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He shook his head. “No. I will be pulled, remember? I will walk the path back to you when it’s done.”

Cool sweat broke out around the back of my neck. “Is there anything I need to do? Prepare? Anything that will make you find your way back to me faster?”

His smile was so gentle, so heartbreakingly soft. “I already have my marker,” he murmured, pressing his index finger over my heart. “It’s right here. I couldn’t get lost even if I tried.”

“Okay,” I whispered. God, why was I so scared? “You won’t—nothing will happen right?”

“No.” He cupped my cheek and there was a phantom trace of warmth in his touch. “Nothing will happen.”

“I want you to have peace,” I said, voice wavering. I did. I meant it with every fiber of my being. I didn’t want him to be trapped here alone endlessly. I wanted him to be able to cross over, join his family and finally rest. “I want you to be able to rest, but what if—what if it takes you there instead?”

“It won’t,” he said, thumb stroking.

“How do you know?”

“It won’t,” he said again.

I couldn’t help but feel like I was going to lose him, that he was going to slip from my grasp before I was ready.

“But—”

“No buts,” he chided. “It’ll be fine, I promise.”

I had to take him at his word. I had no other choice than to believe he would find a way back here to me.

“Nothing could keep me,” he promised. “Nothing, Avery.”

I leaned against him, cheek pressed to his chest.

“I can’t wait to feel you properly,” he mumbled. “Your skin. Your warmth. I don’t think I realized how cold I’ve been.”

I squeezed my eyes shut at the onslaught of emotions that tore through me. There had to be a way. I couldn’t walk away knowing he was still here, alone and freezing. I would go and ask Isadora later on. She might know if there was anything I could do to help him.

I choked down my fears the rest of the day as much as I could. Wolfe was restless, shoulders rolling back in agitation. The way he moved sometimes… He looked like a beast given flesh. Prowling. Lethal.

He might have been when he was alive.

The world looked different then.

He joined me on my usual walk and for the first time, his cheeks were ruddy under the cold wind tearing through us. His shirt rippled across his body, painting itself to his skin. I gaped at the muscle, the definition of him, that had always been obscured and just out of reach. Veins bloomed on his arms, thick and blue, as they raced down to the top of his hands. I blinked, blinked again, but no—they were there. The corded muscles in his forearms, the faint brown arm hair.

It was all real.

When we came back from the walk, he tripped over the carpet in the foyer. He cursed, catching himself on the table. It shook against the wall under the force of it and my throat went dry.

“I do this every year,” he grumped. “I should just throw the damn thing out.” He smoothed down the edge of the rug and moved on, boots thudding over the floor.

My brain was at war with itself.

I tried to imagine the phone call I would need to have with my therapist when this was all said and done.

Listen, I know this is going to sound crazy. I knew he was a ghost, but he was so real…so…so vivid, that I forgot. That I fell in love with his spirit so deeply, so completely, I’d started to think he was real. And then I saw his grave, and realized that he is, in fact, dead. But now… Now he’s coming to life, tripping over furniture, stumbling into walls, cheeks flushed with cold air, and my heart tells me that it’s all real. He’s real. That I could keep him—but it’s his bones that are buried in the grass beside the sea.

I shook my head, clearing the thoughts away. She was going to love that and likely have me committed on the spot but how—how could I resist?

Did it make me that desperate? That lonely? That sad? Pathetic? The word choices were endless and I wondered what it said about me that I’d been so starved for company that I brought a ghost nearly back to life just by sheer force of will.

And I could never tell anyone. No one would believe me. I would have to carry him alone for the rest of my life. I couldn’t share our stories, his details. None of it. It would live and die with me.