I can't believe he just closed his eyes when I asked. For someone who likes controlling situations so much, this whole night feels like it can't have happened. Like I must be making it up in my head.

I swerve through the creepy spider room and through a side door into the back stairs.

Once inside, I realize how hard it is to go backward up a spiral staircase while guiding a man with his eyes closed.

It's a very specific experience, but I've now had it.

And I'm doing a shit job. I pull him a little too hard and he trips over his feet, stumbling dangerously close to the edge of the stair before he catches his balance and grabs at my hands. I stabilize him with both hands and wait a moment before I dare to move.

I move with extra caution, gently guiding him up the stairs at a pace that might rival a snail. But he's safe and the way his hands press into mine sends my mind where it shouldn't go. And the whole time, Alex doesn't open his eyes.

"Where are we going?" he asks as we near the top of the staircase.

"Up," I say, pulling his jacket back into place.

"I could tell," he jokes, tipping his head back toward the step he tripped over.

"Sorry," I respond without answering his question. "I'll be more careful."

He doesn't press the issue, and he still doesn't open his eyes. He just reaches out his hand and waits for me to take it. If it weren't for the quick rise and fall of his chest, I'd suspect he'd been abducted by aliens and replaced with a robot who never got anxious.

But reality was almost weirder.

"Feeling okay?" I ask, pulling us up the last three steps. There's no reason for his eyes to still be closed, but I don't tell him to open them.

"Yeah," he answers. "I'm okay."

"This room is a little drafty. That's on purpose. You'll see."

He nods, barely visible in the dim light of the stairwell.

"Come on." I pull him through the door into the wide expanse of the room at the top of the stairs, formerly the living quarters of the house's owner.

"You weren't kidding about the draft." He shivers as we enter the room, but I can't feel the draft at all. I don't think the windows are open yet.

"One second," I say, dropping his arms and racing across the carpeted floors to push the huge panes of glass open.

"Jack?" He holds his hands out in front of him, eyes still firmly closed despite the lack of obstacles. I've not even secured something over his eyes and he's still not looking. "Are you still there, Jack?"

"Sorry, yeah." I don't even think, pulling his hands into mine. We're standing less than a foot from each other when I say, "Open your eyes."

He blinks his eyes open, not even letting them wander around the room before landing directly on my own. A breeze from the window sneaks up the back of my shirt and tickles my spine, sending a shiver through me.

My eyes are still locked on Alex's.

"Wow," he breathes. He's not looking out the window.

I turn around and his arms instinctively wrap around my waist. "Yeah, it's really pretty up here," I admit, staring out over the sea. "The... guy who owns it likes the ocean, so he had these windows installed. It was a whole thing with the historical society, too."

"What do you mean?"

"This place is a protected heritage building," I explain.

"So they didn't let him do what he wanted to?" He wraps his arms a little tighter around me.

"Oh, no, they didn't mind. It was him. He kept saying they really ought not to let him do this or that because it would affect the character of the home and basically talked himself out of any changes except this one." I can still see his wild face when he told me the story over dinner. "So he settled on this rear-facing ocean-view windows as a compromise with absolutely no one but himself."

"He sounds fun."

"You would think that," I tease, spinning to face him, face mere inches from the line of his jaw. "It's very nerdy."

"I am very nerdy," he confirms with a nod, lips grazing my hair on his way to hug me from behind. "How did you know him?"

I knew it would come, but I still don't know the answer. "I'm not really sure how to explain it. I don't tell people about him often. He's Alice... you know the woman from the shop? Her uncle. He's kind of become my surrogate grandpa after I stole his Jack-o-lanterns one Halloween. That's actually how I got the nickname."

"No way!" he laughs. "Jack-o-lantern Thief Whitfield really does roll off the tongue."

"It doesn't. But he caught me running off with the last one and a small metal sculpture in the shape of a skeleton. Pulled me back here by the pumpkin, plunked me down on the steps and asked me my name. I wouldn't tell him, so he called me JT for Jack-o-lantern thief."

"I guessed right!" He pulls his fist into a winning first pump gesture and shouts a loud 'yes'.

"Yes, you did." His enthusiasm warms me, pushing me through the rest of the story. The part I usually leave out. "I told him I didn't like 'JT', and he told me if I didn't like it, I'd have to tell him my name."

"Did you?" Alex asks, pushing forward until we're both mere feet from the windows, looking out over the crashing waves as orange and white lights flash against the side of the house.

"I did," I admit with a nod. "I told him my name was Jaqueline and all he did was nod and ask, 'do you like that name? Because it doesn't suit you.'"

"See, now I know I'd like him. Actually, he sounds like he'd love my sister."

"He probably would." I smile at the thought. "Her kids, too. He loves kids."

"Did he move away?"

"No. He just spends the winters out on Vancouver Island pretending he knows where things are when tourists ask questions."

Alex laughs and shakes his head. "So he didn't think Jaqueline suited you?"

Leave it to Alex to remember and return to the topic at hand. "Yeah, he told me it was too froufrou for a woman with my strength."

"What did you say? I mean, do you agree with him?"

"Well, I was still trying to figure out how to steal his skeleton so I wasn't paying too much attention and I must have accidentally agreed because next thing I know I'm being ushered inside and referred to as Jack. Obviously you know I don't love Jaqueline so I guess it kinda stuck."

"So you're Jack the Jack-o-lantern thief. But how'd you come to know him so well? Did he make you work off the debt for the theft?"

"Not even a little," I admit. "He made me sit down for dinner with his family and told me he was going to turn this house into something so scary I wouldn't be able to sleep for a week."

"That's... terrifying." Alex looks around, pulling me closer into him, wrapping me up in his surprisingly strong arms.

"I think he knew it would get me to stay. I told him I bet I could scare him more than he could scare me and the rest is kind of history, I guess. I helped him create this haunted house and every year I come set it up before he leaves for the winter season. His niece and nephew hire the staff you saw down at the front there to keep everything up while he's away."

"Why don't you run it?"

I admit this is the first time I've ever stopped to considered it. "I guess I'm just so used to being in Heartsbrook, the idea of moving to the city is just not really something that crossed my mind."

"I get it," he says, resting his chin on my head and falling silent, looking out over the ocean at the lights illuminating the night sky.

People cram through the haunted house downstairs. As usual, the house gets busier as the night goes on, but we don't go back down. We just sit down on the couch, look out over the ocean, and talk about life. About how he used to pick strawberries as a child, about who I consider my family, about our jobs, about our friends, and finally, about Luther.

"I'm sorry he was such a dick to you," Alex says, resting his hand on my knee. "I know from work he isn't the best guy, but I never expected he was capable of all that."

"He's very good at looking the part, isn't he? I think that's how he gets all of his clients to work with him."

"I can't wait to see his face when he sees his office tomorrow," Alex chuckles. "If only I could get video without arousing suspicion. Because I know it's going to be amazing. Everything I've learned about Tea Sip says that video would rocket me to stardom."

"You're not wrong," I admit. "But I guess I'll have to settle for the second-hand account."

"Why?" he asks, a glint in his eye. "Do you really think I don't have the know-how to wear a hidden camera for this? Or hack the security system?"

"I've already seen you hack a security system once tonight, so I would never assume it to be beyond your capabilities."

"You better not. I'm nothing without the analytical nerd label."

"You are a lot of things without the analytical nerd label," I say before my brain catches up with my mouth. "I mean, uhh. I mean you are also very kind and a wonderful friend. Plus, you're a thoughtful uncle and brother, I think."

"You think?"

"Well, I don't know," I muse, pulling my hand to my chin. "I think I'll have to ask your sister and her kids first. They're the only ones who can tell me the truth. Plus, I bet she has some hilarious and embarrassing stories about your childhood."

"My mom probably has worse ones," he answers. "But Melanie probably could regale you with tales of my incompetence in the social realm, that time I covered myself in mud to see how many hours it would take to dry or my intense study of gravity that involved the destruction of all of Mother's good melons."

"Sometimes, you just gotta figure it out for sure," I say. "Gravity is important, after all."

"Yeah, well... I have a whole trail of science experiments in my wake, so I'm pretty sure my mom was glad when I finally moved out. And I'm sure Melanie is glad I'm almost always gone to work where I am a safe distance away from her own children's attempts to explode volcanoes. Or worse."

"You wanna explode a fake volcano with me?" I ask. "I never got to do it when I was in school and I feel like I missed an important rite of passage."

"I never went to prom," he blurts, and then adds, "So I know what it's like to feel like you missed a rite of passage."

"Why didn't you go to prom? Is this one of those sad 'no one wanted to go with the nerdy guy' tales about how hard life was before you got hot?"

I said it out loud. The heat instantly rises in my cheeks and my fingers still. I said it out loud.

"No," he answers, completely ignorant of my apparent struggles with early menopause. Or a sudden onset fever. Who knows, really? "I was just at a concert that weekend."

"A concert?" Of all the things I thought he would say, skipping prom for a concert was not among them. "What did you see?"

"I don't even remember now. Some rock band or other. I was trying to be cool at the time. My analysis showed that if I attended a concert and flaked out on a school sanctioned event, my popularity would rise exponentially. Leather jackets and beer were also factors."

"You drank underage?" Well, now I'm definitely feeling like none of this can be real.

"No!" he protests, throwing his hands in the air. "Of course not. I just saw the analysis. Smoking and alcohol would have upped my cool factor, but I wasn't willing to try that one just to advance scientific understanding."

"You really need to be more dedicated to your nerdy analysis," I tease. "How am I supposed to know what will work?"

"Apparently prom is not like any other school sanctioned event, though, and is in fact viewed as in itself cool, assuming one has a date. So my calculations were wildly off. Not sure I could have provided you with any useful data."

"Perhaps I'll have to run my own experiment," I answer.

He's probably the only person in the world who could make me say that. And actually mean it.

"Maybe we can work together," is all he says in reply.