“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“I just…” The humor drained from his voice. “I don’t want to leave you alone, okay?”
The guilt in his voice made my heart hurt. I couldn’t stand him thinking any of this was his fault.
“I’m fine. I swear. Besides, Mom’s home. I won’t be alone.” I grabbed my book from where he’d tossed it onto the pillows. “I just need a quiet night. No drama unless it’s the fictional kind.”
“Fine.” Cash ran his fingers through his messy hair. “Have your nerdfest. But I’ll call you later to check on you.”
“One of your famous 2:00 a.m. drunk calls?” I smiled. “Can’t wait.”
Cash disappeared out the window, shimmying it closed behind him. I listened to the cold November wind pulse against the walls of the house. Just the sound of it made me shiver. I tugged my red cardigan around my chest to hold in the warmth and burrowed into my covers, flipping the pages of the book I was reading.
I’d made it through three more chapters by the time Finn came back, stumbling through the wall like he’d been shoved into the room. He braced himself on the sill, pulling back the parts of himself that had seemed to melt right through the Sheetrock and cursed under his breath.
“You’re not very good at that, are you?” I asked, feeling relieved and upset all at the same time.
He glanced at me over his shoulder, then cast a haunted look back out the window. His eyes flickered with the movement of whatever he was seeing. Snowflakes, probably. Even from my bed I could see the eerie ballet of white dust against the black velvet sky outside.
“Were you…” I hesitated, searching for the right word. “Were you collecting a soul?”
“Where’s Cash? I thought he’d be with you,” Finn said, carefully deflecting my question. He didn’t have to answer, though. I could see it written all over his face. The pain and regret. The mask of horror that death brands into a person’s eyes.
I turned my attention back to my novel, pretending to read so I wouldn’t have to look at him. “He’s drinking with some of his buddies. They’re forming a garage band,” I said. “Not my thing. Besides, you and I never got a chance to finish talking.”
Finn didn’t say anything right away. He didn’t even look at me. But after a few moments of silence, he sat down beside me on the bed. The mattress didn’t give. The blankets didn’t shift. So close and still so far away.
“If you’re waiting for me to tell you I regret it, that’s not going to happen,” he said, his voice sounding tight and uneven. “I don’t. I wouldn’t take it back even if I could. You deserve to be here, and you sure as hell didn’t deserve to be cast off as the scum of the underworld for the rest of eternity because I made a mistake. If that makes me a bad person, if it makes you hate me…then I guess it is what it is.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. I was afraid of what would happen if I let the words out. I didn’t hate him. I…loved him. He’d risked everything for me. He was
How could I hate him? I was just angry, and no matter how hard I tried, it wouldn’t go away.
“I am sorry I lied to you,” he whispered. “I’m sorry I got in the way of who you were supposed to be. If I had just left you alone that first day…”
“Don’t say that.” I moved closer. “I
“You could be in Heaven if it wasn’t for me. Do you realize that? You could still have that if I could just let go.”
“I don’t want Heaven. Not yet anyway,” I said. “I want…this.” I reached out, but Finn jerked away like I’d burned him.
“I can’t…I don’t trust myself with you right now.”
“What’s wrong?”
Finn scrubbed his hands over his face. “Nothing. Okay, not nothing. But I’ll get over it soon.”
I bit my lip and watched him. “If it helps, I don’t hate you.”
“You should.”
The lights flickered above us, the wind outside waging a war with the power lines. Without thinking, I leaned across Finn to grab a candle and a lighter from my nightstand drawer. My arm sank through his shimmer and dissolved through his arm. He inhaled sharply and I froze. My hand glittered like silver dust beneath his.
“I’m sorry,” I said without moving. I could feel his warmth against my cheek as I hovered over him.
“Emma…please,” he said breathlessly. He shut his eyes, like he was trying to get some control over himself. “No. I should go.”
“Please don’t.” The lights flickered again, so I pulled away to light the candle, then set it on the opposite nightstand beside me. “Talk to me.”
He watched me for a moment, his gaze jittery. His hand moved across the mattress between us, but he yanked it back before it got to me. “I don’t…I don’t deal very well with, um…” He swallowed.
“Fire.”
“Is that where you were? A fire?”
He nodded. “A lot of people died. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.”
“That’s how you died, isn’t it? A fire made your plane crash?”
He looked away, a pained expression on his face. “How do you know I was in a plane crash?”
“I researched your name on the Internet.”
“Why?” He still wouldn’t look at me. I wanted to make him. It felt necessary to life that he look at me at that moment.
“Because I care,” I said. “And because I feel like I should know these things, considering what you are to me.”
“And what am I to you?” Finn asked just as the lights gave a final flicker and went out. The candle glow made him look ethereal in the dark, his skin like caramel, his eyes the deepest shade of jungle green.
“I…I feel something when I’m with you that I’ve never felt before,” I whispered as if anyone else were there to hear. “Like we’re two halves of a whole.”
“You feel that way even after everything I did?”
“Yes. Don’t you feel it?”
He finally rested the back of his head against the headboard and stared at the ceiling like he was looking into a nightmare. “I was a fighter pilot in World War II. My plane was shot down at the Battle of Midway. I was only eighteen. I didn’t even finish high school,” he said in a flat voice. I had a feeling it was the first time he’d ever said it aloud since his death. “My mom begged me not to go, but I went anyway. At the time, it seemed right. I remember thinking I’d come home and show them all when I was a war hero.” He laughed, but it sounded bitter. “I did come home a war hero. Or at least the letter and medal that represented me did, all wrapped up in a pine box. I really showed them, huh?”
“I’m sorry.” It sounded so inadequate but it’s all I could think of to say.
“It’s okay. Ancient history, right?”
“And they made you a reaper right away?”
“Yes.”
“Did you hate it?”
“Not always,” he said. “Not until I had to take you.”
I shifted so that I was close enough to feel the warm energy coming off of him. “Tell me what happened.”
“You were with a boy. His truck went over a guardrail into a river.” Finn dropped his head and stared at his clenched fists in his lap. “I’d never doubted what I had to do. Never gave it a second thought. But after seeing you lying there in the snow, knowing you’d dragged yourself out of that river and died alone…for the first time in over forty years, I hated what I had to do. I hated myself.”
He stopped to rub his hands over his face again. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say to this boy who had seen me die. This boy who was doing everything in his power to make sure it didn’t happen again.
“When I came back the next day, you were at the gates, waiting,” he went on. “I thought for sure you’d hate me. Most of them did. Not at first, but after they realized how trapped they really were, what kind of fate waited for them, they always hated me.”
“But I didn’t.” Hesitantly, I met Finn’s intense gaze. “I didn’t hate you, did I?”
“No.” He shook his head. “No…you loved me, I think.”
