Ascension by Bailey Bradford (desktop ebook reader txt) 📕

me a lot longer than it’s taken you to get to where you are. Honestly, right after I died, I don’t even think I was whole, if that makes any sense.”

“I was scared and confused,” Stefan said before Ro could ask what Conner meant. “I was still pretty stupid back then.”

“Stefan!” Conner snapped. “Don’t talk about yourself like that, not even in the past tense. You were never stupid.”

Stefan rolled his eyes so hard Ro was surprised they didn’t hear the tendons straining. “Riiiiiiiiight. I was”—Stefan hooked two fingers from each hand in the air—“intellectually challenged. Whatever.”

“You can be sit-challenged,” Conner warned.

“What the hell does that mean?” Ro asked.

Stefan sniffed and turned his nose up at them. “It means Conner will try to paddle my behind. He’d have to catch me first, though, and he’s old!”

“Brat.” Conner growled the word and Stefan giggled then vanished, off to tease someone else, Ro was sure.

“What did you mean when you said you didn’t think you were whole after you first passed?” he asked Conner then.

Conner steered them over to a shady patch of grass beneath a huge old oak tree. They sat, Ro not feeling the ground beneath him but that was okay. He was more interested in Conner’s explanation than he was in anything else. Conner didn’t keep him waiting.

“The thing is, I don’t know how we come to be like this, what makes us stay, but I figure our brains work on electrical impulses, or have some kind of electrical current.”

Ro nodded, following along so far.

Conner linked their hands together and continued, “Okay, well, I don’t know how that works, but it seems like all those electric particles have to keep going on when the body doesn’t, you know? Like that energy has to go somewhere, and I could be way wrong, but I prefer to believe that’s us, the core of us, our soul or whatever you want to call it.” Conner tilted his chin toward the sky. “Like water, how it evaporates then comes back down to Earth as rain. I know it’s all more complicated than that, but maybe it’s as simple as that kind of recycling, too.”

“It sounds as likely as anything else,” Ro said after thinking about it. “So how were you not whole?”

“I’m not sure, I just felt like I was scattered, like someone took all those protons and neutrons, whatever it was that had a current running through me, and tossed them up like a handful of confetti. Pieces of me were everywhere.” Conner squeezed his hands. “I didn’t come to like you did, passing over from life to death and retaining everything about myself. I remember some things, but it took me a while to feel like I had any substance. At first I was terrified and hurting still.” He shrugged. “Maybe it was the trauma of how I died. Don’t suppose there’s anything saying a spirit can’t suffer from that.”

How anyone wouldn’t be haunted by such a violent death was beyond Ro. “Makes sense. So what happened?”

Conner drew them back until they were lying, looking up at the green canopy of leaves. Ro didn’t think they were nearly as fascinating as the man beside him, so he chose to watch Conner instead. “What happened was, I became aware in fits and starts, and somehow gathered myself together, kinda like a magnet taking up metal shavings. Then one day, it was just right, done. I was as whole as I’d ever be, and things began to snap together in my head, the need to reach Laine the most pressing. Took me over three years, but I did it. Now, here I am.”

“Here we are,” Ro corrected.

“Yeah, that too,” Conner agreed, his lips curling up in a smile that brought out those dimples.

Ro wondered if he should suggest they get up. There were things he needed to do, like check on his dad and learn how to be a proper spirit—or at least how to do that popping in and out thing. But Ro didn’t want to think about any of that now. He wanted to stay there beside Conner, studying that chiseled profile for at least a week.

What did he really have to do? Ro thought about it. He didn’t want to go to the funeral home—that was more than he felt capable of handling. Seeing his own body hadn’t fazed him last night, but he’d been confused and discombobulated. Today, however, he cringed just thinking about seeing his corpse. Checking in on his dad was something he did need to take care of. Even though Conner had said Roger was still walled off from them being able to get too close, Ro still wanted to see him for himself.

“Can we go see Dad?”

“We can do whatever you want to.” Conner ran a hand through his thick blond hair, pulling the ends of it at his crown before letting go. “Adela and Martin are with him, or they were when I checked on Roger a few minutes ago.”

“So he’s not alone.” A knot of worry in his chest loosened a little knowing that his sister and brother were there. He didn’t feel as pressing a need to go now that he knew his dad wasn’t alone. “How were they?”

Conner startled him by lifting him and settling Ro between his legs. With an arm around his middle, Conner pulled Ro until his back was pressed to Conner’s chest. It felt good, right. Safe, though Ro didn’t know what he might be unsafe from at this point.

“They were sad, Ro, I’m not going to lie to you.” Conner kissed the side of his head, his ear, down to his neck where he inhaled, rubbing his nose on Ro’s skin. “You smell so good.”

Ro’s cock perked up but he twisted his head around to frown at Conner. “Are you trying to distract me?”

Conner grinned crookedly, making Ro’s heart flutter. “Maybe. Sometimes you have to let the living grieve and give them a little time. I