Page 111 of A Heart So Haunted
He grabbed my wrist. “Landry, enough.”
I tugged. “I’m serious. If it’s something she found, then we can look. Right now.”
His eyes turned pleading. He stood, not once breaking my gaze. “No. Right now I just want to talk to you.”
He didn’t. He was stalling. He had to be. Pushing back the inevitable. Reeling me in from a cliff.
“About what?” I said, breathy. He hadn’t let go of my wrist, his palm hot and electric on my bare skin.
“You had a heated conversation, if I remember correctly.” His eyebrows rose. “That man you spoke with. Who you refused the listing to.”
“Ivan.” My heart ratcheted.
His personal space was suddenly my personal space. It made my body hum. He tilted his head, throat tight, just like he did when he was the creature, but this time it was thoughtful. “The things you said to him. What happened between the two of you.”
I searched his expression. His pulse fluttered in his temple. The way his hair fell in soft, slight curls in places. The strong swoop of his jaw.
He was asking me.No more secrets.
“Ivan and I dated before,” I started.
A shadow passed over his face. “Courting?”
I offered a gentle smile. “Yes, courting. I was, I don’t know? Eighteen, nineteen? Maybe twenty the last time we spoke?” I shrugged. “I never … told him how I’d felt before.”
“Did he … hurt you?”
“Some ways, yes.”
His eyes narrowed. “I should have taken his fear to my advantage, then,” he said, gravelly.
“Hurting someone for me isn’t necessary, Hadrian.”
“There is more than one way to injure a man’s soul, dearest. And sometimes, it’s more than what they deserve. It’s what they need.”
Time to show my hand. “You say it like you know from experience.”
He nodded, contemplated for a second. His hand slipped a bit farther up my sleeve until he encircled my forearm. “I … felt it. When you went to the room. I heard it. Everything.”
I stared at a point on his throat. I couldn’t tell if the room had a looser hold on Hadrian, was giving him more liberties, or if whatever was inside it was seeping out. Becoming a bit more unruly.
Like he heard my thoughts, he said, “I think something is changing, Landry. Do you remember how I said the house felt different? When I first came out of the room?”
“Yes.”
“I couldn’t place it then. Everything was disorienting. Like wading through silty water. But now I believe it was like thisbefore, in my time. Harthwait, I mean. It had a feel that made your skin prickle. Your aunt mentioned it getting worse, and I remember something similar as a child, though it would come and go.”
A thought came to mind—the feeling I’d had when I’d gone back to the room, the energy around me, like it had built itself up. As if it wasn’t contained and bledoutnow. The same kind of energy Irene had mentioned, that my aunt mentioned.
“You think the house was being contained? In that room?”
He shook his head before I could go on.
“Fall in Love with You” started to hum from the TV. Hadrian offered his hand, low at his side. “Care to dance with me?”
That hummingbird jerked in my chest at the sudden pivot. “Dance with you?”
“Do I have an echo in here? Maybe if I say yes, it will answer it back to me?” A brief but devastating smile appeared. “We can talk as I lead.”
