Chapter Fourteen
Phin
Iwas in a precarious situation. Five seconds from being sent to a very dark, scary place, or so I’d heard.
The rumors were nasty. They painted Tech Duinn as a truly horrible place.
Instead of thinking about that, all I could focus on was how hard it would be to let Ossy be happy with someone else.
My heart literally hurt at the thought. How crazy was that?
We were just supposed to be fuck buddies.
Nothing more. Ossy had flaked on me more times than I cared to count.
So why, for the love of the gods, had I fallen in love with him?
Doing so was by far the stupidest thing I’d ever done.
Here I was, mourning the loss of him in my life, even though he was holding me in a dark closet.
Yeah, we were in the closet again. It seemed we would always be hiding in the dark.
So why did I feel safe whenever Ossy held me?
Every time I was with him, there was a sense of contentment.
Office romances were a little forbidden, even though no one really enforced it.
Or maybe they hadn’t enforced it with Ossy and me when we were fucking.
If that were so, it had to be because they knew we just weren’t meant to be.
Donn, being a god and at the top, knew everything, didn’t he?
Maybe that was why I forgave Ossy after all the times he didn’t show up and then apologized.
We always went back to my place or his, and we fucked like rabbits.
It had been great. But it was over. I had to accept that.
The darkness in the closet was all-consuming. The only light came from under the door. I could see people searching for us. Figures moved beneath the door as they walked down the hall, breaking the light as they passed. It was probably HR demons. They were persistent.
We were as quiet as mice, motionless. I was pretty sure Ossy even held his breath.
Files filled the shelves. The files contained every living person.
The Bureau filed the folders, alphabetizing them by name.
The room expanded in an unnatural, illogical way.
It kept growing every few seconds, each time a baby was born and new life formed.
Another file would appear on the shelf, and the room would expand.
Rows and rows of shelving and files stretched out.
I could no longer see the door or the light beneath it. My eyes adjusted to the darkness.
Ossy and I stood between the stacks. We were at the back. Everything shifted and shuffled around, including us. I couldn’t make out names, but the file folders were color-coded. I wasn’t sure what the colors meant, but they lined the shelves in soft, rainbow hues.
Ossy kissed my temple, then tilted my chin up and kissed my lips.
“I’ve missed you,” he whispered, trailing kisses along my jaw and up to my ear.
A single tear slid down my cheek, and with its escape came a newfound appreciation for the dark. “We shouldn’t be doing this, Ossy.”
I clung to him despite my words. I needed his tenderness because it reminded me of what we had before his beloved entered the picture.
He continued trailing kisses along my jawline and down my neck.
Ossy had always been affectionate and gentle.
Every time I was with him, he touched me as if he couldn’t get enough.
I always felt like I was the only person he saw whenever we were in the same room.
That I still did was what made it so hard to pull away.
If he had a beloved, we shouldn’t be like this anymore. It felt like a betrayal, even though I didn’t even know the person. It went against Ossy’s moral compass, too. I knew him well enough to know that. Maybe love was love, but if he had a beloved, everything we did needed to stop.
I wriggled free of his arms and took a step back.
He frowned as if he were confused by my behavior.
“Congratulations on finding your beloved, Ossy.” My gut twisted into knots, and I wrung my hands.
The comment should have landed like a bomb, blowing up our tender moment. Instead, Ossy chuckled and tried to draw me closer. “Congratulations on yours, too, baby.”
“I don’t have a beloved.” I would feel it, right? It seemed like something as important as finding the person the god of love deemed perfect for me would come with a signal. I half-expected my person to have a beacon spinning around his dick. But I’d never met anyone like that yet.
That was the comment that landed like a bomb.
His face fell, and he stepped back, though he kept hold of my arm.
But it wasn’t because he wanted to touch me.
It was because we needed to stick together.
We needed each other if we wanted to get out of the building.
It was dark enough to get lost, and with the room expanding, who knew where we’d end up?
I didn’t even know how far we’d have to walk to get out of the closet.
“Don’t you want to be my beloved?” he asked, sounding almost hurt, as if I’d said something wrong.
I stiffened, my body tensing as his words sank in. “If I had to pick someone, I would pick you. But it isn’t my choice, Ossy.”
Tension left Ossy like air escaping a balloon. He rubbed his thumb against my wrist. “You are my beloved. Donn is blocking the feeling when we’re in the building. As soon as we step outside, you’ll feel it. That will prove it to you.”
“How can Donn block the god of love?” Not that anything involving the gods made sense. But it didn’t matter. “All I want is for you to be happy, even if that’s not with me.”
He cupped my cheek and smiled. “I am happy, Phinny. You make me happy. And right now, you not believing me makes me frustrated, but I’m still happy, too.”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you. It’s just that I don’t understand why I don’t feel it. And if you don’t, too, then how do you know for sure?”
I thought about all those times we were in my apartment or in Ossy’s bungalow by the beach.
Did I feel anything? Some sort of connection?
Did he? I didn’t know if I had. I certainly hadn’t been paying attention.
Maybe, for us, the bonding had been stop-and-start from day one.
Every time I walked into this building, the god of death sucked our connection away.
Or maybe something else was at play that I didn’t know about.
Either way, it made me wonder whether Ossy and I had always been chasing a connection that Donn had constantly stolen from us.
It seemed like I was always chasing him, always looking for him, and always forgiving him whenever he ditched me. The space between that push and pull left me feeling weak, without the power to control my own feelings. The theft had to play a part in that, too, didn’t it?
“Did you feel it?” I asked. “Outside of the office, all those times we were together?”
Ossy shook his head. “I think that when Grym met Elliot, something opened up inside all of us. I realized it on the farm. I think Elliot was supposed to be the first. It opened a floodgate that not even Donn can close.”
Maybe that was how it was supposed to be.
“This changes the realms,” he continued. “The veil between the living world and the dead is getting thinner. It won’t take much to make it crumble. I think that’s what Donn is afraid of.”
“Rightfully so.” If I were Ossy’s beloved, then I was part of the dismantling. I didn’t know how I felt about that. It seemed scary, all things considered.
Ossy was right. I had felt something when I talked to him on the phone in my apartment last night. There had been a deep longing for him. I stepped into his embrace and rested my head on his chest.
“I want to believe you. I really do, Ossy.” I sighed. “If we really are supposed to be for each other, then I don’t know if I can take you constantly flaking on me.”
“From now on, you are my top priority.” He sounded sincere, but Ossy always did, and then he flaked again.
“You have a lot to prove.” That was if we were beloveds.
“I know you don’t believe me. I wouldn’t believe me either. But I’m in this forever. Whatever the future brings, it will have you and me together in it.”
Those were big words. Bigger, maybe, than me and the rest of the beloveds, because if it were us together forever, it would mean we would take part in tearing down the veil between the living and the dead, wreaking havoc in the god of death’s realm. And on Death itself.