Guilty Needs (9 page)

Sarcastically, he muttered, “Well, gee, thanks.”

Alyssa drifted away from him, not exactly walking, but not really hovering the way he would have thought a ghost would. It was almost like something tugged her away as she said, “I always thought Bree was stubborn.”

Bree
.

The sound of her name had his guilt dropping down like a stone albatross around his neck, dragging him under. Blood rushed to his face and then drained away as nausea churned inside him. “Bree…”

“Why do you feel so guilty, Colby? It’s not like you left me for her. I’m gone. For good. I’m only here to make sure you’re going to be okay and then that’s it. So why do you feel so guilty for needing her?”

Needing her? He didn’t—

But all his dreams over the past six months rose up to haunt him, defying him. And Alyssa stood there watching him with knowing eyes. “Why don’t you want to need her?”

“I made a promise to you. I swore to love you. I don’t want to love anybody else.”

“Not really something we can control.” Alyssa sighed. Her body shimmered, wavered with the sound, before solidifying again until she seemed almost solid. “You did make a promise…and you kept it. You promised to love me ‘til death do us part…then death parted us. You’re free from that promise.”

“And if I don’t want to be?”

Her eyes flashed. The room chilled. Abruptly, Colby remembered other times when he’d heard this voice, the irritation or anger, followed by an icy chill. It was her—came from her—he realized.

“What are you going to do, spend your life alone?” she demanded. “Is that what you want?”

“I want my wife back!” he shouted. His voice echoed around him, the words leaving an empty, aching hole in his chest. “I need my wife back.”

“No. You don’t.”

Alyssa reached out, her hand hovering just above his cheek. He could feel the cold radiating off her and it made him think of Bree. Made him think of her warmth. Her smile.

As though she knew exactly what he was thinking, Alyssa nodded. “You need her. More, you want her. It’s time to let me go, baby. Letting me go doesn’t mean you don’t love me. It just means you’re ready to love her.”

“Bree.” He shook his head. “I don’t love her. I…”

Alyssa smiled at him. “Don’t you?”

“It doesn’t happen like that.”

She gave him a quick wink as she backed away. “Love doesn’t have a rulebook, you know. It can happen any way it wants.” Her words hadn’t even faded in the air before she was gone.

If Bree hadn’t come looking for him, Colby had no idea how long he might have stayed down there in the basement, staring at nothing, replaying those minutes with Alyssa over and over and over—each word, each movement.

Letting me go doesn’t mean you don’t love me—it just means you’re ready to love her
.

I don’t love her
.

Don’t you?

Like a DVD stuck and skipping back to the last scene, he kept going back to that.

It just means you’re ready to love her
.

I don’t love her
.

“Colby?”

Her quiet voice drifted down the stairs and he closed his eyes. For a few minutes, he’d almost forgotten where he was. “Yeah, I’m down here,” he said, raising his voice just a little.

At the sound of her feet moving lightly down the stairs, he turned. She glanced at him, then down. He realized he was still holding a bottle of wine. “Sorry. I was thinking about getting a drink.”

She shrugged. “I don’t mind.” As she moved closer, he caught the scent of soap and lotion—something exotic, like coconut and tropical flowers. “We can have a glass before we go eat if you want.” She took the bottle from him and turned it until she could read the label.

A glass? Oh. Yeah. Wine
.

Not for him, really. He’d given up on alcohol. He’d come down here to distract himself so he wasn’t thinking about a wet, naked Bree. And he’d ended up being confronted by his wife, who really didn’t care if he was thinking about a wet, naked Bree.

Getting a drink was the last thing on his mind but he couldn’t exactly tell her he’d given up on drinking when looking for a bottle of wine sounded so much better than the truth.

Sorry, came down here so I wasn’t thinking about you wet and naked in the shower
.

Well, no, not exactly right—Alyssa did care, as in she wanted to have him thinking about Bree. In any capacity. Wet. Naked. Clothed.

“Changed my mind,” he said, his voice rusty. “We can, though, if you want.”

Bree just shrugged. “Nah. I’m better off getting something to eat first. Skipped lunch. A glass of wine will probably go straight to my head right now.”

Oh, now that was just not what he needed to hear. A tipsy Bree, her hair still damp from the shower and her skin smelling of tropical flowers and Colby on a mission to track down just where the scent was the strongest. Her neck? Along her torso? Lower?

Suppressing a groan, he took the bottle and returned it to the shelves. “Let’s head on out then.”

Before he decided to open that bottle and drag Bree to the shower, because just then, a wet, naked, tipsy Bree sounded like bliss.

“Are you okay?”

Colby glanced up from his lasagna to smile at her. It was a familiar one, the one that said he was distracted, thinking about ten different things and not really paying attention. But when she had been about ready to repeat herself, he’d shrugged. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just…do you believe in ghosts?”

She’d been lifting her sweet tea up for a drink, but as that question hung in the air between them, she lowered it back to the table and then ended up folding her hands in her lap. “Ghosts?”

He nodded.

“Yeah.” Squirming on the bench, with its thin cushion and hard back, she met his gaze and nodded. “I believe in ghosts. Not necessarily the kind that rattle chains or play with the lights, but I believe in them. Sometimes people die before they can take care of everything they wanted to do.”

“Unfinished business,” he murmured.

A shiver raced down Bree’s spine as he echoed the words Alyssa had said to her so many times.

“I…” he licked his lips, leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. The material of his shirt drew tight across his biceps and shoulders and for a second, Bree was too distracted to follow him. Then she heard him say Alyssa’s name. “Would she have any reason to come back? She wasn’t exactly the type to start and not finish something.”

Except me
, Bree thought ruefully.
I’m her latest and last project
. “Sometimes they don’t have much choice.” She didn’t want to ask him. It was too damn weird.

But she couldn’t not ask. “Is this about Alyssa?”

She could see the answer in his eyes. He’d seen her. When, though?

She might have even asked him, except, just like that, his features became shuttered, blank. With a shake of his head, he muttered, “No. Forget I said anything.”

The rest of the meal passed in awkward silence and Bree ended up leaving two-thirds of her spaghetti uneaten on her plate. By the time the waitress came with the check, she was damn anxious to get out of there and apparently Colby was in the same state of mind. They both reached for the check at the same time. “I’ll take care of mine,” she said.

He didn’t even look at her. “I brought you. I’ll pay.”

Arguing with him was only going to keep them trapped there longer and she needed to get out of there, get away from him.

He’d locked her out.

Again.

The pain inside him was a cancer and all she wanted to do was help, but he wouldn’t let her. He had disappeared for a year, no letters, no phone calls, nothing—it was pretty damn clear he didn’t want or need her help.

In her chest, her heart was a cold, icy knot.
He doesn’t want me, Lys. I wish you could see that
.

The drive to her house was another exercise in awkward, tense silences, but when she tried to make her escape, he hit the door locks just as she reached for the handle. “I’m sorry. I think I forgot how to act with people in public,” he said quietly. Sliding her a glance, he shrugged. “It’s been a weird day.”

“They happen.” She wanted to lean forward and wrap her arms around his shoulders. His eyes were so serious and he looked so worried, so miserable. But touching him? Not a good idea.

Instead, she forced a smile and said, “Don’t worry about it.”

Don’t worry about it? Oh, the irony.

For the next week, Colby did nothing but worry about it. Worry about her. Worry about Alyssa. Worry about the very weird day when he’d seen his wife’s ghost in the basement of her best friend’s house.

She hadn’t made a return appearance.

Even when he had another dream about Bree and woke up feeling sick with guilt. It had hit him hard, but instead of collapsing under it, he’d shoved back. “There’s nothing to feel guilty about,” he’d told himself. He mostly even believed it. At least now.

And that might be why Alyssa hadn’t made a repeat appearance.

He spent the week in his office going through paperwork. On Friday, he found a partially finished manuscript that he’d set aside probably four years earlier. Most of his stuff was in the urban fantasy scene, with a few more traditional pieces.

Darkness
might have some urban fantasy aspects, but it was too dark, too macabre to be called anything but horror. Flipping through the loose pages, he found himself getting engrossed. A red pen, a tepid bottle of water—with his back pressed against the wall, he lost track of time, making notes in the margin, going back, rewriting a few passages in long hand then he got to the last page and realized the sun had set and he’d spent the past four hours doing rewrites on a piece that wasn’t even done.

But the story had turned into a song in his head, one that wouldn’t shut up. So instead of stretching out the kinks in his back and getting something to silence the growl in his belly, he pulled out the chair, booted up the computer and brought up the file holding the notes and partial manuscript for
Darkness
.

By the time the song in his head settled down to a quiet hum, it was dark outside. Dark in his office too, because he’d never bothered to turn on the lights. He didn’t bother doing so now, either. Instead, he just saved the updated file and made a backup copy on an SD card he found buried in one of the drawers.

His back was a mess of knots and aches. Exhaustion pushed at him but he didn’t head to the guest room where he’d been sleeping since he came home.

He headed outside, stripping out of his clothes, his goal the pool.

It had hit the high nineties today and right now, he’d bet the water would feel like warm silk. He was right. The water closed over him in an embrace. Holding his breath, he swam along the bottom until he had to surface. Then he started to swim laps.

His muscles warmed and he fell into a regular rhythm. Letting his mind drift, he toyed with the plotline for
Darkness
, taking mental notes and debating whether or not he should even try getting a proposal together for his agent. Hell, if she was still his agent. He hadn’t talked to her in a year and he wouldn’t be surprised if she’d decided to let him go. Yeah, he’d made her a decent amount of money but he was dead weight right now. Publishing didn’t allow for a lot of dead weight.

But the story wasn’t going quiet—he already knew that. He even had a glimmer of how it was going to end and unless he’d lost his rhythm during his twelve-month break away from the computer, he had a feeling he could wrap
Darkness
up in a few weeks.

Putting together a proposal was a good idea.

His muscles were starting to burn but he didn’t quit swimming until he’d managed to hammer out the basics in his mind and formulate a somewhat formal letter to his agent. Angela Browning wasn’t the overly formal type, but since he’d been playing mute the past year, going formal wasn’t a bad idea.

He swam another two laps and then just let his body float.

Overhead, the moon shone down—a pure, clear circle of silvery-white. His mind drifted, with little surprise, to Bree.

It just means you’re ready to love her
.

Ready to love Bree.

For some reason, the idea of it didn’t rub him quite so raw. Ready. Was he ready?

Always one to test himself, Colby deliberately thought about his wife. For the longest time after she’d died, he wouldn’t let himself think about her and when he had, he’d tried to jerk his thoughts away before he got lost in them. Thinking about her bought a stab of pain that threatened to eviscerate him.

It got to be habit, until he found himself thinking intentionally less and less. Wayward thoughts would intrude and he’d find himself fighting the tidal wave of grief, but thinking back, he realized that had been slowly ebbing down over the past couple of months.

It no longer had the power to level him.

And now? It was the first time he’d deliberately tried to do much more than visualize her face in his mind—excluding all the times he’d done it just to punish himself.

He went through a mental list, tried to recall the way she smelled. The way she tasted. The way she felt against him. It was all too hazy and vague. A surreal memory that would grow ever fainter with every passing day. Some part of him hated that—he wanted to keep her memory alive. But, even as he tried to make his thoughts of Alyssa clearer, more vivid, he realized other thoughts were trying to intrude.