Thirty

A

t the hostel, Finn parked the car and offered to walk me in. The lobby was relatively empty but for a twenty-something couple on a dingy couch, looking at something on their phone. I fished my key from my pocket and turned to say good-bye to Finn. There was everything but good-bye in his eyes.

“Food?”

I laughed. “We just ate!”

Finn drifted into my atmosphere, nibbled my bottom lip, and whispered, “Dessert?” in a voice as dark and tempting as chocolate.

“I could go for something sweet,” I answered with a mock air of indifference, while my heart beat double time.

He kissed me again and sucked my bottom lip into his mouth just slightly. “So could I,” he growled.

I snagged his hand and led him to my room.

Our impatient kisses delayed us at my door. Neither of us could suspend our need to close the gap, emotional and physical, between us. The bold girl I liked so much rose up in me again. I held Finn’s narrow face between my hands and kissed him hard. His hands clutched the small of my back, gathering my jacket in his fists as he pulled me against him. Being pinned to the door by Finn’s body was as heady as being pinned underneath him in my room that night back home. A small shred of me knew that unlocking the door and taking Finn into my room was reckless.

Freedom is its own kind of open door.

I fumbled the key into the hole, and we tumbled inside, wrapped in each other.

Cold hit me. A breeze that had nothing to do with air vents or open windows. The chill ran over my back like a bank of white clouds.

I slipped from Finn’s grasp.

“What is it?”

Nothing seemed out of place. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but perhaps I was looking with the wrong sense. I reached out with my subtle body, my aura. There was a ghost of energy in the room that hadn’t been there that morning, the residual fingerprint of someone else’s energy, lingering malice. I could feel them as if I’d walked through the vapor of their aura.

“Something’s off in here,” I said, unable to fully explain it to Finn. “I don’t feel safe.”

His eyes scanned the place for anything out of the ordinary. His chest expanded and fell with a testing breath. “I can’t say why, exactly, but this place does have a bad vibe,” Finn said.

I scrambled around the room, gathering my things, throwing one article after the other into my suitcase and shoving it closed while Finn watched me with a disconcerted expression.

“It reminds me of when my uncle Clancy took me to visit my grandmother in the hospital. We stood over her bed, and I swear I felt it when her spirit left her body. There was…a drift in the currents of the room.”

I shuddered. “Spoken like a true sailor.”

He crossed the floor, gathering me in the warmth of his arms, into the cocoon of his heartbeat. “If you don’t feel safe here, luv, you shouldn’t stay.”

“Hence, the packing.” I slung my duffel over my shoulder, plans formulating in my head. “Giovanni will let me stay with him until we figure out what to do.”

Finn’s eyes widened. A touch of anger and protectiveness flared from him and wrapped me in an unwelcome cloak of dull green and lifeless yellow. “That wasn’t my first notion,” he said. “You want to stay with some tosser you barely know rather than with me?”

“I—honestly, it hadn’t occurred to me that I could stay with you.”

I thought of Ina Doyle. I wasn’t welcome in her son’s life, so how would she like me being in their home? “What about your mother? Do you really think it will be okay? For just a night or two? Just until I can figure out what’s next?”

“I’ll call Uncle Clancy. I’m supposed to drive him home when the pub closes. We can pick him up, and he’ll drive with us to my house. He’s got a way with my mother.” When he held the sides of my face, I gripped his forearms. Our eyes locked. “I don’t know what’s got you so spooked, but I don’t ever want to see fear in your eyes like I see right now. Let me take care of you.”

He didn’t say what I’m sure we both thought. Let me take care of you…until our time is up.