8. Grim #2
At first, it is hardly more than a brush of lips, so gentle I almost convince myself I've imagined it.
Then she leans into me, closing the last fragile inch between us, and suddenly she tastes like coffee and sugar and funeral cake, warm and wonderfully alive.
Every careful wall I've spent centuries building simply... disappears.
When we finally pull apart, she lets out a tiny, breathless laugh.
“Was that your best try,” she asks, smiling up at me, “or are you still practicing?”
I can't help smiling back.
“Mixed results.”
She bumps my shoulder with hers hard enough that I nearly upset the vase beside us.
“I think there's potential.”
God help me, I want there to be.
“So,” she asks, her eyes bright with hope, “is this going to be a thing?”
The answer rises to my lips before I can stop it.
Yes.
Yes, if I could rewrite the universe.
Yes, if I could forget everything I know.
Yes, if I could be anyone else.
Instead, my hands begin to tremble.
She notices immediately.
Of course she does.
Without saying a word, she lays her hand gently over mine.
“I’m not going to break,” she says.
You will, I think. Not today. Not tomorrow. But someday, because everyone does, and I know exactly how cruel time can be.
“I need to tell you something.”
The smile fades from her face, replaced not by fear but by quiet attention.
Later, when the orders are finished and the shop has settled into its familiar afternoon hush, she makes coffee—tar-black and unsweetened, exactly the way she likes it.
I sit opposite her with my hands folded while she turns the mug slowly between her palms, watching the steam curl toward the ceiling.
“Do you ever feel,” she asks after a while, “like you’re waiting for something, but you don’t know what?”
“Always.”
She nods slowly.
“The first time I saw you, I remember thinking... here's a man who's seen too many bad endings, but still keeps showing up for the beginning of the story.”
The words land somewhere deep inside me.
“I've been trying to tell you the truth since Graymere.”
She raises an eyebrow.
“I assumed that's where the kissing interrupted your train of thought.”
Despite everything, I laugh.
“It did.”
“I thought so.”
The warmth between us makes what comes next almost unbearable.
“I’m not who you think I am.”
She gives me the faintest smile.
“Of course you're not. If you were, I'd have you figured out already.”
I stare down at my hands, suddenly aware of how strange they look resting on the countertop. Once they carried a scythe. Once they turned an hourglass. None of that belongs here among flower stems and ribbon and chipped coffee mugs.
“I should have told you before I kissed you.”
“Told me what?”
I draw a breath out of habit more than necessity.
“I’m not really Grim.”
She tilts her head.
“Not really Grim, as in that's not your real name? Or not really Grim, as in you're secretly a tax accountant in witness protection?”
The joke almost saves me.
Almost.
“Not like that.”
She waits.
“I am Death.”
The words settle quietly between us.
Not dramatic.
Not theatrical.
Simply true.
She doesn't laugh. She doesn't recoil. She studies my face with that same thoughtful patience she's shown every flower she's ever arranged, as though she's turning the truth over in her hands to see how all the pieces fit.
Finally she speaks.
“I think... part of me already knew.”
I say nothing.
“When I told you my dad was in hospice, you didn't try to comfort me.” She looks up. “You just nodded. Like you understood.”
“I did.”
Another silence settles between us, but it feels different now. Not awkward. Thoughtful.
“So...” she says quietly. “You know.”
“Yes.”
“My father?”
“Yes.”
She swallows.
“And... me?”
For the first time since we've met, I find I cannot hold her gaze.
“Yes.”
The word barely makes it past my throat.
“You've known all along?”
“Yes.”
She looks down at our joined hands, her thumb absently brushing across my knuckles.
“When?”
I almost answer.
The date is as familiar to me as my own name.
Before I can speak, she lifts her free hand.
“No.”
I blink.
She shakes her head gently.
“I don't want to know.”
“You're sure?”
A small smile returns to her face, sad but unmistakably genuine.
“I still have flowers to plant.”
Something inside me gives way.
She squeezes my hand.
“Does it ever get easier?”
I don't need to ask what she means.
“No.”
Just one word.
One honest word carrying centuries of loneliness.
She watches me for a long moment before speaking again.
“That sounds terribly lonely.”
No one has ever pitied me for what I carry.
Not kings.
Not saints.
Not poets.
Only the florist.
“I didn't want to be,” I whisper, and I mean everything at once.
The Reaper.
The lonely man sitting in her flower shop.
The fool who almost walked away from the only happiness he'd ever been offered.
“Then don't.”
For one impossible, beautiful moment...
I believe she might actually mean it.
The coffee has gone cold between us.
Neither of us notices.
“It isn't a trick,” I say quietly. “It isn't an act. You don't have to stay because you feel sorry for me.”
“I know.”
“You don't have to stay at all.”
She smiles.
“You kissed me.”
“I did.”
“You came back.”
“I did.”
“I think that's considerably more interesting than the whole Death thing.”
Despite everything, I laugh again.
She points a finger at me.
“Besides... maybe you're just terrible at your job.”
“I was,” I admit, truth and irony folding together so perfectly they become the same thing.
She slips her fingers through mine.
“You don't scare me, Grim.”
I look down at our hands, at life holding on to Death as though neither one finds it particularly strange.
Then I look back at the woman who somehow made the impossible seem ordinary.
“Good,” I say with a shaky smile.
“Because I'm absolutely terrified.”