Giving Up the Ghost Read online

  The room was quiet ‑‑ it was late afternoon, John thought, although it was hard to keep track when traveling, and the hotel wasn’t crowded at this time of day. John was nearly asleep again when he heard Nick clear his throat. “John?” he asked softly, as if unsure if John were awake.

  John managed a questioning grunt by way of reply and then forced his eyes open. “’M here, love.” The endearment came easily when he was this tired; it took more effort to remember that he and Nick weren’t quite right than to forget it.

  “Can ‑‑” Nick rolled onto his side, looking at John. He licked his lips nervously. “Can I sleep with you?”

  “Aye. Of course you can.” John was too sleepy to feel more than a distant relief. He threw the covers back and moved over, making room for Nick. Nick slipped in beside him and John drew the covers up over them, sighed, and settled down the way he always did, although he never woke that way, his arm across Nick’s chest, his head on Nick’s shoulder.

  Nick was warm against him; he smelled of unfamiliar shampoo, but other than that and the sheets, John could have thought they were home in their own bed. “Go to sleep,” Nick whispered.

  “I am asleep,” John told him.

  “I can tell.” Nick might actually have sounded a bit amused, although it was difficult to tell through John’s own exhaustion.

  “I feel…” John turned his head a little, murmuring the words against Nick’s skin, feeling his lips touch it in what wasn’t a kiss, not really. “We’re a long way from home.”

  “We are.” Nick’s arm around John’s shoulders squeezed slightly in a half hug. “Too far. I wish we were there instead of here.”

  “You’re here. I’m here.” John made it a definite kiss this time, dizzy with the feel of the world spinning under him, far too fast. Thousands of miles…hours lost or relived, he wasn’t sure which. None of it felt real. Last time they’d flown to the States they’d planned it for weeks; he’d been prepared. This was too sudden, too violent a disruption to their lives, and given the way things were between them, he didn’t feel as if he could ask for or give reassurance the way he normally would have.

  It wasn’t going to stop him kissing the smooth hollow of Nick’s throat, though. Not when it was there, and Nick wasn’t stopping him. He wasn’t wanting to take it any farther than that ‑‑ he didn’t think he could ‑‑ but kissing Nick was what he did before he went to sleep and it didn’t feel right not to.

  “As long as you’re going to stay,” Nick murmured. “With me, I mean. If you left…I don’t know what I’d do.” He tilted his head obligingly, giving John better access, but he wasn’t entirely relaxed.

  “Staying…Go to sleep, will you? Please? Can’t if you don’t…” John wasn’t sure that what was coming out of his mouth made sense, but he hoped it did.

  “Shh. I am,” Nick said, reassuring. “It’s okay.” It barely mattered at that point; John had been holding onto consciousness by sheer force of will, and sleep was already pulling him under whether he wanted it to or not.

  * * * * *

  Nick woke around the same time he would have at home. Of course, it was five hours earlier in Florida, the sky still dark and the hotel almost disturbingly silent around them. John had rolled over and was sleeping with his back to Nick; needing the comfort more than he wanted to worry about their relationship, Nick tucked himself up against John, one arm over his waist. John murmured sleepily but didn’t really wake up, and after a while, Nick fell back asleep himself.

  When he woke up again, the sun was rising. They hadn’t thought to close the curtain that led to the balcony off their room, and the sunlight was streaming in. Nick crept from the bed and went to shut the curtain, but ended up slipping behind it and opening the sliding glass door to the balcony into the warm Florida air. He rubbed his arms with his hands, surprised that he wasn’t cold but still wishing he’d stopped to put on a shirt.

  Behind him he heard the faint rustle of the sheets as John stirred awake. John always seemed to know when Nick left the bed, no matter how deeply he was sleeping.

  “It’s not raining, then?” John’s voice, soft, and with a lilt to it that was going to get every waitress, cab driver, and store assistant they met commenting, admiring and dredging up relatives who were Scottish, had been to Scotland, or owned something tartan, sounded amused. “We should’ve stayed home. There was a nice gale on the way.”

  “Come out here,” Nick said. At that moment, the wonder of the morning had him firmly in its grasp and nothing else mattered; not why they were there, not even that things had been so shaky between them. “You have to see this sunrise.”

  John got out of bed and joined him, slipping his arm around Nick’s shoulders in a brief hug before walking to the edge of the balcony and staring out at the spectacular landscape neither of them had really taken in the night before. The hotel was on the beach; directly beneath their third-floor balcony was a narrow strip of thick-bladed grass, bordered by a concrete path, and then the white sand began, lapping up like a sea against the buildings.

  Nick knew John’s eyes would be on the sea, though; the wide, endless expanse of it, holding the shifting colors of the sunrise now, though it’d be intensely blue soon. The rush of the waves made it feel like home. A different shore, but the same ocean.

  “Aye, that’s something,” John said after a while. He turned his head, studying Nick with the same concentration he’d given to the view. “You look better for the sleep. Are you hungry? You ate next to nothing yesterday, not that I can blame you.” He wrinkled up his face. “By the time I’d got all the plastic wrappings off that meal on the plane, they were coming around to take the plates off us.”

  Nick’s stomach growled at the suggestion of food, but he only had eyes for John; he reached for John’s hand and pulled him closer, hugging him, inhaling his scent. Holding John like this gave him a profound sense of peace, one that he wanted to keep for as long as he could, even though he knew it would only be a few minutes. “I’ve missed this.” He meant it as an apology. “I didn’t realize what was going on. Well, I did, but I didn’t know how bad it was. I’m sorry.” The last words were whispered, but he knew John would be able to hear him.

  “I wish you’d been able to tell me.” John’s hands on his bare back, stroking it slowly, firmly, were easing muscles Nick hadn’t realized were tense. “I feel as if I’ve done nothing but let you down, somehow, what with that and ‑‑ and it’s the last thing I wanted to do.” John pulled back enough that Nick could see his face, the blue eyes bright against the skin that even in winter was still tanned because John spent more time outside than in; always had, always would. “I love you.” John’s gaze didn’t waver. “Very much.”

  “I love you, too. More than anything.” Nick stroked John’s cheek, rubbed a thumb over his lips. “I don’t know why I didn’t tell you. I think, at first, I thought it was just a dream, and then I really thought…it had to be, I don’t know, my mind playing tricks on me.” But deep down, he hadn’t really thought that, or else he wouldn’t have spent so much time scouring the Internet for reports of planes having gone down. “But I should have said something.” The secret had driven a wedge between them that had done more damage than Nick would have thought possible.

  Above them, seagulls cried out, wheeling in wide circles over the beach. Even this early the beach wasn’t empty; a couple was walking their dog, and someone else was running down close to the water, where the sand was hard and packed.

  Nick’s peaceful mood was already evaporating. “Can we get room service for breakfast?” he asked. “I don’t think I want to be around a lot of people right now.”

  “Fine by me.” John leaned in and kissed Nick, his lips tasting somehow of home. “Do you think they do waffles? I liked them last time we were here, and those wee frozen ones we get aren’t anything like the same.”

  “We should probably give up on them and get a waffle iron,” Nick said. “It can’t be that hard to make waffles.
” Not that he’d ever been much of a cook, of course, but he’d learned some things in the past year, and weren’t waffles just pancakes cooked in a waffle iron?

  While John went to take a shower, Nick called room service and ordered breakfast for them, then he went back out to the balcony and sat down, letting the warm sunshine seep into his bones and trying not to think about what the day ahead was going to hold.

  He heard the shower finish but didn’t go back inside. Out here, with a salt-scented breeze whipping away each thought of his father and the others who’d died on the small plane, some thirty or so, he thought, he could cope. Inside, closed-in, he was a target. He knew that it didn’t matter; if the spirits wanted to talk to him, they’d find him wherever he was, but he wasn’t feeling very logical right then.

  Even when a tap on the door, and the murmur of voices told him that their food had arrived, he stayed where he was, his eyes taking in the blue and white and green around him without seeing details.

  Then John appeared, his brown hair damp and tousled, a white, skimpy towel hitched around his hips, looking flushed. “I didn’t know where the dollars were that you got at the airport. Had to promise I’d remember his name, and tip him later.” He glanced down at himself, shaking his head. “He’ll remember me, that’s for sure. I damn near lost this towel trying to go through the pockets in your jacket.”

  “Sorry,” Nick said, even though he wasn’t really. A little part of him, the part that was still stung at the thought of Andy, didn’t like the idea of anyone else seeing John in nothing but a towel, but that was stupid and he knew it.

  He got up and they went inside; the wheeled cart was over by the door where John had left it. Nick carried the trays to the small table in the corner and laid out the food while John got dressed, then sat down with the newspaper that had been tucked between the trays. He didn’t really want to look at it, but he knew there’d be a lengthy story about the plane crash and he needed the information whether he wanted it or not.

  “What’s that?” John asked, standing behind him with a hand on Nick’s shoulder as he opened the paper and found the story. “Oh.”

  “Uh huh.” Forty-one deaths; he’d been wrong about that. The chaos in his dream hadn’t made an accurate head-count easy, but Nick’s stomach still clenched at the thought of it. “There weren’t any problems with the weather,” he said, even though John could read just as well as he could.

  “No…” John sounded abstracted. “Says they’re assuming something mechanical, but won’t know for sure for a while, yet. Do you ‑‑ do you know, then? What happened? Or was it just your dad you saw?”

  “I never saw him.” Nick turned his head and looked at John over his shoulder. “I had no idea it had anything to do with him until I got that phone call. God, that was less than two days ago.” It felt like they’d traveled at least a week in that time. “Do you think that’s why I was having the dream? Because of him?”

  John blinked at him, looking puzzled. “Well ‑‑ aye, don’t you? Planes crash all the time ‑‑ bigger ones than this ‑‑ and you don’t get visions of them. And generally, you have to be close to where someone died to see their ghost or get one of those premonition flash things, so, aye, I’d say it was your dad that made the connection happen.”

  He sat down and picked up the coffee Nick had poured for him, giving Nick a worried glance. “You’ll see him, won’t you?” he asked. “It’s why we came. He’s no claim on you, not after how he left you, but you won’t let his ghost walk if you can give him a chance at peace.”

  “I don’t think I’ll have a choice,” Nick said. He probably needed the resolution with his father just as much as his father had; his biggest fear was that his dad wouldn’t be amenable to it. Ghosts weren’t always eager to work through things, no matter how necessary it was. “They might all be there. Everyone who died.”

  It had been a long time since he’d voluntarily walked onto the site of a serious disaster like this, and John had never seen him in that kind of situation. The ghosts who were ready to leave messages for loved ones were rarely patient enough to wait their turn, and trying to separate out one voice amongst a sea of them had pushed Nick into a state of near-catatonia more than once.

  John glanced around the room and then over at Nick. “You’ll remember you promised you’d always tell me if there was one with us? Is there? Has it started?” He picked up the paper from the table, looking at the small map of the crash site. “It’s about ten miles north of us, I’d say.”

  They’d picked up a car at the airport yesterday, so driving wouldn’t be an issue, and they had maps that the rental company had given them. The woman at the counter had seemed relieved to discover that Nick would be driving rather than John, whose accent had been immediately obvious, even in the little they’d needed to speak.

  Nick realized he hadn’t answered John’s question, although his silence had probably been answer enough. “No, there’s no one here now. I think you’d be able to tell if there were.” Firmly reminding himself that he needed to eat, he poured syrup over his waffles and took a bite. “You need to eat, too, you know.”

  “I can’t always tell,” John pointed out, although from Nick’s experience, John usually could, sensing them in the vague way a person afraid of cats could tell if one was in the room. “And don’t worry about me. I’m eating. See?” John loaded his fork with a wedge of waffle, topped off with a chunk of strawberry, and dripping with syrup and butter, and then took a bite that ended up with him mopping his chin and frowning at his sticky fingers. “Followed by another shower…”

  “The best food’s usually messy,” Nick said distractedly, his eyes already drawn back to the newspaper story. He read it again from beginning to end, then sighed and folded up the paper, tossing it onto the bed and turning his attention toward his breakfast.

  John had already half finished his and was nursing his second cup of coffee; he’d been quiet while Nick was reading, which Nick appreciated.

  “I don’t know how this is going to go,” Nick said. “Being there, I mean.”

  “It’ll be crowded. And usually you’ve been invited by the relatives, or you’re by yourself.” John eyed Nick. “You’re going to have to be careful, or you’ll have a crowd of idiots trailing around after you.”

  That happened. Not as often as people sneering or getting angry with him for anything from blasphemy to taking advantage of the bereaved, but it happened. Ghost groupies, Matthew had called them, more approvingly than Nick had liked, but then, Matthew hadn’t just been his lover, had he? He’d been Nick’s manager, Nick’s agent. Nick’s buffer. John hadn’t had much, if any, experience with that part of what Nick did; it just hadn’t been an issue on a remote Scottish island.

  Somehow, Nick thought it might be here.

  He took one more bite of waffle and set down his fork; eating too much would be just as bad as not eating at all, and he didn’t want to have to deal with the consequences. “When stuff like this happens, the ghosts aren’t all that interested in waiting their turn to talk to me. Through me.” He was never sure which phrase was better. “I can get…kind of confused. It’s pretty overwhelming. I’m probably going to need you to keep people back, if you can, and to make sure I don’t do anything stupid.”

  Stupid like walk into a wall, or walk into some angry relative’s fist, or fall flat on his face, all of which had happened at one time or other. When his brain was on overload like that, his eyes didn’t always transmit to his brain the way they should.

  “I can do that. Keep people back.”

  Nick hadn’t seen it himself, but he knew that Michael wasn’t the only one on the island who’d had a reputation for being the first into a brawl and the last one left standing. John was wiry, his muscles earned through work, not exercise, and Nick had a queasy feeling that John would probably enjoy punching someone who threatened Nick.

  John’s mouth curled in a smile. “I won’t,” he said, reading Nick’s expression.
“Go wading in, fists flying. And don’t tell me it’s not what you were thinking, because it was.” He stood and came around the table to Nick, crouching down beside Nick’s chair, his hands loosely clasped on his knees. “I promised you I wouldn’t get into fights, remember? When you saw the state of Michael’s face after the one in the bar? I’ll just be…charming,” he finished, nodding. “Aye. I’ll reason with them.” He stood in one smooth, easy movement, dropping a jaunty kiss on the top of Nick’s head. “And if they won’t listen to reason, and give you the space you need, I’ll…think of something.” He smiled, looking younger, happier, as if hearing that Nick needed him had given him a reassurance that Nick’s hug on the balcony hadn’t. “I’m a very resourceful man, did you not know that?”

  “Of course I did,” Nick said, nodding and finishing off his cup of coffee. “You always have been.” It was true; John had accepted him almost immediately, not to mention accepting his abilities. It was something he’d never expected to have, someone who knew what he was and loved him despite it. No matter what had happened between them ‑‑ no matter what John had done, and Nick didn’t have any reason to think it was more than what he’d admitted to ‑‑ it was important that Nick remember that.

  He’d never find another man like John, and he didn’t want to.

  Standing up, Nick rubbed his forehead and moved to his suitcase to get out some clothes to change into.

  Chapter Five

  The land was scarred where the plane had crashed; deep swaths of burned trees and churned-up grass sketching out its final, brutal landing. John stared at it through the open car window, his heart thumping, his breath catching in his throat. He’d seen similar scenes on television; pitied, commented, and changed the channel, feeling a genuine, if fleeting sympathy, no more.