Page 43 of She Haunts Me Still

Alone in the sacristy, Mallory counts to five before snatching a strand of rosary beads from one of the cabinets and sprinting out the door. Heart hammering in her ears, she races to the empty confessional box and slams the door behind her.

Mallory drops to her knees inside the small space, cross clutched in her fist. Arden’s encouraged her to get baptizedand go to confession for years, promised it would help her feel lighter. Cleansed.Happy. Mallory always declined, knowing no amount of prayer could wash away the nightmares she lived through. But right now, her voice whooshes out in desperation, as if she’s been praying her whole life.

“Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee,” Mallory recites. “Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the—”

The door opens and shuts, a towering figure at her back. A scream rips from her throat, and she scrambles to her feet, colliding with whoever is behind her, sending them both crashing to the wooden bench.

“Let go!” she practically sobs, pushing at the body underneath her. “Let me go, let—”

“Jules,Jules,it’s me, it’sme—”

Warm hands circle her waist and the room spins. Ezra—Ezra?But her brain can’t process it, her surroundings swimming.

“What are you doing in here?” he asks, shifting her slightly.

“There was—I saw—” She closes her eyes. “I don’t know if it was real, I don’t know—”

“I’ve got you.” Ezra yanks the rosary beads from her trembling fists and grabs her hand. Squeezes twice. Their code.This is what’s real.

But it’s not enough.

“No—no.” Mallory wrenches her fingers out of his grasp. “There’s somethingwrongwith me, Ezra.”

His features blur in front of her. Two Ezras, floating in and out of space. Her bones ache under the weight of exhaustion, and she fleetingly imagines dying right here, becominga corpse in the arms of a man she’s never even kissed, just so she never has to feel this way again.

“Listen to me,” Ezra says fiercely. “There’snothingwrong with you.”

“Something’s poisoning my brain,” she says. “I just want everything to stop.” A keening sound trills in her ears. She bites her lips so hard she tastes metal. “My mom got everything to stop.”

Ezra’s hands freeze.

“There’s so much noise in my head,” she adds. “I just want it to be quiet.”

Mallory waits for his gaze to harden, for him to tell her not to say such things.

Instead, Ezra’s throat tightens. He brushes sweaty bangs away from her face and says, “Sometimes I think about doing the exact same thing.”

She blinks, pulse slowing enough to register the somber admission in his words. It’s not easy to whisper that death can be seductive, to admit that being alive isn’t always desirable. Most people squash those kinds of feelings, can’t stomach hearing them, view them as a marker of damaged goods.

But Ezra heard hers. And she heard his. It’s not shameful to feel this way. It’s human. These aren’t thoughts to be stifled or dismissed. They’re meant to be held. Set free. Simply allowed to exist.

“Jules,” he adds softly. “What haunts you doesn’t define you.”

His words hang between them, thickening the air. Mallory stares into his dilated pupils, suddenly painfully aware of every single place they’re touching. Her thighs cinched at his hips. His hands, clutching her waist. Holding her close.

Her head swims, maddening heat blazing at the contradiction of talking about death with Ezra, while hungering for him to make her feel alive.

Today, she decides, she’ll choose life.

“Did you come here to pray?” Mallory whispers, certain he can hear her heart pounding. “Or did you come to confess?”

For a moment, Ezra just stares. She senses him turning over all the ways he could answer. Like he’s at a crossroad, calculating the risk of blurring every remaining line between them.

And then his grip tightens, like he’s decided he doesn’t care about the consequences anymore.

“Are you saying,” he asks in a low tone, “that you want my confession?”

“Yes,” Mallory breathes, tilting her hips to sink more firmly against him.