Chapter 18
Hayden
Levi’s absence is immediate.
It settles like a fog, dulling the edges of everything. He slipped out at dawn with a lingering kiss on my forehead and a whisper of a delivery at the flower shop. But my sheets still smell like him, like salt and citrus and something sweeter.
My mornings were always mine. A carefully structured solitude with Seby in my lap. Now, I reach for a mug and half expect him to be leaned against the counter in one of my shirts, barefoot and smirking like he owns the air.
But I don’t dwell on the thought. Habit drags me to city hall, as it always does on Wednesdays.
A ritual just as ingrained as breakfast. Though even as I call the elevator, I feel it: The pull is weaker.
The fight that once burned in my chest has dulled to something quieter, almost mechanical.
For so long, I told myself that chasing the loophole was its own kind of happiness.
Purpose masquerading as hope. A way to keep moving without ever having to feel still.
But now, guilt gnaws at me for noticing the truth. That even this, the only thing I’ve ever chosen for myself, is beginning to fade. And I don’t know what that says about me.
What I do know? Wanting him is beginning to sound more like me than wanting a loophole ever did.
The elevator groans like it resents the effort.
Behind the counter, all three of them sit like crows on a wire. Lorraine flips a folder lazily. “Back so soon, dear?”
“Can we skip the charades today?” I grind out. “You’re well aware of our standing appointment. Wednesdays. At nine. For eternity.”
“All business as always,” Agnes says, boredom dripping from her lips. “We’ve reviewed your latest submission regarding Immortal Retirement Clause 4C and”—she makes a show of flipping to a tabbed section in her folder—“it’s adorable how hard you’re still trying.”
“I satisfied every condition,” I snap. “Forms, stamps, your fetish for blue ink.”
“Oh, yes,” Constance says with a tight smile. “Blue ink. Such a tragedy.”
Agnes tilts her head. “You know, at some point, you might want to ask yourself what you’re actually fighting for. Because it’s starting to look less like desire and more like habit.”
She’s…not entirely wrong. My anger sparks, but their jabs don’t catch the way they used to. The conviction that once drove me here week after week, year after year, feels thinner. Much like my shadows, restless at my edges, I’m not sure what I’m clinging to anymore.
“Do you?” she presses. “Want it, I mean? Because from our vantage, it’s starting to look like someone’s found…other priorities.”
I stiffen. “Nothing’s changed,” I lie.
Constance tsks, straightening a stack of folders with unnecessary flair. “You’re so sure you’re the one holding the line. That the rest of them…Zane, Porter…left you to clean up their mess.”
“They did,” I snap.
“But you stayed,” Lorraine says calmly. “You keep coming back. To us. To this. The others walked away centuries ago. But here you are.”
“Someone has to hold the thread,” I growl, shadows twitching at my feet.
Agnes’s smile shifts, almost pitying. “Hold it too long, and it’ll only tighten.”
The silence stretches, the thick and uncomfortable kind. Constance eventually sets a fresh form on the counter. Form 13B-12, naturally. As if there wasn’t already a 13B-10 and 11 in the stack of folders she just shredded.
“This week’s revision,” she chirps. “Due next Wednesday. Or retire the performance.”
I take it. Because I always do. And because this is what they dole out to me week after week…millennia of amendments, addendums, fine-print revisions. Busywork designed to keep me chasing cracks in a contract that doesn’t break.
I take it because I don’t know who I am if I don’t.
· · ·
The air outside is sharp enough to bite, but I barely feel it. The folder crumples in my grip and I can still hear Constance’s sugary voice ringing in my ears:
Or retire the performance.
Gods, I hate them.
One moment, I was outside city hall, vibrating with fury. The next, I’m in front of Full Bloom’s greenhouse as if I’ve been summoned. I don’t remember walking here. My lungs remember first. Then my feet. Then the anger loosens its jaw.
And then I smell it.
The distinct, unholy aroma of fresh manure.
A towering heap of it, in fact, steaming faintly into the crisp morning air, unapologetically grotesque beneath the blue sky.
Levi Wilder, elbow deep in a wheelbarrow of said shit, grins at me in his denim overalls smudged with dirt. “Thank god you’re here. Grab a shovel.”
I take a slow, careful step backward, assessing the situation. I stare at him, then down at my crisp, dry-cleaned suit and perfectly polished shoes that have never known such treachery. “Absolutely not.”
“Oh, come on.” Levi wipes the back of his wrist across his forehead. “It’s just fertilizer.”
“It’s excrement,” I say flatly.
He props his shovel over one shoulder, eyes brightening mischievously. “Aren’t you the god of the underworld? Shouldn’t this be nostalgic?”
“Sure,” I say dryly, taking in his cheerful confidence with a scowl, “and I’ve left said filth precisely where it belongs. In the underworld.”
He tosses me a spare pair of gloves, the filthy things hitting me squarely in the chest. I catch them reflexively before they fall to the ground and I stare down at the stained fabric.
“Look,” Levi says gently. “You clearly have some pent-up anger or something you need to work through, and I’ve got dozens of these bags to fill. Win-win?”
“I don’t have pent-up anger,” I mutter irritably, pulling at the cuffs of my suit jacket with indignation.
He smirks, eyes sparkling. “Then consider it charity. Please, Funeral Guy?”
I groan, resigned to the absurdity of the situation I’ve found myself in. “Unbelievable,” I mutter under my breath as I change into a spare pair of Levi’s coveralls, which, against all laws of nature, are simultaneously too loose and uncomfortably snug in certain areas.
My life is unrecognizable.
Thirty minutes in, my fate is sealed. Levi is effortless, tossing bags of fertilizer onto his cart with ease, his body moving like he was built for this.
Fluid, strong, purposeful. I, on the other hand, wrestle with the concept of earthly tasks, glaring every time a speck of dirt lands on my coveralls.
I loathe everything.
“Are you absolutely certain this is necessary?” I grunt, stabbing the shovel into the heap.
Levi, unfazed and annoyingly agile, tosses a bag onto his cart, laughter echoing in his chest. “Plants need nutrients, Hayden.”
“Plants need watering,” I counter, frowning dramatically at the pile. “Not…this horror.”
He tips his head back in a full-throated laugh. “You’re cute when you complain.”
“I’m not complai—”
“And so grumpy,” he teases, nudging me with his hip as he hauls another bag onto the cart.
“I’m not…” I stop myself, flushing slightly, and redouble my efforts to scoop the fertilizer with competence. “I don’t complain.”
“Mm-hm,” Levi hums with amusement. “You’re always this aggressive with manure, then?”
I pause, taking a deep breath that does not, unfortunately, calm my frustration. “Some of us had an exceptionally maddening morning.”
Levi watches me thoughtfully. “Ah, so there is a reason behind your charmingly hostile mood.”
“I’m not hostile,” I argue, shoveling with unnecessary force.
“No, of course not,” he teases, smiling brightly. “You’re clearly filled with sunshine and warmth.”
“Levi,” I warn, though my annoyance is rapidly losing the fight against the corner of my mouth that twitches upward.
He leans against the wheelbarrow next to me, his expression suddenly softening with genuine curiosity. “What happened?”
I shake my head. “I just had a trying morning at city hall.”
Levi’s eyebrows lift. “You go there a lot, huh? Every time I blink, you’re either coming or going from that place. Is there some twink clerk I should be worried about?”
“Just handling a…legal issue.” My voice stays calm. Too calm, perhaps.
He hums thoughtfully. “Uh-huh. Sure, legal issue. Sounds hot.” He grins, kicking the cart’s wheel with the toe of his boot. “Someone suing you for funeral-related damages? Did you bury someone alive?”
I huff a laugh, rolling my shoulders. “No, just hammering out some details and hitting a roadblock, if you will.” Not a lie, technically. Not the whole of it, either.
I could tell him.
I should tell him. I’ve been more open with Levi than I’ve been with anyone in centuries. He knows who I am. What I was. But he doesn’t know what I’ve been fighting for. Or why I’ve spent the last few decades chasing a loophole that refuses to exist.
And come to think of it, I’m still figuring out if I care anymore, so what’s the point?
But instead, I just shake my head and shovel another pile into a bag.
Levi elbows me softly. “Locked room again?”
I smirk, nudging him back. “Must’ve misplaced the key.”
He gasps dramatically, eyes wide. “My broody funeral director shrouded in mystery. Who would’ve guessed?”
I arch an eyebrow at him. “Literally anyone who’s ever met me.”
That earns a laugh, rich and bright enough to cut through the morning’s frustrations. “Well, lucky me, then,” he says, shoving another bag of fertilizer onto the cart, the muscles in his arms shifting beneath his shirt. “I like solving mysteries.”
He turns to grab the next bag, and I let myself watch him. He’s infuriatingly beautiful. Even covered in manure.
For a moment, I’m not thinking about paperwork or mortality or loopholes. All I’m thinking about is the curve of Levi’s mouth, the sweat at his temples, and how badly I want to peel off every ridiculous layer of these coveralls and trace the freckles along the line of his spine.
I’m suddenly grateful for the simple repetitive task of filling bags.
For the warmth of his laughter and the easy way he nudges me like we’ve been doing this forever.
Breath evens. Shoulders unlock. As maddening as the Fates have been, here in the dirt, shoveling manure with Levi, their nonsense feels a world away.
I bend down to tighten the cord on one of the bags, more for something to do with my hands than out of necessity. “So,” I say, voice a little more formal than intended, “you mentioned your family visiting soon, right?”
“Tomorrow, actually,” he says, tugging off a glove. “They’re driving in with a cooler full of questionable leftovers and enough unsolicited input to power a small city. Should be a treat.”
“Should I be worried?” I ask, teasing because it’s easier.
“Only if you plan on discussing existential dread and the underworld over dinner.” He pauses. “Actually…no. That might help.”
I smirk. “Charming.”
“You laugh,” he says, tossing another bag onto the cart, “but my mother has already asked if I was bringing the ‘special someone’ I’m always talking about to dinner. And then followed it up with a smirking emoji.”
“Smirking emoji?”
“Yes,” he says, deadpan. “You know the one…the slanty-eyed smirk. Universally recognized as gay flirting.”
I arch a brow, barely hiding my amusement. “Universally?”
Levi huffs, nudging me gently. “Hush. You know exactly what I’m talking about, and you know why receiving that particular emoji from your mother is unquestionably traumatizing.”
He sets another bag down with care, shaking his head. “But, you know, if existential dread and parental emojis haven’t scared you off, you’re welcome to join us for dinner. No pressure, but I’d…” He takes a steadying breath. “I’d like you there.”
I freeze, caught between the sudden thrill of being invited into his life even further and the quiet panic that this…meeting parents, sharing dinner, dissecting teasing emojis…is dangerously real.
It’s the exact kind of domestic intimacy I spent centuries convinced wasn’t meant for me.
But Levi is looking at me with those eyes, all warmth and hopeful expectation, and it’s terrifying how easily the answer slips from my mouth.
“I’d like that, too,” I say softly. “Existential dread included.”
A smile blooms across his face, slow and genuine and just for me, and his cheeks turn that enticing shade of pink I’ve grown particularly fond of.
His shoulders visibly relax as we fall back into the messy rhythm of the task at hand, as if my acceptance has lifted a weight he’d been carrying quietly.
When we finally finish, Levi peels off his gloves and stretches his arms overhead. The gesture draws my gaze again, those long limbs and lean muscles making my mouth go dry.
“See?” he says brightly, dropping his arms and looking at me with that annoyingly dazzling smile. “That wasn’t so bad.”
“Worse,” I confirm, shooting him a flat look, but his eyes are too bright, and damn it, I feel it. The lightness. The way my frustration dulls just by being in his orbit.
He steps closer, tilting his head slightly, his voice dropping softer. “And yet…you stayed.”
I shrug, but something in my chest tugs at the way he says it. Casual, easy, like he’s perhaps used to people…leaving. I think of this morning. The endless red tape and the subtle but unmistakable smugness from the goddamn Fates.
But mostly, I think about how the moment I left city hall, my feet carried me here.
To him.