Chapter 37 #2
“I didn't bring you here,” Greg said. “I just couldn't stop you either.”
Around them, the store was erupting into motion. The manager was on his phone. Someone was taking a video. The employee who'd been mopping a second ago was staring at the toppled shelf as if he was just now realizing that he'd be spending a long time cleaning up this mess.
Slowly, Greg rolled off Dustin.
“We're going to talk about this,” Dustin said. Not a question.
“Yes,” Greg said.
The manager hurried over. “Are you guys okay? I am so sorry — we had no idea that unit was loose! We're going to cover any medical expenses, anything you need—”
“We're fine,” Dustin said. He let the manager help him to his feet. Then he reached down and pulled Greg up, one-handed, and didn't let go of his arm.
Greg glanced around the shop.
Valerie was gone.
They walked out of Garrett's Grocery without paying for their groceries—the manager had insisted.
The truck was where they'd left it. The sun was still out. The sky was still that relentless Colorado blue, which seemed wrong. Things should look different after you'd phased through a shelf and tackled someone out of the path of a collapsing steel unit.
The world should at least have the decency to change its lighting.
Greg didn't voice this thought as he climbed into the truck.
His clipboard was on the seat where he'd left it.
He picked it up.
Before he even checked, he could tell that something had changed.
He looked at Dustin's page. He tried to, at least.
He couldn't find it.
Dustin's file had been removed from imminent collection—at least that was what Greg hoped.
“Your file is gone,” Greg said. His voice sounded strange to his own ears. “I think the system recalculated.”
Dustin looked at him. “What does that mean?”
“It means you're going to die of old age.” Greg closed his eyes for a moment and breathed. “I think. If you're not careless about it. You could live your whole life.”
Dustin didn't respond right away. He sat with his hands on the wheel and his jaw working and pasta sauce drying on his shoulder.
“I couldn't tell you,” Greg explained. “Because if you knew, you wouldn't have gone. Or you would have tried to outsmart it. And the system might have counted it as cheating.” He looked down at the clipboard. “I wanted to do for you what you did for Sarah Meadows.”
Dustin's hand tightened on the steering wheel. “What does it mean for you?”
Greg didn't answer.
“Greg. What does it mean for you? What happens to a reaper who blocks a collection?”
“I don't think I'm a reaper anymore.” He knew the words were true as he said them.
Dustin turned in his seat. “What?”
“I interfered with a scheduled collection. I used my abilities to prevent a death the system had authorized. That's...” Greg shook his head. “The system won't take me back.”
“Are you going to dissolve?”
“I don't know.”
“Is the demon going to come for your soul?”
“I don't know that either.”
“Then what do you know?” Dustin's voice was tight and his eyes were narrow. “What part of this did you actually think through?”
“None of it,” Greg admitted.
“None of it.”
“There wasn't time. The shelf was falling.”
“I'm not talking about the shelf! I'm talking about all of it!” Dustin gestured wildly. “Last night, this morning, what happens to your soul and your job and your — your entire existence—”
“Dustin.”
“I told you!” Dustin sounded angry now. “I told you I didn't want anyone to sacrifice for me anymore.”
Greg looked at him.
Dustin's brows were furrowed and he was looking at Greg as though Greg had done something unforgivable, and maybe he had, except—
“This isn't sacrifice,” Greg said.
“You might dissolve.”
“That's not what I mean.” Greg turned the clipboard over in his hands.
“You keep saying people sacrifice for you.
Your mother. Me. As if we're losing something. As if the trade goes in one direction.” He looked at the dashboard.
“Before you, I was a reaper. I showed up, I collected souls, I filed paperwork. I would have done that for eternity and then I would have dispersed into nothing. No afterlife. No memories. Just... gone.” He swallowed.
“And I would never have known what I was missing.”
He turned to Dustin, needing him to understand.
“You took me to a diner,” he said. “And you put a burger in front of me and I didn't know what it was.
Not really. I didn't know what anything was.
I didn't know what a milkshake tasted like or what it felt like when someone wiped ketchup off your face or what—” He stopped.
The lump in his throat made it hard to speak.
“I didn't know what a kiss was. I'd seen hundreds of humans do it and I'd written it down in my notebook and I never understood what it meant until you put your mouth on mine in a motel room because you were sad and I was there.”
Dustin wasn't looking away. His jaw was tight but he blinked fast.
“I'm not sacrificing anything,” Greg said. “I gained everything. All of it. Every single thing I have, you gave me.” His voice gained strength. “Without you, I would never have…”
“Never have what?” Dustin's voice was rough.
Greg didn't finish the sentence.
He leaned across the seat and kissed him.
It was not the best kiss, objectively speaking. The angle was wrong, the center console was between them and Greg's hands were still holding the clipboard. But Dustin's hand found the back of Greg's neck and pulled him closer.
And for a moment there was nothing else — no system, no demon, no collection windows, no dissolution. Just Dustin's mouth and Dustin's hand and the way his breath hitched when Greg pressed closer, and the word Greg couldn't say out loud because saying it would make it too small.
Lived.
Without you, I would never have lived.
Reapers didn't live. They existed. They moved through the world like a breath moves through a room — unnoticed, never changing the world around them.
They watched humans fight and grieve and love and lose and they filed it all away and they never once understood why someone would hold on so hard to something that was always going to end.
But that was what made humans brave. Not that they didn't know about death — they knew.
They knew better than anyone. They carried it with them every day, the knowledge that everything they loved was temporary.
And they loved anyway. They held on anyway.
They fought tooth and nail to keep each other alive for one more year, one more day, one more hour, not because they thought they could win but because the holding on was the point.
The holding on was what made it mean something.
Greg understood that now.
He pulled back. Dustin's hand stayed on his neck, fingers pressing against his pulse.
“I can never be a reaper again,” Greg said quietly.
It was a fact, as simple and as clear as anything he'd ever known. He'd walked through a shelf to save someone he loved and he could already feel the system letting him go. He was losing the thing that had defined him, like a uniform he'd taken off and couldn't put back on.
He looked down at the clipboard in his lap.
Its edges were soft.
Just the way Greg's own edges had gone soft that morning in the motel room when he'd been dissolving.
Greg ran his thumb along the metal. It blurred slightly under his touch, like ink in water.
He knew what he had to do.