Chapter 44
forty-four
. . .
Two weeks later, Kit and I are sitting on a plane ready to take off for Sacramento.
I grip his hand tightly. “It’s been a while since I’ve been on a plane,” I say apprehensively.
“Nervous flyer?”
I stroke my thumb over his. “Not really. I’m antsy, I think.”
“Me, too.”
I lean my head on his shoulder as the plane taxis down the runway.
“Don’t let me fall asleep,” he requests softly.
“I’ll keep you awake.”
His nightmares have been getting better, but he still has them. The longer he’s human, the more the memories of Hell fade away. He can remember everything about being a demon, though, so I guess Earth memories stay and Hell fades. I believe he’s all right with that.
I paid for the in-cabin Wi-Fi so I could get a little work done on my laptop. As I’m messing with a clip, going back and forth between cutting it at 1:22 and 1:23, an email notification comes in. I jolt to a straighter seat, clicking on it.
The email is from Stephanie Tate’s office. I smack Kit excitedly on the arm as I read the email. He leans over to read it with me.
“That was quick,” he comments.
“Way sooner than I expected,” I confirm as I reread the email. They sent me a list of potential locations and their short list of the people that may become my team. “I’m going to have a team.”
Kit says lovingly, “My girl is going to have a team.”
“They’re also suggesting I find a manager,” I say, chewing absently on my thumbnail.
“Well, you’ll need one when the show takes off.”
“If,” I correct.
“When,” he corrects me back.
I shake my head but can’t hide my smile. I go back to the clip, deciding on 1:22. When it comes time to take a break, I glance over at Kit to see him scribbling in the notebook he brought to write down what he wanted to say to his family. He wrote:
Hey, it’s me your dead son/brother. I’m not dead!
But he has gotten distracted from improving that. He’s drawing now. My lips pull as he swirls the pen around the page, creating curls.
“She’s cute,” I say.
“She’s gorgeous,” he states, moving the pen to draw eyelashes on the sketch of me.
“I like it better than the one you ripped up.”
“You saw that?”
“Yeah.”
“How about I draw your portrait every day for the rest of my life?”
I kiss him on the cheek. “Please don’t do that.”
He responds with a half-hearted shrug, so I’m afraid he may actually do that. He keeps moving the pen across the page in quick strokes.
We land a few hours later and rent a car to get us to Kit’s neighborhood.
Kit’s parents still live in the house he grew up in. I park in front and turn the engine off. The two-story house sits upon a hill, steps leading up to the front door. Kit stares at it cautiously, his hand poised on the car handle.
“I can go in with you, if you need me to,” I offer for the third time.
Kit shakes his head, still staring at his childhood home. “No, no. I should do this alone. There’s that coffee shop I told you about? Just around the corner. You mind waiting there? I don’t want you to sit in the car.”
I smile. “That’s perfect. I have my laptop, so I can do some editing and research the locations they sent me.” I pull his mouth to mine, lingering close to his lips. “I’m a phone call away. I love you.”
“I love you, too.” He takes in a deep breath then gets out of the car before he can talk himself out of it.
He peeks back at me once as he cautiously approaches the front door.
He rings the bell, and a moment later, it swings open.
A dark-haired, middle-aged woman stares in horror, letting out a scream.
Kit looks back at me with panic. I give him a double thumbs-up, and he nods.
He focuses on his mother, grasping her by the shoulders, saying something I can’t hear but probably along the lines of, “Hi, Mom. It’s me, your dead son, but the alive version.
” He never did improve his first draft on the plane.
She stops screaming and throws her arms around him.
I take that as my cue to drive away. I find the coffee shop and pull into a spot close to the front.
I grab my things from the car, order a latte at the counter, and take a seat near the back.
I send Kit a quick text to let him know I’m at the coffee shop and remind him he can call or text me if he needs me.
He sends back a heart. It must be going well.
A half hour later, he texts to let me know his dad is coming home from work and his sister, nephew, brother, and brother’s husband are coming over. Husband?? he writes. He’s mature enough for a HUSBAND?? I can’t help but grin down at my phone, thrilled it’s going well.
The bell over the door rings as someone enters, making me glance up. Before I can slap my hand over my mouth, I say, “Izan?”
And apparently, I said his name loud enough to hear. He gives me a puzzled smile. Shit. It’s him. Kit’s best friend, hair shorter and a decade older than when I had seen him in Kit’s memory, but it’s him.
Prior to the flight here, we couldn’t find anything on him but a website for his wedding three years ago.
His and his wife’s Instagrams are both private, and we couldn’t find any other social media—not even a LinkedIn.
We weren’t sure if he was still in the area or not.
Kit had planned to ask his parents about him.
“Hi?” he questions, peering at me curiously.
“Fuck me,” I mutter under my breath. I stand, unsure of what else to do, and say, “Hi, um, Izan, right?”
“Yeah. Sorry—have we met?”
“No. No. Not really. I was a…am a…uh, no, I knew…know? This is impossible. I know Kit.”
His eyes widen. “Kit Mitchell? You knew him?”
“It’s a bit more complicated than that.”
He appraises me. “Oh, did you two date?”
I purse my lips. “It’s more of a present tense thing.” I pull out my phone and send Kit a quick text saying, IZAN COFFEE SHOP!!! hoping he understands. To Izan, I say, “Can we talk for a minute?”
He looks wary. “I’m just on a quick break from work…”
“This is more important. Trust me.”
He eventually nods and agrees. “Let me order a coffee first.”
Izan soon joins me and says, “So, what did you want to talk about?”
“Well, there is literally no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to say it.” I look at the ceiling. “I hope he won’t be angry that I told you first.” My eyes move back to Izan. This might be the best way. What if Kit’s parents don’t know where Izan is? “Kit is alive.”
Izan shakes his head, solemn. “Kit died. Sorry, if you didn’t know that. He died ten years ago. His heart gave out.”
“Yeah. You’re correct. Mostly. He did die. And now he’s not dead.”
He shakes his head more. “I don’t understand what you mean. He’s dead. He was cremated. I scattered his ashes.”
“In Beachy Head. Yeah. That’s where he woke up.” I pull out my phone again and pull up a photo I took of us, a selfie on my couch. “This is from last week.”
Izan takes the phone. “This looks just like him…”
“It is him.” I take the phone back and swipe to another photo, this one I snapped of him as he was attempting to make me dinner last night.
Izan shakes his head and says again, “Kit’s dead.”
“I know this is hard to accept, but he’s alive.”
At that moment, Kit texts me saying, Get him here!!! followed by, Please. Thank you. I love you!
I sigh, understanding Izan’s lack of acceptance.
“I know this is hard to believe—despite how much you want it to be true.” My hands wrap around my coffee cup as I lean forward.
“I lost my best friend August four years ago, and I would kill to have her back, to get the news I’m giving you right now, so please believe me. ”
Izan starts to get up. “I don’t know what this is—”
I cut him off, “Listen, okay? The last time Kit saw you, he gave you a hug in the break room and said to you, ‘You know you’re my best friend, right? I love you.’ Then you asked if he was all right and said, ‘I love you, too, you freak.’ That was the last time you spoke to him.”
Izan’s mouth drops open, mid-rise from his seat. He falls back into it. “I don’t…I don’t tell people that I called him a freak. That was normal for us, but it sounds mean, so I keep it to myself. How did you…?”
I saw it in a memory is not the correct answer.
“He told me. Because he’s alive. I can take you to him.”
“He’s here?” he asks quietly, eyes daringly hopeful.
“At his parents’ house.” I stand and gather my things. “Come on.”
We get in my car, and I drive him over. I let him out.
“You’re not coming in?” he asks, holding the top of the door.
“Kit wanted to do this alone.”
He nods, giving me a small wave, and walks up the pathway. Kit opens the door, says something I can’t hear that makes his mouth quirk, and Izan tackles him in a tight hug. My eyes water watching it, seeing the pure joy on Kit’s face.
I don’t drive back to the coffee shop. I just sit in the car, staring at my phone.
A knock on the window scares the shit out of me, my phone getting thrown in the air. Kit is standing on the other side, grinning. I roll down the window.
“Would you like to come inside, sweetness?”
I shake my head. “I don’t want to intrude.”
“Not intruding. Not at all. I need you.”
I smile back at him and roll the window back up before opening the car door. He takes my hand and leads me back up the path. I stop him before we enter. “It’s going okay?”
“It’s going great. Everyone is very freaked out and very confused and they all keep poking me. But they believe I’m me, and that’s what matters right now.”
Kit walks me inside to the living room, where everyone is gathered. Tears in all of their eyes, they smile up at us.
“This is Lacy,” Kit says. “My…girlfriend doesn’t feel like a strong enough word. My favorite human in the world and the love of my entire goddamn life. And the reason I am standing before you all now.”
“Hello,” I say awkwardly.
Kit’s mother gets up first and pulls me into a tight hug. “Thank you,” she whispers in my ear.
I receive hugs from the rest of the family, lastly from a muscular man with a dark beard. “Xander?” I ask incredulously.
He laughs in a deep voice. “Yeah, that was the same reaction Uncle Kit had.”
“You look older than him,” I say before I can stop myself. “In a good way. Or, ah, a neutral way.” I blink myself back to the present. “Sorry, last time I saw you, you were six and tiny. Er, I mean a picture of you. Sorry.”
Kit’s hand finds mine again. “I’ve maintained my youthful glow, while Xander here has discovered protein powder. He’s healthy as a horse.”
I squeeze his hand, knowing just how joyful that makes him. We take a seat side by side on the couch while Kit continues to endure an endless stream of questions. The main one that keeps hitting us over and over is: “How?”
Eventually, Kit says, “Magic. Can we just go with that? It’s the only explanation I have.”
He holds my hand tightly, and I know it will all be okay.
That evening, we’re lying in Kit’s childhood bedroom on a full-sized bed with my head on his chest and his arms wrapped around me.
I’m wearing an old World of Warcraft T-shirt of Kit’s that he dug out of a box that has been in this room for ten years.
It smells a little musty, but Kit insisted, saying he wanted to see me wearing his clothes. I could hardly argue that desire.
“Izan has a kid and another on the way. Isn’t that crazy?”
“It is,” I agree. Even though Kit was away for many years, I can’t imagine the shock of coming back and discovering your best friend has created two more people since you’ve been gone.
“Thank you for coming with me today,” he whispers.
“Thank you for letting me,” I whisper back. My fingers move absently over his chest.
“Having you here helped. I know they’re my family, but I was so scared.”
“I know, kitten. I’m glad it worked out.”
“Lacy?”
“Hmm?”
“Marry me.”
I let out a surprised cackle. “No, you impulsive weirdo.”
“Please? Big ol’ wedding, you and me.”
“We can’t afford a wedding right now—you don’t have a job.”
“We could elope.”
I back up so I can fully regard him. “Wait. Are you serious? You haven’t even met my mom yet. You could completely change your mind about me once you meet her.”
“I highly doubt that.” He sits up on the bed on his knees. “Come on. Marry me. It doesn’t have to be right away. We can have a nice long engagement.”
I bite my lip. His eyes are soft and vulnerable. He means this. I climb up on my knees to face him. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay! Yes, you fiend. I’ll marry you.”
He tackles me back into the bed, placing kisses on every spot he can reach. “The future Mrs. Tonkitgrol Mitchell.”
I giggle as he keeps attacking me with his mouth. “You are not making that your legal name!”
“I can do whatever I want. You’re talking to a fearsome, former demon, my fiancée.”
I roll my eyes and pull his lips to mine. “I’m so happy you found me.”
“I’m so happy you let me in.”