“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” He refused to meet my gaze again, that faint odd growl back in his voice as he extended the car keys to me.
Did he think I reallywasmad? Or that I would bite? In his defense, if given the chance, I just might…
Dare I tell him that?
No. Dying from embarrassment was something I hoped to avoid.
I opened my hand and Grim dropped his keys into my palm—like he didn’t want to touch me. I gripped them hard, waiting to feel grounded by the burn of the cold metal.
“You’re not still thinking of going to talk to the higher-ups about me… are you?” I probed.
“I go back and forth,” he admitted, his voice still tight with some emotion I couldn’t pinpoint, “on whether or not it would do any good… for you.”
“Do… I get a last wish?” I asked him.
His eyes snapped up to mine, and a scowl darkened his expression. This time, I didn’t back down. It wasn’t that his (literal) death stare didn’t faze me anymore. Oddly enough, I’d just developed a tolerance to its gut-piercing, soul-skewering effect.
“I want you to go forward with the plan to wait,” I said. “I want you to do what’s best for you.”
“I’m not sure I can do that,” he said, his jaw tightening as he looked away, down the hall where the elevator dinged and opened for my elderly neighbor, Ms. Lynn. I waved as she turned around after boarding. She waved back half-heartedly, her wide-eyed attention, shielded by gaudy, rhinestone-encrusted cat-eye glasses, fixed on Grim—at least until the doors closed.
“It… will be okay,” I assured him. “And… if it’s me you’re worried about? Well,Iwill be okay.”
“No, you won’t,” he snapped, that gaze shooting back to capture mine, sharper than ever. “Do you even know what you’re saying?”
“I know what I have control over,” I told him with a shrug, “and… I know what I don’t. Fate, by its very definition, does what it wants, doesn’t it?”
“So do I,” he said.
I tilted my head at him, unable to help a small, bemused smile. “Are we having our first fight right now?”
“I don’t understand,” he growled, ignoring my teasing, his agitation growing. “Why aren’t you afraid?”
“Who says I’m not?” I asked. “But even if I am—and I am—that doesn’t change anything.”
To that, he offered no reply. After a shaky breath, I spoke again.
“Are you coming into the library tomorrow to talk to Hunter? That’s my coworker friend.”
“I’ll think about it,” he grumbled before turning and walking away, back in the direction we’d come.
I stood there and gaped after him until he vanished into the stairwell, at a loss for what I’d said, what I’d done, to chase him off after such a nice night—though maybe I shouldn’t have been.
Maybe his abrupt exit just meant he’d gotten a call for another Fated. Maybe I should be glad that, for the moment, I wasn’t on his list of tonight’s pickups.
I wasn’t glad, and in his absence, only sadness emerged.
I opened my apartment door and stepped inside, dropping the mail I’d stopped to collect on the way in on the little hall table.
The energy bill sat on top. Should I even bother paying it?
Sighing loudly, I kicked off my flats and scanned the darkened apartment, which I had cleaned and tidied since Grim’s last visit. In vain, it seemed. Maybe I’d secretly been hoping hewouldstop by. On the flip side, a part of me had worried about him having to step over clutter on his way to get to my soul if I happened to bite it here at home somehow.
I dropped my purse and the keys on the table next, ignoring the oppressive loneliness that closed in on me—right along with that hounding fear I’d just confessed to him that, despite all my jokes and dismissive comments, Ididfeel. Acutely.
At least—ironically—whenever I wasn’t with him.
I threw the deadbolt and put the latch on the door, my heart in shambles now that I was officially alone, left to my own company and once more saddled with the crushing reminder that every secondI continued to breathe was borrowed—bought by a being, a man, who had never meant to sell himself out for my sake.
