If I Die

Nash sighed and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “I just don’t understand how you can take this so lightly.”

“What do you want me to do, slap on some black eye shadow and host my own wake? I’m gonna die, Nash. There’s nothing anyone can do to stop that. But I’ve got six days left, and I don’t want to spend them thinking about how it’s all gonna end.”

I sat up on the bed and studied him, trying to see him like I had six months earlier, when we’d first started going out. Before he’d betrayed me to feed an addiction to Demon’s Breath that was my fault in the first place. I’d spent the past month and a half learning to trust him again—letting him convince me that was possible—but now I was out of time. As with everything really good in life, I’d have to either jump in headfirst, or not at all.

“What?” Nash said when I just stared at him, thinking. Wondering if I could really go through with the idea taking root in my brain. Or maybe someplace a little lower. “You better not be thinking something stupid, like breaking up with me now will make next Thursday easier for me.”

“Nash, if I thought there was any way to make my death easier for you, we wouldn’t be together in the first place. I just… I don’t want to dwell on all the things I’m not gonna get to do.” I took a deep breath and ignored my racing pulse. I couldn’t choose when or how my life ended, but I could choose how I spent what time I had left.

I can do this.

I took his hand and pulled him out of the chair. I didn’t have to pull very hard—it was more an issue of guiding him where I wanted him. Onto the bed. With me. “I wanna do some of them, before it’s too late.”

I scooted backward and he crawled over my legs and up my torso as I lay back on the pillows, and my heart beat so hard I could hear it echo in my ears.

“This is why you closed the door?” he whispered, dropping a series of tiny kisses at the back of my jaw.

“It wasn’t premeditated….” I breathed, running my hands over the front of his shirt, feeling the planes beneath. Was his heart beating as hard as mine? Was that even possible?

“Coulda fooled me.”

“Shut up.” I slid one hand behind his neck and pulled him down until his mouth met mine. His lips were warm and soft, and the taste of him brought back nothing but good memories—the only advantage to having been possessed by a hellion is that you don’t actually remember what happened while you were away from your body. Which made it just a little easier for me to push aside the knowledge that he’d been less than trustworthy in the past and just decide to trust Nash now.

I’d been unable to do that completely so far, but knowing I was going to die soon—knowing I was about to lose my chance—made me bold. Not quite fearless, like Sabine, but definitely brave. And more than a little eager.

My mouth opened beneath his, and Nash kissed me deeper. His weight settled onto me, heavy and warm, and very, very real. A nervous tingling started in the pit of my stomach and spread like pins and needles everywhere Nash touched me. I’d never felt more alive, and the irony in that thought did not escape me.

This is going to happen. I was ready, mostly because there was no more time to not be ready—not unless I wanted to die a virgin. And of all the things I still wanted to do before I died, this was the only one within reach.

Nash’s mouth trailed down my throat, and I closed my eyes, concentrating on the electric feel of his hands, the scalding heat from his lips. Letting it all overwhelm the sharp edge of fear holding steady like the eye of the storm raging around me. I had a lot of things to be scared of—real things—but this wasn’t one of them. And slowly, I let my hands trail down from his chest to the waist of his jeans.

I gave the top flap of denim one sharp tug, and the button slid through the hole.

“Whoa…!” Nash rolled onto his side, staring down at me in confusion. “What are you doing?”

“I think you’re pretty familiar with the concept….”

His gaze searched mine. “Is this a test? Should I ask what color your first bike was?”

I laughed. Six weeks earlier, I’d used that question as a sort of password, to make sure I wasn’t talking to a hellion who’d hijacked my friend Alec’s body. “I’m not possessed.” I looked up at him from the pillow, letting him see the truth on my face. “I’m just ready.”

“You weren’t ready last week.” Nash sat up, frowning down at me from the edge of my bed now. “And the only thing that’s changed is…”

“The only thing that’s changed is that now I’m dying. I’m out of time, Nash, and I want to do this. Now.” Before I got nervous, or scared, or started to feel really, really embarrassed by the fact that I was having to convince him.

“Your dad’s in the other room.”

“So let’s go to your house.”

He shook his head slowly. “My mom’s home.”

I shrugged. “Fine. Let’s go to the lake.”

“Kaylee…” Nash scrubbed his face with both hands, then looked at me with the most conflicted regret I’d ever seen. “You know I want to, but…”

I sat up, and I could feel my cheeks flaming. Was he turning me down? After all the times he’d hinted, and asked, and outright pushed? “But what?” I demanded, and I could hear the bite in my own voice.

“Not like this. You don’t really want this. You’re just trying to avoid thinking about next Thursday. Or maybe you’re trying to cross things off some kind of morbid checklist. Either way, this isn’t really what you want, and —”

“Don’t tell me what I want!” I snapped, but he only put his hand over mine and leaned closer, so that I had to see the depth of the regret swirling in his eyes.

“—and I swore to you once that I knew you well enough to know when you want to stop, even if you can’t tell me. Don’t make a liar out of me, Kaylee. Not again.”

He was right. Damn it.

“Okay, I get it. But things have changed.” I sucked in a deep breath and looked right into his eyes, begging him silently to understand. “Everything’s changed, Nash. I do want you. And you want me. You’ve wanted this for months, and now we’ve only got six days to make it happen before we both lose our chance.”

He closed his eyes, and I realized that was to prevent me from seeing whatever he couldn’t stop them from showing. When he finally opened his eyes, they shined with good humor, and only the lines in his forehead told me it was forced. “How did this turn into you begging me for sex?” He grinned, and I laughed out loud.

“You’re not gonna let me live it down, are you?”

Nash’s smile faltered. “No more life and death jokes, Kaylee. This is hard enough as it is.”

“They say humor is the best defense.”

“No, they say the best defense is a good offense. But you can’t take the offensive with death. Though he’s awfully easy to piss off sometimes…” Meaning Tod, of course. Though, honestly, Nash usually meant to piss him off.

“Whatever. Where do we stand on the subject of my dying wish?” I leaned back against the pillows again, hoping to tempt him.

“I’m your dying wish?” He lay down next to me, and I lifted my head so he could put his arm behind it.

“Well…not quite. My dying wish is not to die. But you’re a close second. So where do we stand?”

He ran one hand down my arm and my pulse spiked when his fingers splayed across my stomach. “We stand…”

My desk chair creaked, and I looked up to find Tod sitting in it backward, facing away from us—the most courteous entrance he’d ever given us as a couple. And while most of me was frustrated by the disruption, some tiny part of me was also a little relieved—and confused by the discrepancy in my own emotions.

“Hope I’m interrupting something.” The reaper swiveled to face us and Nash sat up, cheeks already flaming.

“Get. Out,” Nash growled.

Tod rolled his eyes. “I made Kaylee a promise. As usual, I’m just the messenger.”

“What’s up, Tod?” I laid one hand on Nash’s arm before he could say anything else.

“Mom’s in the kitchen with your dad, trying to talk him out of doing something stupid. It sounds like she could use your help.”