If I Die

16

I followed Emma back to her house, and we spent the next two hours overanalyzing my ill-fated love life and ignoring her older sister’s unsolicited advice about that ill-fated love life—which she understood very little of. We didn’t talk about my impending death. In fact, we avoided the subject at all costs, by mutual, unspoken agreement.

Emma seemed to understand what I would have had to explain to anyone else—that I wanted just a couple of hours of normal with my best friend, before I returned to the maelstrom of bizarre the rest of my life had become. What little life I had left, anyway.

But when it was time for me to go, I accidently left my keys in her room, and when I went back for them, Emma was crying, facedown on her bed. Hard enough that she heard neither my footsteps, nor the rattle of my keys as I slid them into my pocket. My heart broke for us both as I snuck out again, so she wouldn’t know I’d seen.

Five minutes later, I opened my front door to find a huge bowl of popcorn on the coffee table, and I could tell from the scent and the way some of the kernels were shriveled that they were drizzled with real butter.

“Hey.” My dad stepped into the living room from the kitchen with two tall, clear glasses, topped in thick cream-colored foam.

“Is that what I think it is?” I pushed the door shut and dropped my keys into the empty candy dish, then took the glass he handed me. “Coke floats?” He used to make them when I was little—that was one of the few memories I had from before my mother died.

“None other. And I’ve got sour worms and Milk Duds for dessert.”

“So this is dinner?” I dropped onto the couch and grabbed a handful of greasy popcorn.

“Unless you want pizza.” My dad plopped onto the couch next to me and stuck a bendy straw into my float. “I happen to know the local delivery boy can be here in thirty seconds or less.”

I laughed, because that’s what he wanted to hear, but the mention of Tod made my heart ache, with a confusing combination of excitement and guilt. “No, this is fine. This is great.”

“Good.” He set his glass on the end table and picked up the remote control. “It looks like the movies recorded, but I’ll be damned if I know how to make them play.”

I swallowed my first mouthful of Coke and melted ice cream, then took the remote from him and pulled up the guide menu. “You know, you’re going to have to learn to do this for yourself, at some point. I’m not going to be around to program the DVR forever…”

I meant it as a joke, but my dad looked like I’d just stabbed him in the heart. Repeatedly.

“Sorry. Just kidding.” I shoved another handful of popcorn in my mouth to keep from making it worse.

“It’s okay,” my dad said, though it was clearly anything but. “However, I reserve the right to wallow in denial for as long as I see fit. And on that note, how was school today?”

Another sip from my glass, and I was ready to play along. “Well…I embarrassed Sophie at lunch, failed to turn in five homework assignments, lied to my French teacher, saw Tod feed my personal reaper to Avari in the Netherworld, broke up with my boyfriend, then propositioned my math teacher.” I shrugged and tried on a nervous grin. “Nothing worth writing home about.”

My father leaned back on the couch, holding his float in both hands. “I swear, Kaylee, sometimes it’s hard to tell when you’re joking.”

“Is this part of that whole wallowing in denial thing?” I reached for another handful of popcorn. “’Cause I was serious. All that really happened.”

His brows rose and his gaze narrowed on me. “The father of a non-emancipated minor might be a little overwhelmed right now.”

“A non-emancipated minor would never have told her father most of that.”

My dad sighed. “I don’t even know where to begin.” I started to make a suggestion, but he cut me off. “Oh, wait. Yes I do. Why the hell would you proposition your math teacher? And what exactly do you mean by ‘propositioned’?”

“I don’t think you want details on my definition of that word, Dad. But it wasn’t for real. Our math teacher is an incubus, and Em and I were trying to get him where we want him, so we can take him out. By…putting ourselves in the line of fire, tomorrow, at Emma’s house.” Before he could form a response—and his struggle with that was obvious—I pushed the play button on the remote. “How ’bout some Alien?”

“How ’bout some answers?” He grabbed the remote and pushed several buttons, and when he couldn’t get the movie to stop, he finally stood and stomped across the room, then slammed his whole hand down on the power button.

Dramatic, but effective.

“Okay, I’ll give you the short version,” I conceded. “But then I demand some serious Alien carnage.” My dad made a “go ahead” gesture, then reclaimed his seat next to me. “Mr. Beck is Mr. Wesner’s replacement, and last week we discovered he’s not human. He’s an incubus. And he’s in heat—or whatever. I would have told you, but that was the same day you and Tod told me I was going to die, and then everything started to pile up, and you were always gone trying to save my life. And as it turns out, there’s just never a good time to tell your dad you’re doing battle with an evil lust demon posing as your math teacher. Right?”

His pause was too long to precede anything good. “Is this what your little powwow this morning was about?”

“Yeah. We were pooling information and trying to come up with a viable game plan. If you want to help, we really need to know how to get rid of a possibly ancient incubus.”

“By letting your father kill him for even thinking about touching his little girl.”

The ache in my chest was warm and kind of wonderful, in the weirdest way. “Yeah, that’d be really awesome, if you could do that. ’Cause we actually don’t know how to kill him, and I need to make sure he’s gone before I die, ’cause he’s going after Emma next.”

“Next?”

“He’s already impregnated three girls that we know of. He’s also killed one woman and left another in a coma. But I’d bet there are others we don’t know about yet.” And with that thought, my appetite dried up like sweat on a Texas sidewalk.

“Damn it.” My father scrubbed his face with both hands, and I felt awful for adding to the stress he was already under. “Harmony warned me it could get crazy around here, with Avari living in the high school. But I never saw this incubus thing coming.”

“Yeah, me, neither. It’s not one of the things you typically worry about, in suburban Texas.”

“Okay, if memory serves, your uncle Brendon ran up against an incubus once. I’ll call him later and see what he can tell me. But just to make me feel marginally involved in your life, what happened with you and Nash? Not that I disapprove of the outcome, but this seems like an odd time to dump your boyfriend.”

Oh, here we go… “Nash saw me kissing Tod.”

My father’s stare was almost vacant, and just when I was starting to wonder if he was still in there, he blinked. “I should have mixed something stronger than Coke floats.”

We only made it through the first Alien movie before my dad’s patience shattered beneath the cluster bomb I’d dropped on him and he excused himself to go call his brother. I couldn’t blame him. Even our rare, about-to-expire father-daughter bonding time was outweighed by the threat of an incubus preying on the local coed populace.

Dad made the call from his room, so I sat on my bed with my door open, trying to hear what he obviously wanted to chew over privately before passing on to me. But he was hard to hear through his closed door.

“No, we’re short on specifics, and even shorter on time,” my dad said. He’d told my uncle Brendon about my expiration date, and they’d planned a family dinner for the next night, Wednesday, possibly my last night in the land of the living, and the night I’d planned to lure my evil incubus teacher to his death. I couldn’t imagine how awkward that meal would be, though, considering my cousin Sophie’s complete ignorance of all nonhuman matters.

“She doesn’t know his real name or how old he is…” My father’s words faded, and I assumed my uncle was speaking on the other end of the line. “Math. You should ask Sophie if she has him.”

But she didn’t. I’d verified that the day we found out what Beck was.

“I know, but let’s not borrow trouble till we’re ready to pay some back.” My dad’s mattress creaked and I could picture him sitting on the edge of the bed, hunched over and stressed. But I didn’t hear anything after that because my phone buzzed in my pocket. I dug it out to find a text from Tod.

Can I come over?

Suddenly my chest burned like my lungs were on fire. Like when I was a little girl on the playground swing set, and that plummeting feeling made me feel scared, and excited, and so alive.

Yeah. In my room.

An instant later, Tod stood in the middle of my bedroom floor, and I realized that the courtesy text before just popping in was only one of the things that had changed.

“Hey,” he said, hands shoved into his jeans pockets, watching me carefully, like he didn’t quite know how to act around me now and would be taking his cues from me. Which sucked, ’cause that was my plan, too.

“Hey.” I sat up on the bed and folded my legs beneath me, itching to touch him, or somehow acknowledge what had happened between us. Yet I felt guilty for that impulse—for wanting something that would hurt Nash.

“I need to tell you something.” He glanced at the floor, looking more conflicted than I’d ever seen him, and that burning in my chest became a steady smolder of resignation and disappointment I had no right to feel.

I knew where this was going. Nash was his brother—his flesh and blood. And Nash would be here for the next three hundred years or so, long after any memory of me faded from both of their minds. Of course he would choose his brother over me. How could he not? And part of me knew that was the right thing to do. How could I not want peace between them, especially considering that aside from Harmony and potentially Sabine, they had no one else. Tod and Nash would probably never be best friends, but they would always be brothers, and who was I to get in the way of that?

Tod exhaled slowly, and I could only watch him, waiting for the inevitable heartbreak. Could a person actually die of a broken heart? Was that how I would go?

“I’m not supposed to want you, Kaylee. Not like this,” he said, the blues in his eyes churning with disparate emotions, and my stubborn heart beat harder. “I made a decision two years ago and gave up the right to want anything.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I wasn’t going to interrupt him, because no one had ever spoken to me like this. As if whatever he was trying to tell me was so raw and painful it had to come straight from his soul.

“I’m not supposed to have a life, or a future beyond helping preserve the balance between life and death. My humanity is supposed to fade. They want us that way. Empty, so it’s easier to take life, day after day. Sometimes it becomes too easy, and reapers get bored. Desperate for something—anything—to break up the monotony.”

He was talking about Thane; I understood that much. I was Thane’s entertainment—his break from monotony.

“That’s not supposed to happen, but neither is this.”

“This” was me. I wasn’t supposed to happen to Tod. My next breath burned in my throat, and he shifted onto one foot staring down at me like he wanted to sit, but couldn’t let himself get comfortable until he’d said what he had to say.

“They were starting to get what they wanted from me. I stayed close to my mom and Nash, and that worked for a while, but it wasn’t enough. Only two years dead, and it was getting harder for me to feel…anything. I was starting to slip into the darkness. The numbness. And the worst part is that it wasn’t even scary. I was losing myself, and I didn’t even care.

“Then I met you, and at first I didn’t understand what had happened. What had changed. All I knew was that I wanted to be near you. Then you helped me with Addison, even though it nearly got you killed—I nearly got you killed—and I started to understand how special you are. But by then, you were getting serious with Nash. With my brother—one of few people in the whole world I still gave a damn about. So I tried to stay away. I tried so hard.” His voice cracked on the last word, and my heart cracked with it. Tears stood in my eyes, but I was afraid to let them fall. I was afraid to even breathe for fear of missing a single word.

“But you kept pulling me back. You’re the brightest thing I’ve ever seen, Kaylee. You’re this beautiful ball of fire spitting sparks out at the world, burning fiercely, holding back the dark by sheer will. And I always knew that if I reached out—if I tried to touch you—I’d get burned. Because you’re not mine. I’m not supposed to feel the fire. I’m not supposed to want it. But I do. I want you, Kaylee, like I’ve never wanted anything. Ever. I want the fire. I want the heat, and the light, and I want the burn. But…”

He left that word hanging. The most hated word in the English language. And I knew what was supposed to follow it.

“But Nash…” I finished for him, and my tears fell in scorching trails down my cheeks.

Tod nodded miserably. “He’s my brother. He can hate me his entire life, but that won’t change the fact that he’s my little brother, and I’m supposed to protect him, not hurt him.”

“And we hurt him.” I couldn’t get Nash’s face out of my mind, how betrayed he’d looked standing in the hall. When he saw us.

“Yeah. We did.”

“Why…?” I started, then had to suck in a deep breath to continue. To control the heartbroken, angry tears that wanted to flow again. I stood and turned away from him while I wiped my face, and my frustration built. “Why did you say Nash and I aren’t right for each other, if you didn’t want to hurt him?” I demanded, turning on him again. “Why the hell would you show me that if it wasn’t going to lead to anything?”

“Because it’s true. Even if you were both scheduled to live forever, eventually he would have messed up again and hurt you. Or you would have broken his heart. But I won’t deny that I had selfish reasons for saying it, even though it was the truth.”

“So you wanted us to break up.”

“Hell yes, I wanted you to break up,” he said, and for one horrible, wonderful moment, relief almost overwhelmed my guilt. “But I didn’t want to be the catalyst. I wanted you to realize he was wrong for you, then realize that I might not be. I’m so sorry it all came out of order, and if I could undo what he saw and go back and do this the right way, I would. He’s my brother.”

I sniffled back more tears and sank onto my comforter again. “So, you’re here to let me down easy?” This was the part that would kill me, two days early. I could feel it.

“No,” he said, and I looked up, sure I’d heard him wrong, or I was missing something. “I’m here because I couldn’t stay away from you. I’ll spend the next three hundred years trying to make this up to Nash, if that’s what it takes. But I’m going to spend the next two days with you. If you want my company.”

My next breath was so shallow I hardly had the air to speak. “I want that so, so much.”

Tod sank into my desk chair and a slow, relieved smile formed on his face. “I was sure that after all that, you’d decide this was too much trouble.”

“This?”

“Us,” he clarified, rolling the chair closer to the bed, one foot at a time.

I scooted toward the edge of the mattress to meet him, my pulse rushing so fast just breathing felt surreal. “There’s an us?”

“As far as I’m concerned…” He leaned forward, his mouth inches from mine, and my pulse spiked. “There’s nothing but us.” His lips met mine, and he kissed me slowly, deeply, like we had all the time in the world. And in that moment, that’s exactly what it felt like.

When I finally pulled back to catch my breath, my head was spinning. Or maybe the whole damn room was spinning. “I think that was even better than the first time,” I whispered.

“There’s no one gawking at us now.”

But that reminded me of the public spectacle our first kiss had become, and why we’d been there in the first place. And of the questions I still had to ask, as badly as I hated to ruin the moment. “So…Thane’s gone?” I asked, and Tod nodded. “What does that mean, exactly?”

“It means that Levi will be scrambling to replace him.”

“Does he know what happened?”

Tod leaned back in my desk chair. “He knows that Thane had an unfortunate run-in with everyone’s least favorite hellion and that he won’t be rejoining the workforce. But he might not be entirely clear on how Thane and Avari happened to meet.”

“Are you going to get in trouble for this?”

He shrugged, like it didn’t matter. “I’m dead. What more could they do to me?”

But I wasn’t buying his nonchalance. They could demote him back to reaping on the local nursing home circuit. They could transfer him to another district, away from his family. They could recycle his soul and end his afterlife.

The thought that Tod could die—for real this time—because of me made me want to vomit my junk food dinner all over my comforter. “The truth. How bad could this get?”

Tod exhaled slowly, then met my gaze with a heavy one of his own. “Levi wanted to make an example out of Thane and he’s pretty pissed that I messed that up. But he likes me—as much as a reaper his age can really like anyone—and he’s the one who left the information around for me to find in the first place. I think he’ll leave it alone as long as he can claim plausible deniability. But if anyone over his head finds out I acted against another reaper—one who outranks me—without permission or evidence…well, let’s just say there’ll be a sudden opening at the pizza place.”

My nausea swelled into bone chilling horror. Tod could still die—again—for what he’d done for me. But he hadn’t hesitated to do it.

“So he hasn’t replaced Thane yet?” I said, trying not to think about how badly this could end for Tod. There was nothing I could do to change that. I couldn’t make him take back what he’d done, and even mentioning it would sound ungrateful.

“Not that I know of.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Knowing that Levi was looking for someone to kill me—though inevitable—was creepy and beyond bizarre.

Though it hadn’t even happened yet, my death was already hurting people, in spite of my best efforts to make it easy on everyone. I should have told Emma earlier. I’d thought that by not telling her, I’d be sparing her several days of advance grief, but it turns out, I was denying her the chance to come to terms with my death.

And Nash…

“I should have taken your advice,” I blurted out, with no conscious warning from my brain that I was even going to speak.

Tod took one look at the pain that must have been swirling in my eyes and he put on a teasing grin as easily as most guys would put on a baseball cap. “About the pizza? I told you, goat cheese is no joke.”

“No.” He was going to make me say it. “About Nash. I should have let Sabine have him six weeks ago. You were right—if I’d let him go then, he would have moved on by now, and whatever’s going to happen on Thursday wouldn’t be so hard for him.” And, of course, he wouldn’t have been blindsided by me kissing his undead brother in the middle of the math hall.

Tod exhaled heavily, and when he looked up, the soft swirl of blue in his eyes caught me off guard. And suddenly my heart felt bruised in advance of whatever he was going to say. “I lied, Kaylee.”

Okay, not the best opening… But not the worst either, considering his last big announcement was that I was going to die. “About what?”

“About Nash,” Tod said, and though he looked uncomfortable with the very concept of making a confession, he didn’t look particularly sorry about the offense itself. “I don’t think he would have gotten over you this quickly.”

“Then why did you say it?” Why would he lie to me—even if I was the pot to his black kettle?

“Because you don’t belong with him! I tried to tell you that, but you wouldn’t listen, and I thought if you understood that he’d be better off without you, you’d break up with him for his own good. So I…exaggerated how easy it’d be for him to get over you, with Sabine there to step in. But I underestimated how incredibly stubborn you are.”

“I prefer to think of it as dedication…” I mumbled.

“Whatever you want to call it. The harder Sabine pulled on him, the harder you pulled back, just so she couldn’t have him.”

“That’s not why!”

“Not consciously, no,” Tod agreed, taking my hand in his. “Which is why you couldn’t see what I was trying to show you. But then you saw, and you kissed me, and that changed everything for me, and now I only know two things for sure.”

“What things?” I couldn’t get enough air, no matter how fast my lungs pulled it in, and I couldn’t think beyond waiting for whatever he would say next.

“I know that you and I belong together. And I know that it’s too late for that to matter.”

My heart cracked open, and pain leaked out. “That’s the problem, Tod. It’s too late for anything to matter. That’s why I kissed you,” I admitted, challenging myself to hold his gaze during my own confession.

“You kissed me because it wouldn’t matter?” A flicker of hurt swirled in his eyes. “You really think it doesn’t matter?”

“That’s not what I meant.” That kiss had meant a lot to several different people. To Nash. To Tod. Hell, even to Sabine. And I wasn’t going to deny what it changed for me. “I meant…I’m going to die in less than two days, and you should know better than anyone what that means. It’s scary, and surreal, but in a way, it’s also like the ultimate freedom. Does that make any sense?”

“Yeah.” Tod brushed a pale curl from his forehead. “You can do whatever you want, because you’re not going to be here to suffer the consequences. Right?”

“Right.”

His brows rose over a new shine in his eyes. “So what you’re really saying is that kissing me is one of those things a girl shouldn’t die without experiencing, right?”

“Wow, you have a healthy ego.”

He shrugged. “Helps make up for the pallor of death. But you’re avoiding the question.”

“I didn’t think you were serious.”

“Dead serious.” The reaper grinned over his own joke, and I groaned. “Humor me, Kaylee. Dead guys don’t get much action—I’m gonna have to make this memory last a loooong time,” he said, and it felt like someone had sucked all the air out of the room and left me gasping. He was going to make the memory last? The memory of me kissing him?

“Make it last, like, forever?” I whispered, and immediately wished I’d kept that question to myself.

“Yeah. Like mental movie footage.” His mouth was grinning, but his eyes were serious. “Now I’m compiling the bonus features, including an interview with the kissee herself. So tell me, Ms. Cavanaugh, how long have you been dying to kiss me?”

I groaned. “More death humor?”

Another shrug. “It’s kind of my shtick. Answer the question.”

“I don’t know.” I sat up and played along, surprised to realize that for the first time in days, I wasn’t tense and on alert, waiting for the proverbial scythe to swing—ironic, considering I was sitting next to a Grim Reaper. “It’s not like I planned it, but I will admit that the prospect hasn’t been especially distasteful lately.”

“Not especially distasteful?” He pretended to think it over. “That ought to keep my ego in check.”

I laughed. “Is that even possible?”

“Probably not. But I wouldn’t put anything past you, Kaylee,” Tod said, looking straight into my eyes. I looked back until the connection between us started to feel raw, and taut, and vital, in no way I could explain. I’d never felt so exposed and vulnerable, yet confident of my own safety. I felt like he could see past my eyes into parts of me no one had ever seen before. And he deserved the truth.

“Fine.” I crossed my legs yoga style and picked at a bit of fuzz on my comforter. “I admit it. I didn’t want to die without knowing what it was like to kiss you.” I might have been thinking about that on occasion recently, since we’d been spending so much time together….

I don’t know how I thought he’d react to that tender bit of truth, but his wary frown definitely wasn’t what I’d expected.

Tod leaned back in my desk chair, putting a frustrating distance between us. “Like you didn’t want to die without knowing what it was like to sleep with my brother?”

And that’s when I understood my mistake—and damn, I’d made a lot of them.

“I didn’t sleep with him, Tod. Thanks to you, ironically enough.” Because he’d interrupted us with the news that Thane had been assigned as my reaper.

“That’s not irony, Kaylee,” he said, and his gaze never wavered. “It was careful timing.”

I blinked, gaping at him in disbelief. “You knew…?”

“That you were about to have sex with Nash? Yeah.” He shrugged, like that was no big deal, but my irritation had just flared into a brutal emotional heartburn.

“You were here? Watching?” I shouldn’t have been surprised. There was nothing to stop a reaper from being wherever he wanted, unseen by all. But knowing my privacy had been violated during one of the most intimate moments of my life sickened me like little I’d ever felt.

“Hell no, I wasn’t here. I can’t even stand to see Nash kiss you, much less…anything more. But here’s what you really want to know—I don’t spy on you, Kaylee. Not anymore.” Tod was careful to let me see the cobalt twist of sincerity in his eyes.

“But you used to?” I refused to be placated by the past tense nature of the offense.

“Yeah, but it was nothing personal.” He shrugged and crossed his arms over his chest. “I have a lot of hours to kill and nowhere to be when I’m not working. So I watch people. Most reapers do it out of boredom, but I’ve been hanging out at my mom’s house ever since I died, because I don’t know where else to go. It’s not my home, because I never lived there, but it’s always been like home, because my family’s there.”

I couldn’t quite interpret the ache in my chest, but it tempered my anger, whether or not it should have. “When did you start watching me?”

“After what happened with your aunt.” The week I’d found out I was a bean sidhe and started going out with Nash. “You were the only one other than my family who knew I existed, so I’d tag along when Nash came over and watch whatever you guys were watching on TV.”

“Were we really that boring?” It was weird to see me and Nash through someone else’s eyes.

Tod laughed. “Yeah. Thank goodness. But then you helped me with Addy, for no reason except that I asked you to, and I started to come over here on my own, just to see you.”

I was half creeped out, half fascinated, and all ears. “When did you stop?”

“When I realized I hated seeing you make out with my brother.”

“I don’t understand.” But maybe I was beginning to, and that ache in my chest deepened.

Tod glanced at my comforter, then met my gaze again. “Okay, I’m starting to realize how creepy this whole thing makes me sound, but try to remember that until you, my whole afterlife was like a one-way mirror. I saw people, but they never saw me. There was no interaction. No involvement. No malice or creepy intent. I’m not like Thane—I never stalked people I was scheduled to reap. I was just…watching. Living vicariously, which is the only way I can live now.”

“I’m with you so far…” And sympathy was starting to win out over the creepy factor. He must have been so lonely.…

“Good.” The tension in his frame started to ease. “Anyway, I stopped watching you when we started hanging out together for real.”

“After Nash started using?” I asked, and Tod nodded. I couldn’t be around Nash while he was going through with drawal. The wounds were still too raw, and the thought of seeing him hurt. But Tod had come over a couple of times during my otherwise lonely winter break, and we’d done…nothing. We’d just hung out, watching stupid YouTube videos and listening to music, openly avoiding the subject of Nash and his frost addiction.

Maybe that should have been my first clue….

“Once I realized I wanted more than friendship from you, it didn’t seem fair for me to see you when you didn’t know I was there.”

My relief was almost enough to mitigate my irritation at having been watched in the first place. “So…if you weren’t spying, how did you know…what Nash and I were about to do the other day?”

“Sabine called me.”

I closed my eyes, resisting the urge to slap my own forehead. How had I not figured that out? I’d called Sabine for advice, then hung up when Nash arrived, and she’d probably had Tod on the phone before my voice even faded from her ear. Damn Sabine! But she wasn’t working alone….

“What could possibly make you think what I do in private is any of your business?” I demanded, my voice low with anger.

“Sleeping with Nash would have been a mistake, and I don’t want anyone to hurt you—including you.”

“You don’t get to decide what’s a mistake for me, Tod.”

He frowned, obviously confused. “Was I wrong? Do you wish you’d done it?”

“No.” Especially now that Nash and I had broken up, and I could see the truth about my own motivations—I hadn’t wanted to sleep with Nash so much as I’d wanted to lose my virginity before I died. “But that’s not the point. I have a right to make my own mistakes, just like everyone else. Don’t ever do that again.”

“Fine.” He recrossed his arms over his chest. “But I’m not sorry I did it. And neither are you.”

I nodded slowly. “Fair enough. So…” I hesitated, not sure I really wanted the answer to what I was about to ask. “Were you and Sabine working together to break up me and Nash?”

“No. She tried to talk me into that when she first got here, but I told you, I didn’t want to be what broke you two up.”

“But you didn’t mind her trying it, even though it’s morally repugnant to intentionally break up someone else’s relationship?”

Tod’s brows arched in amusement over my moral outrage. “How is it wrong to put everything you have into getting what you want most in the world?” Which was exactly what Sabine had done.

Or was he talking about wanting me like that—more than anything else in the world? My pulse raced so fast my head started to swim. He wanted me more than anything? Wait—focus…

“It’s wrong because you don’t have the right to end someone else’s relationship!” Had two years of reaping souls skewed his moral compass, or was he always like this?

“First of all, keep in mind that this is all hypothetical. I didn’t try to break up you and Nash—that was Sabine.” The reaper leaned forward, his eyes bright with interest, enjoying what he obviously saw as a recreational debate. “And second, if the couple shouldn’t have been together in the first place, breaking them up is actually doing a good deed. So you’re welcome. Hypothetically.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or yell at him. “You don’t get to decide who should be together and who shouldn’t!”

“Are you saying I was wrong?” Tod’s gaze narrowed on me in challenge. “Did you really think you and Nash belonged together for the rest of your lives, even after what he did to you?”

Damn it. “I did at first. I thought I could forgive and forget.” I’d tried to. But the truth was that I couldn’t make myself trust him again, though I’d probably never admit to Sabine that she was right about that. “But that’s not the point.”

“That is the point! Right and wrong aren’t as simple as black and white. You and Nash would have done more damage to each other together than the breakup would have done to either of you, and just because you couldn’t see that doesn’t make it wrong for those who care about you both to point out the truth.”

For one long moment, I could only stare at him in disbelief. “It’s a good thing I’m not going to live long enough to go out with you, because you’d drive me crazy.”

“There’s a good kind of crazy, Kaylee,” he insisted softly, reaching out to wrap his warm hand around mine. “It’s the kind that makes you think about things that make your head hurt, because not thinking about them is the coward’s way out. The kind that makes you touch people who bruise your soul, just because they need to be touched. This is the kind of crazy that lets you stare out into the darkness and rage at eternity, while it stares back at you, ready to swallow you whole.”

Tod leaned closer, staring into my eyes so intently I was sure he could see everything I was thinking, but too afraid to say. “I’ve seen you fight, Kaylee. I’ve seen you step into that darkness for someone else, then claw your way out, bruised, but still standing. You’re that kind of crazy, and I live in that darkness. Together, we’d take crazy to a whole new level.”

My pulse whooshed in my ears so fast I could barely hear myself speak. “I only have—”

“Two days.” He squeezed my hand. “So what? You can spend them feeling sorry for yourself, or you can let me help make them the best two days of your life, and my afterlife. So what’s it gonna be?”

I stared into his eyes, like I’d never seen him before. And I hadn’t—not like this. But he’d obviously seen me, better than anyone else ever had.

“Well?” Tod watched me, his hand still warm in mine.

In answer, I leaned forward and kissed him again.