My Dead Husband Followed Me Home

The woman my husband never got over threw the cat I had raised for seven years out a window while I stood there and watched. I went for her.

Someone caught my wrist from behind and slammed me down onto the floor. My husband.

He steadied Serena, put himself on her side of the room, and looked down at me. "Whatever happened, you don't get to touch her." Seven years ago I was the one who carried him out of the woods, out of his own blood.

She came back stateside, and then she had the show I'd spent three years earning. Then she had my husband. Seven years ago, Vera and I woke up inside a novel.

She fell for the second male lead, Sebastian Thorne. I married the male lead, Caspian Vance.

The System told us later what those two were, and that the female lead would come home someday. Three years ago we got one chance to go back. Neither of us took it.

Seven years into the book, my best friend finally gave up and divorced the second lead. I took her out drinking. I took her canyon bungee jumping.

At the end of it she stood on the coast and threw her wedding ring into the water, and wiped her face once. "Fine. That's that.

Let those two circle each other for the rest of their lives. I'm done waiting on him. Come on. We're going home." Then she squinted at me. "Hey. Why aren't you throwing yours?

Don't tell me you still want Caspian." I slid mine off and tossed it, light, the way you'd toss a bottle cap.

None of her fury in it. "I just don't think he's worth the feelings anymore. Him, any of it. It doesn't go anywhere." Real letting go is quiet.

The loud kind, her kind, only happens while you still love him. I didn't love Caspian Vance anymore. Vera looked at me. Her face came apart, and she started sobbing.

I turned to put my arms around her. Caspian was standing behind us. Cold and contained, the way he always was.

Except his mouth wasn't steady. "Is that right?" he said. "I'm not worth anything to you anymore?" Chapter 1 Caught talking about a man behind his back.

It should have embarrassed me. It barely did. Then I met his eyes, that flat black, and everything in me went quiet again.

I hauled Vera up, drunk out of her mind, and started walking toward the hotel. Past midnight. Wind off the water. Something moving under the surface of it.

Cold moonlight on Caspian, leaning against his car door. I passed him and caught the smell of cigarettes. I hate that he smokes. He quit for me years ago. Then Serena came back.

He stood out on the balcony and smoked through an entire night. In the morning he turned to me. I hadn't slept either. He said one word. Sorry. Sorry for what?

I didn't let myself look at it too closely. It didn't come together. I can now. That sorry was him apologizing in advance for all seven years. Caspian called after me.

The wind roughed up his voice. "Let me drive you." Like he already knew the answer, he added, "You've both been drinking.

You can't drive. "Walking back to the hotel at this hour. "It isn't safe." I couldn't read his face. But Vera was still mumbling into my shoulder, still leaking tears.

So I said, "Fine. Thank you, Mr. Vance." His hand stopped on the door handle. The car was quiet. Vera went down across the back seat and stayed down, which put me up front.

It was strange, sitting there. Caspian and I hadn't been in the same room since the blowup. Sitting side by side felt like something we'd both forgotten how to do.

He checked the mirror and broke the silence first. "Sebastian's been looking for you two for a long time." Sebastian Thorne. The second male lead.

The one Vera loved down to the bone. Because of him, she'd done what I did. Three years ago she gave up her ticket home and stayed in this world.

I let a second pass. "Mm." When that was all he got, he drove onehanded and pressed his fingers into his brow.

Worn down, maybe. "Sebastian and Serena aren't what you two think they are. They were raised in the same house, they're—" "I know." Chapter 2 I cut him off. Here's the thing.

When Vera and I first dropped into this place, the System glitched, and we had no idea we were inside a book. We had each other and nothing else, so we lived in it like it was real.

By the time the System came online, we were already in love with Caspian and Sebastian. All the way in. Even after it told us what those two were, neither of us took the exit.

Girls. We'll do the dumbest, most spectacular things for love. But you can only run into the same wall so many times. I turned around.

Now I was just waiting on Vera to decide. "If you're hoping I'll help Mr.

Thorne talk Vee around, you picked the wrong person. "Even if he and Serena were clean, I'd never stand on his side.

I'd never do one thing that hurt Vera. "Besides." My voice went flat. "They aren't clean." Vera found it in the study Sebastian never let her walk into. Serena's journal.

Years of it, all about the boy she was raised beside. And one reply he never sent. Line after line of everything Sebastian couldn't say out loud about Serena.

And a few notes about how much Vera resembled her. Same temperament. Same way the light moved in her eyes when she was in love.

Vera finished reading it and threw up with one hand braced on the safe. She called me from the floor. "Come get me. Come get me.

Please come get me." Vera loves being beautiful more than anyone I've ever met. For two weeks she'd been drinking around the clock, crying awake and crying asleep.

Her face had swollen into a stranger's. She looked in the mirror and said, "Like this, I don't look like Serena anymore.

Right?" At the hotel I got Vera settled, took her makeup off, put her in pajamas. Then I found out Caspian hadn't left. He was standing outside the door.

When he caught the look on my face he put the cigarette out fast. "Was there something else, Mr.

Vance?" His mouth opened, then closed. "Sebastian's coming by in a little while." I went cold. I turned to go in and throw the deadbolt. He caught my wrist.

I didn't get it. "What are you doing?" He looked at me.

His eyes were very dark, and the whites were shot with red, like he hadn't slept in days. "He knows he was wrong. "He regrets it. "He's coming to apologize." "Apologize and he's forgiven?" I said. "Does he not know what he did?

Trash." It's hard to stay polite about your best friend's husband. I thought I'd been generous. Caspian's face changed anyway.

The composure cracked, one hairline at a time, and what came through underneath looked a lot like panic. He dropped his eyes and put it away.

I used that half second to pull my hand free. And slammed the door. A wide pale hand came down on the frame in the last inch. He blocked it with his body. The hallway light was dim.

The gap was narrow. I couldn't read his face. I could only hear him, low. "Josephine. "Today's my birthday." I didn't catch it. He said it again. "Today.

It's my birthday." Something stubborn in it. And underneath that, almost too small to hear.

Hurt. "You said. "You'd always be there for my birthday." He leaned his head in, like he wanted to be nearer and hadn't decided to.

His eyes hadn't changed at all from seven years ago, from the night I fell in love with him.

Black all the way down, and under the cold, something that had never once agreed to be tamed. "Caspian." I said his name. He didn't know.

The time I had left in this world had already started counting down. Chapter 3 Something lifted in his eyes. Before I could say anything, his phone rang. He picked it up.

The name on the screen was Serena. His mouth opened. His hand slowed, caught between two things. "Vera's been posting.

It's hitting Serena's work too." Serena studied broadcast journalism, same as me. She came back stateside and got parachuted straight into the network, and she got my show.

Vance Group is the network's biggest advertiser. The day the network president took her to lunch, nobody bothered to tell me. Add Caspian and Sebastian pushing her from behind.

A million followers later she was the face of the place, with nowhere to go but up. I stopped looking at him. "Fine. Take it." He didn't move. He didn't take the call.

The clock in the hallway was almost at midnight. His voice came out rough, which almost never happened.

Like he already knew the next sentence was hard to say and wouldn't land. "Josephine. Can I ask you for a birthday present?" I'd spent a whole day holding Vera together.

I was tired past the point of feeling anything, and I didn't want to keep standing there. So I nodded. It cost me nothing. Her ringtone kept going. He had a separate one for her.

Caspian said it slowly. "Let's not get divorced. Please." His fingers tightened on the phone. The knuckles went pale. Probably about her image.

Both the Thorne heir and the Vance heir divorcing in the same season, and every headline would be her name. "Okay." I said it right away. Joy came up on his face.

On him it was rare enough that I watched his mouth move with it. He stepped back and finally let me go.

He looked at me the way he had when we first started, eyes smiling, tracing my face like he was memorizing it. I used to think that was what love looked like.

Before he walked off to answer her, he said one more thing, and there was a lift in it that had to be my imagination. He said, "Josephine. See you tomorrow." I shut the door.

And thought about it. The deal with the System was already made. The second Vera said the word, we could both go back to the world we came from. Divorce. No divorce.

It didn't matter. I was up before the sun. Vera was still out. I went down to the hotel coffee bar and got her a large black coffee, scalding.

Coming back, I heard screaming. "AAAAAAAAHH!!" "Let go of me!" "Don't touch me!" I ran. Sebastian and Serena were in the room. I have no idea how long they'd been there.

One thing I hadn't planned for. I'd forgotten the hotel belongs to the Thornes. The front desk didn't even check a room number. They walked him straight up.

Sebastian's brow was pulled tight. Confused, and a little sick of it. "That was a long time ago. "Serena and I are foster siblings. We were raised in the same house.

When you act like this, what do you think it does to the family name? Do you have any idea what people are saying about Rena? "She's a public figure.

You throw one tantrum and years of her work is gone. What happened to you. "Come home with me.

Post something saying it was all a misunderstanding." Serena wiped the corner of an eye that had nothing on it.

Sorrowful. "Don't be angry at Vera, Sebastian. "This is my fault. "I shouldn't have. I was a kid.

I shouldn't have written those things." She let out a small breath, and grief settled over her face. "I've known for years that it was wrong.

I let all of that go a long time ago." Sebastian reached for Vera's hand and stopped halfway. That stop said it better than anything he'd said out loud.

Chapter 4 The plot of this book is simple. Serena and Sebastian were raised as brother and sister with no blood between them. A step forward and the world burns them.

A step back and neither of them can stand it. With Caspian it's the other kind. Mutual salvation. Two broken people fixing each other.

Once Serena came home, she was supposed to run a legendary, agonizing triangle with both of them. Pull and release. Endless almost. Except.

Vera and I got wedged in the middle of it. Sebastian had never put that forbidden thing down. What he felt for Serena had stopped being brotherly a long time ago.

He heard her deny it, and he slipped. Grief came up on his face before he could stop it. Vera watched the two of them. She laughed and cried at the same time.

Her hair was everywhere, tears drying on her cheeks. "Why can't you two let me go? Do I have to sit here and watch it? Then what am I?

What were my seven years?" Sebastian and Serena stood there in their good clothes, looking down at her. Like doctors studying a lunatic. I'd seen enough. I started forward.

A hand closed on my arm, light as anything.

Caspian is taller than me, and when he looks down his eyes never carry much. "This is between them," he said, flat. "Josephine, can you stop putting Vera ahead of us.

We still have… "Besides, Serena's career is climbing right now. Vera shouldn't be tripping her at a moment like this." I almost didn't trust my own ears. Then it clicked.

He's the male lead. She's the female lead. Since the night she pulled him out of an alley when he was a wild teenager, he has been hopelessly, permanently hers.

Nobody else's pain weighs as much as one strand of her hair. "Both of you, stop.

Vera posts an apology to Serena and this is over. "And I'll let the rest of it go. "Let's go home together. Okay?" Something in his face softened.

A little light came into his eyes, and I don't know what put it there. "Peaches is waiting for us at the house.

Only you could be this cold about it, staying away from her this long." Peaches was our cat. Mine and Caspian's.

Seven years ago I was hiking in the hills and found Caspian beaten half to death and left in the trees. The same day I found a calico kitten torn up by stray dogs.

Peaches was tiny then. She trusted nothing. She let nobody near her. Except me. I used to joke that she and Caspian were the same animal. Same mean eyes.

Nobody allowed close except the one person they'd picked. Caspian would stare her down for a while.

Like the two of them had a real problem with each other, and then he'd turn away with a grunt. Peaches couldn't be bothered either.

She'd turn her back, put her tail up, and come wind around my ankles. Until he cracked and shooed her off, pulled me into his lap, and glared at her over my shoulder. "Go away.

Don't you have a wife of your own?" The two of them made me laugh until I couldn't breathe. Back then it just seemed ordinary. Who could have guessed.

A few years later Serena came home, and the second she lifted a heel to kick me, Peaches launched off the floor to get in front of me. She opened up Serena's arm.

Serena went off. "You think Caspian actually cares about you? You're a standin. That's all you ever were. "I'm back.

He is never going to look at you again. "And this damn cat!" She threw Peaches out the window. Something in me went white. I hit back. Caspian held me off.

He left the estate with Serena. She gave me one last look on her way out, got into the pink sports car he'd bought her, and was gone. I went down after Peaches, limping, bleeding.

A woman and a cat, both passed out from blood loss. Chapter 5 They took me into the ER that day. I woke up with a dragging ache low in my stomach.

The doctor flipped through my chart and frowned. "Did you know you were pregnant?" I shook my head. "Another half hour and you'd have lost it." I couldn't hold a thought. "Peaches.

Where's my cat?" He frowned again. "What cat? You came in alone." When I got back to her. Peaches was still soft. Just cold.

She was never going to get up and wind around my ankles again. I filed a police report. The day they came to take my statement, Caspian didn't show. Vance Group sent legal.

They got it written down as an accident, and mentioned that I hadn't been in a stable place emotionally. That was the end of the case. Caspian never appeared at any point in it.

I threw the coffee. All of it, still scalding.

He let go of my arm without deciding to, and his eyes went dark. "What is wrong with you?" Whatever was left in me gave out. "What's wrong with me? Ask yourself, Mr. Vance.

Peaches has been dead a long time. I sent you message after message and you didn't answer one of them.

How do you still have the mouth to say her name?" Something moved across his face and wouldn't settle. "What are you talking about. Peaches can't be dead.

I've had Serena over feeding her every single day—" He turned to look at Serena. Serena turned her face away and would not meet his eyes. The blood left Caspian's face.

His jaw locked, and he still tried to take hold of me