Arrow to the Heart: A Dark Cupid Romance

Chapter 24

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When I called my sister earlier and she reminded me that Mom was staying with her, I immediately changed my plan of spending the night there.

More than two hours trapped in the same house with my mother? Nope. Hard pass.

I figured it would probably be fine to stay one night with a weird randomly opening door.

I reminded myself that the lock seems to be in working order, that it would only be one night, and that ghosts don't really exist. Everything should be perfectly fine, right?

And I had myself pretty convinced until I went to throw my towel in the hamper and it stopped mid-air, draped in the form of a person.

Now, I am screaming like I'm auditioning for a horror movie and scrambling backward and—because I'm remarkably uncoordinated—I fall on my ass and my head hits the frame of the bathroom door with a loud thwack.

The towel falls to the floor so I can no longer see whatever this thing is.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

"Shit," a deep voice curses.

Well, great, at least the ghost seems to be as panicked as me.

"Please don't hurt me or kill me or eat me or whatever you came here to do please!" I sob, curling into a ball and covering my face.

This is really how I die? Murdered by a ghost while wearing my fuzzy robe in my bathroom doorway?

"It's okay. It's okay. No one's gonna hurt you, I promise," the voice says.

I continue to sob, mostly because it's the only thing I can do. My heart is pounding in my ears and I'm shaking so much my vision is blurring.

"Please stop crying," it says, almost pained.

"W-what do you want?" I ask in a broken whimper.

"Fuck." Before my eyes, Dec appears crouched in front of me. His brows are pinched in distress and he's... oh, he's naked. "Bree, it's okay, it's me."

I blink away tears and sniffle, trying to understand what I'm looking at.

Where is the ghost? Why is Dec here? Where did he come from? Why is he naked?

"What... you're... you're a ghost?"

"No, I'm not a ghost," he says with a sigh. "It's complicated. I can just..."

"You can turn invisible?" I ask.

"Yeah."

What? This can't be happening.

I search his eyes for some sort of hint that this is all just a really elaborate prank, but I find none.

"So you turned invisible so you could sneak into my house?"

"I mean, I... kinda, yeah, b-"

"...to watch me shower?"

His eyebrows shoot up.

"Whoa—no no no! It's not like that I swear."

"Uh huh..." I glance down at his naked form.

He covers his groin with his hands and cringes.

"Okay, yeah, I admit, this looks bad." Dec stands up, his hands still strategically placed, and walks over to the corner. He grabs the towel off the floor and wraps it around his hips, then sits on the bed. "It's not what it looks like."