8. Grim
GRIM
Three days pass. I haunt the alleys of Blackthorn Bay, silent and unmoored, ducking into doorways or slipping down side streets whenever I glimpse her hair through a window.
The blue flower loses a little more of its color each day, petal by petal, yet I cannot bring myself to part with it.
Each hour that stretches the distance between us seems to grow something else, too—a quiet hunger, a restless need to know whether I have hurt her, or whether she has already shrugged me off and carried on with that relentless human optimism.
I watch her once, just before dark. She is closing Belladonna Blooms, humming softly as she counts the cash drawer.
Her hands are stained green from the day's work, and loose strands of hair have escaped to frame her face.
Every now and then she talks to herself, voice low and fond, as though the flowers deserve conversation as much as water.
She never looks toward the window. She isn't expecting me.
I am the one who cannot give up the ghost.
Every legend gets it wrong. They imagine Death as a riddle, a drama, a dark stranger who comes for you alone beneath a moonlit sky.
Most of the time, it is nothing so singular.
It is paperwork and waiting. It is watching—endless watching—until you know every line of a life and the exact moment it will break.
When Lavinia locks up for the night and walks home, I follow at a distance.
Not to stalk, I tell myself. Or perhaps only to stalk a little.
I tell myself I am guarding her from the occasional fool who mistakes darkness for opportunity.
She walks with her head high, backpack slung over one shoulder, her hands free and unhurried.
Even in the empty streets, she never checks behind her, never quickens her pace.
I wonder if she senses me anyway, the way animals sense a storm long before the clouds arrive.
At her doorway, she turns and looks directly toward the dying streetlamp beneath which I stand. For one impossible second, I think she sees me.
Instead, she wipes the mist from her glasses, unlocks the door, and disappears inside.
I stay until the light in her apartment goes dark.
It is as close as I allow myself to come.
That night I lie on my back in the field behind the supermarket, counting the seconds between distant train horns.
I force myself to remember every face from the meadow—the little boy flying his kite along the tree line, the old woman walking her terrier, the truck driver leaning against his cab to smoke while watching the clouds gather overhead.
Every day, endings braid themselves quietly beneath beginnings, the way roots spread unseen beneath flowers that won't bloom until spring.
I think about telling her.
What would it cost?
At first she might laugh, right up until she saw my face. It would sound absurdly like a breakup—it's not you, it's me—except in my case it would be literally true, a cosmic joke wrapped around my own existence.
By dawn I have walked nearly the entire city. My legs ache pleasantly beneath me while the scent of fresh bread and fryer grease mingles with the promise of rain. I could leave. I could disappear before anyone noticed, vanish for a month, a year, another century.
But I don't want to go.
Not yet.
More than anything, I want to tell her goodbye.
More than that, I want her to ask me not to.
On the fourth morning, I finally decide.
The shop is dark except for a single light glowing somewhere in the back. I stand outside the locked door for nearly a full minute, rehearsing elaborate speeches that collapse under their own weight. Eventually, it occurs to me that this is not a bank robbery.
I do not need a plan.
The sign reads:
Closed for Lunch. Knock if Emergency!
I knock anyway.
“One sec!” she calls.
A moment later the door swings open.
Her hair is tousled, her cheek dusted with either pollen or watercolor paint. She blinks once when she sees me, and then relief settles across her face so quickly she probably doesn't realize I've seen it.
“You're alive,” she says, folding her arms. “The rumors were true.”
I have spent four days rehearsing this moment.
All I manage is a nod.
“Come in,” she says, stepping aside. “I’m eating leftover cake and pretending to do inventory. Want some? It's from a funeral, so it's probably haunted.”
I follow her inside.
The familiar warmth of Belladonna Blooms settles around me, rich with the scent of lilies, damp greenery, and fresh-cut stems. Someone has tied a tiny blue ribbon around the bell above the door. The little detail makes me smile more than it should.
She leads me toward the workbench where a single slice of cake sits abandoned beside an open ledger, sunlight catching the frosting like polished marble.
She offers me the fork.
I shake my head.
“Suit yourself.” She takes another bite before pointing the fork at me. “So... did I come on too strong, or did you just ghost me for the poetry of it?”
She says it lightly, but there is enough honesty beneath the joke to make my chest tighten.
In the warm, familiar comfort of her flower shop, surrounded by every celebration and farewell a bouquet has ever marked, the truth suddenly feels impossible to speak.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “I… needed time.”
She studies me for a heartbeat longer.
Then she nods.
“Okay.”
Just that.
No lecture.
No guilt.
No demand for an explanation.
She simply reaches for a bucket of chrysanthemums and drags it onto the workbench.
“I’ve dated worse,” she says. “You know what they say. If you love something, let it ignore you for several days, then show up looking like it hasn't slept and smelling faintly of swamp.”
I laugh before I can stop myself.
“I do tend to haunt.”
That earns another smile.
“You want to make it up to me?”
You are going to vaporize this poor woman.
Still, I nod.
She sweeps an arm dramatically toward the back room, where a line of empty vases waits beside bundles of flowers.
“See those? Two dozen 'sunny but dignified' centerpieces for a corporate luncheon. They're all yours. I'll even let you use the good scissors.”
For a moment, I simply stand there.
Being put to work—her quiet way of forgiving me, or perhaps simply resetting the balance between us—feels oddly comforting.
I move toward the workbench while she watches with her chin resting in her hands, wearing that same soft, impossible expression.
The first time I ever touched a human soul, I wasn't prepared for the warmth that lingered long after they had gone. I find echoes of that same warmth here, in the tools she uses every day, in the stems she has already trimmed, in the faint imprint of her hands upon the work itself.
I begin arranging flowers one stem at a time, letting the rhythm quiet my thoughts. Yellow tulips. Clementine ranunculus. Soft greenery to frame them. It is nothing like the wreaths I spent centuries watching people lay upon coffins.
After a few minutes, Lavinia slips in beside me carrying a roll of floral tape.
“Here,” she says. “You have to anchor the stems first or they'll splay out when you add water.”
She lays a careful grid across the mouth of the vase before handing it back.
“See?”
“I believe I've just learned something.”
“You'd be amazed what florists know.”
Her fingers brush mine as she reaches for another strip of tape.
The contact is brief.
Entirely accidental.
I feel it anyway.
She glances at me, her smile fading into something quieter.
“If you're going to disappear again..." she says softly, “…at least tell me goodbye this time."
The words catch somewhere behind my ribs.
I almost tell her then.
What I am.
Why none of this can end the way either of us wants it to.
Instead, I hear myself ask, “Do you ever regret it?”
She frowns.
“Regret what?”
“Living here. Doing this.” I gesture toward the flowers surrounding us. "Growing beautiful things only to cut them down."
She considers the question for a moment before gently straightening a tulip.
“Flowers don't die in here,” she says. “They go to weddings. Birthday parties. Hospital rooms. They sit on kitchen tables and remind people they're loved. They make someone smile on a day they really needed it.”
She looks up at me.
“That's a much better ending than rotting in the mud.”
Something inside me shifts.
Perhaps she isn't talking about flowers at all.
When I finish the last arrangement, she gives me a mock-serious round of applause.
“Impressive.”
She tilts her head.
“I honestly thought you'd lop the heads off everything and call it modern art.”
“We all contain surprises.”
“We do.”
She pulls her hair into a loose ponytail and leans against the cooler door.
“Hey, Grim…”
I look at her.
Unable, as always, to look anywhere else.
She bites her lip. “I’m sorry if I misread things the other night. I thought—I mean, I thought we were having a moment. But you don’t have to explain if you don’t want to.”
I can hear my own pulse, or think I can, roaring behind my ears.
There is hurt in her face, softened by pride.
She is giving me the easy way out, offering me an escape I do not deserve.
This woman, who loves life with every stubborn piece of herself, has decided to protect even the clumsy, accidental parts of it.
I could still run. I could let this fade, as all things eventually do, and disappear before either of us had to suffer through the truth. Or I could let something bloom, even knowing I might be the one to wither it in the end.
Instead, I step toward her.
One step.
Then another.
She doesn't retreat. Her blue eyes stay fixed on mine, steady and trusting, and before I can lose what little courage I've managed to gather, I do the one thing I've been replaying in my mind since the meadow.
I kiss her.