If I Die

people, but they never saw me. There was no interaction. No involvement. No malice or creepy intent. I’m not like Thane—I never stalked people I was scheduled to reap. I was just…watching. Living vicariously, which is the only way I can live now.”

“I’m with you so far…” And sympathy was starting to win out over the creepy factor. He must have been so lonely.…

“Good.” The tension in his frame started to ease. “Anyway, I stopped watching you when we started hanging out together for real.”

“After Nash started using?” I asked, and Tod nodded. I couldn’t be around Nash while he was going through with drawal. The wounds were still too raw, and the thought of seeing him hurt. But Tod had come over a couple of times during my otherwise lonely winter break, and we’d done…nothing. We’d just hung out, watching stupid YouTube videos and listening to music, openly avoiding the subject of Nash and his frost addiction.

Maybe that should have been my first clue….

“Once I realized I wanted more than friendship from you, it didn’t seem fair for me to see you when you didn’t know I was there.”

My relief was almost enough to mitigate my irritation at having been watched in the first place. “So…if you weren’t spying, how did you know…what Nash and I were about to do the other day?”

“Sabine called me.”

I closed my eyes, resisting the urge to slap my own forehead. How had I not figured that out? I’d called Sabine for advice, then hung up when Nash arrived, and she’d probably had Tod on the phone before my voice even faded from her ear. Damn Sabine! But she wasn’t working alone….

“What could possibly make you think what I do in private is any of your business?” I demanded, my voice low with anger.

“Sleeping with Nash would have been a mistake, and I don’t want anyone to hurt you—including you.”

“You don’t get to decide what’s a mistake for me, Tod.”

He frowned, obviously confused. “Was I wrong? Do you wish you’d done it?”

“No.” Especially now that Nash and I had broken up, and I could see the truth about my own motivations—I hadn’t wanted to sleep with Nash so much as I’d wanted to lose my virginity before I died. “But that’s not the point. I have a right to make my own mistakes, just like everyone else. Don’t ever do that again.”

“Fine.” He recrossed his arms over his chest. “But I’m not sorry I did it. And neither are you.”

I nodded slowly. “Fair enough. So…” I hesitated, not sure I really wanted the answer to what I was about to ask. “Were you and Sabine working together to break up me and Nash?”

“No. She tried to talk me into that when she first got here, but I told you, I didn’t want to be what broke you two up.”

“But you didn’t mind her trying it, even though it’s morally repugnant to intentionally break up someone else’s relationship?”

Tod’s brows arched in amusement over my moral outrage. “How is it wrong to put everything you have into getting what you want most in the world?” Which was exactly what Sabine had done.

Or was he talking about wanting me like that—more than anything else in the world? My pulse raced so fast my head started to swim. He wanted me more than anything? Wait—focus…

“It’s wrong because you don’t have the right to end someone else’s relationship!” Had two years of reaping souls skewed his moral compass, or was he always like this?

“First of all, keep in mind that this is all hypothetical. I didn’t try to break up you and Nash—that was Sabine.” The reaper leaned forward, his eyes bright with interest, enjoying what he obviously saw as a recreational debate. “And second, if the couple shouldn’t have been together in the first place, breaking them up is actually doing a good deed. So you’re welcome. Hypothetically.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or yell at him. “You don’t get to decide who should be together and who shouldn’t!”

“Are you saying I was wrong?” Tod’s gaze narrowed on me in challenge. “Did you really think you and Nash belonged together for the rest of your lives, even after what he did to you?”

Damn it. “I did at first. I thought I could forgive and forget.” I’d tried to. But the truth was that I couldn’t make myself trust him again, though I’d probably never admit to Sabine that she was right about that. “But that’s not the point.”

“That is the point! Right and wrong aren’t as simple as black and white. You and Nash would have done more damage to each other together than the breakup would have done to either of you, and just because you couldn’t see that doesn’t make it wrong for those who care about you both to point out the truth.”

For one long moment, I could only stare at him in disbelief. “It’s a good thing I’m not going to live long enough to go out with you, because you’d drive me crazy.”

“There’s a good kind of crazy, Kaylee,” he insisted softly, reaching out to wrap his warm hand around mine. “It’s the kind that makes you think about things that make your head hurt, because not thinking about them is the coward’s way out. The kind that makes you touch people who bruise your soul, just because they need to be touched. This is the kind of crazy that lets you stare out into the darkness and rage at eternity, while it stares back at you, ready to swallow you whole.”

Tod leaned closer, staring into my eyes so intently I was sure he could see everything I was thinking, but too afraid to say. “I’ve seen you fight, Kaylee. I’ve seen you step into that darkness for someone else, then claw your way out, bruised, but still standing. You’re that kind of crazy, and I live in that darkness. Together, we’d take crazy to a whole new level.”

My pulse whooshed in my ears so fast I could barely hear myself speak. “I only have—”

“Two days.” He squeezed my hand. “So what? You can spend them feeling sorry for yourself, or you can let me help make them the best two days of your life, and my afterlife. So what’s it gonna be?”

I stared into his eyes, like I’d never seen him before. And I hadn’t—not like this. But he’d obviously seen me, better than anyone else ever had.

“Well?” Tod watched me, his hand still warm in mine.

In answer, I leaned forward and kissed him again.

17

“Hey, Kaylee,” my dad called, as his door squealed open at the end of the hall.

I jerked away from Tod so fast the whole room seemed to spin around us, and when I looked up, I found my dad watching us from my doorway, surprised into a rare moment of total speechlessness.

“Hey, Mr. Cavanaugh.” Tod swiveled to face him in my desk chair, and I could see my father struggling for a response.

“Tod, could you excuse us for a minute?” he said at last.

Tod gave me an amused look no one else could have interpreted. “I’ll be in the living room.” Then he disappeared, and the chair spun without him.

My father sighed and stepped into my room, closing the door behind him. “Could you please ask him to walk like a normal person when he’s here?”

I shrugged. “He’s not a normal person.”

“Is this going to be a regular thing now?”

“I don’t know how regular it could be, considering how little time I have left.”

My dad sank onto the end of my bed and picked at one thumbnail before meeting my gaze again. “This is going to sound stupid, considering the circumstances, but don’t you think this is happening kind of fast, Kaylee?”

Another shrug. “I guess that depends on your perspective. From Tod’s, it’s been a long time coming.”

He seemed to think about that for a minute, then stared at his hands again and nodded. “Yeah, I guess it has.”

I frowned at him in surprise. “You knew?”