My Best Friend’s Secret Plan, My Dead Husband’s Watching Eyes Chapter 01

My Best Friend’s Secret Plan, My Dead Husband’s Watching Eyes Chapter 01

My husband, Graham Ashford, died in our bed on our wedding night. He left me billions of dollars.

Everyone told me I was too young to stay a widow.

My best friend took it upon herself to set me up with a man. He was tall and built. Not as good-looking as Graham, and nowhere near as wealthy, but he was young and attentive.

The day he got down on one knee, words appeared in midair. Floating text, like comments on a screen, scrolling right in front of my eyes.

[Do not accept the proposal! Your best friend deliberately set you up with him because she knows your late husband’s ghost is right beside you!]

[The second you accept that ring, it proves everything they’ll say about you: greedy, unfaithful, and already in another man’s bed!]

[Your late husband’s love will curdle into hate. When he comes back to life, you’ll be the first person he kills.]

[And your best friend? She’ll be the one who heals him. She’ll get his love, his money, all of it. Forty years together. A love story for the ages.]

I stared at Miles Larkin, still on one knee, holding out a diamond ring.

I didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then, I made my choice.

I slapped him across the face.

…

Miles clutched his cheek, and the first thing out of his mouth was a curse.

“What the hell is wrong with you? I’m proposing, and you slap me?”

I didn’t care about the look on his face.

Graham had always been possessive. Obsessively so.

He was five when he got into a fight over me at school. His father had told him that with their money, he could have anything he wanted. So, Graham chose me, and he refused to let go.

After that, Graham never left my side.

He looked after me like a tiny adult, from the time I was a toddler until I turned eighteen. Even my mother said he hovered too much.

Graham didn’t care.

When I was nineteen, some guys on the street whistled at me. Just whistled. Graham had every single one of them run out of Havenbrook by morning.

Havenbrook was named the safest city in the state for years after that.

I didn’t believe the floating comments at first.

I’d held him that whole night, felt his body go cold and rigid in my arms. I watched them seal the casket. I watched them lower it into the ground.

But floating text had just appeared out of thin air in front of me. That was already impossible.

What if it was true?

Three months. If Graham had been here this whole time, watching me with Miles, no wonder my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

Even the wind felt colder.

“Maren.”

My best friend, Vanessa Caldwell, looked at me in confusion.

“You and Miles have been together for months now. You said it yourself. You two know each other inside and out.”

“Marriage is the obvious next step, isn’t it? What’s gotten into you?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but more floating comments scrolled past again.

My blood went cold.

[She just said “inside and out” right in front of your dead husband’s ghost. You really think that was an accident?]

[He’s been right here for three months. He’s heard every word. Accept this proposal and it’s the thing that finally breaks him.]

It hit me then.

Vanessa had always liked dropping little comments like that around me, things that sounded harmless but landed hard.

Miles and I hadn’t even slept together.

I’d always written it off as best-friend teasing. But if Graham’s ghost had really been standing right here, then every one of those comments was a match struck on purpose.

She wanted his love for me to rot into something ugly.

“I never said that.”

It was the first time I’d ever pushed back against her.

Vanessa’s face stiffened.

“Vanessa’s not wrong, you know. Sooner or later, we’ll know each other that well.”

Miles looked a mix of confused and impatient.

“Seriously, what is going on with you today?”

“I love you. You love me. So what’s the problem? Don’t you want this? Don’t you want us?”

The floating comments started up again.

[He’s in love with your best friend. The ring is her size, and when you notice, he’ll swear he bought the wrong one because he was nervous.]

[Your late husband comes back to life in three days. Don’t trust either of them!]

As the comments flooded past, one after another, I grabbed the ring from his hand and slid it onto Vanessa’s finger.

It fit perfectly. Like it was made for her.

The color drained from Miles’s face.

“I’ve never done this before, okay? I was nervous. I got the wrong size.”

Word for word, exactly what the comments said he’d say.

Something cold settled deeper inside me.

If the comments were right, if Graham was really coming back, then I wouldn’t just lose the money. Graham would kill me himself.

Three days. That’s what the comments said. I could wait three days.

Miles was still waiting for an answer, hope written all over his face. I forced a thin smile.

“You’re a friend, Miles. That’s all you’ve ever been.”