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The mansion was the kind of haunted that felt like the walls breathed. Lucy’s boot hit the creaking wood floor, and she swore it exhaled beneath her. The air was thick—dust and decay and something else. Something colder. Lockwood had his rapier drawn, his flashlight slicing shadows to ribbons beside her, but she didn’t look at the light. She looked at him. Always him.
“Basement’s likely in the east wing,” George muttered from behind. “Be careful. The floor plans are incomplete, but some of the foundation’s missing entirely. Watch your step—” The warning came a second too late.
A crack.
A shout.
The floor gave.
And Lockwood was gone.
Lucy didn’t hesitate. Not for a heartbeat. Not for air. Not for the screaming voice in her head that sounded suspiciously like George. She dove after him, plunging into the dark. The fall stole her breath. The impact stole everything else. She landed hard—shoulder first, pain rocketing up her spine—but she didn’t care. She was already scrambling to find him, flashlight flickering wildly as she spun through dust and shadows.
“Lockwood!” she shouted, panic fraying her voice. “Anthony!”
“Here,” came the croaked reply. She followed the sound and found him slumped against a jagged beam, blood trickling down his temple, arm twisted unnaturally.
She dropped beside him. “Are you insane?”
“Says the girl who just jumped down a twenty-foot hole after me,” he rasped, giving her a crooked smile. “Jesus, Luce.”
“You could’ve died.”
“You could have died.”
They were nose-to-nose now, her hands trembling as she cradled his face, brushing hair away from the gash above his eyebrow. His skin was warm. Still alive. Still here.
“You don’t get to die on me,” she said, voice cracking.
He stared at her, expression shifting—like something fragile cracked open inside him. “I didn’t ask you to follow.”
“I didn’t need your bloody permission.” Silence. Thick and pulsing.
“You can’t keep doing this,” he said, voice low. “Throwing yourself into danger for me. It’s not—”
“What?” she cut in, breathless. “It’s not what, Lockwood? Not smart? Not fair? Not sane?”
“Yes!”
He tried to push to his feet but staggered, pain pulling his face tight. She caught him, arms around his waist, holding him steady, “What’s not fair is you not giving a crap about your life.”
“You think I care about fair?” he said, shaking. “If something happened to you because of me—if I lost you—” He looked at her then. Really looked. And she saw it—the war in his eyes, the way he’d been holding back for months. Maybe years. “I’ve been breaking hearts a long time,” he whispered. “Tearing through people, pushing them away before they got too close. But you…”
“Lockwood,” she breathed.
“You made me care. You made me feel like I’d finally found something worth losing.” His hand reached for her then—tentative, reverent. “Don’t blame me,” he said, thumb brushing her cheek. “Love made me crazy.” And then she kissed him.
Lucy’s hands curled into Lockwood’s coat, pulling him closer, angling her mouth to deepen the kiss like she couldn’t get enough. And she couldn’t. Not after everything. Not after years of wanting and waiting and pretending it didn’t burn every time he looked at her like she was more than she knew how to be.
His hands were in her hair now, gentle but greedy, like he’d spent too long keeping them to himself. His lips moved against hers like a promise and a plea all at once. Like he was starving. Like he’d finally let himself be selfish. When they finally broke apart, they were breathless and flushed, foreheads pressed together, breathing the same shallow air.
“Tell me this isn’t a mistake,” Lucy whispered.
Lockwood’s eyes fluttered open. “It’s not.”
“You’re sure?” Her voice was raw. “Because once we do this—once we are this—I won’t be able to go back. I won’t be able to pretend again.”
He swallowed, hard. “You think I want to pretend?”
She pulled back slightly, still close, but now able to look him in the eyes. “You’re Lockwood. You’ve built a life on pretending everything’s fine.”
“And you,” he snapped, something tight behind his words, “built a life on running away the second things get too real.”
The words hit her like a slap. She blinked. “I stayed,” she said quietly. “I jumped into a hole after you. I didn’t even think. I just—”
“You could’ve died!”
“So could you!”
“That’s different.”
“No, it’s not!” Her hands fisted in his shirt now, gripping him like she wanted to shake sense into him. “You’re not allowed to throw yourself into danger and expect me to stay safe. That’s not how this works, Lockwood. If you go, I go. If you fall, I fall.”
His eyes flashed, fierce and agonized. “That’s the problem.”
“What?”
“That’s always been the problem,” he said, breathing hard. “You’d follow me anywhere. You’d do anything for me. And I—God, Lucy, I’d burn the whole world down for you. That’s dangerous.”
She stared at him, stunned. “You love me.”
“I love you,” he said, like it hurt to say it. Like it scared the hell out of him. “I love you so much it makes me reckless. It makes me stupid. It makes me wrong.”
She shook her head, voice trembling. “No. No. You don’t get to make this into something ugly. You don’t get to love me and hate it at the same time.”
“I don’t hate it,” he growled, grabbing her wrist, pulling her back into him. “I hate that I need you. That I can’t breathe when I even think about losing you. That I’ve become everything I swore I wouldn’t—dependent, desperate, ruined.” And then—he kissed her again. Hard. Angry. Devastated.
She kissed him back just as fiercely, her nails digging into the back of his neck, teeth scraping his lower lip, and it wasn’t soft now—it wasn’t tender. It was fire and grief and surrender. It was every second they’d ever wasted pretending they didn’t feel this.
They broke apart only to argue again.
“I’m not yours to protect!” she gasped.
“You are—”
“I’m not!”
“You’re mine, Lucy!”
“And you’re mine!” she shouted back, and that shut him up for half a second.
“I would waste my time for you,” she said, quieter now, but no less charged. “I would lose my mind for you.”
His jaw clenched. “You already have.”
They were both shaking. And then, again, they were kissing.
It was a loop. Fight. Kiss. Fight. Kiss.
The cold bit at their skin, but neither of them noticed. Not when his mouth was on her throat, not when her fingers dragged over the buttons of his shirt like she needed to memorize the pattern. Not when they were clinging to each other like survival.
“I don’t know if this is a good idea,” he rasped against her collarbone.
“It’s not.”
“But I can’t stop.”
“Then don’t.”
His lips brushed her ear, ragged breath sending chills down her spine. “You’re my drug, Lucy.”
Her eyes fluttered shut. “Then overdose.”
She dragged him down into another kiss, and this time when they parted, it wasn’t because they were angry. It was because they were terrified. And in love. And finally, finally doing something about it.
It was frantic and clumsy and desperate, all teeth and tears and shaking hands. But it was real. And it was them. When they broke apart for the final time, foreheads pressed together, he whispered, “If it doesn’t drive you mad, you’re not doing it right.”
She laughed, choked and trembling. “I’m losing my mind.”
“I’d beg you to stay,” he said hoarsely, “if you ever walked away.” They held each other in the dark, both bruised and broken and finally honest. Down in that haunted wreckage of a house, surrounded by death and silence, they chose each other.
Lockwood kept waking up in the middle of the night just to check that she was still there.
A month later, Lucy had moved into his room—not officially, not in any way George could tease her for—but her things were scattered across his desk, and her boots sat next to his, and her presence filled the space like it had always belonged.
She was his.
But sometimes, when she was asleep beside him and the moonlight spilled across her face, he remembered the way she’d jumped without thinking. The sheer terror of it. The recklessness. And he thought: What happens when I get her killed? Because he’d almost lost her. Because she would do it again.
Love made him crazy, too. But fear—it made him cruel. It made him build walls again. Step back. Smother the part of him that wanted to pull her close and never let go. Lucy noticed. Of course she did.
“Why are you pulling away from me?” she asked one night, her voice steady but eyes raw.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
Ghost cases came and went. The kitchen grew quieter. Lockwood stopped making her tea the way she liked it. And she stopped sleeping in his room. Holly kept glancing between them. George cursed under his breath a lot more. They were unraveling. Until that night. Another case. Another mansion. He pushed her out of the way of a Wraith’s reach—threw himself into danger like it meant nothing. Like he didn’t remember what it felt like to nearly lose her.
When it was over, she shoved him. “Do you want to die?!”
“Do you?” he shouted back.
Their voices bounced off the marble walls, rage and heartbreak mingling. They were too close again, chest-to-chest, breathless.
“You can’t keep doing this,” he growled. “You can’t be everything to me.”
She froze. “Why not?” she asked.
“Because I don’t know who I am without you anymore.”
And then he kissed her again, fierce and painful, like it was the only thing tethering him to the world.
They didn’t tell anyone. Not officially. Not yet. But everyone knew. Lucy swore George started making popcorn every time she and Lockwood ended up in a room together. Holly developed this little habit of coughing strategically whenever they stood too close. And Kipps—Kipps, of all people—had the nerve to start betting with Flo on whether or not Lockwood would actually combust if Lucy so much as smiled at someone else.
“You two aren’t exactly subtle,” George said one afternoon, leaning in the doorway to the kitchen with a biscuit in one hand and that infuriating smug look in his eyes. “Some of us like our tea without the extra sexual tension, thanks.”
Lucy, perched on the counter, snorted. “Get out before I throw this kettle at your head.”
Lockwood, leaning far too close as he sweetened her tea—because he always remembered how she liked it now—gave George a deceptively sweet smile. “I’m afraid she’s not bluffing, mate.”
George raised both hands. “Right, right. Far be it from me to interrupt whatever tragic love story is unfolding in the bloody pantry.”
They both went still.
Lucy turned to Lockwood, lips twitching. “Did he just—”
“Tragic?” Lockwood said, deadpan. “It’s only tragic if we die.”
“Bold of you to assume we won’t.”
“Please don’t tempt fate,” George muttered, already retreating.
They were back at the Archives, cataloguing ghost-types from a recent case. George was cross-checking energy residue. Holly was organizing files. Kipps was doing whatever Kipps did—grumbling, probably. And then Lucy and Lockwood disagreed. Not just casually. Not about something small.
He wanted to take on a second case that week. She didn’t think he was healed enough after the last one. She was right. He hated that she was right.
“What gives you the right to decide that for me?” he snapped.
“Maybe the fact I had to pull iron shards out of your shoulder three days ago?”
His eyes flashed. “You’re not my keeper, Lucy.”
“No,” she said, low and dangerous, “but I am the person who gives a damn whether or not you make it to the end of the week.”
They were too close again. Breathing too hard. She pushed her hand against his chest like she was trying to physically stop herself from doing something reckless. From kissing him. From screaming. From falling apart.
“I told you,” she whispered, “I’d lose my mind for you.” Then she walked out.
Lockwood watched her go with a broken expression on his face, turning to George helplessly.
He only shrugged, “What do you want me to say, Lockwood?”
“I don’t— I don’t know what to do, George,” Lockwood said roughly, curling his hands into fists and pressing them against his eyes. “She just— she’s just—”
“Lucy.”
“Yeah.”
“And you love her.”
“I love her so much it’s driving me mad,” he laughed weakly. “It’s driving both of us stark raving mad.”
“I’d be worried if it wasn’t.” George shook his head, sighing. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Are you going after her or what?”
Later that night, Lockwood found Lucy on the roof. She was curled in his coat, staring at the London skyline like she could make sense of everything if she just stared hard enough.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said softly.
“I know.”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“I know.”
She turned to him, tired and raw and honest.
“Do you love me?” she asked, voice steady.
He didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“Even if it makes you reckless?”
“Yes.”
“Even if it drives you insane?”
“Especially then.”
She let out a broken laugh. “We’re a mess.”
He sat beside her, their shoulders pressed together, hands finding each other in the dark. “I don’t care,” he said. “If love made me crazy—then good. That means I got it right.” She looked at him, really looked, and this time, she didn’t pull away.
And when he kissed her again—slow and certain—neither of them held back.