Chapter 6: Ghosts in the Rain

Chapter 6: Ghosts in the Rain

The rain started around midnight, drumming against my rental car's windshield as I sat parked outside Turner Construction. I'd been here for an hour, watching the light in Ethan's office burn while he worked late. Again. Three nights straight since the festival, he'd buried himself in blueprints and contracts, hiding from me the only way he knew how.

My phone buzzed – Tommy.

"He's not coming out anytime soon," his text read. "He does this when he's trying not to feel things."

I remembered. Back in high school, after our first kiss, Ethan had spent a week rebuilding his dad's deck. Anything to keep his hands busy and his mind quiet.

The rain picked up, and I finally got out of the car. To hell with hiding. The bell above the office door chimed as I entered, and Ethan's head snapped up from his desk. For a moment, he looked like that seventeen-year-old boy again, caught between wanting and running.

"We're closed," he said, voice rough from disuse.

"Funny." I shook rain from my hair. "Sign says you close at five."

"Cal..." He stood, papers scattering. "Don't."

"Don't what? Don't care that you're working yourself to death? Don't remember how you used to do this same thing when things got too real between us?"

"You don't know me anymore." But his hands were shaking as he gathered the blueprints.

"No?" I moved closer, catching the scent of coffee and graphite and him. "I know you still take your coffee black with one sugar. I know you still bite your lip when you're concentrating. I know you still run your fingers through your hair when you're stressed – yeah, just like that."

He yanked his hand from his hair like it had betrayed him. "What do you want from me?"

"The truth." Another step closer. "About why you're really hiding in here instead of facing what happened at the festival."

"Nothing happened." But he wouldn't meet my eyes.

"You really believe that?" I was close enough now to see the shadows under his eyes, the stubble on his jaw. "Because from where I stood, it felt like everything happened."

"It was a dance," he said, but his voice cracked on the last word.

"It was never just a dance with us." I reached out, letting my fingers brush the papers he was clutching like a shield. "Just like that night at the lake wasn't just a kiss."

"Stop." He backed away, hitting the desk. "You can't just come back here and expect—"

"Expect what? Honesty? Because I remember a time when you promised me that. Right before you married Sarah."

The papers crumpled in his grip. "That's not fair."

"None of this is fair!" My voice echoed in the empty office. "It's not fair that I still dream about you every night. It's not fair that seeing you with someone else killed me for twenty-five years. It's not fair that even now, even after everything, all I want to do is—"

His mouth crashed into mine, desperate and angry and everything we'd left unsaid. I grabbed his shirt, pulling him closer as his hands tangled in my rain-damp hair. He tasted like coffee and regret and possibility.

Then he shoved me away, chest heaving. "Fuck."

"E—"

"No." He wiped his mouth with a trembling hand. "I can't do this again. I won't survive it this time."

"Who says we have to just survive?" I reached for him, but he flinched away. "Why can't we finally live?"

"Because you'll leave again!" The words exploded out of him. "You'll go back to your perfect life in Seattle, and I'll be left here picking up the pieces. Again."

"That's not—"

"You don't get it, do you?" He ran both hands through his hair, leaving it wild. "I built a life here. It might not be the one I wanted at eighteen, but it's mine. I have a son who's just starting to understand who I really am. A business I built from nothing. I can't just throw that away for some... some fantasy of what might have been."

"It doesn't have to be fantasy." My voice broke. "I'm here now. I'm not that scared kid anymore."

"Neither am I." He straightened, and I watched the walls go up behind his eyes. "Which is why you need to go."

"E, please—"

"Go back to Seattle, Cal." He turned away, gathering his scattered papers. "Some ghosts should stay buried."

I stood there, rain water dripping from my clothes onto his pristine office floor, creating puddles like the tears I refused to let fall.

"You're wrong," I said finally. "About fantasies and ghosts. Because ghosts don't kiss back like that. They don't shake when you touch them. And they sure as hell don't look at you the way you just looked at me."

He didn't turn around, but I saw his shoulders tense.

"I'm staying," I continued. "At least until Mom's house sells. And every day, I'm going to remind you that what we have isn't dead. It's just been waiting. Like us."

I walked to the door, pausing with my hand on the knob. "You know where to find me when you're ready to stop hiding."

The bell chimed again as I left, stepping back into the rain. Through the window, I watched him sink into his chair, head in his hands. Part of me wanted to go back in, to hold him until the pain eased. But he was right about one thing – we weren't those kids anymore.

This time, love would have to be a choice. And I'd wait as long as it took for him to choose us.

The rain soaked through my jacket as I walked back to my car, but I barely felt it. Because under the anger and fear in his kiss, I'd tasted something else.

Hope.