She hadn’t told me much about her life, or why she’d left, but it didn’t feel like the right time to ask. “If you’re really interested in design and décor, you could definitely head up that department. I’m clueless on that stuff,” I told her.
She frowned. “I don’t really have experience though. I don’t want to screw things up.”
“This is the perfect opportunity to learn. It can’t get worse than it is,” I said, giving her what I hoped was an encouraging smile. “Nowhere to go but up, right?” I stood and folded up the laptop. “Should we head up?”
Addie gazed uncertainly at the stairs through the doorway. “Yeah, I guess so.”
We switched off the lights, and made our way together up the grand staircase of the old house. As we took turns in the single bathroom and said our goodnights, I tried to keep my mind focused on the work that lay before us. Not on the beautiful woman who would be settling down to sleep just a room away.
Not on the fact that she’d have to change her clothes just on the other side of that wall.
And definitely not on the fact that whatever feelings I had about Addison Tanner had shifted in the very little time I’d spent with her. I didn’t want to think about how easy it was to be with her, or how pretty her dark wide eyes were, or how nice it had felt when she’d gripped my arm.
I sighed deeply, laid down on the air mattress on the floor, and closed my eyes.
12
Thumps in the Night
Addison
I was not exactly a fanciful teenager, eager to believe the stories I’d heard my whole life about the Easter Mansion being haunted. But I’d also never expected to find myself stretched out on the floor in said mansion, trying to fall asleep to the dulcet tones of creaking floors, swollen pipes, and potentially miserably ghostly entities. And while we’d spent a surprisingly nice evening after the otherworldly scream and the upending of my suitcase, this place was still super creepy. The odds of me drifting peacefully off to sleep seemed very low.
But maybe making decisions about changing your entire life on what some might call a whim was more tiring that I’d considered. Because a few minutes after stretching out on the surprisingly comfortable air mattress Michael had loaned me—after he’d shown me how to inflate it, I found myself sinking into sleep. But my dreams weren’t peaceful.
I dreamt of dark dusty rooms filled with fog and shadow, movement in the periphery of my vision that disappeared as soon as I turned to look, and someone crying in some distant room of the house—a baby.
Though I slept, I was aware of my body’s restlessness, and so I lingered in that half-waking state where dreams mixed with reality and my brain never quite shut off, as if it knew that remaining vigilant would be the best plan when sleeping in a creepy old house some lady willed you just to try to end a feud.
The scream that cut the air, catapulting me violently out of my half-sleep was one hundred percent inhuman, that much I knew.
I was on my feet without making a conscious decision to get there, and those same feet were already carrying me to Michael, though I definitely didn’t make a decision about that. I burst through his closed door, panting and gripping my pillow to my chest, to find him sitting up and looking around, the light on his phone illuminating the room.
“What was that?” I asked, my voice a panicky whisper.
“Same thing we heard earlier, I guess.” Michael had clearly been sleeping, and his hair stuck up on end, giving him an adorably disheveled little boy look that was contrasted sharply by his bare chest, which was well muscled and dusted with light hair. “You okay?” He asked.
I came back to myself slowly then, realizing too late that I was standing in his room, half dressed in only a long ragged T-shirt I’d gotten for attending some corporate event years ago. It wasn’t the way I’d normally present myself to a near-stranger. “Uh, yeah. Sorry to barge in. I was asleep,” I said, feeling abashed.
“It’s okay.” He stood, revealing a pair of loose flannel pajama pants and bare feet. “Want me to check it out?”
“If it’s the same thing as earlier, we won’t find anything,” I said, late-night cynicism and fear making a less-than-optimistic combination.