Jonah Bennett (Bennett Mafia)

I looked straight ahead. I didn’t know what to do here. I was caught, kind of, or at least it seemed that way.

Shit, shit, shit.

Jonah hadn’t said anything when he and the guards caught me in the woods. Nothing at all. He just caught me, and they brought me back, and he’d been cleaning me up. He’d had hardly any reaction at all until I went and said those words.

“You know what I do for a living?” he asked again.

“I know you do that, not your family stuff,” I choked out, keeping my head down.

I tensed, waiting for his reaction.

Nothing.

It was silent.

“Explain,” he said.

Jesus. I didn’t want to.

I forced my eyes up at him.

He gave me a heavy look, and I couldn’t decipher what he was thinking.

I shivered.

“Carson,” he said quietly.

A second shiver passed through me.

I could feel blood trickling down my back. I reached behind me with some gauze.

“Keep going.”

“No.” I glared at him. “You still haven’t said shit about who you are, who your family is, who you think I am. Nothing. You’ve kidnapped me. That’s it. You made me strip and checked to see if I had a tracker? And what? Were you looking to see if it was under my skin? Like we’re in a Jason Bourne movie or some crap like that? Are you insane?”

“I changed my mind. Stop talking.”

I did. Gladly. I meshed my lips together, and when he stood and nudged my hand aside, I brought the gauze back to my lap. There was a good dot of blood there. I stared at it, not knowing why, but unable to look away from it.

Fuck it.

Just fuck it.

What did I have to lose?

Nothing.

“I remembered you after that night,” I said softly.

He had started to bandage that cut, but he paused a moment.

“It was her, now that I’m thinking about it. She—when she came in, I just thought how beautiful she must’ve been. You could tell. Sometimes we can’t, when they’re…you know, but with her, I could tell. I could tell right away. There’s always a feeling about them.”

Should I tell him about the other side of it all?

I looked back and found him staring at me.

Oh boy.

Okay.

Here we go.

I hoped he was open-minded. “I can feel them.”

His eyes sharpened, finding mine.

“When they’ve died, I can feel them.”

“Shut up.”

I didn’t. “If it’s their soul or—”

“Stop.”

“If it’s their, I don’t know—”

“Stop talking.”

“—their spirit. It’s them. I can feel them.”

“Shut up!” he roared, reaching for me.

His hand found my throat, but there was no pinch, no squeeze. It was all for show.

“I knew she was loved when she was wheeled in. I can’t tell you how I knew it, but I did.” I swallowed, feeling his hand tighten over my throat. “Her family came, and I knew it wasn’t by them. I’d never felt that before. Ever. But I knew. I knew, and then you showed up, and I swear, I could feel her. I could hear her say, finally to me, like she’d been waiting for you.”

“Shut,” he growled. His hand twitched, tightening on my throat. “Up.”

I wanted to. I just couldn’t.

Not about this. Never about this.

My voice dropped low, almost to a whisper. “She left.”

His hand tightened, painfully.

“After you were there, she was gone.”

He closed his hand, sucking a breath in, and pinned me to the table. His eyes were feral.

I closed my eyes, feeling his hand on my throat, but my God, I had to tell it all now. “You can kill me. That’s fine, but she was there. I have to tell you that. She was there, and she was waiting for you, and when you showed up, she was happy.” My eyes were still closed, but I felt a tear trickle out, down the side of my face. I left it. It didn’t matter. “She was happy you were there. It was you she was waiting for, not her family. You. And I can feel all of that because I’ve taken care of so many dead people.” I took a deep breath, noting that I was still able to do so. “And since we’re talking about spirit stuff, the rest seems silly to keep from you...” Oh boy. Really? Yes. “I was attracted to you—not your brothers, you. I don’t know why—maybe it was her. But the doctor stuff I know about you? It’s because I googled you. I know your name. I know your medical school friends, or some of them. You were tagged in a picture someone uploaded—you and your nurses. And there’s another of you and your patients. They tagged you.”

His patients loved him. I’d seen that.

His nurses respected him. I saw that, too.

“If it’s all a farce, you being a doctor, it’s a really good one.”

He stood, releasing my neck and scattering bandages across the floor. He tossed his scissors in the sink and stormed out.