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“Don’t.” I leaned forward, nose brushing his. “I don’t want a gentleman. I want you. Just as you are.”

He gripped my knees and yanked me to the edge of the couch until I was nearly between his legs.

“Are you sure? Because the way that I want you…” He blew out a sharp breath. “I don’t think I could be gentle even if I tried.”

A thrill rushed through me. “You think I don’t feel the same?” I ran my thumb across his lower lip. “That I’m not—not desperate?”

He made an anguished, tortured sound. “Don’t tell me that. It kills me every day, Avery. Not to kiss you. To hold you. To—to—drop to my knees at the sight of you. Fuck.” He kissed the corner of my mouth, lips barely there. “A lifetime wouldn’t be enough. Two lifetimes.”

I felt the same.

Wild, out of control, on the verge of tearing my own hair out. The hours between now and then would drag and I prayed with everything inside me that it all stopped when he arrived, that the world would go quiet and slow enough that I could fit a small forever inside it.

“For all of this,” he said, voice dropping, “there’s still one thing you haven’t asked me.” He ran his thumb up my palm, tracing the life lines in my skin. “One thing left I haven’t told you.”

I hadn’t asked because I’d never felt brave enough to hear the answer.

I knew his entire life—every iota of who he was.

But I didn’t know how he died.

“You should know before tomorrow,” he said. “Before I cross over.”

“Why?” I whispered.

“It’s the second to last piece of myself that I can give you. A ghost does not like to relive their death. Some are trapped in a loop, stuck in the same moment over and over again. Some are told what happened when they cross over and it drives them mad. Others… Well, some can’t handle it and they pretend.”

My heart broke at the image—living in such denial, clinging to a life that no longer fit you.

“And you?”

He lifted a shoulder. “I knew as soon as I passed. I remembered everything.”

“Is that unusual?”

“Everyone is different. If the death is traumatic enough, some spirits repress it.”

I licked my dry lips. “Was yours… Do you want to tell me?”

“I drowned,” he said tightly. “Off the docks.”

I went rigid in my seat, spine locking together. We’d…we’d gone whale watching. He’d walked to the docks with me, stepped out onto a boat, and sailed across the water he died in.

I ripped my hand from his and pushed to my feet. I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth. I was going to be sick—or die from guilt.

“Wolfe—” I bit back the bile climbing up my throat.

“I loved the sea,” he said quietly. “I always did.”

Tears filled my eyes. “Then how—”

I tried to imagine him fighting the current, clawing for the surface and unable to reach it. The light above his head shrinking smaller and smaller as he sank into the crushing black, the weight and cold of the water robbing the breath from his lungs. I pressed my hands against my eyes until I saw stars.

He must have been terrified.

Cold.

Alone.