Dead People by Edie Ramer

independence.
    With short, gentle strokes, he wiped the blood off her hand, so close she heard his breath exhale. He stood and turned to the sink. She looked at the cleaned back of her hand and saw a small cut over a blue vein. A nick. Just as she’d said. The blood already stopped.
    “I told you it wasn’t bad,” she said. “I didn’t even know I had it until you mentioned it.”
    “That was the adrenaline.”
    “You’re an expert?”
    “Bar fights.” He opened the cupboard beneath the sink, then took out a tube of lotion and a box of bandages.
    Leaving the bandages on the edge of the sink, he turned to her, the tube in his hand. “Antiseptic,” he said.
    The bathroom was too small for the two of them. She smelled him, his scent not unpleasant but unsettling, coiling into her gut and even lower.
    Damn him. Damn Isabel. Damn her overactive hormones.
    How could she feel like this? With him? A man who didn’t respect what she did?
    This was the wrong place, wrong time, and it sure the hell was the wrong man.
    “I hate that you rescued me.” She heard her voice, low and harsh, and knew this wasn’t what she should be saying. She should say “Thank you” and leave it like that. That’s what a normal person would do. But normal had blown past her years ago. “It wasn’t necessary. Isabel would’ve calmed down.”
    “How can you be so sure?” He unscrewed the top of the tube. “Your vast knowledge of ghosts?”
    “She was running out of things to throw at me.”
    A corner of his mouth curved up and he slanted an unreadable glance at her. “You’re insane.”
    “I’ve been told that before.” But it still hurt. As if he’d taken a shard of the broken glass from inside the family room and jabbed it into her heart. “No wonder I prefer ghosts to people.”
    “Even Isabel?” He rubbed the ointment over the back of her hand with the tip of his middle finger, taking his time.
    “We’ll get along better next time she sees me,” she said.
    He washed his hands and dried them, and then took a bandage out of the box. Seconds later, he smoothed the bandage over the back of her hand.
    “Isabel won’t get along better with you,” he said, looking intently at her, still holding her hand, “because you won’t be here. As soon as Erin gets home, I’m leaving.”
    She jerked her hand away. No! Her job wasn’t done.
    He returned to the sink, screwing the top on the tube, his decision final.
    She sucked in a deep breath. Of course, he was leaving. In his shoes, she would take her precious daughter and run too.
    A darkness hovered at the edges of her mind that she knew from experience would go away if she ignored it long enough. She got to her feet and skirted around him until she was in the open doorway. Isabel might swoop in any second, but it didn’t matter anymore.
    “You’re doing the right thing for Erin. I won’t return the advance but I’ll forgive the other half.”
    He put away the ointment and held out his hand. “So this is goodbye.”
    She shook his hand, his palm warm, but when the shake was done, he still held hers, not saying anything, just holding her hand in a loose grip she could easily break.
    Everything slowed. Her breath. Her heartbeat. Time.
    Neither of them moved. If this were a movie, he’d pull her up to him, limb to limb, curve his arm around her back, and kiss her until she mewed like a kitten.
    Or she would do it. She wanted it, after all.  
    The tension amplified, pounding between them like fast beating drums.
    Why not? She was leaving. He was leaving. It wasn’t as if she would see him again.
    One kiss. What would it hurt?
    After what she’d gone through, the scare she’d been given, she deserved it.
    And he still held onto her hand. His sapphire gaze never leaving hers.
    Then he blinked and released her hand.
    She headed into the hall. Behind her, she heard his heavy footsteps and she felt him urging her to get the hell out.
    “I should’ve been more careful,”