Page 17 of A Ballad of Phantoms and Hope
It’s my favorite sound—the laughter of someone’s first ride. The thrill is addicting.
The sun hits my eyes as she turns her head a bit. The helmet shields her face, but I know she’s looking back at me, enduring the patterns of my quickened pulse against her back.
Suddenly, I become acutely aware of myself. What is she looking at? My eyes, my lips, my nose? Perhaps I’ll never know. She turns to face the road again and juts her ass out more as she leans forward against the wind. Her hand smooths over mine, feeling the throttle and the strength I hold it with.
This is the moment I know I’m in trouble.
The way every cell in my being reverberates and responds to her. Ophelia is liquid in my veins. Her laugh forever haunting.
Halfway to Harlow, we stop and switch. She sits behind me and I take over driving. Her thighs wrap around me and I look down more than once. The heat of her core warms the bottom of my spine. Ophelia’s hands spread across my chest, securing herself firmly at my back.
The ride back is torture. I’m thankful she can’t see the boner that tents my pants, and I may take a few alternate roads to prolong our trip to Harlow so the blood can return to my head.
Take it easy, Nevers,I chide myself. She’s probably not even into me.
But that thought is hard to enforce in my mind as she lets her fingers glide up and down my sternum. The motions are languid and slow. Her cheek presses to my shoulder and I jolt at the realization that she’s ditched my helmet.
“You didn’t toss it, did you?” I shout sarcastically, knowing as well as she does that I can just steal one again. Nothing we touch or move actually changes in the living world. We only take fragments of them, small, insignificant pieces like their shadows. Everything is false here. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t still fun, not any less real for us.
She rests her chin on my shoulder and says, “We don’t even need them. Can we stop somewhere first?”
I grin, not that she can see. “I like the way it looks on me. Makes me more mysterious. Sure—where to?”
She laughs. “It’s just up this road. Take a left when you get to the forest line.”
I follow her guidance and take the narrow road leading into the mountains. The pine trees are closer to the street here, creating a barrier that blocks out all the sounds of the world. Mountains should be visible straight ahead in the distance but the mist is still heavy in the air, blocking out the sun and creating an almost ominous world beneath it.
The motorcycle slows as I let off the gas a bit. “Where are we going?” I ask. This feels more like a horror movie than the basement at Harlow did.
It’s so quiet and void of life.
Ophelia’s hands are still tightly wrapped around my center as she says nonchalantly, “To my hiding place.”
Hiding place? All the way out here?
I open my mouth to ask more questions, but she cups her fingers over my lips gently. Cold air wisps between the gaps and sends chills down my spine.
“You’ll see,” she whispers against the shell of my ear.
Who are you, Ophelia Rosin, and why has it taken us all this time to find one another?
I want to ask her many things, such as what her favorite music is and where she finds all those abandoned plants she fills her opera house with. When she stumbled upon this place and how she was murdered.
There are so many aching thoughts that burden me. But I keep my lips pressed together, patient.
After a few minutes of driving on the winding forest road, a small wooden sign appears on the right. Ophelia points at it andI turn. The asphalt turns to gravel and the path leads to a small trailhead. A makeshift fence of rotting wood stands in place, along with an overgrown path. Wildflowers and weeds have long since crowded any trail that used to be here.
It’s vacant.
There is a stillness here, nothing but the sound of the birds waking above in the boughs, their songs laden with sorrow. Branches snapping beneath the feet of weasels or vixens. For some reason, the sound of them settles the affliction inside me. The anxiety and depression that lingers almost seems hushed here beneath the mist and pines—amidst the whispering trees and the chill in the air.
My eyes close and I let myself become one with this place.
“Lanston.” A whisper.
For a moment, I think it’s Wynn. The softness and light lilt to it is warm.
“Lanston.”
