didn’t know what was more shocking-the unexpected gentleness of his roughened palms or the pooled warmth as they slid down her fingers, cocooning her knuckles, heating her skin.
“Remember how you said we should all be more gentle with each other?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you should start with yourself.”
Kit frowned.
And then Tony was back.
And then, regrettably, Grif’s touch was gone.
Chapter Thirteen
Grif had been fighting sleep for a day and a half, ever since Sarge had threatened him with unforgettable dreams and a “living nightmare.”
So when he lay down on Tony’s couch while waiting for Kit to finish primping for the charity ball, he told himself he was just going to shut his eyes for one moment. Rest his body for the night to come. He had no intention of actually sleeping, which was why he was already entering the bungalow, hand-in-hand with Evie just as he had fifty years prior, before he even realized he was dreaming.
Of course, by then it was too late.
This dream picked up where the first had left off, on the final night of his first life. He and Evie had already arrived in Vegas and been driven by golf cart to a room that was a bungalow in name only. Hidden deep within the thick foliage of the Marquis’ horseshoed center, these were the high-roller suites. Evie squealed at the sight of all the white marble and gold paint, right at home in accommodations meant for a movie star.
“Everything’s comped, Mr. Shaw,” the bellboy said, but the owner had already told him that.
“It’s like the honeymoon we never took,” Evie beamed, once they were alone. Guilt sailed through Grif at that, but he’d been working long hours back then, and she had, too, until a few weeks later, when she quit, saying standing on her feet behind the counter at Woolworth’s was too hard on a woman trying for a baby.
But she wasn’t remotely fragile on this night. They exhausted themselves with each other in the bedroom, then again in the gilded shower. The heated water was bested only by Evie’s hot mouth, her need for him thrumming in the tightening of her thighs around his waist.
“Tonight we’ll make a baby,” she said, the words wet on his cheek. Tonight all their greatest hopes for the future would come true.
And she stared up at him like they already had.
But the Grif that was fifty years older and
I love her best like this, he thought. Bare-faced, stripped of clothing and artifice, wet and giving him a look that belonged to him alone.
But later, when her hair framed her face in tight, gold waves, and she wore a wiggle dress and high heels, he thought her just as perfect. She dabbed perfume at her wrist, a lilac memory that made him pulse, and flashed him a knowing smile. Her nails matched her dress, a blend of dark cherry and glitter left over from the holiday season.
“It’s perfect for Vegas,” she explained, blowing on the tips, helping them dry. Then they wrapped their arms around each other’s waists and traded the privacy of their courtyard bungalow for the action of the clanging casino floor.
Evie went on to repay Sal DiMartino’s generous hospitality by chip-hustling her way through the craps pit. She moved like a charmer in a pit of snakes, and Grif was as enchanted as everyone else.
Yet this time he was also aware of the plasma.
He couldn’t turn his head, couldn’t do anything he hadn’t done the first time, but he’d dwelled in the Everlast, and knew what to look for now. The dead could spot death coming, even from the corner of their eyes.
So his eyes remained glued on Evie’s wrist, and as time ticked away on his celestial meter, he noted the gambler next to Evie watching it, too. The man, balding and wide, bit his lip as she threw a seven, hooting in celebration even as she slipped a couple of chips out of the rack near his waist. She turned her head away when he tried to buss her cheek in thanks, and fluttered her lashes at Grif, laughing like all of life was a game, and a grift at that.
Behind her, death-the world’s greatest con-inched closer.
Grif sipped at an old-fashioned, and then another. He switched to straight whiskey when Evie ignored the subtle jerk of his head and continued to hold the table like she was spotlit in the main lounge of the Silver Slipper Casino. He admired her moxy and style, every red-blooded man at the table did, but he was surprised to realize this time around that he hadn’t much liked it on this night.
So Grif drank some more. The Centurion in him, wise with hindsight, screamed for him to stop, that he’d need his senses and reflexes to react, to protect. But the old Griffin Shaw, the dream one-the dead one-kept drinking and silently fuming and watching that slim wrist throw sevens and spirit chips, mending and breaking hearts with fingertips that glittered.
The silver plasma gathering around him was now thick as mercury.
Then, without warning, they were back at the bungalow, and Sarge was right about the moments that followed. They were a living nightmare.
The movement was a blue-black slide from the shadows, too hard and fast for Grif to block, even without whiskey slowing him down. He slumped like a rag doll, but felt the wall, solid at his back, and pushed from it-moving forward, always forward, just like his boxing coach had taught. He didn’t yet feel the knife in his gut-the heat lightning of shock masked the severing of tissue and muscle and organs-but this time Grif felt
The shearing of his remaining earthly years. His mortal coil unraveling like spilled guts.
Then, somewhere, Evie screamed.
And the knife was suddenly in his hand. It was slashing and furious, in some ways more alive than he, and suddenly it, too, was covered in blood. Grif didn’t remember this part.
He staggered, catching his balance, watching as the guy he’d gutted twitched but didn’t get up. He was dark- haired and olive-skinned, wearing driving gloves that matched his black suit, and Grif had a moment to think he looked vaguely familiar… but then there were no moments left.
His skull popped and his legs shorted out, electricity surging through them in a numbness that was oddly sharp, not blunt. A second man, thought the Grif with Centurion hindsight. Why hadn’t he realized it before?
Didn’t matter. Again. The marble floor was littered with too much, the knife, the gold vase. Blood. His mortal coil. And glittering fingertips, Grif saw. Splayed in the shards of gold, attached to a delicate, crafty wrist now covered in droplets of blood.
He’d never even heard Evie fall.
Horrified, Grif tried to call out, yet his brain was swelling, pushing like putty against the crack in his skull. Baby, he thought as he began to rise and float… but there was nothing he could do. Nothing but live out the nightmare, and remember what he’d rather forget.
Nothing but die again and, this time, watch Evie do the same.
Grif!”
Kit had rushed into the room at the sound of the first cry, but froze when she saw Grif writhing and gasping, tears sliding from the corners of his eyes. She thought he was sleepwalking for a moment, but her voice had him lunging into a sitting position so quickly that he fell from the couch. He only hit his side on the coffee table, but he cried out like the wound had gone much deeper.
“Grif!” Kit rushed to his side. “Are you okay?”
