Chapter 41 Helena #2
The tears returned to burn my eyes, their essence different now, infused with the happiness that came with the realization I’d had him all wrong. The truth of our situation soured that happiness, though. “Death is going to catch up to me. And The Few. They’re going to catch up to you.”
“Let them come,” he said, his voice catching with emotion, and he swallowed, those blues searing into me.
“Let all of it come. That’s what life is anyway, isn’t it?
That’s what death is, too. It comes when it wants.
Ultimately, there’s no stopping it. But the fucking dash that comes in between the dates on a tombstone?
You made me realize, long or short, that’s the part that matters. ”
“Oh, Grim.” I lifted a hand to brush away my tears. “I… I don’t know what to say. This… it all feels so impossible.”
“Because it is,” he half said, half growled. “We are. So let’s just be impossible for as long as we can. Let the match burn down. It’s fucking going to anyway at this point.”
“I… I can’t let you do that,” I said.
“Let me?” he snarled, closing the distance between us, bringing that tattoo that, for me, dwelled right at eye level closer.
“There isn’t a force on this plane of existence, or any other for that matter, that could keep me away from you.
Tell me to fuck off and I will still catch you from every fall, pull you off every elevator, sweep you out from under every train, walk you out of every fire, pull you out of every ocean.
Maybe The Few will find out, but maybe they won’t.
When it comes down to it, I’m not going to be any worse off. ”
“You will be,” I argued.
“You don’t get to say that.” He grabbed me, pulling me toward him.
“Even if they send me to the depths of hell, I won’t really be there, because I’ll still have my memories of you.
Aside from that, Rose was right about more than one thing.
Say the worst happens and we both bite it.
Get torn apart and tossed into other realms. I’ll still fucking find you.
Because I’ve seen it more than once. I’ve just never believed it until now. ”
“Believed what?”
“That nothing can sever love,” he said. “Not even death.”
I sucked in a sharp gasp—but that was it. No more air could reach my lungs.
Because had he just admitted to loving me?
“Being together,” I said. “It… isn’t sustainable.”
“Neither is mindlessly collecting souls for the rest of eternity.” He swung me toward the tomb, which he backed me against before leaning down, bringing his lips close to mine.
“You don’t want me around? Fine. Tell me to get lost. I’ll leave you alone and just show up when I need to.
You can even find somebody else, and I’ll still—”
“Somebody else?” I interjected, cutting him off by placing my palm flat to that brightly colored tattoo. “You think I’ll ever be able to love anyone else?”
“Then we’re on the same fucking page, aren’t we?”
He kissed me then, and I melted, unable to keep myself from throwing my arms around those strong shoulders.
The same page, he’d said.
Maybe we were there together. Even if the words written there didn’t make sense.
Because there were so many variables, so much that could go so horribly wrong.
In all likelihood, death would find a way to claim me—a way Grim wasn’t going to be able to stop. Maybe that would happen before The Few caught wise to Grim’s involvement with me, and maybe not.
There was still the problem of Cedric, too.
Grim and his friends, his family, couldn’t keep the wizard locked in a lantern for eternity… could they?
A mystery man had involved himself in our affairs, too.
I broke the kiss.
“What about the note?” I asked in a whisper. “Did you find out who left it?”
Grim pressed his forehead to mine, his hair brushing my cheek.
“Another Fated,” he said, and I gasped again.
“Sir White came to personally escort the soul, so I didn’t get a chance to find out why.
Cedric, the note, the involvement of another Fated—it’s all tied together, though I can’t figure out how.
My guess is that someone’s got it out for me—someone besides Cedric.
But I don’t know who, and I have no way of finding out.
Not until whoever is responsible tries making another move.
Seeing you again, though, holding you again, makes me realize…
how much I don’t care anymore. Not about anything I can’t change anyway.
My enemies are coming for me regardless.
And now we know for sure, fate is coming for you, too.
So all I can do anymore is hold us down until the worst.”
“The worst,” I repeated. “When you didn’t come back, I thought the worst had happened—to you. I couldn’t bear the thought you might be somewhere awful. At least that’s what I thought when I wasn’t thinking you just… didn’t want me. Didn’t care for me the way I’d come to care for you.”
“I was trying to protect you,” he said. “I never wanted to hurt you, Helena. I’d made such a mess by bringing this all down on you.”
“Promise you won’t do that again,” I said. “Leave me to wonder.”
“Whatever happens,” he said, “wherever I am, I promise that no matter what, I love you. And will forever.”
His way of softening the blow—of telling me he wasn’t going to make vows he might not be able to keep. All while promising the most beautiful thing of all.
Then he kissed me again—before I could argue—and I found it harder to process everything he’d told me up to that point, or to think rationally about any of the problems that this change of plans, this total annihilation of our original plan, did nothing to solve.
Maybe, though, Grim was right. That we were trying to solve a conundrum that, because of how we felt about one another, had officially become unsolvable.
No matter how you looked at it… it seemed there was no winning now. Not for either of us.
And the only thing left to do was to dance among the flames and in each other’s arms, drinking one another up as much as we could while the world blazed around us, our enemies—whoever they were—closed in, and this doomed ship we occupied together gradually sank.
Even I had to admit how, when it came down to it… that approach was, like Grim himself—like us—pretty metal.
“Does this mean,” I said as I again broke the kiss, tilting my head back while Grim assailed my throat next with trailing caresses, “that… you really are my boyfriend?”
“Boyfriend,” he growled into me, a low, underscoring rumble of his monster’s voice backing his human one. “I’m about to be your whole fucking world.”
I sighed, a rush of euphoria sweeping over me, the sensation heightened and amplified by the press of his skeletal hand sweeping under my blouse and scaling up my rib cage before bypassing my bra entirely, burrowing underneath before clamping around my breast.
A needy moan escaped my lips the moment he squeezed, the soft cry echoing in our tight quarters.
“And you, librarian,” he said, that thumb circling my hardening nipple, sending a rush of heat through my limbs—and between my legs, “are about to be mine.”