The Billionaire's Ghost Bride

The day I died, he was flirting with the florist.

I've haunted him for three years over it.

Tonight I flicker into the light and scare off the girl he brought home. She backs into the door, shaking.

Your place is haunted!

He doesn't even blink. Just that slow smirk.

Mm. And a gorgeous little ghost, too.

Chapter 1

Soren brings a different woman home most weeks. In three years he hasn't laid a hand on one of them. He spends his nights bickering with his dead girlfriend instead.

That would be me.

Girl number three this month just called me a freak and bolted.

Soren saw her out like a gentleman. "You sure you won't stay? She seemed very understanding."

The girl was long gone, too rattled to catch a word of it.

He shut the door, turned, found me bristling on the couch. Didn't have the decency to look like he was seeing something he shouldn't.

"How many is that this month?"

Lazy. Like it cost him nothing.

"Three." I said it like a win.

He dropped onto the couch, straight through me, scattered my whole ghostly shape like smoke, and stretched out.

"Sloane. You want me celibate?"

He pointed at himself. "Three years and counting."

"Look at you, though." I tipped my chin at him. "Never looked better."

Nothing like the man I'd dated, who'd burned it at both ends and loved every minute.

He huffed a laugh. "Body's in great shape. Living just doesn't do much for me anymore."

I let that one sit.

Soren went through women a new one every few weeks, back then, and I was no exception. It was the way he carried himself that got me. Lazy. Loaded. Like the last Black Baccara rose open on the bush, the red so deep it's almost black, putting off all that heavy perfume.

At my most gone over him, he told me, dead serious. "I'll never marry. I'll never want only you. I take what's good while it lasts, and I don't answer to anyone."

Cold and reckless in the same breath.

And somehow, against all of it, he kept circling back. On, off, on again, for two years.

My story cut off where the blood went into the mud.

The last sound I ever heard was something heavy coming down, dull and close.

Before the first blow landed, I'd already wiped my phone clean. Force of habit. You don't hand them your sources, not even when you already know how the night ends.

The last message that came through wasn't from Soren. It was a photo a friend sent.

Soren, holding a bouquet. The florist, laughing up at him.

Picture-perfect, the pair of them.

Of course. Since when does a man like that turn around for a girl like me.

The last thing I thought, before the light went out:

If Soren found out I was dead, would he still be in the mood for his date with the florist?

After I died, he started bringing flowers home.

Not for me, obviously. The florist was just that good-looking, and a bouquet gave him an excuse to keep working her.

Bad luck for her. The day he started in on her happened to land on the day I died.

So no matter how she leaned in, Soren never laid a finger on her.

He lifted the white roses off the coffee table, set them in the vase one stem at a time, misted them until the water beaded and clung to every petal.

He nudged one into place and tossed me a line. "You run cold. Stay near the vase. Low temp, they'll keep longer."

...

Waste not, want not. That's my Soren.

I got annoyed. The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.

He looked thrilled.

When he's pleased with himself he gives off this whole I-own-the-world thing.

"Want a new dress? I'll burn one down to you."

Filthy rich and not an ounce of shame.

He'd set a piece of couture on fire without looking up from his phone, every last thread of it, just so a dead girl would have something new to wear.

Which is exactly why I'm the best-dressed ghost on the block. My dead-girl crew would kill for the couture I've got on.

Soren bought the dress to my exact specs. Burned it down to me that night.

A man who swore he'd never answer to anyone.

Funny. He answers to a dead girl now.

Chapter 2

He carried the fire bowl out under the old oak and burned the clothes for me, slow and careful, one piece at a time. Sent some cash down after, too.

The smoke rolled up black and stung his eyes shut.

A man passing by lost it. "Who the hell's burning trash out here?"

Soren coughed. "Sorry, sir. Just sending a few things down to my late girlfriend. One more minute."

The man opened his mouth to keep at it.

A woman pulled him back. "Leave the boy alone. Handsome thing, isn't he. Lost his girlfriend a couple years ago. Beaten to death, ugly business. They say he's not right in the head now. Caught him talking to thin air more than once."

"Huh. Poor kid."

"Every woman they set him up with takes one look and walks."

My fingers knotted together. Soren just stood there, calm, letting it roll off him.

It got to me.

He used to have them lining up.

"Soren. Let's go."

He lifted his eyes. "Almost done. You get it?"

"Yep. Just signed for it. The other side's got a shockingly fast courier."

He smiled. "Good."

When Soren woke, there were tear tracks at the corners of his eyes.

Red-rimmed, hoarse. "Sloane."

"Mm?"

I was busy trying on the clothes.

He saw me, and lay back down. Eyes shut, arm thrown over his face.

A few heavy breaths. Then quiet.

I pulled on the little tweed jacket and spun for him. Twice.

"Well? How do I look?"

He glanced up. In the sunlight his eyes went pale, almost translucent brown.

That teasing edge in his voice. "Better without it."

"Excuse you."

He laughed under his breath. Just watched me. Said nothing.

"It's my birthday. Day after tomorrow."

"I know."

"So come by my grave. Pay your respects."

Nothing.

I clicked my tongue.

"Soren."

I laid a hand flat against my chest, marked off a height.

"Grass on my grave's up to here by now. You've never once come to look."

Soren really is a cold piece of work.

I was an orphan. Never ran warm with people.

When it was over, the only one the police could turn up to claim my body was him.

Funny, that. He was the one who saw me off in the end.

He identified me in the morgue.

I didn't look good, if I'm honest. Skull split open, body mottled with bruises.

He couldn't see me yet, back then.

But I caught the hand holding the sheet. It shook. Once. A fine, hairline tremor, there and gone, the white cloth crushed in his knuckles before it went still.

The police gave him a few minutes and cleared out.

Here's the thing about Soren being so cold-blooded. Anyone else, seeing what they'd done to me, would have gone to pieces. He didn't.

He just stood beside me. Looked at me and didn't look away.

You'd think he'd cry. Even fake it. A token tear, for show.

We did sleep together three years, after all.

After a long while, he ran a finger down the bridge of my nose.

"Wonder if you died for something that mattered," he said.

The empty room had no answer for him.

Then he gave the police my life, flat and even.

"She liked pink."

"She was a reporter."

"She had a small mole at the base of her thumb."

"I'm her boyfriend. Not her husband. We never had any legal arrangement."

Chapter 3

Here's the funny part.

Soren warned me from the start. "Don't come to me looking for safety. I don't have it in me. And don't try to fix me with love. I will never marry. So if that's where your head's going, end it now, before it costs you."

Everyone assumed we'd never last.

And then he became the one person who knew me best.

His eyes were hollow while his mouth laid out my habits, the things I'd loved when I was alive.

I wondered if he knew my favorite position, too.

And while we're on it.

Soren. You won't even fake it? You're this calm. Won't the cops start wondering if you're tied to the case?

Turns out my worrying was wasted on the living.

By the end of it, Soren shifted. Off the back of the chair, leaning in, just slightly.

Fingers laced.

"I'd like to see the security footage. From that night."

He watched it once and left.

Never went back to the station.

Didn't come see me either.

Fine. If the mountain won't come to me, I'll go to the mountain.

I watched him quit his job.

Not for me, obviously.

He'd left to build something of his own. Banking paid, but Soren wanted to own the room, not sit in it. So he started buying media. Content accounts, a platform, the kind of machine that decides what a whole city wakes up talking about.

He skipped my funeral. The funeral home kept calling to confirm charges, and every time he said the same thing. "Use the most expensive one."

He probably had no idea this was him at his most devastating. This careless. This rich.

"Three years, though," I said. "And nobody's tended my grave."

A little wounded.

Soren wasn't buying it.

"I hired someone for that."

Paid them well, too.

I scoffed. "Burn me their paycheck and I'll clear the whole plot with one cold gust."

His mouth tipped up. "I'll send extra down later."

"You're really not coming?" I threw up three fingers, vicious about it. "Three years! You don't even want to know if I look any different?"

He found that funny. "What could possibly be different about you?"

"Older?"

He shook his head. "No. You're frozen at twenty-five. You always will be."

The second it was out, we both went still.

He wasn't wrong, though.

I died three years ago.

The day after would've been my birthday.

Pity. I never got to be twenty-six.

The air went thick.

"What's it like," Soren asked. "Being dead."

"Not great."

"How so?"

I shook my head, mournful. "Some guy-ghost hit on me the other day. I've been lonely long enough, I almost said yes. Then he crossed over, drank the forgetting, and turned around like he'd never met me."

I flipped him off. "Are all men this forgetful?"

He answered something else entirely. "So you're out finding men behind my back."

I gave as good as I got. "You're not out finding women behind mine?"

Even score.

Soren shook his head, smiling. "I bring mine home to show you, at least."

I sniffed. Then, curious. "Three years celibate. You really feel nothing?"

He grunted, checked out. "Even porn does nothing for me anymore."

I smirked, popped my second button, arched a brow. "How about this?"

He spared a glance at the goods.

"What's that supposed to be. A horror flick?"

...

You would call it a horror flick.

Annoyed, I turned to go.

Soren reached out on instinct to catch my arm. His hand went straight through me.

Chapter 4

For a second he blanked. Then snapped back.

"Fine. I'll go. Happy?"

"Hm?"

"To your grave. Bring you some fried chicken?"

My eyes lit up. "And a beer~"

He laughed. "Done."

A chime.

A news alert lit up Soren's phone.

THREE YEARS AFTER FATAL ASSAULT, YOUNG WOMAN LEFT DEAD IN THE STREET. ONE PARTICIPANT RELEASED.

There was a photo. A man in an orange jumpsuit, head shaved down to stubble.

Clean-featured. Almost pretty.

But the cigarette between his lips, the red ember at the tip, the gray smoke curling out of him. That image, I couldn't shake.

I closed my fist tight. I wasn't going to come apart in front of Soren.

I waved, breezy. "I'm off."

"Where?"

"Don't get clingy, buddy. This girl's not some bored little spook with time to kill."

Don't write a dead girl off as just dead. I need sleep and work like anyone.

Soren didn't know. Keeping watch beside him all day cost me. Every long stretch near him and I had to go back to the grave to rest. My ashes were still there, after all.

And every day I got the old groundskeeper coming through, telling me all about his late-blooming thing with the cafeteria lady. Genuine torture.

Never told Soren any of it.

He didn't much want to come see me. The groundskeeper was the only living person who'd talk to me. No sense letting Soren take that away too. I'd have died of boredom otherwise.

Under the moonlight I split the grave offerings with a friend.

Thea. Cancer. My senior in this, and my neighbor, in a manner of speaking.

"Sloane. Still not moving on?"

I bit into a slice of cake, shook my head to myself. "Nope."

"Why not?"

"You haven't either."

She grinned. "I'm sticking around to watch that bastard and the woman he always pined for crash and burn."

Killed me.

After Thea died, the bastard had his big revelation. Turned out she was the one he'd loved all along. Man's been a wreck ever since.

Thea was in no hurry to go. She wanted the show.

One thing in his favor. He burns her down designer too.

"And you?" she said. "What's your reason? Don't tell me you're waiting to see what happens to the ones who killed you."

What happens to them.

Money. Power. Someone else to take the fall when it goes wrong. Not a day behind bars.

Bad people live long lives. The world isn't fair.

"I don't care how they go," I said.

The wind howled through and made the quiet cemetery feel emptier.

"There's just one person I can't leave behind." Quiet.

The cemetery was empty at night. The living only come in daylight, when there's warm sun to mourn by. Me, I'm a ghost. I only get the dark. I've made my peace with it. Soren should make his too.

"You don't mean the ex, do you? Didn't you say he's still out hitting clubs, working like normal? Take it from someone who's been here, hon. People are resilient. You're probably not as important as you think."

Thea wasn't being cruel.

The thing is, we ghosts can't drift among the living too long. We start to fade. We forget the way to the road out. My own memory's been slipping lately. To linger for someone who isn't worth it, the cost is too high.

But Soren's worth it.

He's worth it.

Chapter 5

To make sure Soren wouldn't back out, I rushed over to his place.

He wasn't at work today.

White tee, gray sweatpants, the simplest thing he could throw on, and still stupidly good-looking.

It threw me for a second.

He's thirty-one this year. How does he not age. Still that gorgeous, still that much.

He was on the couch, on the phone.

A girl's voice on the other end.

I pressed my lips together.

I didn't let him see me. Just slid down next to him.

Her voice was sweet. Sugar-water sweet.

"So what flowers this time? I'll set aside the freshest bunch for you."

I raised a brow. The florist, then.

She kept going. "Or I could suggest something new, lovely for indoors. The meaning isn't quite I'm thinking of you, but"

Soren cut her off, flat as still water.

"Not for indoors this time. I'm visiting her grave."

She stalled, apologetic, couldn't get a whole sentence out.

"Sorry," Soren said. "Should've been clearer up front."

"It's fine. I'll wrap something for a memorial, then. Do you lean more toward chrysanthemums or lilies? Or"

"No need. Wrap me a bunch of jasmine."

I touched the side of his face.

I sat with him a while, then went back to the window and pulled myself together.

I whistled at him. Teasing. "Hey, handsome. Home alone?"

He turned his head my way, that lazy curl at the corner of his mouth.

"Mm. But my wife's home soon, gorgeous. We'll have to make it quick."

I slid the collar off my shoulder, played it up for him.

"Better hurry, then. You wouldn't want your wife finding out."

Soren shut his eyes, the smile still hanging there.

"Sloane. Quit playing with me."

I sat back down.

"You're going to the grave tomorrow. Right?"

A long hum. "Maybe."

"What do you mean, maybe. You're going." I pressed it.

He lounged back against the couch, head tipped up.

That clean, superior line of his nose, the profile with no business being that perfect, his throat working once before he finally drawled it out.

"Yeah. I'm going."

Good.

He kept his eyes shut. Wouldn't look at me.

"Soren." I said his name.

"Mm." He answered.

"Do you love me?"

It came out of him on reflex. "No."

I went quiet.

"Sloane." Low. That voice.

"Mm?"

His eyes were still shut. But his lashes had gone damp.

His mouth trembled.

"You can ask again. A few more times