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Bunny busied herself with dishing more pork onto her plate so that she could avoid looking at either of the men in the room. She could practically feel the smug amusement rolling off of the immortal one, and her brother hardly needed any more encouragement to embarrass her. She speared a piece of pork with one chopstick and slung it into her mouth so she wouldn’t have to talk.
“And the time when we went camping and you kicked Freddie Pickens so hard that he peed his pants,” Ben reminisced with a chuckle.
Oh sweet and merciful universe, make it stop.
“Your mother told me about that,” Death confessed with amusement, making Bunny glare at him before she could stop herself. She turned immediately back to her brother.
“Well, Freddie Pickens deserved the kick and to pee himself for torturing that poor frog,” Bunny declared, gripping her chopsticks. “I don’t want to talk about any of that old stuff, okay?”
Ben leaned back in the chair. His eyes were on his food, but his mind was obviously someplace else. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I just love thinking about the past, you know? Sometimes I think I’d rather live there.”
His voice had gotten quiet, solemn even. Her brother was usually so carefree—so happy-go-lucky—that it was easy to forget he had his own demons in his past. His ex-wife being one of them. Though she hated to admit it, Bunny was more similar to the woman than she’d like. They both craved the city and all its trappings, and they both wished Ben hadn’t wasted his charm and his talent running a Podunk convenience store in Mosswood.
“Yeah well,” Bunny said, for lack of knowing what else to say. “Memory Lane is closed for tonight, thank you very much.”
“Pity,” Death sighed, making Bunny flick a warning look in his direction.
The siblings continued to eat in silence for the next little while, with Death sitting at ease beside them. Bunny continued avoiding looking at both of the men in the room, focusing on her food instead, even though she didn’t really have much of an appetite. She told herself if she ate now, then she could shower, get into bed and work on getting some more souls distributed before morning.
But Ben had other ideas.
“Why don’t you ever want to talk about where you come from?” he asked earnestly. “Are you that ashamed?”
“I’m not ashamed,” she shrugged, trying not to delve too deeply into the connotations of that word. “I just don’t think my whole life should revolve around the fact that I was born in a one-horse town in the middle of nowhere.”
“Some of us have made a pretty good livin’ in that town,” Ben challenged her. He laid his chopsticks on the side of his plate and put the plate down on the coffee table to signal he was done eating. “Might do you some good to think about how lookin’ down your nose at us makes us feel.”
This wasn’t the first time her brother had accused her of being a citified snob. She sighed. “I’m sorry. I really don’t mean to.”
Ben pressed his lips together, as though choosing his next words carefully. He looked tired in more ways than one, and even though they had both joked about Bunny burning the candle at both ends, she couldn’t help but worry that her baby brother was doing a little of the same.
“I know you’ve got your reasons for not likin’ where you’re from,” he said with a small shake of his head. “I just think that if you looked a little bit harder, you might find some reasons to also like it.”
“Maybe.”
It was as much of a concession as she’d ever be willing to allow on the topic, and she deployed the two syllables as a peace offering before standing with her plate. She held her hand out for Ben’s.
“Here.”
“Thanks.” He handed it to her and set about packing up the food as she got rid of the scraps and put the plates in the kitchen sink. “I’m beat. Guess I ate too much, huh?”
“We usually do,” she said, as Ben brought the Chinese food boxes in and put them away in the fridge. “Night,” she said on her way out of the tiny kitchen, fixing him with a small smile in the hope of solidifying their truce.
Ben’s voice drifted to her as she eyed the now-empty couch. “Night, Bun.”
* * *
“Bun?”Death asked with a sarcastic shake of his head. He didn’t bother to keep his voice down, seeing as Ben couldn’t hear him anyway. He was sitting on the side of her bed, his left leg bent and his hands clasped in his lap. She closed the bedroom door behind her, hands automatically finding her hips.
“Don’t call me that!” she hissed, not wanting to be overheard. Her eyes flashed with anger. “What the hell did you think you were doing, third-wheeling our conversation? Don’t you have any decency?”
Death shrugged with maddening nonchalance. “Technically, decency is a human trait—one which many would argue they possess less and less of.”
It was such a typically roundabout answer that she suddenly felt exhausted by the thought of arguing the point with him.
“Well, I hope you had fun eavesdropping,” she sighed, stalking over to her side of the bed. She ripped back the covers before shooting him a pointed look over the top of her thousand-thread-count linen. “Now if you don’t mind, I need to get some sleep.”
But he didn’t budge. He leaned back on one elbow instead, looking for all the world like a teenage girl at a sleepover who was still too full of gossip to sleep. “I do mind, actually,” he said, inclining his chin. His masculine, chiseled jaw usually gave her pause for admiration, but in that moment it was a sign of pure unadulterated arrogance and it made her want to quite literally kick him out of bed. He spoke before she could voice that desire.
