him getting kicked out. Or him getting both of us kicked out. He’d even been extra well behaved as we had shopped, no hopping around or wandering off without me.
I scowled up at Gideon. “What makes you think I’m worrying about my father?”
He leaned one shoulder against the closed front door, lips quirked up on one side in a damnably attractive smirk. “Start with the fact that I didn’t say your father, just ‘him,’ and you assumed. Move on to you looking at the box of ashes when you walked in and flinching.”
I glanced guiltily back at the box, still sitting on my mantel. “Did not.”
Gideon didn’t refute the lie, just snorted.
“It’s probably half dirt and cobwebs now,” I said, quiet. Like that would stop him from hearing the admission. “I used a Dustbuster to put him back in the box.”
The snort became a snort-laugh. “You sure did. Hell of a useful gadget, that Dustbuster.”
“My father’s ashes, Gideon.”
The grin on his face was boyish and innocent, considering the subject. “Yup. And now it’s half dirt and cobwebs, just like you said.” He glanced over at the box, and back at me, then winked. “Just like his soul. It’s a good match.”
I groaned and would have buried my face in my hands had they not been filled with grocery bags. So instead I headed for the kitchen, pretending to ignore Gideon’s laugh as I went. How could the man be so adorable while also laughing at my mistreatment of my father’s ashes?
Because you’re the only one who’s even trying to like your father, my brain helpfully pointed out. Which was true. Even his fans, whose visits were thinning out as the days passed, hadn’t liked him enough to visit him or go to his funeral.
Much like my mother, everyone had been temporary in the life of John Bradford. I’d been the longest running landmark in his existence, and if I were being honest with myself, I knew he’d kept me around after I turned eighteen only because I had been cheap labor he could push around.
“I keep looking back, wanting to see something that wasn’t there,” I finally told Gideon, who had followed me into the kitchen. “I want our relationship to have been good, so I don’t have to decide that it doesn’t matter to me. I don’t want to lose that.”
I dumped the bags on the counter, then took the one foxy had carried for me from between his teeth. It was more treats for him, mostly, and some peanut butter that he’d practically begged for. My little glutton.
“Sage,” Gideon said, leaning down to look me straight in the eye. He was close enough to kiss, if I’d wanted to.
Oh, who the hell was I kidding? He was close enough to kiss if he’d been corporeal. I definitely wanted to.
I looked into his deep brown eyes and wondered how the sun glinted off flecks of gold in their depths when the eyes weren’t really there, and the light was behind him.
He lifted a hand as though to touch my cheek, and his voice when he spoke again was soft. “There’s nothing to lose. He’s gone, and the relationship never was. Missing something that never existed can only hurt you.”
I closed my eyes and I could imagine his breath ghosting over my cheek. The feeling of his body, just inches from mine. He’d be warm and solid, and smell of leather and gun oil.
When I opened my eyes again, he was still there. Still looking down at me. There was a spark of something in his eyes, and I wondered if, maybe, he had the same notion. The same curiosity.
No, not curiosity.
Longing.
I wanted him to lean forward and press his lips against mine more than I wanted to have a civil conversation with my father. More than I ever had wanted that.
He took a step back, and I could almost feel the space open between us, the air returning to me, even though he didn’t have the physical ability to crowd me. I turned back to the bags and started rifling through them, as though my life depended on finding the tub of cream cheese.
I had bought bagels, so it might.
“Have you remembered any more names?” I asked, and I was proud of how even my voice was. No tremble at all. No hint of the pitiful longing to have a ghost kiss me.
He sighed, but I didn’t think it was about me. It was pure frustration. “No. Well yeah,