.

The door across from mine opened and Ivy
stuck her mousy brown head out to stare at me. “What’s going on in there?” she
said, her eyes wide behind her glasses.

“Oh, uh, well, it’s a ghost. I think.” I
smiled lamely.

Her eyes got even wider. “A ghost? You’re
kidding, right?”

“No, Ivy, I’m not.” My hand was still
shaking as I lifted it to push my hair from my eyes. “It’s a poltergeist or
something.”

“Holy shit. That’s...that’s awesome!”

My eyebrows shot up. “You think so?”

“Yeah.” She sounded genuinely excited. “Can
I look?”

“If you want, but it threw a cup and a
pile of books at me, so be careful. One of the books hit me in the back.”

“Wow.” She edged out of her room and put
her hand on my doorknob. “You sure it’s okay if I look?”

Inside the banging continued.

“Sure. Please yourself.”

She opened the door a crack and peeped
inside. “Oh. My. God. That’s incredible. I—” Words seemed to fail her as she
stared at the wild show going on in my room.

“Shit.” She recoiled and slammed the
door. Something thumped hard against the closed portal. “It threw another book
at me. A big one.” Ivy turned her head to look at me. “What should we do?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess...I’m
going to have to call my boyfriend. I mean, my ex-boyfriend. He might know.”

“Is that the guy who was sitting out
here in the hall the other day?”

She’d seen him? “Yeah, that’s the one.”

“He’s hot. I can’t believe you broke up
with him.”

“Neither can I,” I muttered.

I so didn’t want to call Max. Except I
did. God, how I wanted to hear his voice, see his face, touch him. But that
couldn’t happen—the touching. We had to keep this on the level of friendship
only.

I hit his number.

“Kincaid,” he said in an impersonal
tone, as if he hadn’t noticed my number on his phone.

“Max, it’s Caroline.”

Dead silence. Oh, hell, I’d done the
wrong thing. He didn’t want to hear from me after all, and who could blame him
after the way I’d talked to him.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have bothered
you,” I said quickly.

“I’m just surprised. I didn’t expect to
ever hear from you again,” he said.

“Yeah. I didn’t think I’d call you.”

Another uncomfortable silence followed.

“So...” He finally broke the quiet. “What’s
up?”

“I seem to have another ghost problem. A
poltergeist. Isn’t that what you call them when they throw stuff?”

“That’s it.”

“Something’s been rattling my bed and
throwing books around in my room. It hit me with one of them.”

“That sounds dangerous.” He sounded
carefully neutral. There was no joy in his voice, nothing to show he was glad I’d
called.

“Yeah. I thought so.” I fidgeted
nervously, trying not to glance at Ivy, who was standing there openly
listening.

“Is there something you want me to do
about it?” Max said. “Because I can help if you want, but you’re going to have
to ask for it.”

“You want to humble me, is that it?”

“No. I just want to be clear about
exactly what you want.”

I drew a deep breath in through my nose.
Fine. “Please help me, Max. I’d really appreciate it if you could come over and
see if you can do anything to make it go away.”

“I’ll be there in a few.” He cut the
connection.

I glanced at Ivy. “He’ll be here soon.”

“This is so cool. Can I hang around
while he does his thing?”

It was hard not to laugh. Ivy really
didn’t fit my preconceptions about what people interested in paranormal phenomena
looked like. “Sure, why not?”

“Awesome sauce.” She grinned at me.

Awesome sauce? I hadn’t heard that
expression since about fifth grade.

“So, are you a freshman?” I said.

“Nope. I’m a sophomore, actually.”

“An independent?”

“Yeah. You?”

“No, I’m in a sorority.”

Her eyes widened again. “Oh. I didn’t
know you sorority girls lived in the dorms past the freshman year.”

“We don’t, usually. I just wanted to be
on my own.”

She cocked her head. “How does your
sorority feel about that?”

“They hate it.”

We chatted for a while about the
difference between being an independent and a Greek. Ivy seemed smart and
likable, and I wondered why she hadn’t pledged. From the way she talked, I’d
guess she hadn’t been interested. Some of my sorority sisters—Tiffani, for example—would
never believe that anyone could be completely uninterested in pledging. They
always assumed independents had tried to pledge but had failed to be invited.
They were losers, in other words. Talking to Ivy, I was suddenly sure that wasn’t
true.

And anyway, was it right to label
someone a loser just because they didn’t fit into sorority life? Even if they
had tried to pledge and been rejected, that didn’t make them losers.

Ivy’s gaze moved to the end of the hall
behind me, lingering on whatever she saw there. Probably Max. My heart sped up
again and my achy butterflies made a grand entrance, fluttering so furiously I
thought I might be sick. What was I going to say to him? How could I look at
him without giving myself away?

I turned. He was wearing his black
leather jacket and carrying a messenger bag slung over one shoulder. His eyes
were sad. Distant. His gaze collided with mine and broke away, as if he couldn’t
bear to look at me.

I pressed my lips together and stared at
the floor. His feet, in worn black skate shoes, came closer and closer until
they stopped in front of me. A tremendous bang sounded inside my room.

“Sounds like they’re having a party in
there,” Max said.

“It’s incredible,” Ivy said.

He glanced at her. “You saw it too?”

“She let me peek.”

“Are you okay, Caroline?” he said. “You
said it hit you in the back.”

“I’m a little sore, but I’ll be fine. I
just can’t go in my room.” I glanced up at him. And caught him staring at me.

There was so much undisguised yearning
in his eyes that I couldn’t look away. We stared helplessly at each other for
an endless minute.

Max cleared his throat. “I’d better get
started. You two stay out in the hall.”

“Can’t I watch?” Ivy said. “I was really
hoping to watch.”

He gave her a faint smile. “I guess, but
don’t blame me if you get smacked with something.”

“I won’t.”

He didn’t ask me if I wanted to watch.
He just opened my door and stood in the opening, watching whatever was going on
in my room.

“Are you the one who’s been throwing
things around?” he said.

Ivy and I exchanged a wide-eyed glance.
I couldn’t hear the answer he received. He took a step over the threshold.

“We’d like to come in and talk to you.”

Whatever it was must have given him the
okay because he gestured to us to follow him before entering the room entirely.
Ivy happily tromped after Max, but I hung back. I really didn’t want to be
winged with another book.

I peered around the door and saw
Retro-girl standing in the center of my room. Wait.
She
was the one who’d
smacked me? I hadn’t perceived her as violent before, and it bothered me now to
think she’d attacked me.

The air in the room felt
refrigerator-cold again. She wore the same outfit she’d had on when I saw her
at the sorority house—mini-skirt, high fringed boots, long red and green paisley
tunic. Her hair was loose and ultra-straight. She had her arms crossed and was
staring at Max.

I sneaked into my room and closed the
door. Retro-girl glanced at me before going back to staring at my ex-boyfriend.
She looked annoyed. Well, screw her. What did she have to be annoyed about? She
wasn’t the one who’d been hit by a big-ass textbook and had her favorite mug
broken into a million pieces.

I sat on my bed and glared at her. “Why
are you messing up my room?”

“I’m here to talk to Max, not you,” she
said in a perfectly clear voice.

“Well, la-di-da,” I said. “You broke my
cup. You hurt me. I don’t like it, Retro-girl.”

The blonde frowned at me. “My name is
Sharon, not Retro-girl.”

“Fine. Sharon. Whatever.”

“Caroline, stay out of this,” Max said.

“It’s my room and my stuff. I want to
know why she attacked me.”

“You weren’t talking to Max,” she said. “I
had to make you.”

“That’s why you hit me? Couldn’t you
have just said something? You know, like with words?”

“I didn’t think you’d listen. You didn’t
listen to Fred, so why would you pay any attention to me?”

Max turned his attention to me. “Fred
came here?”

“Um...yeah,” I said, flushing.

“He wanted her to listen to what you had
to say,” Sharon told him. “But she refused. I didn’t think she’d listen to me
and I had to do something. Carter is desperate.”

Max sat down on my bed next to me as if
his legs had been cut out from beneath him. “Carter.”

“He needs to talk to you. He has
something to tell you, but he’s having trouble getting through. He needs you to
reach out from your side.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” he
said. “Why haven’t you spoken until now?”

“I was afraid. It takes a great deal of
energy to do what I’m doing right now. I’ll be weakened for a long time
afterward.”

“Would an offering help? Max said.

She tipped her head to the side, making
her hair hang down like a golden curtain. “Maybe.”