I’m already in bed when someone knocks on the door. I’m playing a dumb game on my phone, though I’ve got my book next to me. I meant to read it, but what I really need is colors and lights flashing in front of my eyes and distracting me, not something that might let me think.

I pause when I hear it. On my phone, a stack of jewels crashes down and shatters, but I’m hoping that whoever it is will go away and just leave me alone.

But no. They knock again, and I sigh, because I’m pretty sure I know who’s at my door. There’s about a five percent chance it’s Gavin or Nigel and maybe a one percent chance that it’s Joan, which leaves an eighty-nine percent chance it’s Trent, if my math is right.

And I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t know what to do around him, how to hold my hands or where to look or what face to make, because I still wish I’d said yes instead of no and despite everything, I don’t feel like I can reverse it.

He knocks again, and I roll out of bed, wearing old boxer shorts and a t-shirt, and shout “I’m coming!” as I head through the bedroom and the living room, both dark.

I yank the door open, already afraid he’s left.

“Did I wake you up?” Trent says, looking over my shoulder into my dark suite.

“I was reading in bed,” I say.

There’s a long pause. He’s got a brown paper bag in one hand, and it crinkles when he shifts.

Is he drinking?

“What’s up?” I finally remember to ask.

“Can I come in?”

I step back and hit a light, my eyes still on the bag as he closes the door behind him.

“I can’t stand this,” he rumbles.

“Can’t stand what?” I ask, like I don’t fucking know.

“So I came here to fix it,” he says, looking toward the window where the moonlight is on the trees. “You were right. I got carried away at the river, I was in a bad place, I was just being...”

He drifts off for a moment, my stomach clenching, his face suddenly distant, closed off because fuck I don’t want to hear this. I don’t know what I fucking want to hear, but I only tried to kiss you because I was really upset isn’t it.

“Reckless,” he finally says. “And it was stupid, and I’m sorry, and I came here to make things normal again.”

I almost say you showed up at my hotel room at eleven at night, after I was in bed, to make things normal again? But it’s not like we’ve ever quite had a normal friendship, so I don’t.

Instead I swallow and nod, not sure what to say, feeling like broken chunks of something I can’t identify are floating around my heart.

“I’d like that,” I say.

Trent walks to the dining table, plops the paper bag on it, and starts pulling things out: two headlamps, a flashlight, a length of rope, a meat thermometer, and a canister of baby powder.

I find myself uncharacteristically speechless for a long moment, and Trent just looks at me, arms crossed, the shadow of a smile on his face.

“Caving?” I hazard, because I have no idea how this is going to make things normal again.

“Nope,” he says.

I cross my arms in front of myself, because I’m not wearing anything under this very old, very thin t-shirt, and Trent doesn’t need to know my nipples’ opinion of him right now.

It’s a positive opinion. Despite myself.

“Coal mining?”

“Still no,” he says, reaching into the bag again. He pulls out a long-sleeved black t-shirt that’s way too small for him, so it’s probably for me.

“Mime school.”

“Closer.”

“Is it?”

The smile’s still flickering on his face.

“No.”

“I give up.”

He crumples the paper bag in his massive hands and tosses it into a trash can.

“There’s a haunted mansion about twenty minutes outside town,” he says. “And after watching every episode of I Think My Cabana Has Ghosts or whatever it was, I figure we’re ghost experts.”

“Right now?” I ask, even though I already know the answer. Yes, right now.

“Unless you’d rather go to bed.”

I can’t help but smile, because given the options of go ghost hunting with Trent or sleep, it’s not even a choice.

“I’d rather find some ghosts.”

“I thought so.”

Trent tosses me the black shirt, the smile still playing across his face.

“Go put that on, I can’t have you giving us away,” he says as I catch it.

“I would never,” I protest. “Tell me about the ghost while I get changed.”

I leave the bedroom door open and step behind it so I can hear Trent as he talks, standing by the table, not facing the door.

And I think about it. Fuck yes I do. I think about stripping naked except for my bandages and walking out and saying something like try kissing me again, but this feels like it might finally be normal again, like we might have gotten over the madness that happened two nights ago and back to baseline.

Baseline, where I think about Trent more than I wish I did and got jealous of a college student in short shorts earlier today. Someday that has to stop, I think.

“This place was built by a lumber baron, Woodford Beechcourt, in the late 1800s on the side of a mountain. He apparently put it there so he could oversee all his workers from his front porch while he drank fine wine and counted his money.”

I slide a tank top over my head, since I still can’t wear a bra, and grin at my bedroom.

“And he was murdered by the men he overworked and fed into a woodchipper,” I call.

“Better,” Trent says.

“Better than murder by woodchipper?”

“He was having an affair with a local woman, and his wife found out,” Trent goes on. “But when she went to confront the other woman, the two of them fell madly in love, so they conspired to murder the husband, collect his insurance, and then travel the world together as lovers. They used arsenic or something that was untraceable back then.”

“And then they woodchippered him.”

“There’s no woodchipper, and remind me never to do something behind your back,” he says, his voice low and laconic.

I sigh dramatically, the knot of nerves that’s been in my chest for days slowly unwinding.

“Anyway, the plan worked,” Trent says. “The wife was properly shocked, blamed heart troubles or something. She waited an appropriate amount of time after the funeral, then just took off one day with the mistress. Sold the house and no one ever saw the two of them again. The next owners turned it into a bed and breakfast.”

I come out of the bedroom, practically skipping I’m so excited. I swear Trent glances at my chest for one second, but then it’s eyes on my face again as he leans back against the table, arms crossed in front of himself.

“A few years later, the east wing was nearly burnt down in a terrible fire, rendering the whole place pretty much unusable. Rumor has it,” Trent says, a slight smile on his lips, one eyebrow raised. “That an unwed couple shared a room, and the very conservative Woodford’s ghost was so enraged that he set fire to the place.”

“He had an affair and got mad about an unwed couple?”

“I guess ghosts can be hypocrites too,” Trent deadpans, and I laugh.

Then I stop.

“Did anyone die in the fire?”

The burn on my back tingles slightly at the thought, but Trent shakes his head.

“Everyone got out and the fire was contained,” he says. “The rest of the mansion is virtually pristine.”

I grab a headlamp and a flashlight from the table and shove them into my pockets. Trent does the same, I put on my jacket and shoes, and we’re out the door.

Even if I’ve got a vague premonition that I shouldn’t be going places alone in the dark with Trent.

Even if I know what happened the last time we did, even if it’s a miracle that things aren’t more strained between us right now.

I don’t even know that I’ll say no twice. I don’t know if I can. That one word, don’t, felt like pushing a boulder out of my mouth. Maybe the hardest fucking thing I’ve ever said, because even though I knew it was a bad idea, I wanted to kiss him.

Dear God, did I want to. Maybe more than I’ve ever wanted anything, or at least it felt that way, but I know better, and I know that people who kiss each other break up and I can’t, I just fucking can’t.

And now here we are, again, and I’m dumb as a box of rocks — ten boxes of rocks, if that’s dumber than one — to be doing this, but I’m all out of self-control.

“Do I really have to wear this?” I ask as we walk outside, pulling the headlamp from my pocket and putting it on.

“You do now,” he tells me.

I flip him off. He grins. Something warm and nice percolates through me, from my toes to my belly to the top of my head.

This is exactly what I can’t lose, I think. Don’t fuck it up.