Guilty Needs(26)

Reaching out, he closed a hand over the doorknob, turned it slowly. He pushed it open and sagged against the door frame.

Sunlight drifted in through the windows to fall across the bed in pale splashes of gold. The hospital bed had been removed. Bree must have taken care of that. Their old bed was back where it had always been, neat as a pin. His throat went tight as he made himself walk into the room.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, dragging the air into his lungs. Before, the room had always smelled of Alyssa—sexy and female. Now the air had a sterile quality, the faint scent of lemon-scented Pledge lingering in the air and nothing else. On the dresser, he could see her hair brush and a tangle of silver and gold chains thrown onto a silver tray. Just as it had been when he left.

Colby crossed to the dresser and stroked a finger down the tray’s edge. It was an antique that she’d found at some garage sale or second-hand store. Alyssa had used to love going to places like that. When she had brought this tray home, it had been all but black with tarnish.

Tugging open the top drawer, he found himself staring at silk and lacy swathes of filmy material that hadn’t hidden a damn thing when she wore them. Hooking a finger in something Alyssa had called peacock blue, he lifted it up. It just looked blue to him.

It was a chemise, so damn skimpy she couldn’t wear it for anything other than driving him crazy. She’d loved lingerie. He’d loved seeing her in it. Loved buying it for her and wondering when she’d wear it for him. So why in hell couldn’t he remember how she looked wearing this?

Something dark and bitter moved through him and he crumpled the filmy bit of nothing in his hand, glaring at his reflection in the mirror. She’d been dead a year and he was already starting to forget how she looked. A year and he was already so damn hot to f*ck her best friend, he’d all but stripped her naked in public. So damn ready to do whatever the hell he wanted that he was dreaming up ghosts just to rationalize and make it all okay.

“She wasn’t anywhere close to being naked. And I’m not a rationalization, babe.”

Colby wheeled around, following the sound of her voice. When he saw Alyssa sitting on the edge of the bed, the bed visible through her, he stumbled back. His butt bumped into the dresser and that was all that stopped him, otherwise he just might have kept backing away. “You aren’t real.”

Alyssa sighed and tucked a wayward curl behind her ear. “Didn’t we already talk about this? I am real. As real as a dead person can be, anyway.” Then she winked at him. “I wasn’t ever the rational type, so don’t try to use rationality to explain me away.”

“You can’t be real.”

She shrugged. “People say that about Bigfoot too, but you believe in him. Why can’t you believe in me?”

He scowled at her. She was right. She hadn’t ever been the rational type. Not too many people, besides her, could draw a connection between her transparent form and the existence of a cryptid. “I believe he could exist. I don’t necessarily think he does exist.”

She gave him a brilliant smile. “Then you could at least give me the benefit of the doubt and believe I could exist.”

She glanced down and Colby followed the line of her gaze until he realized she was looking at the blue chemise he still held clutched in his hand. “I went shopping with Bree the day I bought that.”

“So what? You went shopping with Bree all the time.”

“She picked it out.”

He turned and shoved it into the dresser, unsure why he had to get it out of his sight. He lifted his gaze and stared into the mirror. I’ll be damned, he thought. Ghosts do cast reflections. And he could see hers rising from the bed and moving toward him. “And that matters…why? Weren’t you trying to convince me the other day that Bree has some secret hang-up on me? Why the hell would she help you pick out lingerie if she had something for me?”

Alyssa shrugged. “Maybe because she was doing what friends do.”

She stood beside him now, staring at her reflection with wide, curious eyes. “I haven’t been in here since it happened,” she whispered. Slowly, she turned and stared around, her gaze lingering on the bed, then moving to the window. “I remember…you lay down next to me, held me. I told you I loved you. You said it back. I wanted to go out to the garden…was going to tell you that after I woke up. But I never did, did I?”

In a rusty, tight voice, he said, “No.”

Turning back, she stared down at the jewelry on the tray, lifting a hand as though she’d pick something up, but all she did was let her fingers hover just above the chains. “I can’t do anything about you feeling guilty, Colby. I wish I could, but you’re the only one who can do something about that. There is nothing for you to feel guilty about. Nothing.”

“How can you say that? I’m back here a month and all I can think about is her.”

“That’s not really true.” Alyssa lowered her hand to her side and then faced him. “You’re too hung up on feeling guilty about Bree to be everything you think about, or you would have already at least slept with her.”

“It shouldn’t be like this,” he gritted out. “You weren’t even gone six months when I started dreaming about her. That isn’t right.”

Alyssa cocked a brow at him. “Says who?”