Page 84 of Ghoul Me, Maybe
Just... a guy, building something.
Living.
I lean against the doorway and watch him for a while. The rhythm of his work is hypnotic. Thud. Tap. Tap. Breathe. His muscles move beneath his shirt like memory, like instinct. This body might be new, but he knows how touseit. How to work until the ache becomes a kind of music.
Eventually, he senses me and looks up, brushing a hand over his forehead.
“You’re staring,” he says.
“You’re glowing,” I reply, teasing. “Or possibly on fire.”
He grins and wipes his palms on his jeans. “I missed this. Not this exact thing,” he adds, gesturing vaguely at the porch. “But doing something that stays. Something I can see and touch and know I made happen.”
I step closer, dropping to sit beside the toolbox. “So, what? I’ve lost you to carpentry now?”
“Maybe,” he says, quiet. “I’ve been a ghost. I’ve been fury and tether and memory. This? Hammer, nail, wood—it doesn’t lie. Doesn’t vanish when the tide comes in. Doesn’t pull me back under.”
He pauses, glancing at his hands.
“There’s peace in this.”
He doesn’t have to say whatthismeans. I know.
Peace inbeing. Peace instaying.
I look at his arms, his jaw, his back. He still carries the scars—emotional ones, invisible but ever-present. I carry mine, too. But they don’t ache like they used to. They don’t define us anymore.
They’re just part of the architecture.
“What are we building, exactly?” I ask, watching him fit another beam into place.
“A future,” he says without hesitation. “Brick by goddamn brick.”
I laugh, short and breathy. “That’s ambitious.”
He gives me a crooked smile. “So are you.”
CHAPTER 29
ELIAS
The ocean sounds different now.
Not quiet. Not really. It’s still got its moods—still snarls during storms and whispers when the moon’s high—but it’s lost the edge it used to carry. Like whatever ghost was snarling through its tides got finally laid to rest.
I know how that feels.
I lean against the porch railing of the house Sienna and I have been rebuilding—her father’s place, now ours. The wood smells clean. New. It’s not done yet, not by a long shot. The roof still leaks on the north side and there’s this one window in the back that sticks like hell. But it’s holding. Just like us.
Behind me, there’s the clatter of dishes, the low hum of Sienna’s voice singing off-key to an old record playing in the kitchen. She’s been in there baking again. Something that smells like cinnamon and rebellion.
I take a long breath. Let it fill my chest. Human breath. Real. Warm.
It still knocks me off balance, sometimes. Waking up with a heartbeat. Getting tired. Beinghungry.It’s like the whole world is louder now. Every breeze. Every heartbeat. Every time she looks at me as if I’m more than a myth.
And somehow, the town’s starting to see it too.
The first time we stepped back into town after the blood moon, I expected pitchforks. Or, at the very least, whispers behind closed doors. I still get a few stares—the kind that saythat’s the guy who fought a demon at the wreck and didn’t die.And yeah, okay, fair.
