Page 28 of Grim Tidings

Luckily, we both seem to want the same thing. Even if he can’t see that just yet.

“Well,” I say calmly. “If you want to save this soul, you’ll help me cross things off my list.” I won’t be shut out of my own redemption arc. I need to be the one to save this soul. I need to know that I’m capable of something that isn’t death. “Every time an item is achieved to my satisfaction, I will share a detail of my vision.”

“No,” he says immediately.

“Fine.” I shrug. “Then we’ll part ways. We’ll see who gets there first.”

On the other side of the table, Gabriel fumes. He doesn’t want to help me, but he doesn’t want to lose a life even more. I’m forcing his hand, and he hates it.

“Let me see the list,” he finally says.

“I want your agreement first.”

“No.” He drops his milkshake on the table and crooks two fingers in a short, impatient gesture. “Let me see it.”

I hesitate, then slowly reach into the front pocket of my bag for the folded-up piece of paper that’s been there since the day I died. I hold it in my fist, dragging my thumb over the well-worn edges. No one has ever seen this list but me. I’ve scrawled out every silly wish. Every misplaced hope. Every inconsequential thing I never got the chance to do.

“Darcy,” he snaps, impatient.

I hold on to it. “I don’t want you to make fun of me when you read it.”

A divot forms between his brows. “I won’t.”

“Pinky promise.”

He huffs and rolls his eyes. “I’m not going to—” I thrust my pinky in his face. He stares at it in derision. Then with all the enthusiasm of a man being led to the guillotine, he lifts his hand and curls his pinky around mine.

“Thank you.” Satisfied, I extend my paper across the table, then immediately busy myself with shredding my straw wrapper into a thousand tiny pieces. I can’t stand to watch him read it. It feels like he’s shoving a crowbar between my ribs and cracking me open.

Paper rustles, his chair creaks, and the silence is so thick I want to scream.

Finally, he snorts. “Bumper cars?”

I reach across the table and immediately snatch the list back. “You said you wouldn’t make fun of me.”

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t expecting to see bumper cars.” He smiles a little bit, bewildered, and it makes his face look impossibly younger. Softer. Like last night, when I was someone else and so was he. “Why the hell do you have bumper cars on your bucket list?”

“It’s not a bucket list if you’ve already kicked the bucket,” I grumble, carefully folding the paper back up and sliding it into my bag. Tater Tot nudges me with his wet nose in solidarity, and I give him a gentle pat.

“So, what? I take you to bumper cars, and you give me hints as to who is in danger? That’s your plan?”

More or less. I would have settled for him staying out of my way while I attempt to save a life, but that clearly isn’t going to happen. Gabriel seems like the type of man who likes to work for a solution. If this makes him trust me a bit more, so be it.

“It’s a win-win,” I say.

Gabriel is deep in thought over my proposition, squinting at me like he wants to split my skull open and pluck out all my secrets. “Is that why you kissed me in the alleyway? To cross an item off your little list?”

“You kissed me,” I point out, flustered. I was hoping the both of us could just pretend that never happened. “And that’s not on my list. Kissing, I mean.”

“Seems like an oversight,” he says, latching on to my discomfort like a greedy parasite. “To have something like bumper cars but no kisses.”

“Yeah, well. I don’t know if a mediocre kiss next to a trash can would have ranked.”

The smile vanishes from his face, and his hand flexes on his cup, crushing the flimsy cardboard. Strawberry milkshake starts to ooze out of his straw. “That kiss rocked your world.”

“Five out of ten,” I tell him, lying through my teeth. That kiss is the most I’ve felt in four decades.

“Is that why you were making all those little sounds?”