I don’t stop, I just bolt up the stairs feeling like an idiot because I think I’d way fucking rather face an angry bear or a vengeful spirit right now than keep talking to Trent about how we’re not fucking, about whether this is romantic, or even be in the same room with him.

“Darcy, for fuck’s sake you have no idea what that noise was—”

“I’m fine,” I say, stopping on the second-floor landing. “It was probably just a branch or something.’

“Branches don’t walk,” he says. “And for Chrissake, you’re still hurt, you’re armed with a meat thermometer, you shouldn’t just go running off in old houses because fucking anything could be up here—”

I start laughing.

“Dammit, I’m serious,” he says, but now Trent’s grinning too.

“I’ve got you,” I say. “What could I possibly be afraid of?”

“Squatters with guns and a temper,” he says. “Bears, rattlesnakes, drugged up vagrants, serial killers—”

“I actually wasn’t looking for a list,” I say, and brandish my meat thermometer at him. Trent makes a face and grabs the end of it, and I hit the button.

“Ninety-six point three. You’re cold,” I say.

“Extremities are always colder,” he points out.

“Maybe you’re a ghost.”

“Maybe I’ve been a ghost this whole time,” he says dryly, raising his eyebrows. “Maybe I’m secretly Woodford himself.”

I reach out and grab Trent’s forearm. Warm and solid.

“I’m a stealth ghost,” he says, his voice moving lower.

“Is that a thing?” I ask, my voice matching his.

“Sure,” he says, and I can see a smile creasing around his eyes, even in the dark. I know Trent so well that I don’t even have to see him to know what he looks like, what he’s doing.

My hand is still on his arm. I should take it off. I don’t.

“What’s a stealth ghost do?” I ask. “Besides be ninety-six point three degrees?”

“Ghost stuff, but stealthy. Boo.”

“Walk through a wall or get the fuck out,” I tease him.

Trent tilts his head and eyes the wall behind me, his eyes raking over the cracked plaster, wooden slats visible here and there. The interior walls on this floor aren’t stone, just the exterior.

“I think I could run through that wall,” he says.

We’re both still holding onto this meat thermometer that’s supposed to be finding ghosts but has only managed to find that I still want my best friend, because my hand’s still on his arm.

“Could and should are different things,” I point out.

“You know you’re talking to the Low Valley Leveler, don’t you?”

“You ever leveled a wall?”

“Just people so far,” he says, and I scrunch my nose. He chuckles. “They knew what they were getting into, don’t make that face.”

I turn and look at the wall. I’m about ninety-nine percent sure that Trent’s got no real intention of running through it, but it does kinda look like he could.

“You’re not gonna get through that undamaged, and I think Nigel might have a stroke,” I say. “Literally, Trent. You could kill a man. And then Gavin would come after me for letting you do this.”

Trent chuckles. We’re still holding onto both ends of the thermometer, and even though it’s a really dumb substitute for holding hands, I don’t want to let go.

“I won’t,” he says. “I’d need about ten beers and probably a couple of bumps first, and I haven’t done that shit in years.”

It’s true. Trent hasn’t exactly always been the sober one, but he’s always been the soberest. Meaning he’s saved my ass more than a few times, like the time I went skinny dipping in the Mississippi or the time I wandered into a corn field, somewhere in Iowa, out of my mind on shrooms, convinced that I was in a maze with a chocolate fountain at the center.

I hardly remember that, but apparently, I really fucking wanted that chocolate fountain.

“What I should do is just throw baby powder on you to find out for sure,” I say. “Though I’m still not really sure—”

CRASHthump.

I whirl around, my breath stuck in my throat at the same time as Trent grabs my arm and shoves his way between me and the door. I stumble a little but I’m fine.

Scratch scratch. Thump.

“Stay here,” Trent tells me.

He glances at the meat thermometer still in my hand, looking unimpressed. Then he bends down, grabs a wooden bannister railing, and pulls it off with one jerk.

Even though my heart is hammering at about a thousand beats per minute, I still notice the way his forearm muscles bunch beneath his tattoos. And I like it.

He turns and walks through the doorway, ducking his head just slightly as he moves into the dark. I ignore his order to stay there — like fuck I’m staying behind, where the serial killer’s serial killing friend can just come grab me? No thanks — and walk softly behind him.

It’s nothing, I tell myself. It’s a squirrel, or a bird, or maybe an owl or a chipmunk or—

I frown, trying to think of more woodland creatures. I grew up in the suburbs and then the city, and none of my parents were ever exactly the take the kids on a nature walk type. My education there is mostly limited to the animals who helped Disney princesses clean their houses, as seen on very blurry VHS cassettes.

Tap tap tap tap THUNK slide tap scratch.

I freeze. The room we’re in now is big, shelves lining each wall. Probably used to be a study or something, broken windows framing the spindly, spiny arms of evergreen trees outside. The windows up here aren’t as broken, meaning that these still have plenty of solid panes left.

Also left in this room, unlike downstairs: furniture. Or something, huddled in a mass in the center of the room, covered in a huge white sheet. Even though I know, logically, that it’s probably a bookshelf and a desk and a chair or something, it looks spooky as hell.

The wind blows. The trees move. The pale shadows left by the moon move.

And under the sheet, something also moves.

I gasp, grab Trent’s arm, and smash my face into his shoulder blade, the least-brave ghost hunter who’s ever existed. I’m good right up until something might actually happen, apparently.

He chuckles.

“Shut up,” I whisper, bravely peeking out around his arm.

“I’m pretty sure it’s a raccoon,” he murmurs, his voice low and steady. “And I’m pretty sure it’s more nervous about us than we are about it.”

“They’re rabid sometimes,” I offer, like it excuses my abject cowardice.

“And they’re also known to kill humans for fun sometimes,” he says.

I squeeze his arm tighter, despite myself.

“You’re fucking with me.”

“Yeah,” he admits, a grin in his voice. “But you thought about it.”

“Well, it can have this room,” I say. “This is the raccoon’s house now.”

“I thought you wanted to hunt for ghosts,” Trent says, his voice still low and teasing. “You charged up that staircase a couple minutes ago like you were Queen Fuck Everything of I’m The Shit Mountain.”

I’m still holding onto him, my body still pressed tightly against his, and it’s not because I’m really frightened anymore — the sheet over the furniture keeps wiggling, but I’m pretty sure he’s right that it’s a raccoon — but because I like it.

I fucking like it and I fucking want this and I want him. Like this, in the dark, in an old romantic getaway that’s full of ghosts and wildlife, where he rips railings from bannisters to defend us from cute little woodland critters.

I keep thinking this feeling will go away but it hasn’t. It’s only built, for years now, from the night we met and I thought hey, he’s cute to sitting together in dressing rooms, listening to music while Gavin and Liam got high. To telling him all my bad, dark shit, about being a foster kid and running away at fifteen, and instead of backing away like everyone else he told me about his own bad, dark shit about a drunk dad and a mom who wouldn’t leave.

Cracking each other up at three in the morning, driving our van from college town bar to college town bar, the other two asleep in the back. Eating breakfast from rest area vending machines as the sun came up. Discovering a shared love of absolutely stupid television and a fascination with weird museums in small towns.

Trent staying here, in Tallwood, to take care of me when he didn’t have to.

So I hold onto him, thinking all this and trying not to think at all. Thinking so rarely gets me anything good.

Trent crouches down, his arm slipping from my fingers, and he grabs a small chunk of plaster from the floor. Then he stands and tosses it at the sheet-covered furniture.

There’s an angry squeak, followed by a scrabbling sound.

“Yeah, I think we’re serial killer free,” Trent says, crouches for another chunk of plaster, and does it again.

This time a small, pointy, gray face peeks out. It’s got that unmistakable bandit mask around the eyes, and is super fucking cute.

“Go on, get,” Trent says, tossing more plaster at it, small pieces that are only big enough to annoy it, not hurt it.

The raccoon scurries toward the wall where windows are missing. More plaster tossing. More scurrying. Every couple of steps it looks back at us, and I swear it looks way more annoyed than afraid.

Actually, given that I’m still half-standing behind Trent, I think this raccoon might be judging me. Fucking wildlife.

“Jesus, this one’s an asshole,” Trent mutters, pitching one more plaster chunk at it while the thing looks at us disdainfully from the window sill.

“It can have the house, I already said that.”

“Go away,” Trent says, and lobs a final piece. It hits the raccoon square on the side and bounces off harmlessly, clattering to the floor.

The raccoon rolls its eyes. I swear it does. Then it finally leaves, disappearing out the window with the rustle of tree branches.

Trent looks over his shoulder and down at me.

“You can come out now,” he murmurs.

“I’m not afraid of raccoons,” I say, still half-hiding behind Trent. From the raccoon.

“Sure.”

“I just... they have diseases, you know?”

“So you wanted to use me as a human shield.”

He’s teasing, and I know he’s teasing, but something in the way he says it hits me right in the gut. Like I’ve been using him or something, which is the very last thing I want him to think.

“That’s not what I meant,” I say softly.

Trent turns to me, and now we’re facing each other. The breeze stirs the trees outside and, ever so slightly, the sheets over the furniture.

Suddenly I can’t breathe and I can’t look him in the eye. This is everything I want and nothing, goddamn nothing that I deserve. I charged up here like an asshole and Trent came to save me, and this after two weeks of being my fucking nursemaid.

He didn’t know it was a raccoon. He knew it could be something actually dangerous and he came anyway without thinking twice.

“Darce, I was just kidding,” he says. “I know.”

I make myself smile, still looking down because I can’t look at him. I can think about a million things I want to say right now, because for some reason this dumb episode with the raccoon has made all of them surface and I don’t know why.

But I don’t say any of them. Instead I whip out the meat thermometer, into the six-inch space between our bodies, and hit the button, the LCD screen lighting up.

“Sixty-five-point-four,” I say. “Is that ghostier or less ghosty than downstairs?”

“Less ghosty?” he hazards.

“Or it’s an angry ghost.”

“Or an angry raccoon.”

“That raccoon was annoyed at best,” I say. “And why would Woodford be angry?”

I very nearly say we’re not doing any unmarried fucking but Trent is so close to me that I can feel his body heat and I’m not backing away. Unmarried fucking is just about the last thing I’m currently brave enough to say.

“I’ve got the feeling he’s not the most reasonable of ghosts,” Trent murmurs.

He’s closer. How the fuck did he get closer? I’m still staring at this thermometer like a mix of idiot and asshole, my heart slamming into my ribs with every beat.

“Seems like anything could set him off if he set fire to his own house because someone got it on,” I say.

Silence. I turn the thermometer off and put it back into my pocket.

“I guess we should leave before we upset him,” I offer, still looking away. At the walls, at the windows, anywhere but at him because I’m terrified that he’ll be able to see every single thought I’ve had in the last hour on my face.

“Are we going to upset him?” Trent asks, his voice so low and gravelly that I swear I can feel it in the floorboards.

Look at him, fucking look at him, what’s wrong with you?

I squeeze my hands into fists and finally, slowly, raise my eyes to look at Trent. Every nerve in my body is exploding.

“I lied when I said I didn’t want this,” I whisper, the words coming out in a rush, like someone’s yanking them from my mouth.

“You never said that.”

“I told you not to kiss me.”

“But you never said you didn’t want me to.”

I touch my fingers to the back of his hand, which twitches, but before he can take my hand in his I move it up his arm, over his patchwork of tattoos to his shoulder, until the back of my hand is resting against his collarbone, and I step in toward him.

Just like that, his arms are around me, warm and thick and familiar because we’ve hugged probably thousands of times. I know this so well but at the same time I don’t.

I’ve got one hand on his shoulder. The other finds its way, somehow, around the back of his neck. My eyes close again and his hands trace my spine in a whisper, so gentle against my new scar that I can hardly feel them.

Then up, over my neck, and Trent’s fingers are warm and solid in my hair. I’m on my tiptoes, eyes closed, and he strokes a thumb across my cheekbone, leaning his forehead against mine.

You can’t uncross this bridge, I think. You still haven’t actually kissed him yet, you can back out and it’ll be okay, probably—

I kiss him.

I do it so gently that for an instant I’m not even sure I did or whether my nerves somehow got the better of me and I’ve started hallucinating, but after a fraction of a second his hand tightens in my hair and he presses his mouth harder against mine and he’s warm and hard and soft all at once, everything that I always thought kissing Trent would be.

We kiss harder, his mouth moving against mine, somehow rough and reckless, and I can feel his fingers digging into the base of my spine, tugging me against his wildly before he pulls back, his lips leaving mine.

Trent pauses, just for a split second, like he needs a moment to collect himself. He’s breathing hard, and he runs his thumb over my cheekbone again, like he’s making sure of something.

And then his mouth is back on mine, harder than before, needier, like a dam’s burst and he can’t hold back. I kiss him fiercely, ferociously, opening my mouth and meeting his tongue with mine, my fingers tight on the back of his neck.

I bite Trent’s lip. He groans quietly, pulling my body against his by the hips, his other hand still in my hair. He’s hard as a rock, his erection against my lower belly and I move my hips against it, something wild and wanton unlocked inside me as he groans again.

Because Jesus, I fucking like that noise and more than anything I like that he’s making it.

We pull back again and this time he catches my lower lip between his teeth and I gasp, his fingers digging into my hip, tightening in my hair as I do. Trent pulls my head back, just a little, and he kisses my jaw, his lips lingering there, my throat, the spot just below my ear. There’s a noise like someone’s whimpering and it takes me a moment to realize it’s me.

I swallow hard, and wonder—

Through my closed eyelids, there’s a flash of white light on the ceiling, and my eyes fly open just in time to see another one.

“Shit,” I say out loud.