The Ghosts of Dearheart: Book I

Chapter 3

Thursday. It wasn't even two full days away from Tuesday, but every hour between passed at a snail's pace for Tieran. And boy, was he not at all productive with his time. Besides eating, sleeping, football practice, and sitting in classes he was no longer paying attention to, it was all now devoted to the art of stalking. Alright, so maybe not stalking, legally speaking. Information on the internet was a free for all. If it was out there for the public anyway, did it really matter who saw it?

Unfortunately, Hartley Bates didn't yield very many results. Tieran was able to find out what high school he graduated from and found his Instagram handle, but that was about it. The Instagram account was private, anyway. His TikTok, however, wasn't. There was one video of him doing speed-watercolor, which had a few thousand views, and a few more clips of him cataloguing the progress on his tattoo sleeve. No Snapchat or Twitter or anything. Not very active on social media, it seemed.

He hated that he even felt compelled to learn any of this. It wasn't lost on him that this level of preoccupation with a one-time flame was abnormal and objectively a little crazy, it was just that the majority vote inside his head determined to fuel the urges instead of repress them, and who was he to veto? He basically spent all of Wednesday with a begrudging hand down his pants at every private moment trying to stroke the infernal pining away. It felt good, but it was ultimately making the problem worse. Now he was just rewarding the obsessive thoughts with orgasms. Not that any of them even half compared to that sensation he felt Monday night. He tried to brush off the memory for the umpteenth time as he sat on his bed Thursday morning, waiting for ten o'clock.

He agreed to fuck just for the asking, his dark side pointed out. Who's to say he wouldn't do it again? Just make it worth his time. Offer to eat his ass or something.

Tieran shook his head rapidly, rubbing his forehead and standing. What the hell—he'd be early again today.

He'd never ventured out to Dearheart Cemetery before, but besides folks who died a hundred years ago, who would? It was a tree-crowded plot of land in an area that, for being basically in the heart of the city, was stupidly difficult to drive to. It was up a steep, winding hill, and once he got all the way up there, parking fucking sucked. He basically had to get out right in the home-grown mud of good old rainy Washington. He stepped out of it and began scraping the bottoms of his shoes on the nearby grass, looking around.

He could see a familiar face or two. Four people around his age were hanging out by the entrance, and after squinting, he could see Professor Hager leaning against a rock that her gray blazer blended into. He pulled out his phone, wondering if he should text Hartley. But then he'd never gotten a response to his first text. Maybe that sentence had been coming on too strong. Maybe it had caused him to drop the course. Or maybe he really was given a fake number after all. Or both.

When he looked up, his professor was waving him over, so he bit the bullet and walked out to meet the others.

"Hey Tieran," said Sasha with a smile.

"Hi," he greeted.

She looked around him. "Where's your partner at?"

"I don't know. Didn't hear back from him. He's probably on his way."

"Are you guys friends by chance?"

Tieran shrugged a shoulder. "Not really. Why?"

She gave an unapologetic shrug in return. "I think he's cute so I'm sussing out his details. Is he single?"

Tieran gazed into her bubbly, extroverted face and felt a dreadful seething in his belly. "No clue."

She pouted for a moment. "Boo. Do me a solid and tell me if you find out."