Page 1 of Ghosts Don't Cry
Chapter One
RONAN
The bus jerksas it slows, brakes grinding out in a low, rusted hiss that vibrates through my body. The nausea churning in my stomach has nothing to do with the bus’s motion, and everything to do with where I am.
This town chewed me up and spat me out. It left me to rot on the side of the road. It didn’t kill me, but it sure as fuck tried.
And now, like a ghost returning to haunt its own grave, I’m back.
My fingers tighten around the strap of my duffel bag, nails digging into the worn fabric until the seams threaten to split. I’m hanging on to it like it will anchor me against the tide of memories threatening to drag me under.
Rain streaks the window, turning the outside world into a twisted visual nightmare of neon and shadow. The flickering station sign bleeds red into the wet sidewalk, its glow feeble and dying. Half the letters are burned out, faded like a pulse that’s long since stopped beating.
I knew it would be like this. I tried to convince myself it wouldn’t, but I knew it in my bones, and in the hollow space beneath my ribs where dread has made its home.
But I still hate seeing it.
The town looks exactly as I remember it. A hellhole where dreams go to die, and hope is just another four-letter word. It’s a place that watches people fall and turns away, pretending not to hear the sound of breaking.
And I did fall.Hard. The impact of it still echoes in my bones, and wakes me up in a cold sweat at night.
The bus wheezes to a stop, the doors groaning open like they’re protesting the effort. An old man rubs his hands together, muttering under his breath to someone who isn’t there. A woman shifts in her seat, adjusting the sleeping kid slumped against her shoulder. Across the aisle, a teenager with a hoodie pulled up leans against the window, his fingers tapping out a mindless beat on his knee.
The driver exhales sharply, impatiently waiting for people to get up and leave. I push to my feet, duffel slung over one shoulder, and step into the aisle. No one looks at me.
Good. I’ve had enough of being watched in this town to last several lifetimes.
My legs are stiff, muscles tight from too many hours of being cramped into a small space. Every instinct screams at me to sit back down, and carry on to the next town. But I don’t. I force myself to walk to the front of the bus.
Then, for half a second, I catch my reflection in the window. And for half a breath, I seehim.
Hollow-eyed. Skin stretched too tight over his ribs. Wearing clothes he found dumpster-diving, and drowning in sleeves too long for his arms. His expression.Christ, that expression. It still haunts me. It’s the look of someone who has no idea what’s waiting for him, but knows, deep in his gut, that it won’t be good. Everything about him gives off the message that he’s a kid who doesn’t know how to fight back.
And then he’s gone. Swallowed by dark glass and replaced by someone else entirely.
A man covered in ink, muscles carved from necessity, face unreadable. A body that doesn’t look starved anymore. A man who learned how to hit back or die, and who carries his scars like armor.
I step down onto the ground, and the bus’s door hisses shut behind me. The engine rumbles, then the bus is gone, swallowed by the dark stretch of highway beyond the station, and leaving me standing here in the wreckage of my past.
Maybe coming here is a mistake. No. It’sdefinitelya mistake.
I’m already turning toward the ticket machine before my brain catches up with what my body is doing. I stop myself, reaching out to grasp the back of a bench and hold myself in place. The contact with the metal is cold, sending an icy shock through my arm, but it stops the flight response from taking over.
I take a deep breath in through my nose, release it through my mouth, then repeat the action. Each exhale comes out in a small white cloud in front of me. Proof that I’m really here, really breathing the poisoned air of this town again.
The worn fabric of my hoodie might as well be tissue paper against the cold that burrows straight to my marrow, awakening ghosts of old pains I thought I’d buried. My shoulder throbs where it was dislocated. My ribs ache where they’d been broken. Bile rises in my throat. I swallow it down, adjust the bag onto my other shoulder, and look around.
There are no cars on the road, no voices drifting through the air. All I can hear is the hum of the streetlights, the dying buzz of the neon sign above my head, and the whisper of my pulse in my ears. The air smells of wet asphalt, gasoline, and rust.
This part of town is still.Toostill. It reminds me of the silence that falls just before an execution, where everyone holdstheir breath and counts down the seconds until the guillotine falls. I can’t help but wonder if it’s my execution I’m here for.
My fingers twitch. A habit I’ve never been able to shake. I flex them, trying to force the tension out of my knuckles, and attempt to convince myself that I don’t need to be ready for a fight.
But that’s the thing about old instincts. They don’t die. They wait, and watch, and then resurface when you don’t want them to.
The farther I walk away from the station, the more the silence feels like a noose. Years of cataloging exits and sleeping with one eye open, all flood back.
The streetlight overhead flickers, casting my shadow in stuttering shapes across the wet sidewalk. For a second, the shadow looks too thin, too small. Like the boy I used to be is trying to escape from the man I became.
