Chapter 32 Helena
Grim took me home after dinner—which he again refused to let me pay for.
Instead, more vintage cash came out of his wallet and went into the bill presenter, but the waiter didn’t say anything.
His lack of comment combined with the fact that he never asked if we wanted dessert gave away our server’s eagerness to be rid of us.
Or, rather, Grim—who (this time at least) wasn’t unfriendly.
He did, however, exude a certain… aura.
One that promised to end everything you held dear. That aura, though—it hit differently for me. Much differently.
Like I couldn’t wait to be drawn into his event horizon and crushed by that black hole pull…
If only I could be so lucky.
After parking The Judge in my usual spot outside my building, Grim escorted me up to my apartment door. We took the stairs instead of the elevator, because I guess neither of us wanted to play with fire any more than we already were.
“Do you want to come in?” I asked him. “I have some ice cream in the freezer.”
“There’s strawberry shortcake in your fridge, too,” he said, his deadpan bluntness along with the statement itself shocking me.
I squinted at him, perplexed. “Wh—how did you—?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Wait a second,” I said, hands going to my hips. “Not so fast. You’re saying you’ve been back in my apartment?”
“It’s from that bakery close to the library.”
He wouldn’t meet my gaze, but that didn’t keep me from blinking up at him, floored. Right before I sucked in a huge, loud gasp, a major revelation crashing over me. “Oh my God, it was you.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You did too!”
“Where else was I going to stash it?” he asked.
“No!” I piped. “You fixed my string!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, his voice gruffer than before.
But he wasn’t getting off the hook that easily.
“You fibber, it was you!” I narrowed my eyes at him. “How many times have you been in my apartment?”
“Am I in trouble?”
“Were you checking on me?”
He didn’t answer. Which was answer enough.
“I never saw you,” I said. “So it must have been after I went to bed.”
He swallowed hard. “You going to tell me off?”
“Well,” I said, folding my arms, “I can if you want to come in and have some stalker-berry shortcake with me.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” He refused to meet my gaze again, that faint odd growl back in his voice as he extended the car keys to me.
Did he think I really was mad? Or that I would bite? In his defense, if given the chance, I just might…
Dare I tell him that?
No. Dying from embarrassment was something I hoped to avoid.
I opened my hand and Grim dropped his keys into my palm—like he didn’t want to touch me. I gripped them hard, waiting to feel grounded by the burn of the cold metal.
“You’re not still thinking of going to talk to the higher-ups about me… are you?” I probed.
“I go back and forth,” he admitted, his voice still tight with some emotion I couldn’t pinpoint, “on whether or not it would do any good… for you.”
“Do… I get a last wish?” I asked him.
His eyes snapped up to mine, and a scowl darkened his expression. This time, I didn’t back down. It wasn’t that his (literal) death stare didn’t faze me anymore. Oddly enough, I’d just developed a tolerance to its gut-piercing, soul-skewering effect.
“I want you to go forward with the plan to wait,” I said. “I want you to do what’s best for you.”
“I’m not sure I can do that,” he said, his jaw tightening as he looked away, down the hall where the elevator dinged and opened for my elderly neighbor, Ms. Lynn.
I waved as she turned around after boarding.
She waved back half-heartedly, her wide-eyed attention, shielded by gaudy, rhinestone-encrusted cat-eye glasses, fixed on Grim—at least until the doors closed.
“It… will be okay,” I assured him. “And… if it’s me you’re worried about? Well, I will be okay.”
“No, you won’t,” he snapped, that gaze shooting back to capture mine, sharper than ever. “Do you even know what you’re saying?”
“I know what I have control over,” I told him with a shrug, “and… I know what I don’t. Fate, by its very definition, does what it wants, doesn’t it?”
“So do I,” he said.
I tilted my head at him, unable to help a small, bemused smile. “Are we having our first fight right now?”
“I don’t understand,” he growled, ignoring my teasing, his agitation growing. “Why aren’t you afraid?”
“Who says I’m not?” I asked. “But even if I am—and I am—that doesn’t change anything.”
To that, he offered no reply. After a shaky breath, I spoke again.
“Are you coming into the library tomorrow to talk to Hunter? That’s my coworker friend.”
“I’ll think about it,” he grumbled before turning and walking away, back in the direction we’d come.
I stood there and gaped after him until he vanished into the stairwell, at a loss for what I’d said, what I’d done, to chase him off after such a nice night—though maybe I shouldn’t have been.
Maybe his abrupt exit just meant he’d gotten a call for another Fated. Maybe I should be glad that, for the moment, I wasn’t on his list of tonight’s pickups.
I wasn’t glad, and in his absence, only sadness emerged.
I opened my apartment door and stepped inside, dropping the mail I’d stopped to collect on the way in on the little hall table.
The energy bill sat on top. Should I even bother paying it?
Sighing loudly, I kicked off my flats and scanned the darkened apartment, which I had cleaned and tidied since Grim’s last visit.
In vain, it seemed. Maybe I’d secretly been hoping he would stop by.
On the flip side, a part of me had worried about him having to step over clutter on his way to get to my soul if I happened to bite it here at home somehow.
I dropped my purse and the keys on the table next, ignoring the oppressive loneliness that closed in on me—right along with that hounding fear I’d just confessed to him that, despite all my jokes and dismissive comments, I did feel. Acutely.
At least—ironically—whenever I wasn’t with him.
I threw the deadbolt and put the latch on the door, my heart in shambles now that I was officially alone, left to my own company and once more saddled with the crushing reminder that every second I continued to breathe was borrowed—bought by a being, a man, who had never meant to sell himself out for my sake.
Like so much else in life—and death—it had just… happened.
Now it was time to accept that, even if he did care about me, I was still just a mistake he needed to rectify.
Not an easy task since reaching that level of acceptance required me to skip all the other stages of grief.
How many of them were there again?
Right at this moment, they seemed to all be coming for me at once.
Every night until tonight, I’d done an okay job of avoiding my deeper feelings, right along with the full weight of what my death really meant. What it would mean for others…
I’d done all the things, of course. All those things that 90 percent of people never got to do.
I’d FaceTimed with my parents, for instance, and met up with Brooke at a local orchard for wine tasting and tipsy apple picking.
The two of us had laughed so hard over old times, and for a few hours, I forgot about my predicament.
Yesterday, I’d called my other friends to catch up, pretending the whole time that nothing was the matter when, in reality, everything was the matter.
Tonight, though, I didn’t want to talk to anyone. No one but him.
Since I wasn’t going to get to do that, I could try my usual trick of marathoning musicals or glutting myself on romance novels, but the problem was those things didn’t make me feel alive.
In the days since I’d left the Hallowed Halls, all my pastimes had come to feel like diversions I couldn’t afford.
Not that I had the bandwidth to concentrate on them anyway.
Instead, I was caught in this weird state of in-between, simultaneously wishing for a miracle and that the other shoe would go ahead and finally drop—if for no other reason than for a release from the pain of being locked in limbo like this.
I pressed a hand to the door and leaned my forehead against the cool surface, pining for my soul’s undertaker more than I had for anyone or anything after learning I was staring down the barrel of a proverbial and inescapable gun.
On the one hand, my longing for him made no sense. On the other hand, considering the way he made me feel, that finding love was possible, my desires made all the sense in the world.
But then, Grim hadn’t returned my advances or flirted back—no matter how bold the knowledge of my impending demise made me. He was still a pipe dream. We were a pipe dream. And I didn’t have time for those anymore.
“I wish it wasn’t so,” I whispered, pushing away from the door, ready to end the night with a good and long ugly cry now that reality had finally seen fit to slam into me, totaling my already teetering world.
When I turned around again, though, I jumped to find him standing in front of me, all six foot whatever of his sexy, doom-and-gloom self stationed between me and the rest of my empty apartment, a never-before-seen ferality in that icy gaze.
My breath caught while my heart launched into hyperdrive.
Glowering hard at me, tension knitting his entire frame, he closed the distance between us in two long strides.
He caught me with those tattooed hands.
Then his lips—warm and demanding—found mine an instant before he backed me into the door, pinning me there.