Chapter Thirty-Four
Gabriel
I’m still getting used to the bounds of my mortal body.
I get cold now. Hungry. Tired. I don’t think I realized how much I wasn’t feeling until I could feel all of it at once, an overwhelming tide of sensation.
I spent the first week without my wings tipping sideways into walls.
Clipping the edge of countertops. Fumbling glasses and falling asleep face down at the kitchen table.
And the dreams. Fuck. The dreams.
They’re cruel in their ambiguity. Shades of Darcy, but never the detail I crave. Her palm, easing down my spine. Her laugh, a wisp of smoke in my ear. Whispered words I can’t make out and fleeting kisses I try to chase.
I wake up with my heart pounding in my chest, digging my palm against the wounds that have finally healed into silvery, jagged scars. And then I begin again.
I go through the motions of this ordinary life, unburdened from the crushing responsibility of keeping everyone around me alive.
Instead, I pour them their beers, and I listen to Nate’s dating horror stories, and I refill their little peanut cups all while my heart keeps a steady beat in my chest and I try not to notice the glaring absence of the woman on the last bar seat on the left.
I live my life, but there’s a stubborn corner of my infuriatingly fragile heart that holds on to hope.
I told her to come back to me. I expect her to listen.
A man in a frankly offensive Christmas sweater slides onto Darcy’s stool, and I shoot him a dark look until he abandons it.
Nate laughs into the top of his beer. “Still doing that, huh?”
I grunt in response. Nate’s memories of Halloween have dulled in the way that mortals’ memories of hauntings and spirits always do. He remembers the broad strokes, but not the specifics, his mortal mind replacing the magic with perfectly reasonable, logical explanations.
I’ve been terrified my freshly mortal mind might do the same. It’s why there’s a Post-it note stuck to the corner of the mirror in the upstairs bathroom, DARCY written in black Sharpie, underlined twice.
I wipe down the counter. “The seat is reserved,” I tell him.
“Yes, yes. It’s currently reserved by the ghost of all your pining.” His grin softens. “It’s going to be fine, Gabe. You’ll rally. If anyone deserves things to shake out in their favor, it’s you.”
Yeah, I’m not so sure about that. But I force my face to go through the motions of a reassuring smile and nod because even in this new, humbling existence of mine, I am apparently still eager to provide comfort.
“I think there’s a new shipment in the back I need to unpack.” I need a cigarette and quiet. Preferably in that order. “Try not to steal too many drinks when I’m not supervising you.”
“I shall be as honorable as I am handsome.”
I snort. “So, not at all.”
I duck out of the way of a flicked peanut and disappear down the narrow back hallway.
I stop halfway down and drop my forehead against the wall.
The memories are the worst back here. I see Darcy everywhere.
In the shadows next to the door and in the alcove by the office.
Her braid swinging between her shoulders or her bottom lip caught between her teeth.
Tonight, I see her standing six inches away, watching me with those big, coffee-colored eyes. Waiting for me.
“Gabriel,” she whispers, and I swear I fucking feel her. Warm and soft and painfully real, standing close enough for me to touch.
I squint into the dark. “These daydreams are getting out of control.”
A low hum. “As far as daydreams go, I think you could do better.”
I freeze, my spine rigid, and slowly turn my head to the side. Darcy is standing next to me, her lips in a small, careful smile. “Hello, Gabriel.”
I stare at her. “Did I fall asleep in the stockroom again?”
Her smile evaporates. “Have you been sleeping in the stockroom?”
“Not intentionally.”
“Gabriel, it’s cold back there. There are like forty-two boxes of vodka.”
“A fine place, apparently, for lying down. Why are we arguing about this?”
She crosses her arms over her chest with a huff. “Because I expected you to take care of yourself while I was away, not lie down on cement floors and accept defeat in some sort of self-flagellation, fallen-angel routine that—”
I push off the wall and lean forward, one hand at the small of her back to scoop her closer, and the other, trembling, against her jaw. I press my mouth to hers and exhale a wounded sound when she doesn’t immediately disappear in a cloud of exhaustion-addled smoke.
“Fuck,” I grunt against her bottom lip. “You’re here.”
Her body melts against mine, her fingers sinking through my hair. It feels so damn good, a grunting, gasping moan tears out of my chest.
“I’m here,” she breathes against my mouth.
“How are you—” I can’t stop kissing her long enough to ask the important questions. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” She laughs, her hands slipping from my hair down to my shoulders. Her fingertips trace patterns down my biceps, over the exposed skin of my forearms. She traces the bare spot between my elbow and wrist where my sword used to be. “You’re different,” she breathes.
I trace my thumb over the curve of her cheek. “Mortal,” I tell her.
Her eyes trip to the ground, guilty. “That’s my fault. I’m sorry.”
I nudge her chin back up with my knuckles. “I’m not.”
I was sitting in a shallow grave for thousands of years, burying myself in my work instead of appreciating it for what it was.
I was wrapped in wool, sheltered by the weight of my responsibilities.
And then Darcy slid on a barstool and yanked something vital free.
She kept it for herself and reminded me that maybe I did deserve a little bit of selfishness after everything.
Down the hallway, reality threatens. Bits and pieces of conversation and a loud, booming laugh. Darcy twists her fingers in the material of my shirt and urges me into the shadows with her, more climbing from the corners to wrap us in privacy.
Disappointment settles like lead in my bones as I watch her wield her magic. “You’re still a Reaper.”
I had hoped—well, I hoped that she might be dealt the same hand as me. Relieved from her duties at the department, free to conclude a mortal life. If anyone deserves a second chance, it’s Darcy.
Darcy studies me from beneath the fringe of her lashes. “I am,” she confirms. “I’ve been given a new assignment.”
When Rafe said Darcy was my soulmate, I foolishly believed that meant I’d have her returned to me. Not held just out of reach.
Maybe all of this is a punishment after all. Leave it to the department to pursue the long game and get creative.
“How long do you have?” I ask.
She eases closer, her arms curled loose around my waist. Her chin finds the middle of my chest, and she looks up at me with those dark, honey eyes. “Well. I thought I’d tell you my clues, and you can tell me if it sounds like anyone you know.”
My face pinches. “All right. I’m not sure how much help I’ll be, but—”
“I saw a rumpled bed with flannel sheets. Two cups of coffee on the end table, gone cold. A stack of books with a heavy preference for ’80s sci-fi, and a man with”—she pauses and takes a shaky breath—“a man with smile lines by his eyes. Dark hair. Wild curls that flop over his forehead no matter how many times he pushes them back. Faded tattoos inked into his skin. He’s older, but no less handsome.
Tired but satisfied by a long”—her voice cracks and break—“a long and ordinary life.”
My heart starts to pound faster in my chest. Darcy smiles. Tremulous and hesitant and hopeful and beautiful.
“It’s the last life I’m meant to claim. I’ll be with him until both our ends.
All my minutes. Every last one.” She lifts her hand and presses her palm to my heart.
Her forehead follows, and she asks her next question tucked perfectly against me.
“What do you think? Does it sound like someone you know?”
I have to swallow before I can trust myself to speak. “Yeah. Sounds familiar.”
I spent lifetimes holding on to my purpose with an iron grip. Clinging to the idea that I was only as good as my wings. But now I know that I’m here for this. Darcy and the way her shadows receded around her as I stare dumbfounded.
She’s my ending.
My beginning, too.
It overwhelms me, and I tug her closer. Until my heart feels like it’s pounding beneath her skin instead of mine. “What should we do with our time, then?”
Darcy grips my neck and hauls my face to hers. Her smile is a secret. A promise. A beautiful inevitability.
“I’ll make a list,” she whispers.