Page 11 of Gone for the Ghost
Most of all, I love that being with him—arguing about punctuation, solving plot problems, sharing space in comfortable silence—feels like the most natural thing in the world, like I was incomplete before and didn’t know it.
Gradually, so gradually, I almost miss the transition, Julian’s presence begins to recede.Not disappearing entirely but pulling back into his own consciousness while leaving traces of his essence lingering in my bloodstream like warmth after drinking something stronger than coffee.The separation feels like loss even as I understand its necessity.We can’t remain merged indefinitely without losing ourselves entirely to the connection.
But as our awareness separates, I’m left with the profound understanding that whatever just happened between us has changed something fundamental about our relationship.The barriers between living and dead, between possible and impossible, have been crossed in ways that make conventional limitations feel like suggestions rather than absolute laws.
We’re both quiet for a long time afterward, sitting in the candlelit aftermath of something too intimate and significant for immediate analysis.The storm continues outside, but its violence seems distant now, irrelevant compared to the internal landscape we’ve just explored together.
“Are you all right?”Julian finally asks, his voice carrying uncertainty I’ve never heard before.
I consider the question seriously, taking inventory of my emotional and physical state.Am I all right?I’ve just experienced the most profound connection of my life with a man who’s been dead for nearly a century.I’ve been possessed, protected, and granted access to another consciousness in ways that challenge every assumption about human experience.
I’ve also discovered that I’m completely, irrevocably in love with a ghost.
“I’ve never felt more all right in my life,” I say quietly, and mean it with every fiber of my being.
Something in Julian’s expression shifts.Relief mixed with wonder, as if he’d been prepared for fear or regret but found something entirely different instead.
Outside, Maplewood Grove settles back into storm-tossed quiet.Inside, two people who shouldn’t be able to connect across the boundary of mortality sit surrounded by candles and the knowledge that some forms of love are stronger than the limitations that try to contain them.
I’m in love with a ghost.And for the first time in my life, being in love feels less like a problem to solve and more like a miracle to protect.
Chapter 6
Julian
Theaftermathofourmerger haunts me more profoundly than ninety-eight years of death ever managed to accomplish.
For those impossible moments when my consciousness flowed through Lily’s living form, I experienced resurrection in ways that transcended mere physical presence.Her heartbeat became mine, her courage coursed through spiritual veins I’d thought permanently emptied, her fierce protectiveness merged with my own territorial instincts to create something more powerful than either of us could achieve in isolation.
But beyond the intoxicating return to sensation, beyond the miracle of occupying space in the living world again, I felt something infinitely more dangerous—the exquisite completeness of being truly known by another soul.
Through our merged consciousness, I experienced Lily’s feelings for me with devastating clarity.Not just affection or gratitude for supernatural assistance but love—deep and transformative, the kind that rewrites your understanding of what happiness means and makes every other connection feel like pale approximation.She loves my sarcastic commentary and protective instincts, the way I challenge her writing while accepting her exactly as she is.She loves that our partnership feels natural despite its impossibility, that arguing about punctuation somehow became the foundation for the most meaningful relationship of her life.
The knowledge should fill me with joy.Instead, it terrifies me more completely than anything I’ve encountered in nearly a century of existence.
Because I felt my own response with equal clarity, and it’s everything I swore I’d never risk again.
Three days have passed since the storm, and I’ve spent them in careful retreat, pulling back into the translucent shadows that allow observation without genuine engagement.I materialize only when absolutely necessary—when Lily asks direct questions about her writing, when she needs assistance with some practical matter that requires supernatural intervention.Otherwise, I maintain the kind of polite distance that suggests helpful cohabitation rather than the dangerous intimacy we discovered during our merger.
I tell myself this withdrawal is wisdom, the mature recognition that some connections are too costly to pursue.Lily deserves better than the complications that come from loving someone who exists outside the natural order.She deserves Blake’s uncomplicated affection, his ability to offer her a complete life with physical presence and social legitimacy.
But the truth is simpler and more selfish.I’m protecting myself from the devastating possibility of loss that caring for someone always carries in its wake.
Victoria’s disappearance nearly destroyed me once.The agony of loving someone completely and then losing them without warning or explanation, the endless questions that multiply in the absence of answers, the slow dissolution of everything I thought I understood about connection and trust—it took death itself to free me from that particular torture.Allowing myself to care for Lily with equivalent depth would be inviting the same destruction, and I’m not certain my spirit could survive another such fracturing.
Better to maintain careful distance now while I still possess the strength to enforce boundaries between us.Better to preserve what we have—friendship, intellectual companionship, the safe territory of mutual respect—than risk everything in pursuit of something that could only end in heartbreak for us both.
The rational argument sounds convincing even to me, which should probably be the first warning that I’m lying to myself with impressive sophistication.
“You’re different,” Lily observes from her position at the kitchen table, where she’s ostensibly working on her manuscript but has spent the last twenty minutes stealing glances in my direction.“Distant.Like you’re trying to fade away even when you’re visible.”
The accuracy of her observation cuts deeper than comfortable.Of course she’s noticed my retreat.Lily possesses the kind of emotional intelligence that makes her an exceptional writer and an impossible person to deceive about matters of the heart.
“I’m simply providing you with the space necessary for productive work,” I say, maintaining the carefully neutral tone I’ve adopted whenever we discuss anything more personal than comma placement.“My commentary can be… overwhelming… when applied too consistently.”
“Your commentary has never bothered me before.”
“Perhaps it should have.”
