Alex zoomed in even closer and then touched one of the circles. A profile popped up: a pretty woman of maybe thirty, dressed in pink scrubs, with long brown hair and big brown eyes.Cora Falcon, the tag read.
“Well, that’s a weird coincidence,” said Stensby.
Alex was looking at Cora’s image. Was it Stensby’s imagination, or did he feel prickles of anger against his skin? “Go get Keith.”
“Of course,” Stensby said excitedly. There was nothing he wanted more than to do things for Alex.
Alex glanced over his shoulder. “And then we’re going to need a ride.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
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The gray isendless as always, flat and unchanging in every direction. Too thick to walk through, too wide to walk around, too high to climb—
Too high to climb?
Grayson’s eyes opened. He took stock of his surroundings: hotel room; king bed; candy wrappers in the trash; soda cans separated for recycling.
Reece fast asleep on the couch, breaths soft and peaceful.
Grayson silently got out of bed without so much as looking at the clock, going straight to the shower. He got it running extra hot and stood in the spray, staring at the white shower curtain, the white tile, the white porcelain bathtub.
He’d dreamed of gray. He always dreamed of gray; he was never going to dream of anything else again.
But for the first time, there had been something different in the dream. Instead of the color alone, it had been as if he’d stepped backward, gotten a little distance, and seen that the gray in front of his face had the form of an endless wall.
Had the gray always been a wall, and he’d just been too close to realize what he was dreaming of?
He washed his hair with the citrusy shampoo, letting his thoughts organize themselves like books on a shelf.
Maybe itwasa wall. Maybe the scientists were right, and it was like when a limb was removed and the wound was cauterized. The emotional part of Grayson had been destroyed, irreparably severed, and so maybe his brain was visualizing a wall to stem the bleeding and cope with the loss.
It didn’t actually matter if he was dreaming of incorporeal gray or a gray wall. At the end of the day, it meant the same thing: Evan Grayson was gone.
And that was a good thing. The world couldn’t afford to lose the Dead Man. No one needed Evan Grayson and no one wanted him back.
He stepped out from the steamy bathroom with a towel around his waist and crossed over to his backpack for clothes. As he dug in the bag, his gaze stole to the couch. Reece must have switched over from the king bed at some point, but Grayson didn’t remember it happening, and it’d been a long time since he’d slept that deep. Reece hadn’t bothered to open up the sofa bed; presumably he’d put the sheet over the cushions, but now it was crunched up at his feet and his comforter kicked to the floor, since he’d probably been roasting in the room he’d set to a Southerner-friendly temperature. His phone was discarded on the coffee table next to him, the message light blinking.
Reece himself was stretched out on his stomach with one arm hanging off the couch. Grayson was used to seeing him in oversized hoodies, but now the T-shirt had ridden up enough to show a sliver of the skin of his side and lower back, and the flannel pajama pants seemed molded to the contours of his legs and ass.
Grayson forced his gaze back to his own backpack. He might be making the occasional bad decision when it came to Reece, but he drew a line at eye-fucking him while he slept, no matter how good the view.
He got dressed and opened the curtain enough to let some of the gray early morning light in. He made a cup of coffee in the machine on the counter and added all the creamers, then sat on one of the bar stools, toes touching the floor as he unlocked his phone.
Reece had texted him a picture: a selfie with the bear hat back on his head and flashing a peace sign at the camera, which was carefully tilted to include Grayson very obviously fast asleep behind him. There was a message with it:
Jamey wanted proof that I was safe, so for the record, I DID send this one to her. She said to tell you she’s sending it to someone named Aisha.
No one was supposed to have pictures of Grayson, and now in the space of a couple days, Reece had three. Grayson should delete this one, and the one of the two of them at the truck, and the gym photo he’d sent from Vermont because Reece had been upset.
He raised his gaze from the phone and eyed the empath on the couch. Reece was still trustingly asleep, his slow and peaceful breathing filling the room.
He looked back at the picture, at the two of them only about a foot apart on the bed. At Reece in pajamas and the bear hat, the rare smile on his face, the camera capturing an evening when he’d been content and happy enough to project those feelings onto a store clerk, a front desk receptionist, and a toddler and her dad.
Grayson’s thumb hovered over the delete icon.
