Inbetween

Chapter 28

Emma I bolted upright in the bed. My stomach felt empty, sick. I couldn’t escape the feeling of falling. The screaming until I couldn’t breathe. Finn’s lips, his voice in my hair. I gripped the sides of the bed.

Finn. I remembered Finn. I remembered where I’d been, who I was…what he’d done. Oh God, what had he done? I had to write this down. I had to get it out of me before I forgot.

I scrambled for the table next to my bed and jerked open the drawer. Gauze, sanitation wipes… where was it? My journal…my journal. Frantically, I looked around. I was in the hospital, not my bedroom. My journal wasn’t here. My fingers searched for a notepad, aching with the need to preserve this memory before the truth was taken away from me again.

“I need some paper!” I shouted, yanking the drawer off its tracks in my desperation.

“Emma!” Mom rushed into the room and pulled the half-emptied drawer from my hands. “What’s going on?”

I tumbled off the bed and one of the stitches in my leg popped open. I cried out, one hand flying to my leg, the other grabbing onto the nightstand.

“Oh my God!” Mom grabbed me and helped me back onto the bed. “What are you doing?”

I fell limp into the pillows. It was already fading. I couldn’t hold onto it. “I need something to write with. Anything,” I sobbed. “Please, Mom.”

She looked me over, bit her lip, and nodded. I waited while she hurried across the room to her purse and came back with a little notebook and a pen. I plucked the remainders of the dream from my mind, cursed the empty spaces where the memory had already disappeared. There had been something wrong with me, but I couldn’t remember what. I skipped over that part and focused on what I knew. Finn was a reaper, and Maeve wanted me dead because he’d stolen her chance at life and gave it to me. And he lied to me about it. About all of it. My heart felt like it was being disassembled and stitched back together. I’d trusted him. I was falling in love with him. And he just kept it from me like that? My life was a lie. It didn’t even really belong to me. I scribbled so hard the pen ripped through the paper as Mom patiently waited, patting my good leg. I stopped when I felt her tugging at the bandages around my calf.

“These need to be changed,” she said, quietly. The bright red spot of blood had grown while I wrote, soaking through the gauze. “I hope whatever you had to write down was worth it.”

I looked down at the words. Half-broken memories. The truth. “It was.”

She made a face and pushed the call button beside my bed. A nurse in pale pink scrubs rushed in and shook her head as she cleaned my wound, then wrapped it in a fresh bandage. Mom leaned up and touched the one on my neck. “How’s this one?”

I flinched away. “Fine.” It wasn’t, but I didn’t want her poking at it. It hurt bad enough as it was.

Everything hurt at this point.

Mom nodded and picked at a loose thread on the stiff blanket covering my other leg. “Were you dreaming about your Dad?”

“Yes,” I lied, hugging the notebook to my chest.

“That’s good,” she said. “It’s good that you remember.”

Mom was the queen of avoiding the past, I realized. She filled up her days with nonsense meetings and nonsense people until there wasn’t room for anyone or anything real. After everything I’d been through, I didn’t blame her. It had to be easier than facing the pain. In that moment I would have given anything to not have to face the pain that Finn and his lies had caused. “That story you told me about Dad…your kiss. That was nice. You should tell me stuff like that more often.”

“You’re right. We should remember more.”

I thought about how hard most of the memories in my head were to relive. The old ones. The new ones. “Easier said than done, right?”

She cleared her throat, and tucked her wavy blond bob behind her ear as she stood. “You hungry? I could have them bring you some soup. Or Jell-O? They must have something good around here.”

“Sure.” I wasn’t really hungry, but I did want her gone. I needed a minute to myself to soak in the words that were living on the paper against my chest. They were whispering to my heart, screaming against my ribs, begging to be read.

Mom paused in the doorway, watching me. “Honey, I want you to know that Parker is doing everything he can to catch this guy. He won’t give up until they have him.”

So he was a cop. I nodded, thinking he’d be looking forever then. “Tell him…thank you.”

After she was gone, I read the memory over and over again. I didn’t remember it all, but I remembered how he touched me. Remembered that he loved me. I remembered that he lied to me. I closed my eyes.

“Are you awake?” Finn’s voice ran through me like syrup, coating everything with a sweet sensation that I couldn’t wash away if I tried. But there was something bitter inside me now, too. A painful regret, the kind that came with knowing the truth. He’d kept everything from me. Betrayal throbbed in my chest, painful and sharp. I opened my eyes, temporarily blinded by the buttery sunshine spilling through my window and the shimmering outline of Finn. When I lifted up my hand to shield my eyes, he jumped up to pull the drapes closed.

“You’re awake,” he said.

“I’m awake.”

“I never should have left you. God, I’m so sorry, Emma.” He looked like he was out of breath, though I knew that wasn’t possible. I gazed at him, mapping out his face line by line, comparing it to the perfect memory in my head.

“You lied to me,” I finally said, considering my words very carefully. Forcing myself to stay calm when all I wanted to do was scream. I swallowed past the burning lump in my throat and focused on the throbbing pain that radiated from the gash on my neck instead. Concrete pain like that was easier to deal with than the emotional kind.

“What are you talking about?”

“You lied to me about everything.” I twisted the blankets in my hands until my knuckles turned white. “Maeve. What we were to each other. God, Finn, what did you do? You…you took her life away from her and you forced me to be involved. I didn’t want that. I didn’t want this. It’s no wonder she wants me dead. She has a right to!”

“Emma…” He looked panicked, placing his hand on the mattress next to my arm. I jerked it away from him and he flinched. “Wait—”

“What are you, really?” I said. “You’re not just a soul.”

Finn looked away and rubbed his palms over his knees. “Why do you need me to say it if you already know?”

“Because I want you to tell me the truth. After all of this, I deserve it.”

“Fine. You want a technical term? I’m a reaper. You want the truth? I’m death.” A holster materialized on his hip. He grabbed the curved blade it held and flipped it open. “I rip souls from their flesh, and I don’t take them to a happy place.”

On the other side of the hospital room door, a nurse laughed. A cart rolled past. A sob welled in my chest, refusing to let me breathe.

“I took you,” he whispered, his eyes burning a hole in my floor. “I was supposed to take you again two years ago.”

“I know. A girl in a white dress showed me. She said to tell you that you owe her one.”

“That’s Anaya. She’s one of Heaven’s reapers.” Finn scooted closer to me, staring at the book.

“What else did she show you? Exactly how much do you remember?”

I swallowed, stretching my stitches. “You said you loved me,” I said. “Did you?”

Before he could answer, I turned away to hide the tears rolling down my face. Even through the anger I was feeling, the need to touch him was so intense that my chest ached until I couldn’t breathe.

As if he could read my thoughts, Finn moved. He touched my open palm, and his hand turned to iridescent particles that sifted between my fingers.

“Yes,” he whispered.

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just nodded. There was still too much hurt inside. Far too much for three little words to erase it all away.

“You were out of time,” he continued. “I don’t know if you remember what was happening to you, but I was losing you. And I couldn’t let you go like that. Not when it was my fault you were damned in the first place. I knew relationships between souls and reapers were forbidden, but I thought I’d be punished, not you. I wasn’t thinking. I should have known…” Finn stopped and his voice sounded strained. “Despite all of that, despite knowing I’d been unforgivably selfish, I couldn’t let you go. I still can’t.”

I absorbed the missing pieces to the puzzle, bits of what the girl in the white dress had given me coming back. The black veins. The Shadow Land. My mind wandered through the newly familiar memories that still didn’t quite feel at home in my mind, trying to remember feelings that belonged to another girl. My heart fluttered just thinking about the way Finn had looked at me. The way he’d touched me. “I don’t want you to let me go.”

I may have been angry and hurt and confused, but I at least knew that much. I wasn’t ready to let him go, either. Even after all of this.

Finn kissed my wrist, his lips dissolving into a fine mist as they moved slowly down to my palm.

My breath caught in my throat and my fingers curled around the shimmery particles. He pulled away, his skin weaving back together as he sat up. Once he was whole again, he grunted and grabbed the blade at his hip.

“Don’t go.” I sat up, reaching out for him, but he pulled away.

He stood up, regret and want swirling in the green depths of his eyes. “I don’t have a choice. Please don’t hate me.”

“Wait!” By the time the word had passed through my lips he was gone. My gaze drifted down to the places he’d touched that still felt warm and tingly. I could still feel him on my fingers. In my veins.

And none of it was enough.