If I Die

monotony.

“That’s not supposed to happen, but neither is this.”

“This” was me. I wasn’t supposed to happen to Tod. My next breath burned in my throat, and he shifted onto one foot staring down at me like he wanted to sit, but couldn’t let himself get comfortable until he’d said what he had to say.

“They were starting to get what they wanted from me. I stayed close to my mom and Nash, and that worked for a while, but it wasn’t enough. Only two years dead, and it was getting harder for me to feel…anything. I was starting to slip into the darkness. The numbness. And the worst part is that it wasn’t even scary. I was losing myself, and I didn’t even care.

“Then I met you, and at first I didn’t understand what had happened. What had changed. All I knew was that I wanted to be near you. Then you helped me with Addison, even though it nearly got you killed— I nearly got you killed—and I started to understand how special you are. But by then, you were getting serious with Nash. With my brother—one of few people in the whole world I still gave a damn about. So I tried to stay away. I tried so hard.” His voice cracked on the last word, and my heart cracked with it. Tears stood in my eyes, but I was afraid to let them fall. I was afraid to even breathe for fear of missing a single word.

“But you kept pulling me back. You’re the brightest thing I’ve ever seen, Kaylee. You’re this beautiful ball of fire spitting sparks out at the world, burning fiercely, holding back the dark by sheer will. And I always knew that if I reached out—if I tried to touch you—I’d get burned. Because you’re not mine. I’m not supposed to feel the fire. I’m not supposed to want it. But I do. I want you, Kaylee, like I’ve never wanted anything. Ever. I want the fire. I want the heat, and the light, and I want the burn. But…”

He left that word hanging. The most hated word in the English language. And I knew what was supposed to follow it.

“But Nash…” I finished for him, and my tears fell in scorching trails down my cheeks.

Tod nodded miserably. “He’s my brother. He can hate me his entire life, but that won’t change the fact that he’s my little brother, and I’m supposed to protect him, not hurt him.”

“And we hurt him.” I couldn’t get Nash’s face out of my mind, how betrayed he’d looked standing in the hall. When he saw us.

“Yeah. We did.”

“Why…?” I started, then had to suck in a deep breath to continue. To control the heartbroken, angry tears that wanted to flow again. I stood and turned away from him while I wiped my face, and my frustration built. “Why did you say Nash and I aren’t right for each other, if you didn’t want to hurt him?” I demanded, turning on him again. “Why the hell would you show me that if it wasn’t going to lead to anything?”

“Because it’s true. Even if you were both scheduled to live forever, eventually he would have messed up again and hurt you. Or you would have broken his heart. But I won’t deny that I had selfish reasons for saying it, even though it was the truth.”

“So you wanted us to break up.”

“Hell yes, I wanted you to break up,” he said, and for one horrible, wonderful moment, relief almost overwhelmed my guilt. “But I didn’t want to be the catalyst. I wanted you to realize he was wrong for you, then realize that I might not be. I’m so sorry it all came out of order, and if I could undo what he saw and go back and do this the right way, I would. He’s my brother.”

I sniffled back more tears and sank onto my comforter again. “So, you’re here to let me down easy?” This was the part that would kill me, two days early. I could feel it.

“No,” he said, and I looked up, sure I’d heard him wrong, or I was missing something. “I’m here because I couldn’t stay away from you. I’ll spend the next three hundred years trying to make this up to Nash, if that’s what it takes. But I’m going to spend the next two days with you. If you want my company.”

My next breath was so shallow I hardly had the air to speak. “I want that so, so much.”

Tod sank into my desk chair and a slow, relieved smile formed on his face. “I was sure that after all that, you’d decide this was too much trouble.”

“This?”

“Us,” he clarified, rolling the chair closer to the bed, one foot at a time.

I scooted toward the edge of the mattress to meet him, my pulse rushing so fast just breathing felt surreal. “There’s an us?”

“As far as I’m concerned…” He leaned forward, his mouth inches from mine, and my pulse spiked. “There’s nothing but us.” His lips met mine, and he kissed me slowly, deeply, like we had all the time in the world. And in that moment, that’s exactly what it felt like.

When I finally pulled back to catch my breath, my head was spinning. Or maybe the whole damn room was spinning. “I think that was even better than the first time,” I whispered.

“There’s no one gawking at us now.”

But that reminded me of the public spectacle our first kiss had become, and why we’d been there in the first place. And of the questions I still had to ask, as badly as I hated to ruin the moment. “So…Thane’s gone?” I asked, and Tod nodded. “What does that mean, exactly?”

“It means that Levi will be scrambling to replace him.”

“Does he know what happened?”

Tod leaned back in my desk chair. “He knows that Thane had an unfortunate run-in with everyone’s least favorite hellion and that he won’t be rejoining the workforce. But he might not be entirely clear on how Thane and Avari happened to meet.”

“Are you going to get in trouble for this?”

He shrugged, like it didn’t matter. “I’m dead. What more could they do to me?”

But I wasn’t buying his nonchalance. They could demote him back to reaping on the local nursing home circuit. They could transfer him to another district, away from his family. They could recycle his soul and end his afterlife.

The thought that Tod could die—for real this time—because of me made me want to vomit my junk food dinner all over my comforter. “The truth. How bad could this get?”

Tod exhaled slowly, then met my gaze with a heavy one of his own. “Levi wanted to make an example out of Thane and he’s pretty pissed that I messed that up. But he likes me—as much as a reaper his age can really like anyone—and he’s the one who left the information around for me to find in the first place. I think he’ll leave it alone as long as he can claim plausible deniability. But if anyone over his head finds out I acted against another reaper— one who outranks me—without permission or evidence…well, let’s just say there’ll be a sudden opening at the pizza place.”

My nausea swelled into bone chilling horror. Tod could still die—again—for what he’d done for me. But he hadn’t hesitated to do it.

“So he hasn’t replaced Thane yet?” I said, trying not to think about how badly this could end for Tod. There was nothing I could do to change that. I couldn’t make him take back what he’d done, and even mentioning it would sound ungrateful.

“Not that I know of.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Knowing that Levi was looking for someone to kill me—though inevitable —was creepy and beyond bizarre.

Though it hadn’t even happened yet, my death was already hurting people, in spite of my best efforts to make it easy on everyone. I should have told Emma earlier. I’d thought that by not telling her, I’d be sparing her several days of advance grief, but it turns out, I was denying her the chance to come to terms with my death.

And Nash…

“I should have taken your advice,” I blurted out, with no conscious warning from my brain that I was even going to speak.

Tod took one look at the pain that must have been swirling in my eyes and he put on a teasing grin as easily as most guys would put on a baseball cap. “About the pizza? I told you, goat cheese is no joke.”

“No.” He was going to make me say it. “About Nash. I should have let Sabine have him six weeks ago. You were right—if I’d let him go then, he would have moved on by now, and whatever’s going to happen on Thursday