Page 82 of Ghoul Me, Maybe
I wrap my arm around her.
“And now?”
She laughs, soft and dry. “Now I know it’s messier. Harder. You don’t justfall.Youchoose.Every day. Through blood and fights and bar brawls and haunted relics.”
Her voice catches, just a little.
“You choose it, even when it hurts.”
I close my eyes.
“I choose you,” I whisper.
She leans in and kisses me. Gentle. Real.
“I know,” she says. “I choose you, too.”
And that’s the magic.
Not the relic. Not the curse.
Just us—still here.
Still choosing.
CHAPTER 28
SIENNA
The old house smells like salt, damp wood, and memory.
Every step I take kicks up dust and something else—something intangible. Like grief woven into the wallpaper. Like voices in the grain of the floorboards. I run my fingers along the doorframe where someone once marked my height with a pencil. The notches are faint now, barely there. Like they know they’re from another life.
“Watch your step,” Elias calls from inside. “There’s a murder hole right in the middle of the hallway.”
“It’s not a murder hole. It’s a sunken board.”
“It’s the kind of hole that eats ankles.”
I roll my eyes and step over it.
The place is wrecked—collapsed ceiling tiles in the living room, mold creeping along the bathroom tile, and half a raccoon’s nest in what used to be the pantry. But it’s still standing. And that counts for something in a world where everything I know has a tendency to wash away.
We spend the morning stripping out the rot. Elias handles the demolition with quiet focus, using strength that still surprises me. He swings the crowbar like he means it, everypull of muscle reminding me that this man—thismiracle—is real now. Solid. Here.
He’s shirtless by noon, which is less helpful and more distracting.
“I swear to God,” I mutter, tossing a chunk of drywall into the dumpster outside, “if you keep flexing while swinging, I’m charging tourists.”
“You’d make a killing.”
“You’d make me trip over that murder hole.”
He smirks and winks, and I throw a paint stir stick at his head. He dodges, barely.
Later, I tackle the old study—Dad’s favorite room.
The wallpaper here is still vaguely yellow with age. The shelves are warped from water damage but still standing. In the corner, under a tarp and some mildewed books, I find it.
