The Devil's Beating His Wife (24 page)

Baxter's head cocked to the side as he looked down at me. "Are you flirting with me?"

All of the questions annoyed me. "Surely a woman's flirted with you before. I saw plenty of girls throwing themselves at you, so don't bother pretending otherwise."

He threw up his hands. "I wasn't. I'm just trying to understand this about-face."

Something about his words finally made me snap. "All of those years, you scratched at my heels. I could have snapped my fingers and you would have come running. Now I show you a bit of attention and your struck dumb."

He narrowed his eyes and placed his hand on my chest. With a bit of force, he pushed me away. "Oh, no. I don't want whatever your sellin' lady."

"Baxter!"

"No. You told me you would never love me. You said you didn't even like me. Now you're pawing at me like a bitch in heat. Are you trying to put a spell on me, Spicey Harrell? Is that it? You want me to drop my guard so you can put some hoodoo on me and I'll go straight to Hell?" He had the audacity to wag his finger at me. "I know your game now, missy. I was supposed to have murdered you—"

"And you did," I interrupted.

"I did no such thing, but that's neither here nor there. You're messing with me, and I don't like it."

I stepped towards Baxter and slid my fingers through his blond curls. He closed his eyes and sighed blissfully.

"Are you telling me you don't like that?" I asked.

"I like it a lot."

I leaned into his ear and whispered, "I know."

Baxter opened his eyes, and I saw the torment there. It nearly stopped my advances. Nearly.

"Please don't toy with me, Spicey. You know how much I care about you."

"Then why are you pushing me away?"

His gaze lowered to the floor. His shoulders deflated as he said, "Because if we do what I think you want to do, it would mean nothing to you. But it would mean everything to me."

I dropped my hand. There was no fun in stroking a whipped dog. "Very well, Baxter. If you don't want this from me, then what do you want?"

He glanced at my face. His heart was in his eyes. "I want you to forgive me."

I scoffed. "For murdering me?"

"I didn't murder you." He sighed deeply. "I admit my hand was on the trigger, but I didn't mean to shoot you. That was an accident."

"Or, maybe you meant that you wanted my forgiveness for destroying my family? It would be easy to, but that blame isn't solely yours. No, you share that burden with your brother. And your mama and daddy, too. All you Bennetts are really just all the same. My family has only ever been governed by the whims of yours. From my mama catering to your mama, to your daddy thinking he can erase all y'all's sins by throwing some money our way." I scoffed as I thought about it. Most of my life had been intertwined with the Bennetts, and now my soul was growing intertwined with this particular Bennett.

Baxter's mouth opened and then closed with a click. He looked to be processing my words because it took him a few minutes before he spoke. "I'm sorry. I wish I could say that I'd never met you, but that would be a lie. I can only apologize for those things I had control over, and I'm sorry that I failed you. It was never my intention to hurt you. I only wanted to keep you safe. That's all I ever wanted."

"I know," I whispered. I also knew that Baxter had a very strange idea of what it meant to love someone.

His eyes brightened. "Then you can forgive me?"

"I'm not sure that I can ever forgive you. I'll just say that I'm learning to like this version of you. The dead you." I stuck out my hand. "We can see if we can build something from there. Deal?"

Baxter glanced down at my hand. He stared at it like he was searching for that hoodoo charm. Once he realized he was safe, he took my hand and we shook. "Deal."

He held my hand in a firm grasp. We stood shaking hands like two buffoons, grinning at each other. Baxter eventually dropped my hand and gave me a shy smile.

I took that moment to plant both of my hands on his chest and push him down onto the couch.

"For fuck's sake, Spicey. What did I just tell you?" Baxter said, trying to push me away.

I leapt on top of his stomach and pinned his hands near his head. He opened his mouth to blast out a few more curses, and I swooped down and took his mouth in a forceful kiss. He grunted as I bore down, pressing him further into the couch.

I didn't let up until his mouth gave under mine. I pulled my head away and sat up. Grabbing the hem of my skirt, I yanked it over my head and tossed it to the floor.

Baxter's mouth opened as he stared at my nearly naked body. Any objections he had seemed to disappear. The corner of his mouth hitched up and his dark blue eyes twinkled. "Praise Jesus," he said.

My fingers quickly undid the buttons of his shirt. He lifted so I could push it from his shoulders. His fingers slid up my thighs and over my waist until he cupped my breasts. As he reached around my body to undo my bra, I unzipped his pants and pushed them down his hips.

Rising to my knees, I pulled his dick from his pants and pushed my panties aside. Wrapping my hand around him, I guided him to my entrance. I paused, wondering if it was the most sensible thing to be sleeping with the man who had shot me dead. Then I shook my hair and braced my weight against my hands. Baxter grasped my hips and surged deep into me.

I gasped from the force of his thrust. It was so very much like when we joined our bodies and became one. I guess it was really the same concept but, instead of my entire soul being swallowed by his body, only a piece of me was taking him in.

He wasn't gentle. He didn't need to be gentle. I didn't want him to be gentle. My fingers clamped around his neck and I applied pressure. I gasped as my body rocked with each of his thrusts.

A wind swirled through us, creating an encompassing warmth. All sound disappeared into a vacuum. All I could hear was Baxter's thoughts churning in his mind.

That's it, my girl. That's it.

This joining felt endless. Even though my body tightened, preparing to climax, I felt like I could go on forever. I felt whole. The throbbing between my thighs reminded me of a beating heart.

Then it all unraveled. Baxter buried his face in my neck. I wrapped my arms around him and held him tightly.

Our bodies were not moistened from sweat. Our breathing wasn't shallow and quick. Yet, I felt more connected with him than I had ever felt before.

Baxter finally brushed his lips across mine. We kissed passionately as our souls returned to our hollow bodies.

I love you, Spicey. I have always loved you.

Baxter didn't speak those words aloud. His intimate thoughts echoed throughout my body. I could sense his feelings. In another girl, the knowledge would have been humbling. For this girl—this dead girl—it was troubling.

Lifting onto my knees, I disconnected our bodies. He drifted towards me as if wanting to hold me in place. Like a rocket, I shot up and away from him. I stood on the side of the couch. I turned my back, bent down, and grabbed my dress from the floor. Pulling it over my head, I stepped away to put more distance between us.

I could hear Baxter adjusting his clothing behind me. When he finished, he shifted on the couch, placing his feet on the floor. He reached out and grazed my thigh with his hand. His hand dropped when I walked away. I entered the back bedroom where I had hidden for the previous twenty-five years.

From my spot in the dark, I watched Baxter place his head into his hands. He rocked back and forth as he mumbled under his breath. After a minute or two of rocking, Baxter finally pushed off of the couch and left the living room.

The silence that descended over the house was extraordinary.

As much as it pained me to admit it, I needed the man. Being with him, either inside of him or with him inside of me, gave me life. That knowledge absolutely terrified me.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

February 14, 2012, Laurens County

"Sixty-nine years," Baxter complained.

"I know. You don't have to keep reminding me."

"Sixty-fucking-nine years."

"They aren't going to melt away simply because you keep repeating it," I told him as I reached across the table to take his hand. My fingertips had barely grazed his palm when he drew his arm back as if I had burned him.

Baxter lowered his gaze to the table. Then he sighed loudly and dropped his head to let his forehead collide with the solid wood of the table. I winced from the loud impact.

"What's gotten into you?" I asked the dejected Baxter.

Two years ago, Baxter had sat at the table and carved notches into the wood. Each notch marked a year of our afterlife. As his head rested against the wood, his thumbs traced over the markings. He had been sitting there for God knows how long, repeating the number of years we had been imprisoned in the house.

"You know," I said, tapping the table, "we could go back into town. It's been over forty years since we've been there. I'm sure most folks we remember are long gone." The last time we'd joined together was the day that my mama spotted us standing under the hanging tree.

"No, thank you," he said politely. After all of these years, I could finally say that I knew him. That encounter had left him spooked. Real spooked. "As I've told you time and time again, we can't risk any of our kinfolk seeing us."

I got up from my seat and walked around Baxter. I placed my hands on his shoulders and lightly began to massage the muscles at his neck. Instead of relaxing under my hands, he stiffened. I leaned forward and whispered into his ear, "But don't you think they're all dead by now?"

Baxter launched from the table and walked over to the kitchen, placing several feet between us. He rolled his shoulders and shook his head. "No, Spicey, and that's the end of it."

The physical distance he had created didn't surprise me. Since that night we'd made love, he had been working extra hard at building a wall between us. He rarely said a word to me. He only commented on benign things like the weather or pesky animals scampering throughout the rotting house.

I didn't know how to explain it other than the last of his spark had burned out. When I had tried to talk to him, he would murmur answers or snort with annoyance. It didn't take long before I'd returned to my hiding place in the back bedroom while Baxter sulked in the rest of the house.

Once, I had wanted nothing more than for him to leave me alone. But that had been decades ago. Long before I had learned to rely on him.

There was a great distance between us, and it was earth-shattering for me. My world was limited and it focused around this one man. There were no more corny jokes to groan at. There were no more long-suffering stares that I could run from. It was like he just existed in this place, no longer trying to cling to the things that had brought him joy in life.

The house had stood empty for decades, since the night that Lily and Abby had fled. Charles Vincent and his son had come out only once to look for Ronnie. I was quite surprised that no police had come to search the place. It seemed odd to me that there wouldn't have been questions about his disappearance. I can't imagine what they thought happened to him.

Otherwise, there had been no one to care about this place. There were no repairs. No auctions trying to sell the land. It was simply abandoned. Forgotten.

It wasn't until a decade or so ago that teenagers began using the abandoned shack as a hangout spot. They would host parties where they brought liquor, cigarettes, and other things. I wasn't exactly sure what the other things were, but they certainly had an effect on the young'uns. Some of them would go bat-shit crazy, talking about how they saw ghosts in every corner.

That was partly our fault. There hadn't been much to amuse ourselves. Whenever these kids came around, we saw an opportunity to relieve our boredom. We would knock things over. Shatter glass.

The kids got a frightful kick out of it. Our activity didn't seem to drive them away. Instead, it seemed to draw more in, kids hoping that they too would have an experience with a ghost.

Baxter leaned against the kitchen sink. He inhaled deeply and blew the air out in one long breath. I didn't understand why he did it. It wasn't like we were actually breathing or anything. "I don't know how much longer I can tolerate this," he said.

"You ready to throw in the towel, Baxter? I thought you was all dead-set on spending eternity here. With me." I couldn't help it. I laughed out loud at the glare he shot in my direction.

"Sometimes, Spicey, I hate you."

"I know, and it makes me damn happy to hear it."

He groaned loudly and rubbed his hands over his face. "I. Am. So. Bored."

I left my spot near the table and joined him at the sink. Baxter turned his back on me and stared out the window. I leaned my head against his shoulder.

"You want to go on a walk?" I asked him.

There was a muffled, "No."

"You want to play hide and seek?" I offered.

He turned his head and stared down at me. There was horror on his features. "What?"

I shrugged at his disdain. "It was just a thought. You're the one whining about being bored. I thought maybe we could play a game."

"Spicey?"

"What?"

"We're ghosts."

"Yes. I know."

He stared down his long, thin nose. "Ghosts don't play fucking games."

"Would you stop that cursing? It's unnecessary."

His fist bounced against the top of the sink basin as he said each word. "Fuckity. Fuck. Fuck. Shit. Piss."

"Piss?" I asked, looping my hands around his arm.

Baxter turned his attention to the window. "I was tired of saying fuck."

"Ah. I see."

He pulled his arm from my fingers and backed away from me, placing distance between us again. He stood quietly and stared at me. His blue eyes darkened and that long hidden grin surfaced. "So you want to play a game, huh?"