Ghost of Lies (Medium Trouble Book 1), page 22
He winks at me. “Fine, fine. But I’m still going to watch you shower. What did Maddox say about me?” he says as he pushes back.
“That he’d help me exorcise you.”
That just makes him grin harder. “I’ve seen plenty a penis before, you can uncover yours.”
I narrow my eyes at him as he keeps grinning and takes a seat on the edge of the tub.
“You seem to think I’m the bad guy here, but I simply want to help you after all the wonderfully kind acts you’ve done for me,” he says.
“No, you want to terrorize me while also kind of wanting to fuck me, while also kind of wanting to annoy me. Do I have that all right?” I ask as I turn my back to him. Giving him my ass is probably also not a good idea, but it’s all I’ve got at the moment.
“Maybe,” he says, and I can practically feel him blatantly staring at my ass. “You ever think about a threesome?”
I throw a glare over my shoulder which just makes him grin even harder.
“I’m not kidding but fine, be a stick in the mud. There’s a ghost who’s been… hanging around the house lately that I think has something to do with you. A real bummer of a ghost. Hates my jokes.”
I turn to him as dread sets inside me. “Young woman?”
“Yep.”
No. No. No. “Fuck.”
“She’s the one who pushed you off the cliff?” he asks.
“She is,” I say.
“I told her to get lost and she basically ignored me. Don’t let your guard down. I’ll keep watch of you everywhere you go to make sure she’s not going to hurt you. That’s why I’m in the tub with you right now.”
“No, you’re in the tub with me right now because you just live to harass,” I remind him.
This simply makes him laugh because he knows I’m right. “Fine, fine. But I can give real good head.”
“Out,” I growl.
He grins at me as he slips through the shower curtain.
“Thanks… for trying to run her off, though,” I say.
“What can I say? You make Maddox happy, so I suppose I’ll suffer a little longer. And if any ghost is gonna off you, it’s gonna be me.”
“Sure, sure,” I say as I shake my head, knowing he’s going to say or do whatever he wants anyway.
I finish my shower, thankfully alone (well, unless Maddox wanted to join me, which I’d definitely make an exception for), then get dried off and dressed to find Maddox in a nice shirt and jeans, waiting for me. He smiles when he sees me, and it makes the torture of dealing with Reggie better.
“Ready?”
“Yep. Anything to get away from the shower where Reggie watched me and commented on my ass.”
He stares at me for a long moment. “Is this like that Scary Movie where you’re going to fuck the ghost?”
I raise an eyebrow at him. “I will not and will never have sex with a ghost,” I promise him. “I can’t… I can’t say I haven’t thought about it, but no.”
He starts laughing. “And you admit to it.”
“I mean… come on, you would have been curious too, right? I mean… if I was able to solidify ghosts as a teen as much as I can now… I’m pretty sure my first time wouldn’t have been hiding in the closet at the neighbor boy’s house. After which he cried, told me he wasn’t gay, and ran away.”
“Sounds very dramatic and traumatic.”
“It was. Basically, my penis had the power to terrify men. We were also nineteen, not like sixteen or anything, which made it stranger.”
“I hope your second time was better than that,” he says.
“No… no it wasn’t. Halfway through, the guy’s dead grandma came into the room, and boy, did she scream. Thought her dear ol’ grandson was a, and I quote, ‘Good Christian boy, and what would his wife think?’ and I go, ‘You’re fucking married?’ halfway through.”
“I’m scared to ask about your third experience.”
“Good,” I say with a grin.
“Sooo… like… is that an issue you have often? Ghosts wanting to… join in or watch?”
“Constantly. Ghosts have nothing better to do than invade the lives of the living,” I say as I head toward the door.
“But you’ve never fucked a ghost? I mean… I’m not going to judge if you have.”
I start laughing as I make my way out to my car, but Maddox tugs me back before I can reach the door.
“I’ll drive,” he says.
“I can drive, I did earlier.”
“But your hands.”
“Yeah, as long as I don’t use the tips of my fingers, it’s fine.”
“No.”
“Fine, fine,” I say as I follow him over to his car.
“Don’t think I’ve forgotten that you haven’t answered my question about fucking a ghost.”
“I haven’t… yet,” I joke.
He snorts as he starts to back down the driveway. “Sounds like Reggie is prepared to be your first ghost fuck.”
“Yeah… that’s not going to happen. He’s already asked if we could have a threesome as well.”
“No…”
“He sure did.”
“Oh dear god. Is there a way I can threaten him?”
“Of course,” I say as I look behind me to see Reggie as proud as a peacock. “He’s in the back seat.”
“Reggie… I’ll fuck you up,” Maddox growls.
“Tell him it does things to my loins when he growls at me,” Reggie says.
“Reggie said that he has a little penis and most of his jokes come from insecurity,” I say with a smile.
“I will murder you in your sleep,” he hisses.
“Did he now?” Maddox asks.
“He also said that he’s thankful I finally helped him get that off his chest,” I add.
Maddox nods approvingly. “Wow… thank you for that, then. Reggie, we embrace you and your small penis.”
“OMG. He’s seen my penis. He knows what it looks like. Have him tell you what it looks like,” Reggie says.
“He said that he wishes he looked as good as I do when I’m naked,” I say.
“I bet he does wish that,” Maddox says.
“Well, you’ve left me with no choice,” Reggie says as he grabs the seat belt and proceeds to yank it.
“Fuck… dammit, Reggie!”
Reggie’s pressing close to my ear now so I’m briefly deafened by him. “Then tell him the truth!”
“He doesn’t need to hear the truth!” I protest.
“I will replace you with someone better,” he growls.
“You can try!” I say. “Fine. Maddox, Reggie wants you to know when you growl at him, it does things to his loins. There? Everyone happy? Can I stop being harassed?”
“Reggie, don’t be a dick,” Maddox says.
Reggie shrugs but lets go of the seat belt. “Tell him that did things to my loins too.”
“He said that did things to his loins,” I say, less than pleased to be relaying any of this.
“Tell him to stop saying the word ‘loins,’” Maddox says.
“Tell him it did things to my raging rod of pleasure penetration,” Reggie says, which I merrily translate.
Maddox just turns silent for a long moment before glancing over at me. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. It shows what kind of person you are to be friends with him,” I say with a sweet smile.
“It does, doesn’t it?” he asks, looking a bit reluctant.
That’s when I remember that I haven’t mentioned that Maddox is coming and should probably warn the family.
Me: I’m bringing someone with me.
Patricia: Is it the hunkalicious Nicolás told me about?
Nicolás: I said hunk. Not hunkalicious. I would like the record straight.
Patricia: Nicolás, is he or is he not a hunkalicious?
Nicolás: Can we stop saying that word?
Patricia: As soon as you admit he is.
Nicolás: Fine. Yes. He is.
Patricia: See, I knew it.
Me: What is happening?
Patricia: You’re bringing Hunkalicious, and I’m providing food. Libby, Vic, and Hailey are coming too.
Me: Please don’t call him that in front of us.
Patricia: I’d never embarrass you like that.
Nicolás: She’d totally embarrass you like that.
Me: I’m well aware.
I look over at Maddox, drawing his attention to me. “What’s up?” he asks.
“Patricia is going to embarrass me.”
“Good, I’m tired of Reggie making everything embarrassing,” he says. “You got along with your foster family well?”
“I did. My first one I hated. I was a mess and upset all the time and they were so strict and unloving, but they eventually moved me to Patricia’s. At the time, she had just gone through a divorce and was leaning toward not fostering, but she took me and Sean as a last minute, ‘here, hold these kids until we find someone else’ kind of thing. And let me tell you, she raised the three of us all alone with not a lick of issue.”
“Did you stay in foster care, then?”
“For a long time, I did. I was running into the issue of being a little older, and sadly, that can sometimes affect chances of being adopted. I’m not saying that’s why, but it could have played a role. But Patricia eventually just adopted all three of us. Nicolás and Sean both were tossed around quite a bit. Nicolás’s mother wanted him when she got out of prison but when that time came, she fell right back into her old ways. Sean was bounced back and forth between Patricia’s and his biological mom’s home before the court finally declared her unfit. It took them far too long, though.”
“So there was a time Sean wasn’t with you?” he asks.
“Briefly, but he continued going to the same school as me, and most of the time, he’d just go straight to Patricia’s anyway. Sometimes it’d be a week before his mom would even come looking for him. She’d storm right up to that door and chew Patricia out for trying to ‘take her son’ even though he’d been gone for days and she hadn’t noticed. After the third time, Sean asked if Patricia could make it stop, so Patricia called the police. When the police arrived, Patricia had Sean locked in the house and Sean’s mother had a baseball bat that she was using to bust Patricia’s windows in.
“In an attempt to help, I rushed into the mix to pull Patricia inside and his mother bashed me with the baseball bat, fracturing my arm. That was when the police pulled up and Sean was officially available for Patricia to adopt.”
Maddox glances at me. “How do you always end up in the mix, yet really don’t seem to have any self-defense skills or anything of the like?”
I grin at him. “I don’t need them. I’m quick on my feet.”
He seems suspicious of this, and I don’t blame him. Since I’ve known him, he’s seen me get bashed to the ground by a knife-wielding maniac, pushed off a cliff, and now I’m telling him about getting beaten by a baseball bat. I don’t tell him the woman was probably all of ninety pounds but when someone’s system is on an overload of drugs, they tend to hit harder.
“What are your thoughts on self-defense classes? Better yet, how about I show you how to shoot that gun?”
The idea of Maddox standing behind me, hands on mine, body pressed up close while he whispers gun-wielding directions in my ear sounds magnificent.
“I’d like that.”
“Tomorrow, we’re going.”
I’d definitely like that. “Ooh… so soon.”
“Yes,” he says. “Tonight, if we get done early.”
“Okay, yeah, sure,” I say.
“I’m glad you ended up with someone who did good by you.”
“Thanks… I won’t say it was overly easy. And I probably wasn’t the best kid, but she stuck by me. It took me a while to truly understand that she wasn’t trying to take over being my mom. That I didn’t have to defend that position. That, instead, she was just there for me.”
“Does she know you can see ghosts?”
“Yeah, I told her a few months after I came to live with her, but that’s a whole other story. The funny part is that it wasn’t Patricia who wanted to adopt or have kids, it was her husband. But she’d found out he’d been cheating on her and the divorce was shitty. He went to stay with the woman he’d been sleeping with and didn’t want to take the kids because the new woman didn’t want them. So here was Patricia, a woman who’d never planned to have her own kids, suddenly stuck with two before getting Nicolás later.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t turn it down.”
“She’d originally said just for a week or two until a better place came along, but she said she could never find that better place.”
He smiles. “She sounds like a pretty amazing woman.”
“She is.”
When he pulls into the driveway of Patricia’s house, I have him park off to the side before getting out. As I walk up to the door, I find myself unsure of how to walk with him. Do I stand close to him? Do I keep a good distance between us? He hasn’t actually said anything else to me that makes me think we’re even remotely heading toward a relationship. So…
I clearly don’t have to figure this out because Reggie shoves me off the sidewalk and starts strutting up beside Maddox until Maddox realizes I’m no longer part of the equation.
“You… alright?” Maddox asks.
“Simply stumbled… as in, Reggie shoved me,” I say as I hurry to catch up but when the door swings open, it just looks like sexy Maddox is there while I struggle from behind.
“Hey,” Nicolás says with a smile.
“Oh my heart,” Reggie declares. “My… who is this gorgeous hunk of a delicious man?”
He tries to shove Maddox off as well as he saunters up to Nicolás. “Peasant! Peasant! Come introduce us!”
It takes me a moment to realize that I’m the peasant.
I glare at him before moving past to stand next to Maddox. “Hey, Nicolás. You remember Maddox.”
“Yes, my memory isn’t that awful,” he says. “We were literally just texting about him.”
I might cringe a little at that. “Uh yeah… anyway… There’s this annoying ghost screaming in my ear. He thinks you’re hot and really wants me to express this, and I hope now that I have, he’ll fuck off.”
Nicolás just laughs, but I notice he blushes a little. “How do you attract all these horny ghosts?”
“It’s a specialty of mine,” I say as I lead Maddox inside.
Libby, Sean’s daughter, comes racing up and wraps me up in a hug. “Is Dad here?”
“You’re not excited to see me?” I tease.
“Eh…” she says with a grin.
“You little brat,” I say as I tickle her.
She giggles and wiggles around, but as I do, I look around for Sean. I don’t see him, but that doesn’t mean he’s not here. I was hoping to kill two birds with one stone with both Libby and Patricia here, but it doesn’t seem like I’m going to get lucky. He’s really just fucked off.
“So?” she asks.
“No, he’s not, kiddo, but I’ll let you know the moment he shows up.”
“Okay,” she says with a smile.
Patricia comes around the corner and heads for Maddox. “I didn’t get to meet you when the rest of the family did. I was out of town. I’m Patricia,” she says with a warm smile. I remember how warm that smile was when I first saw it. She was going through a divorce and her whole life was being turned upside down when she met me, but she still could spare me that smile, and I won’t lie, I needed it.
I needed a lot, but she made me a priority, and I was lucky to have her. At the time she’d already had Sean on and off, and it wasn’t long before he became my brother.
“Pleasure to meet you too,” Maddox says as he shakes her hand.
“What happened to your hands?” Patricia asks me.
Since my hands were doing a little better, I’d switched them to Band-Aids to cover up the larger cut on the one hand and the scrapes on the other in an attempt for no one to notice or ask about them.
“I fell like a clumsy idiot while hiking. Slid down this rocky area where I scraped my fingers, but I’m fine. Clearly, I’m fine. I had Maddox there to save me. I actually did it so he could save me and fulfill my fantasy of being saved by a sexy man,” I say.
Patricia doesn’t look overly amused, but my rambling seems to have distracted her enough. “You need to be more careful.”
“I am!”
She doesn’t seem sure but nods. “Alright, let’s eat.”
“How’d you end up with so much food?” Hailey asks as we walk into the kitchen where her husband Vic is hovering over the dishes.
“Oh, so we were supposed to have a meeting that was catered and the team we were meeting with ended up with some emergency something or other. Told them I wasn’t going to let the food go to waste, so we split it up among my team. I, of course, took all the good stuff. I do the best work, so I feel that’s only right,” she says with a grin.
“I still say you’re going to be running the place before it’s all said and done,” Nicolás says. “I can threaten a few people if you need me to.”
She raises an eyebrow. “No, do you need to go to anger management classes again?”
“I was perfect! I never did anything wrong. That was just that stupid case worker panicking over that one tiny thing,” he says.
“You set the shed on fire,” I remind him. Honestly, Nicolás really never did anything wrong. He was quiet and just watched. That’s why Patricia threw a fit over the anger management class since Nicolás wasn’t even considered an angry kid.
“Once. You ran away like fifteen times. And you got nothing because you were the favorite child,” Nicolás says.
“I grounded him and took away the phone,” Patricia reminds him.
“His only friends were dead people…” Nicolás says.
“Yeah, well, if I wanted to call them, I couldn’t,” I say.
“What about you, Maddox? What thing have you done that can be worse than me accidentally lighting the shed on fire?” Nicolás asks.
Maddox doesn’t leave time to think about the question before answering it. “Hm… nope. Nothing. I do everything perfectly.”
“What about the time you arrested me?” I ask.
“That he’d help me exorcise you.”
That just makes him grin harder. “I’ve seen plenty a penis before, you can uncover yours.”
I narrow my eyes at him as he keeps grinning and takes a seat on the edge of the tub.
“You seem to think I’m the bad guy here, but I simply want to help you after all the wonderfully kind acts you’ve done for me,” he says.
“No, you want to terrorize me while also kind of wanting to fuck me, while also kind of wanting to annoy me. Do I have that all right?” I ask as I turn my back to him. Giving him my ass is probably also not a good idea, but it’s all I’ve got at the moment.
“Maybe,” he says, and I can practically feel him blatantly staring at my ass. “You ever think about a threesome?”
I throw a glare over my shoulder which just makes him grin even harder.
“I’m not kidding but fine, be a stick in the mud. There’s a ghost who’s been… hanging around the house lately that I think has something to do with you. A real bummer of a ghost. Hates my jokes.”
I turn to him as dread sets inside me. “Young woman?”
“Yep.”
No. No. No. “Fuck.”
“She’s the one who pushed you off the cliff?” he asks.
“She is,” I say.
“I told her to get lost and she basically ignored me. Don’t let your guard down. I’ll keep watch of you everywhere you go to make sure she’s not going to hurt you. That’s why I’m in the tub with you right now.”
“No, you’re in the tub with me right now because you just live to harass,” I remind him.
This simply makes him laugh because he knows I’m right. “Fine, fine. But I can give real good head.”
“Out,” I growl.
He grins at me as he slips through the shower curtain.
“Thanks… for trying to run her off, though,” I say.
“What can I say? You make Maddox happy, so I suppose I’ll suffer a little longer. And if any ghost is gonna off you, it’s gonna be me.”
“Sure, sure,” I say as I shake my head, knowing he’s going to say or do whatever he wants anyway.
I finish my shower, thankfully alone (well, unless Maddox wanted to join me, which I’d definitely make an exception for), then get dried off and dressed to find Maddox in a nice shirt and jeans, waiting for me. He smiles when he sees me, and it makes the torture of dealing with Reggie better.
“Ready?”
“Yep. Anything to get away from the shower where Reggie watched me and commented on my ass.”
He stares at me for a long moment. “Is this like that Scary Movie where you’re going to fuck the ghost?”
I raise an eyebrow at him. “I will not and will never have sex with a ghost,” I promise him. “I can’t… I can’t say I haven’t thought about it, but no.”
He starts laughing. “And you admit to it.”
“I mean… come on, you would have been curious too, right? I mean… if I was able to solidify ghosts as a teen as much as I can now… I’m pretty sure my first time wouldn’t have been hiding in the closet at the neighbor boy’s house. After which he cried, told me he wasn’t gay, and ran away.”
“Sounds very dramatic and traumatic.”
“It was. Basically, my penis had the power to terrify men. We were also nineteen, not like sixteen or anything, which made it stranger.”
“I hope your second time was better than that,” he says.
“No… no it wasn’t. Halfway through, the guy’s dead grandma came into the room, and boy, did she scream. Thought her dear ol’ grandson was a, and I quote, ‘Good Christian boy, and what would his wife think?’ and I go, ‘You’re fucking married?’ halfway through.”
“I’m scared to ask about your third experience.”
“Good,” I say with a grin.
“Sooo… like… is that an issue you have often? Ghosts wanting to… join in or watch?”
“Constantly. Ghosts have nothing better to do than invade the lives of the living,” I say as I head toward the door.
“But you’ve never fucked a ghost? I mean… I’m not going to judge if you have.”
I start laughing as I make my way out to my car, but Maddox tugs me back before I can reach the door.
“I’ll drive,” he says.
“I can drive, I did earlier.”
“But your hands.”
“Yeah, as long as I don’t use the tips of my fingers, it’s fine.”
“No.”
“Fine, fine,” I say as I follow him over to his car.
“Don’t think I’ve forgotten that you haven’t answered my question about fucking a ghost.”
“I haven’t… yet,” I joke.
He snorts as he starts to back down the driveway. “Sounds like Reggie is prepared to be your first ghost fuck.”
“Yeah… that’s not going to happen. He’s already asked if we could have a threesome as well.”
“No…”
“He sure did.”
“Oh dear god. Is there a way I can threaten him?”
“Of course,” I say as I look behind me to see Reggie as proud as a peacock. “He’s in the back seat.”
“Reggie… I’ll fuck you up,” Maddox growls.
“Tell him it does things to my loins when he growls at me,” Reggie says.
“Reggie said that he has a little penis and most of his jokes come from insecurity,” I say with a smile.
“I will murder you in your sleep,” he hisses.
“Did he now?” Maddox asks.
“He also said that he’s thankful I finally helped him get that off his chest,” I add.
Maddox nods approvingly. “Wow… thank you for that, then. Reggie, we embrace you and your small penis.”
“OMG. He’s seen my penis. He knows what it looks like. Have him tell you what it looks like,” Reggie says.
“He said that he wishes he looked as good as I do when I’m naked,” I say.
“I bet he does wish that,” Maddox says.
“Well, you’ve left me with no choice,” Reggie says as he grabs the seat belt and proceeds to yank it.
“Fuck… dammit, Reggie!”
Reggie’s pressing close to my ear now so I’m briefly deafened by him. “Then tell him the truth!”
“He doesn’t need to hear the truth!” I protest.
“I will replace you with someone better,” he growls.
“You can try!” I say. “Fine. Maddox, Reggie wants you to know when you growl at him, it does things to his loins. There? Everyone happy? Can I stop being harassed?”
“Reggie, don’t be a dick,” Maddox says.
Reggie shrugs but lets go of the seat belt. “Tell him that did things to my loins too.”
“He said that did things to his loins,” I say, less than pleased to be relaying any of this.
“Tell him to stop saying the word ‘loins,’” Maddox says.
“Tell him it did things to my raging rod of pleasure penetration,” Reggie says, which I merrily translate.
Maddox just turns silent for a long moment before glancing over at me. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. It shows what kind of person you are to be friends with him,” I say with a sweet smile.
“It does, doesn’t it?” he asks, looking a bit reluctant.
That’s when I remember that I haven’t mentioned that Maddox is coming and should probably warn the family.
Me: I’m bringing someone with me.
Patricia: Is it the hunkalicious Nicolás told me about?
Nicolás: I said hunk. Not hunkalicious. I would like the record straight.
Patricia: Nicolás, is he or is he not a hunkalicious?
Nicolás: Can we stop saying that word?
Patricia: As soon as you admit he is.
Nicolás: Fine. Yes. He is.
Patricia: See, I knew it.
Me: What is happening?
Patricia: You’re bringing Hunkalicious, and I’m providing food. Libby, Vic, and Hailey are coming too.
Me: Please don’t call him that in front of us.
Patricia: I’d never embarrass you like that.
Nicolás: She’d totally embarrass you like that.
Me: I’m well aware.
I look over at Maddox, drawing his attention to me. “What’s up?” he asks.
“Patricia is going to embarrass me.”
“Good, I’m tired of Reggie making everything embarrassing,” he says. “You got along with your foster family well?”
“I did. My first one I hated. I was a mess and upset all the time and they were so strict and unloving, but they eventually moved me to Patricia’s. At the time, she had just gone through a divorce and was leaning toward not fostering, but she took me and Sean as a last minute, ‘here, hold these kids until we find someone else’ kind of thing. And let me tell you, she raised the three of us all alone with not a lick of issue.”
“Did you stay in foster care, then?”
“For a long time, I did. I was running into the issue of being a little older, and sadly, that can sometimes affect chances of being adopted. I’m not saying that’s why, but it could have played a role. But Patricia eventually just adopted all three of us. Nicolás and Sean both were tossed around quite a bit. Nicolás’s mother wanted him when she got out of prison but when that time came, she fell right back into her old ways. Sean was bounced back and forth between Patricia’s and his biological mom’s home before the court finally declared her unfit. It took them far too long, though.”
“So there was a time Sean wasn’t with you?” he asks.
“Briefly, but he continued going to the same school as me, and most of the time, he’d just go straight to Patricia’s anyway. Sometimes it’d be a week before his mom would even come looking for him. She’d storm right up to that door and chew Patricia out for trying to ‘take her son’ even though he’d been gone for days and she hadn’t noticed. After the third time, Sean asked if Patricia could make it stop, so Patricia called the police. When the police arrived, Patricia had Sean locked in the house and Sean’s mother had a baseball bat that she was using to bust Patricia’s windows in.
“In an attempt to help, I rushed into the mix to pull Patricia inside and his mother bashed me with the baseball bat, fracturing my arm. That was when the police pulled up and Sean was officially available for Patricia to adopt.”
Maddox glances at me. “How do you always end up in the mix, yet really don’t seem to have any self-defense skills or anything of the like?”
I grin at him. “I don’t need them. I’m quick on my feet.”
He seems suspicious of this, and I don’t blame him. Since I’ve known him, he’s seen me get bashed to the ground by a knife-wielding maniac, pushed off a cliff, and now I’m telling him about getting beaten by a baseball bat. I don’t tell him the woman was probably all of ninety pounds but when someone’s system is on an overload of drugs, they tend to hit harder.
“What are your thoughts on self-defense classes? Better yet, how about I show you how to shoot that gun?”
The idea of Maddox standing behind me, hands on mine, body pressed up close while he whispers gun-wielding directions in my ear sounds magnificent.
“I’d like that.”
“Tomorrow, we’re going.”
I’d definitely like that. “Ooh… so soon.”
“Yes,” he says. “Tonight, if we get done early.”
“Okay, yeah, sure,” I say.
“I’m glad you ended up with someone who did good by you.”
“Thanks… I won’t say it was overly easy. And I probably wasn’t the best kid, but she stuck by me. It took me a while to truly understand that she wasn’t trying to take over being my mom. That I didn’t have to defend that position. That, instead, she was just there for me.”
“Does she know you can see ghosts?”
“Yeah, I told her a few months after I came to live with her, but that’s a whole other story. The funny part is that it wasn’t Patricia who wanted to adopt or have kids, it was her husband. But she’d found out he’d been cheating on her and the divorce was shitty. He went to stay with the woman he’d been sleeping with and didn’t want to take the kids because the new woman didn’t want them. So here was Patricia, a woman who’d never planned to have her own kids, suddenly stuck with two before getting Nicolás later.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t turn it down.”
“She’d originally said just for a week or two until a better place came along, but she said she could never find that better place.”
He smiles. “She sounds like a pretty amazing woman.”
“She is.”
When he pulls into the driveway of Patricia’s house, I have him park off to the side before getting out. As I walk up to the door, I find myself unsure of how to walk with him. Do I stand close to him? Do I keep a good distance between us? He hasn’t actually said anything else to me that makes me think we’re even remotely heading toward a relationship. So…
I clearly don’t have to figure this out because Reggie shoves me off the sidewalk and starts strutting up beside Maddox until Maddox realizes I’m no longer part of the equation.
“You… alright?” Maddox asks.
“Simply stumbled… as in, Reggie shoved me,” I say as I hurry to catch up but when the door swings open, it just looks like sexy Maddox is there while I struggle from behind.
“Hey,” Nicolás says with a smile.
“Oh my heart,” Reggie declares. “My… who is this gorgeous hunk of a delicious man?”
He tries to shove Maddox off as well as he saunters up to Nicolás. “Peasant! Peasant! Come introduce us!”
It takes me a moment to realize that I’m the peasant.
I glare at him before moving past to stand next to Maddox. “Hey, Nicolás. You remember Maddox.”
“Yes, my memory isn’t that awful,” he says. “We were literally just texting about him.”
I might cringe a little at that. “Uh yeah… anyway… There’s this annoying ghost screaming in my ear. He thinks you’re hot and really wants me to express this, and I hope now that I have, he’ll fuck off.”
Nicolás just laughs, but I notice he blushes a little. “How do you attract all these horny ghosts?”
“It’s a specialty of mine,” I say as I lead Maddox inside.
Libby, Sean’s daughter, comes racing up and wraps me up in a hug. “Is Dad here?”
“You’re not excited to see me?” I tease.
“Eh…” she says with a grin.
“You little brat,” I say as I tickle her.
She giggles and wiggles around, but as I do, I look around for Sean. I don’t see him, but that doesn’t mean he’s not here. I was hoping to kill two birds with one stone with both Libby and Patricia here, but it doesn’t seem like I’m going to get lucky. He’s really just fucked off.
“So?” she asks.
“No, he’s not, kiddo, but I’ll let you know the moment he shows up.”
“Okay,” she says with a smile.
Patricia comes around the corner and heads for Maddox. “I didn’t get to meet you when the rest of the family did. I was out of town. I’m Patricia,” she says with a warm smile. I remember how warm that smile was when I first saw it. She was going through a divorce and her whole life was being turned upside down when she met me, but she still could spare me that smile, and I won’t lie, I needed it.
I needed a lot, but she made me a priority, and I was lucky to have her. At the time she’d already had Sean on and off, and it wasn’t long before he became my brother.
“Pleasure to meet you too,” Maddox says as he shakes her hand.
“What happened to your hands?” Patricia asks me.
Since my hands were doing a little better, I’d switched them to Band-Aids to cover up the larger cut on the one hand and the scrapes on the other in an attempt for no one to notice or ask about them.
“I fell like a clumsy idiot while hiking. Slid down this rocky area where I scraped my fingers, but I’m fine. Clearly, I’m fine. I had Maddox there to save me. I actually did it so he could save me and fulfill my fantasy of being saved by a sexy man,” I say.
Patricia doesn’t look overly amused, but my rambling seems to have distracted her enough. “You need to be more careful.”
“I am!”
She doesn’t seem sure but nods. “Alright, let’s eat.”
“How’d you end up with so much food?” Hailey asks as we walk into the kitchen where her husband Vic is hovering over the dishes.
“Oh, so we were supposed to have a meeting that was catered and the team we were meeting with ended up with some emergency something or other. Told them I wasn’t going to let the food go to waste, so we split it up among my team. I, of course, took all the good stuff. I do the best work, so I feel that’s only right,” she says with a grin.
“I still say you’re going to be running the place before it’s all said and done,” Nicolás says. “I can threaten a few people if you need me to.”
She raises an eyebrow. “No, do you need to go to anger management classes again?”
“I was perfect! I never did anything wrong. That was just that stupid case worker panicking over that one tiny thing,” he says.
“You set the shed on fire,” I remind him. Honestly, Nicolás really never did anything wrong. He was quiet and just watched. That’s why Patricia threw a fit over the anger management class since Nicolás wasn’t even considered an angry kid.
“Once. You ran away like fifteen times. And you got nothing because you were the favorite child,” Nicolás says.
“I grounded him and took away the phone,” Patricia reminds him.
“His only friends were dead people…” Nicolás says.
“Yeah, well, if I wanted to call them, I couldn’t,” I say.
“What about you, Maddox? What thing have you done that can be worse than me accidentally lighting the shed on fire?” Nicolás asks.
Maddox doesn’t leave time to think about the question before answering it. “Hm… nope. Nothing. I do everything perfectly.”
“What about the time you arrested me?” I ask.
