9. Lavinia
LAVINIA
Grim’s confession, such as it is, sifts down through my chest like pollen, small and stubbornly everywhere.
I keep waiting for the other shoe—the supernatural punchline, the reveal that he’s an elaborate crank—but what settles instead is the image of him standing at my kitchen counter, hands too big for the mug, shoulders folded in, looking for all the world like a kid waiting outside the principal’s office.
Terrified, like he said, but with a kind of wonder grafted on top, as though he still can’t quite believe I haven’t called in a priest or thrown a bucket of holy water over his head.
I have spent my whole life being told, in ways large and small, that I ask too many of the wrong questions.
Friends, teachers, even the men I dated before they gave up and called me unsettling, or said I looked at people like I was waiting for them to expire.
But if Grim is the capital-letter man he claims to be, maybe it took me this long to find someone with even worse bedside manners than me.
I clear my throat.
“So, what does Death do for fun, Grim? Mini-golf? Amateur bird-watching?”
He smiles, a ghost at the edge of it.
“Mostly I walk. Sometimes I cook. I like to see things that haven’t ended yet.”
“Such as?”
He looks up, lashes thick and shockingly dark.
“Such as you.”
That is either the worst line ever conceived or the best. The distinction, I suppose, is entirely up to me.
Maybe I love him for the attempt alone: a man who shows up with flowers, lies perfectly still while I dissect his soul, and when cornered, answers with the only thing he knows how to give—truth, as sharp and clean as a knife.
“You want to stay for dinner?” I ask, aiming for casual even as my stomach somersaults.
He hesitates only a moment before nodding.
“If you haven’t already made plans to poison me.”
I arch an eyebrow.
“You can’t poison Death. Unless he’s allergic to shellfish.”
“It’s possible. I haven’t tried.”
He watches while I rinse out the old mug, a gentleness to his attention that makes me suddenly self-conscious.
“What’s on the menu?”
“Whatever’s in my fridge and not courageously evolving new penicillin.”
I inspect the shelves.
Two eggs. A heel of sourdough. A regretful amount of leftover beet salad. Half a clutch of scallions. And the remains of a funeral cake, now beginning to ooze suspiciously inside its cellophane wrap.
Grim leans against the counter, barely seeming to disturb the air around him. I hand him a knife and, without comment, he picks up the scallions and begins slicing them into perfect, even rounds.
It occurs to me then that he is really here.
For all his talk of centuries and endings, he moves with the careful appreciation of someone who expects everything to disappear eventually and has decided to admire it while it lasts.
I make pancakes.
It turns out even Death likes them with too much butter, too much salt, and an alarming amount of hot sauce, which he drizzles over the top with unexpectedly civilized restraint.
We eat at my tiny kitchen table, our knees bumping beneath the thrift-store wood, while he tells me stories about the strange late-night life of Blackthorn Bay—the first time he tasted pineapple, which he declared overrated, and the one and only time he attempted karaoke, a disaster so spectacular the entire bar simply stopped singing.
I want to ask him what comes after.
Not for people.
For him.
But somehow it feels too soon.
Instead, we do the dishes together, accompanied only by running water and the clink of plates. He is spectacularly bad at drying them, which annoys me far more than it should.
“You're hopeless,” I inform him.
He lifts the dish towel in surrender, shoulders creeping toward his ears.
“I suspected as much.”
I laugh.
Somewhere between handing him another plate and stealing the towel back, I punch him lightly in the arm.
He staggers backward with theatrical conviction, clutching his chest as though I've shattered one of his ancient ribs.
“You're ridiculous.”
He bows.
“Only because I learned from the best.”
When the dishes are finally done, he loops the towel into an oddly perfect knot before hanging it neatly over the oven handle.
The after-dinner quiet settles around us, warm and familiar, like borrowing a future that doesn't quite belong to either of us yet.
I find myself wanting him to stay—not because I'm lonely, but because, somehow, he's already beginning to feel like part of the house.
Like another lamp left on in the evening.
Like another mug drying beside the sink.
We drift into the living room.
It's small and faintly embarrassing: a battered blue sofa that looks as though it once belonged in a dentist's waiting room, three mismatched lamps competing for attention, and bookshelves overflowing with grief memoirs, botany guides, and novels I've promised myself I'll eventually finish.
Grim lowers himself onto the couch with considerably more force than expected, the cushions protesting beneath him with a sound like two trees colliding in a storm.
I settle beside him.
Close enough that our knees touch.
Not so close that he might disappear.
For a long while, neither of us says anything.
I realize I've never actually done this with another person—not really.
I've sat beside boyfriends before, watched movies, held hands, kissed.
But there was always some version of myself trying to become what they wanted, smoothing rough edges, filling quiet spaces before they could become uncomfortable.
With Grim...
There are no performances left.
Only now.
“Tell me something about you,” he says.
It's not a demand.
It's barely even a question.
Just quiet curiosity.
I consider giving him the edited version of myself—Lavinia, flower shop owner, reasonably well adjusted, unlikely to alarm the neighbors—but the idea feels ridiculous in front of someone who has witnessed the worst day of every life he's ever touched.
So I tell him about my father.
About the stories he invented for every bug that wandered through our back door: the queen ant, the homesick wasp, the moth that threw itself against the porch light every night as though hope had somehow grown wings.
I tell him about my first garden.
About the unreasonable jealousy I felt when my mother praised Mrs. Collins's marigolds instead of mine.
I even tell him about the dream I've had for years—a meadow burning in slow motion, beautiful enough that I never want to wake before it disappears.
He listens.
He doesn't interrupt.
He doesn't offer advice.
He doesn't search for solutions.
He simply lets every confession find a place to land.
Somewhere between the end of my stories and the beginning of his, I realize my head has come to rest against his shoulder.
I don't remember deciding to move.
Maybe I didn't.
He doesn't stiffen or pull away.
Instead, his hand settles gently over my knee, warm and reassuring, like an anchor quietly dropped to the bottom of the sea.
I tilt my face toward his almost without thinking.
He looks down at me.
Then, with all the patience of someone who has never once needed to hurry, he kisses me.
It is slow.
Gentle.
Warm with coffee and butter and just enough hot sauce to make me smile against his mouth.
His hand slides from my knee to my jaw, his thumb resting lightly beneath my ear as though he is holding something infinitely more fragile than it appears.
There is such careful attention in that kiss.
Such reverence.
As though after an eternity of watching life slip through his fingers, he finally has permission to hold something instead.
And somehow...
Despite every warning instinct evolution ever gifted me...
We fit.
His hand trembles, just fractionally, when I thread my fingers with his. For the first time, it hits me that he might be more scared of this—of me—than I’ve ever been of anything in my squandered little life.
He kisses me once, then again, and the third time is not slow at all.
There’s a hunger in him, patient coiling into urgent, as though he’s starved centuries just to taste this moment.
His other hand cups the side of my face, thumb stroking a path beneath my cheekbone, memorizing each pore and flaw.
I open to him, careless, greedy, and the kiss deepens—his tongue salt-sweet and devastating, all the lines of our bodies pressed close, molten and melting every old thing between us.
There is a moment’s hesitation, a vanishingly brief pause as he lets his forehead rest against mine. His eyes are black in this light, enormous, a night only I am allowed to fall through.
“Lavinia.” The word is prayer, warning, and plea. His voice is hoarse with restraint. “If you want me to stop, say it now. I’ve… gone a very long time without wanting.”
I laugh, just to prove I’m still the one choosing. “Show me how long,” I murmur, sliding my palm beneath his shirt, feeling the muscle tense and shudder under my touch.
He exhales a sigh, the kind that weights the air and pulls everything into its orbit.
I tug at his shirt—he’s wearing one of those soft black henleys, sleeves rolled up haphazard—and he helps me, pulling it over his head in a single fluid motion.
The light stutters across his shoulders, old scars mapped in pale relief over skin so warm it almost glows.
I want to trace each one with my tongue, want to name every ancient thing that ever tried to hurt him and failed.
He watches me watching him. Smiles, shy and wolfish. “You are… very distracting.”
“If you think I’m distracting now, you should see me tomorrow morning before coffee,” I say, and we both laugh, and the sound knots something deep in him—his arms around my waist, lifting me, settling me in his lap like he is worried I might vanish if he doesn’t keep me somewhere solid.