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Summoning the portal felt like betrayal. As the pathway between worlds opened up, he walked through, cradling her tightly. He stepped out on the other side, not where he’d taken her captive, but where she deserved to be.
Home.
Clean, organized, yet homely and comforting, he thought with admiration. There were cushions on the couch, including a little rectangular one with an embroidered catchphrase sewn in the middle. All her belongings had a place, and he could tell she’d chosen everything specifically to reflect her.
Bold. Beautiful.
It struck him that as lovely as her home was, she didn’t belong here anymore. His actions would make it incredibly difficult for her to reintegrate with her own kind, isolating her when she needed support to get through what amounted to—in her eyes—the physical and emotional trauma of a crumbling long-term relationship.
Pressure weighed on him now that he was back on the mortal plane, the ever-growing list in his head screaming for attention.
“This is it, darling,” he murmured, walking over to a comfortable-looking couch to settle his lover into the cushions. His heart cracked down the center when she clung to him, her fingers biting into the material of his jacket. “You have to let me go, Lara, and live your life. A second chance. Not many people are gifted those, not in this world. Make the most of it before we meet again.”
“This isn’t what I want. It’s not what you want either.”
“No, but I understand what you can’t right now—life is precious, too precious to be wasted on me. Once you’re reaped, there’s no choice but to move forward.” Gently, he pried her fingers free, then reached for the fluffy blue blanket tossed over the arm of the couch. “This…what I feel for you…it isn’t going to go away anytime soon. If this is love, I don’t want it to.”
Lara slumped into the cushions, tears glistening on her lower lashes before they trickled down her cheeks. “In fifty years, I’ll be old, gray, and emotionally reliant on a cat named Bob.”
Seth chuckled sadly, tucking the blanket around her. “I’ll let you in on a little secret. When you die, you become ageless. No gray hair, no wrinkles, no pain. The best you, ready to take on the next challenge.” Stroking a lock of blonde away from her face, he gave her a sad smile. “As for Bob, well, he’ll be the luckiest cat in the world if he loves you as much as I do.”
“Seth,” she pleaded.
He kissed her again, sealing his fate and tying himself to her in a way that couldn’t be easily broken. Five decades of waiting wouldn’t kill him, even if it might drive him insane. “This isn’t the end, Lara. It’s not even really goodbye.”
“Goodbye for now?” she asked bitterly.
“Goodbye for now,” he confirmed, taking his hands off her and rising. He couldn’t keep procrastinating, otherwise it wouldn’t be goodbye at all. “Take a shower, get some rest. Tomorrow is a new day.”
She lifted her hand and traced the tattoo of his name. “I love you, Seth.”
The sense of awe he felt hearing those words again changed something inside him. Every time she said them, she left a lasting impression deep in his heart, and he began to believe he might actually be worthy of them. “I love you too, Lara.”
Before he could do something stupid like decide to keep her, he summoned the portal again and stepped through, glancing over his shoulder for one last look at the woman who had irrevocably altered his universe.
Those wonderful green eyes would haunt his thoughts for years to come.
Pain speared into his chest when the portal shut behind him, leaving him in limbo. Taking a few moments to reconcile his actions, the choices he’d made, he fisted his hand against his heart and gave a short, bewildered laugh.
The mortal had done the fantastically impossible—she’d cheated Death, and made him fall in love.
Ruined him in the best way.
Shaking his head, Seth threw himself back into the routine of work, thoughts of her plaguing him. When he guided the soul of an Asian man from the devastation of a car wreck, Lara was with him. Lifting the spirit of a child from the confines of a hospital bed, freeing her from months of debilitating pain, he felt Lara on the other side, walking with him.
He was finishing up with a skiing accident in the Swiss Alps when the list in his head jangled noisily to a halt, names dropping back as one jumped to the top.
Lara Townsend, thirty-two. Suicide. Immediate retrieval required.
Time fractured. The world around him splintered into jagged fragments.
For a moment, he was frozen in place on the side of a snow-laden mountain, unable to think or breathe. Immediate retrieval meant Lara had taken the fates by surprise, doing something so unexpected that even the higher powers hadn’t been aware of it being a possibility.
But he should have.
Fuck, he should have known she wouldn’t be patient.
In an instant, he was crashing through the portal again, shaking snow from his hair as he strode across her bathroom floor to where she lay in the tub. He crouched beside her, reaching out to stroke her hair as those fucking eyes of hers rolled slowly to meet his, barely a spark of life left in the green. “What the fuck did you do, darling?”
