Chapter 28 Helena
It had been three days since my… interlude with Grim. To say I was experiencing reaper withdrawal would be an understatement.
There was something so comforting about him. Not to mention alluring…
I’d learned so many unexpected things about him, like his love for music, that he played music, where he “lived,” and how he conducted, well, business. I’d met his adorable family. Learned how much they cared for him…
I could certainly see why.
But… each of those things, illuminating as they had been, had only brought more burning questions about who he truly was—and why our souls seemed to sing to one another this way.
Did his soar the way mine did when we’d intertwined like that?
Exiting the director’s office after delivering our department’s finalized summer-reading-program plans to his desk, I headed for the stairwell, today’s shift officially over.
Yesterday, the director had smiled so big when he told me the “stolen” bookmobile—which the police had recovered—would be repaired and operational again within the month.
I’d smiled back despite my disappointment that we wouldn’t be getting a replacement, and I’d be spending another frigid winter ushering bundled school kids into Gus the Bus, who’d already tried to kill me once.
Something told me he’d probably be the way I was going to go out after all…
Then again, maybe I’d go out in a more dignified way, like choking on a taco or slipping on a rubber duck.
The good news was that no one seemed to know of my involvement in the Halloween-night events. My car had vanished entirely, which told me Grim had done something with her.
I wasn’t complaining. At least, in the fleeting time I had left—however long that turned out to be—I wouldn’t be fielding questions from the police or having to make up believable excuses for how and why my car had been turned into an accordion by the library’s hijacked bookmobile.
With a sigh, I paused at the entrance to the stairwell, my gaze going to the silver elevator doors cordoned off with yellow caution tape. Repairs were still underway and likely would be for the rest of the year. Was it bad, though, that I wished I could, right at that moment, climb aboard again?
It wasn’t that I had a death wish—I didn’t. I loved my life, my job, my family, my patrons…
I just… longed to see Grim.
Shoot. Maybe I did have a death wish.
If I wanted to be super honest with myself, it wasn’t just to see him, either.
Would we have time for another soul-shaking make-out session when my proverbial library card finally got scanned in for the last time?
Maybe he’d just been humoring me… Giving me a little thrill before my spirit got weeded from the shelves of life, stamped with a mystical “WITHDRAWN,” and chucked into the great recycling bin beyond.
We’d agreed he wouldn’t stop my fate from unfolding again, and why would he when, with Cedric in check and a covert way to the White Basin uncovered, the need no longer existed?
At the same time, I still wanted to believe he’d once again find a way to get me off another haywire elevator.
Maybe that was wishful thinking, but then the stars had written hope into the job description of my entire being. Hope could be a beautiful thing, too, a lifeline and a friend—something to hold on to even as your grip on what you held most dear, or even everything… slipped.
I took the stairs to the first floor, then nodded to Sam, the afternoon security officer, as I exited through the main entrance. From there, as the late-afternoon sun took on a more golden hue, I started down the white stone steps of the library.
I had to pause as I neared the book drop.
Peter stood there, leaning against one of the giant metal bins, hands shoved in the pockets of his sophisticated black double-breasted peacoat.
He wore a gray scarf that complemented those silver eyes, but not enough for the Grim-thoughts-induced butterflies in my stomach to do anything other than fall dead to the floor of my being.
“Helena,” he said as I neared him, headed toward the parking lot.
“Peter.” Since we worked together, I almost had to keep the interaction cordial, even though there were any number of colorful things I’d like to call him at that moment.
Names I’d picked up from my favorite storytime crew like “poop head,” “stupid face,” and the perennial favorite, “doo-doo brain.”
“Where are you going?” he asked as I strode straight past him. “And why did you block me?”
Peter had left me a string of texts after Halloween night asking me if I wanted to talk, if he could bring me a cup of coffee at work, and finally, if he could take me out. I’d ignored him and, with that last text, blocked him.
Apparently, hitting that block button was the only thing I’d ever needed to do to get his full and undivided attention.
Once again, joke’s on me…
“Now you’re giving me the silent treatment?” he asked as he kept pace with me to the parking lot.
“Do you have a work-related question?” I asked him.
“Helena,” he said, and it was the wounded tone in his voice that had me stopping at last to wheel on him. “What is it?” he pressed, spreading his arms. “What’s happened? Are you still angry about that day on the elevator?”
The day I’d nearly died, he meant. The day I’d nearly died again.
Had he really forgotten everything that had happened after he’d gotten off that elevator?
Leave it to Peter to assume my reaction had everything to do with him, and nothing to do with the fact that I didn’t have time to waste on him anymore. In truth, I never did.
“We’re at work,” I reminded him, picking up my stride again, shouldering the yellow and lived-in boho patchwork purse I’d returned to after ditching the beat-up pumpkin number.
“Neither of us are on the clock,” he countered as he hurried to catch up with me.
“I’ve got somewhere to be,” I said—which wasn’t entirely a fib. My plan was to take myself to see a movie, and to buy a treat. Lately, the walls of my apartment had seemed to squeeze me, its emptiness reminding me of how much I’d missed out on by chasing the wrong things.
Sure, I had a good job, and I adored my family, but I had never gotten to meet my person. And it was looking more and more like… I never would.
I blamed myself for spending time chasing men who hadn’t been playing for keeps—men who were not interested in finding their soulmate. Men like Peter.
“Where are you headed?” he asked. “Can I come with… you…”
He trailed off as we neared The Judge, a scowl clouding those handsome features as I pulled free Grim’s jingling keys.
“What in the devil is that?” he asked, his gaze bouncing between me and Grim’s monster car.
“Mine’s in the shop,” I said—slinging out a full-on fib this time. I followed that up with the truth, though. For some reason, I still felt obliged to offer Peter particulars that were really none of his business. “I’m… borrowing it.”
“From whom? Mad Max?” he demanded, his voice pitching upward, a look of abject disgust crossing his features as he rounded the black-as-night vehicle, peering over the rims of his glasses the way a food critic would regard a moldy hot dog.
His scrutiny of The Judge stoked my anger, though I couldn’t exactly say why. Regardless, I turned toward him, chin lifted and shoulders thrown back.
“My boyfriend,” I said, a bald-faced lie—one blurted out with the hopes he would shut up and get lost, leave me alone for the remainder of my short life, and take his pompous pride with him while he was at it.
And the stricken look on his face—it was beyond worth the twinge of guilt my deception evoked. He stared hard at me, incredulous.
“Your boyfriend?” he repeated, like he couldn’t believe such a word could ever be paired with someone like me.
That hurt, though it shouldn’t have.
“Yes,” I said, shoving the key into the driver’s-side door.
“Since when do you have a boyfriend? Wait a second. Is that who you had in your apartment with you the other night?”
Again, the night I’d nearly died, he meant.
But could this seriously be ruffling his feathers?
Wasn’t he seeing Cleo?
“I’m not comfortable discussing my personal life with work colleagues,” I shot back, my anger rising.
“Really,” he snipped, his tone wry as he pointed to himself. “Well, it wasn’t so long ago that you felt comfortable doing quite a bit more with this work colleague.”
For that, I should slap him. His words, sharper than any he’d ever thrown at me, sharper than I deserved, cut me to the quick and left me reeling.
Tears threatening, I opened the driver’s-side door of The Judge, wrangling the keys free again. I froze with a gasp when, with the shifting of the car’s side mirror, a familiar figure—and face—snapped into view within its reflection.
I swung around, the dead butterflies in my stomach revived in an instant, all of them taking wing all at once, their sudden flight relieving me of my ability to breathe.
Objects in mirror were indeed closer than they appeared…
He stood there in human form, dressed like a metalhead dream in torn jeans, half-laced boots, and leather jacket, black tattoos crawling out of the collar of his Metallica T-shirt to map his neck.
“Grim,” I somehow managed to utter.
But that hardened blue gaze didn’t even flicker my way. It instead remained unblinkingly trained on the man behind me—Peter.