grasp. I closed my eyes as Cash’s touch forced gravity to take hold of my skin. It burned as it took on the form of something I’d left behind so many years ago I’d lost count. Once I was solid, Cash pushed the braid off my shoulder, letting his fingers slide over my shoulder blade, and
I opened my eyes. He stared at the strap of my dress.
“Why can’t I hate you?”
It was only a whisper. I never realized a whisper could hold so much emotion. Could sound so tortured. I couldn’t stand a sound like that coming out of his mouth. So I did the only thing I could think of to make sure the sound didn’t come out again. I leaned up on my tiptoes and pressed my mouth to his.
His lips were so cold against my mine that I wondered if I was burning him. I started to pull away to check, but Cash wound his arms around my back and crushed me closer. So close the air between us was lost. So close, I couldn’t tell where I ended and he began. Vaguely, I realized our legs were moving. A clumsy dance that landed us on the sofa in the corner of the room. All the way, he never broke the kiss. That kiss worked like stitches. It was the only thing holding either of us together.
Trapping the hurt inside. I was terrified of the pain that would spill out when it ended, so I didn’t let it.
Cash lay back on the sofa and I straddled his hips without him having to guide me. His hands slid up my thighs and gripped my hips. His mouth opened a little wider under mine and I gasped at the dull sensations that flowed through me, growing stronger by the second. He wasn’t just forcing my flesh into existence. He was making me feel things I hadn’t felt since a heart had beaten with life in my chest. My hands wandered over the smooth, hard lines of his chest, trying to memorize every dip and ridge and muscle. When my fingers brushed over his bare stomach, Cash groaned, his hips lifting to press into me as if he wasn’t in control of his own body.
“Anaya…” My name rested like a plea against his lips and all I could feel was his mouth working its way down my throat. The fire in my veins. The electricity that his fingertips created. A blue ribbon of energy wrapped around us, binding us, and nothing had ever felt so right. Cash’s hand worked between us and flipped open the button of his jeans, and a flare of heat exploded to life at my side. My blade. Oh God… I pulled away gasping, my palm glowing against his chest. He was so close the heat drained out of me in an instant, replaced by fear.
I looked down at Cash. My braids created a wall around our faces. My eyes the only light in our little safe haven. He reached up and cupped the side of my face, trying to catch his breath.
“This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. I’m not supposed to see it coming.” His voice cracked. He knew how close he was. He felt it too. “I don’t want to see it coming, Anaya.”
“I know,” I whispered.
His dark eyes searched my face. For what, I wasn’t sure. He rubbed his thumb across my bottom lip, so soft it made me tremble.
“I’ll go,” he finally said. “I’ll do whatever Balthazar wants me to do.”
“Cash—”
“If it means I get to keep you,” he said, pressing his finger to my lips to quiet me. “If it means we can have more of this. Then I’ll do anything.”
I sat up and placed my hands on his chest. He felt like ice under my palms. He felt like he was already dead.
“You have no idea what you’re saying.”
Cash followed me up, so that his face was only an inch from mine.
“For once in my life, I know exactly what I’m saying,” he said. “I’ve never felt like this about anyone, Anaya. And it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that this isn’t going to work with me alive and you dead. It isn’t going work if I’m in Heaven and you’re in Hell. There is only one option that gives us a chance.”
Cash’s eyes swept over my face. His hand reached up to tuck a braid behind my ear.
“I feel like I’ve been waiting for you for a thousand years,” he whispered. “I’m taking that option.”
I searched his eyes for some kind of doubt. Something that said he was only saying these words out of fear. Or desire. The only thing I could see was certainty. And love.
“You’re sure?”
He nodded and tugged me down to brush his lips against mine.
“It’s weird,” he whispered against my lips. “Not even you can make me warm anymore. It must not be far off.”
I pushed Cash back down onto the sofa and curled up beside him. Wrapped every part of myself around him, trying to lend him my heat. He wound his arms around me and closed his eyes.
“How is it going to happen?” he asked.
“When your body gives out…I’ll reap your soul.”
“With the blade?” He sounded nervous.
I laughed. “Yeah. But it won’t hurt. It will be a relief. No more pain. And then I’ll take you to
Balthazar.”
I waited for him to ask me what exactly Balthazar would want him to do, but he never did. I had a feeling he didn’t really want to know. I raked my fingers through his damp hair and pressed a kiss to his temple.
“What happens if you don’t get here in time?”
His voice carried the force of an atom bomb in the silence, even though it was only a whisper. I could feel him shaking, so I smoothed my hand over his arm.
“I’ll get here in time,” I said.
“You can’t promise that,” he said quietly. “I need to know what to do if you don’t get here and they do. Noah’s stronger than me. And he’s good at what he does.”
It took me a minute to find the words. I didn’t want to say them, but he was right. It was unrealistic to think that there was no chance of that happening. Especially when the dead kept pulling me away.
“Then you do what they say.” I closed my eyes and squeezed his arm. “You do whatever you have to do to stay safe until I can get to you.”
He didn’t say anything. Just nodded and blew out a shaky breath. A breath that sounded like it held enough fear for the both of us.
“Go to sleep,” I whispered.
“I don’t want to,” he said. “I don’t want to wake up as someone else. I’m not ready for that. I’m not ready for any of it.”
“That’s not going to happen,” I said, trying so hard to sound confident. Honestly, I didn’t know how this worked. I’d never met a soul that had lived as many lives as Cash. The only kind of souls that stayed in circulation that long were the ones that continued to search for something. They never felt resolved, so they continued on their path, life after life. Death after death. It was amazing he’d made it this long. And just when his journey was about to end…I kept him from it. I rested my head against his.
“You wouldn’t be happy if I came out the other side of this Tarik?”
I turned his face so that my eyes could see his. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because…he’s not you.”
Cash wound around me a little tighter.
“Tell me what you were like,” he murmured, sleep pulling him under. “When you were alive.”
I thought back, something I didn’t let myself do very often. Usually the pain was too great. But now it wasn’t so bad. The past wasn’t nearly as scary when you had a piece of it in your present. I rested in the groove of his arm and smiled.
“My father was a fisherman,” I said. “He even owned his own boat.”
“Really?” Cash’s cheek rose with his smile. “Did he ever take you with him?”
“Sometimes,” I said. “But mainly I helped my mother. Sometimes I would burn the bread just so I’d have something to feed the birds on the beach after Father sailed away. I used to think if I fed them and sent them off with a prayer, that they’d keep watch over him. Keep him safe somehow.”
“Did they?”
I swallowed the bit of pain that rose up my throat like bile. “No. One day he sailed away and never came back. The sea took him away…and it decided to keep him.” I paused, wondering if I should tell him the rest. Cash’s voice echoed in my mind:
“It took Tarik, too,” I said.
