Heart, Haunt, Havoc (The Gideon Testaments, #1)

by Freydís Moon

Colin hadn’t earned his place yet, but he typically didn’t have to: haunted places never failed to recognize haunted people.

The house breathed easily. Inhaling and exhaling, bending toward them and yawning open, struck silently alive in the early hours after midnight.

For years, Colin Hart had searched for oddities and spirits, ripped unwelcome breath from between the bones of crowded houses, braced for fangs and claws in demonic dwellings, but he’d never managed to scrape the inconsistencies out of himself. Hips, too wide. Shoulders, too narrow. Wrists, too small. Testosterone be damned, he still felt half-framed and hollow. As if his body was a home with too many unused rooms, too much open space. A place still under construction.

The pair stood before each other, posturing like birds of prey or venomous snakes, two creatures unused to the idea of being known, or seen, or held.

“Sometimes shame is a lesson. Most of the time, it’s just a way for us to hate ourselves for the things we want.” They shifted their eyes to the door. “What do you know about shame?” “I’m Catholic,” Colin said, matter-of-factly, and braved a touch to Bishop’s knuckles.

His skin felt claustrophobic, constricting his bones and holding tight to his skeleton, amplifying all the places that were too open, too untouched, too blasphemous. For the first time in years, he yearned for someone.

Like this, Colin wondered about loneliness, how houses longed for occupancy and hearts yearned to be held.

Grief, and betrayal, and fine-tuned desperation were learned, lived, and endured. People got better from a burst cyst, from an undercooked porkchop, from an impromptu break-up. But no one fully recovered from loss like this. They simply adapted to the sound of it, calloused to the feel of it.

“I tend to appreciate distance, but somehow, I haven’t found the fortitude to stop wanting you. I think about you often: when I’m awake, when I’m asleep, when I’m alone. Do you know what that’s like?”

“To find yourself trapped in an unexpected orbit? To know someone’s power, to understand their pain, to get a glimpse of their heart?” He met their wide, tense eyes. “Before I slept with you, I daydreamed about you. Now that I’ve been with you, I’m consumed by you. How I feel about you, what I want from you… it’s thrilling; it’s excruciating. So, yes, you terrify me, Bishop.”

“Be scared of me,” they rasped, breathing hard against his chin. “But don’t be afraid to touch me.”

Love, dead or alive, somewhere between the two, still clawed at them. Colin saw it in their glassy eyes, knew it in their loose shoulders and open, empty hands. Love, like possession, like a haunting, refused to rest.