No Kissing Allowed

Chapter 20: Haunted

Chapter 20: Haunted

"Steven. No. Please, no."

Jamie squinted in the darkness, unsure how he'd misread the signals. He'd been swept away in the moment, and Cora hadn't pulled away. On the contrary, she'd clung to him as he carried her inside.

She was swept away as well, no doubt, but in some different current. Answering him with the name of some other man.

Who the hell was Steven?

Jamie rolled off the bed. He flicked on the wall sconce, set to its dimmest setting. It cast the room in just enough light to see the contours of her face.

Cora had her hands covering her eyes, mascara running down her cheeks. The top half of her dress was tangled about her waist, but she didn't seem aware of her exposure.

A twinge pierced Jamie's spine, somewhere between alarm and panic. He reached for his discarded jacket to cover her, draping it backward across her chest and shoulders.

"Cora?" He touched her gently on the wrist and peeled one hand from her face. The light reached her closed eyelids. She blinked, took one look at him hovering above her, and then covered her face up again with her forearms. She let out a sobbing breath.

Jamie looked uncertainly toward the bathroom door. Perhaps he should leave her. He could tiptoe out of the room and use the other bedroom for the night.

He was halfway off the bed before she stopped him. She reached blindly for his arm, gripping it harder than she had when they were dancing outside. Hard enough to leave a bruise.

She spoke then, her words half-unintelligible and garbled with tears, but the growing urgency in her voice was unmistakable. "Pull over... Steven, please!

Pull over?

She had to be hallucinating. He couldn't leave her alone in this state. Jamie wrapped an arm behind her shoulders and helped her to sit up, giving her a gentle shake. "Cora, wake up." He swept aside the loosened strands of hair that framed her face and stuck to her damp cheeks. "Look at me. It's Jamie. Steven isn't here."

Something in his words got through to her. She blinked at him again, and this time her eyes snapped into focus. The recognition dawned. She gasped so violently, Jamie might have found it comical in any other circumstance.

"Hello there," he said. "Welcome back." He reached for the washcloth positioned on his bedside table. He'd intended it for other purposes than mopping up tears, but no matter. He handed it to her, and she dried her cheeks.

Her frantic breathing slowed. Whatever storm had brewed inside her head seemed to have blown over. Jamie could breathe again as well, but he had no idea what to say. Of all the awkward silences he'd ever had to fill, this would go down in his memory as perhaps the most unnerving.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. At least the words appeared to be addressed to him now, and not to the infamous Steven. She glanced at him with a startled look upon her face, almost as shocked as he by what had just transpired.

"I must say," he replied in a droll voice, "I've elicited my fair share of reactions in the bedroom, but this one is a first."

She didn't grace him with a laugh, too far gone for social niceties. Instead, she seemed to collapse in on herself, shrinking beneath his jacket as if she hoped to disappear before his eyes. "Oh no." Her voice sounded shaky. "We didn't— Did we—"