I couldn’t quite interpret the ache in my chest, but it tempered my anger, whether or not it should have. “When did you start watching me?”
“After what happened with your aunt.” The week I’d found out I was a bean sidhe and started going out with Nash. “You were the only one other than my family who knew I existed, so I’d tag along when Nash came over and watch whatever you guys were watching on TV.”
“Were we really that boring?” It was weird to see me and Nash through someone else’s eyes.
Tod laughed. “Yeah. Thank goodness. But then you helped me with Addy, for no reason except that I asked you to, and I started to come over here on my own, just to see you.”
I was half creeped out, half fascinated, and all ears. “When did you stop?”
“When I realized I hated seeing you make out with my brother.”
“I don’t understand.” But maybe I was beginning to, and that ache in my chest deepened.
Tod glanced at my comforter, then met my gaze again. “Okay, I’m starting to realize how creepy this whole thing makes me sound, but try to remember that until you, my whole afterlife was like a one-way mirror. I saw people, but they never saw me. There was no interaction. No involvement. No malice or creepy intent. I’m not like Thane—I never stalked people I was scheduled to reap. I was just…watching. Living vicariously, which is the only way I can live now.”
“I’m with you so far…” And sympathy was starting to win out over the creepy factor. He must have been so lonely.…
“Good.” The tension in his frame started to ease. “Anyway, I stopped watching you when we started hanging out together for real.”
“After Nash started using?” I asked, and Tod nodded. I couldn’t be around Nash while he was going through with drawal. The wounds were still too raw, and the thought of seeing him hurt. But Tod had come over a couple of times during my otherwise lonely winter break, and we’d done…nothing. We’d just hung out, watching stupid YouTube videos and listening to music, openly avoiding the subject of Nash and his frost addiction.
Maybe that should have been my first clue….
“Once I realized I wanted more than friendship from you, it didn’t seem fair for me to see you when you didn’t know I was there.”
My relief was almost enough to mitigate my irritation at having been watched in the first place. “So…if you weren’t spying, how did you know…what Nash and I were about to do the other day?”
“Sabine called me.”
I closed my eyes, resisting the urge to slap my own forehead. How had I not figured that out? I’d called Sabine for advice, then hung up when Nash arrived, and she’d probably had Tod on the phone before my voice even faded from her ear. Damn Sabine! But she wasn’t working alone….
“What could possibly make you think what I do in private is any of your business?” I demanded, my voice low with anger.
“Sleeping with Nash would have been a mistake, and I don’t want anyone to hurt you—including you.”
“You don’t get to decide what’s a mistake for me, Tod.”
He frowned, obviously confused. “Was I wrong? Do you wish you’d done it?”
“No.” Especially now that Nash and I had broken up, and I could see the truth about my own motivations—I hadn’t wanted to sleep with Nash so much as I’d wanted to lose my virginity before I died. “But that’s not the point. I have a right to make my own mistakes, just like everyone else. Don’t ever do that again.”
“Fine.” He recrossed his arms over his chest. “But I’m not sorry I did it. And neither are you.”
I nodded slowly. “Fair enough. So…” I hesitated, not sure I really wanted the answer to what I was about to ask. “Were you and Sabine working together to break up me and Nash?”
“No. She tried to talk me into that when she first got here, but I told you, I didn’t want to be what broke you two up.”
“But you didn’t mind her trying it, even though it’s morally repugnant to intentionally break up someone else’s relationship?”
Tod’s brows arched in amusement over my moral outrage. “How is it wrong to put everything you have into getting what you want most in the world?” Which was exactly what Sabine had done.
Or was he talking about wanting me like that—more than anything else in the world? My pulse raced so fast my head started to swim. He wanted me more than anything? Wait—focus…
“It’s wrong because you don’t have the right to end someone else’s relationship!” Had two years of reaping souls skewed his moral compass, or was he always like this?
“First of all, keep in mind that this is all hypothetical. I didn’t try to break up you and Nash—that was Sabine.” The reaper leaned forward, his eyes bright with interest, enjoying what he obviously saw as a recreational debate. “And second, if the couple shouldn’t have been together in the first place, breaking them up is actually doing a good deed. So you’re welcome. Hypothetically.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or yell at him. “You don’t get to decide who should be together and who shouldn’t!”
“Are you saying I was wrong?” Tod’s gaze narrowed on me in challenge. “Did you really think you and Nash belonged together for the rest of your lives, even after what he did to you?”
Damn it. “I did at first. I thought I could forgive and forget.” I’d tried to. But the truth was that I couldn’t make myself trust him again, though I’d probably never admit to Sabine that she was right about that. “But that’s not the point.”
“That is the point! Right and wrong aren’t as simple as black and white. You and Nash would have done more damage to each other together than the breakup would have done to either of you, and just because you couldn’t see that doesn’t make it wrong for those who care about you both to point out the truth.”
For one long moment, I could only stare at him in disbelief. “It’s a good thing I’m not going to live long enough to go out with you, because you’d drive me crazy.”
“There’s a good kind of crazy, Kaylee,” he insisted softly, reaching out to wrap his warm hand around mine. “It’s the kind that makes you think about things that make your head hurt, because not thinking about them is the coward’s way out. The kind that makes you touch people who bruise your soul, just because they need to be touched. This is the kind of crazy that lets you stare out into the darkness and rage at eternity, while it stares back at you, ready to swallow you whole.”
Tod leaned closer, staring into my eyes so intently I was sure he could see everything I was thinking, but too afraid to say. “I’ve seen you fight, Kaylee. I’ve seen you step into that darkness for someone else, then claw your way out, bruised, but still standing. You’re that kind of crazy, and I live in that darkness. Together, we’d take crazy to a whole new level.”
My pulse whooshed in my ears so fast I could barely hear myself speak. “I only have—”
“Two days.” He squeezed my hand. “So what? You can spend them feeling sorry for yourself, or you can let me help make them the best two days of your life, and my afterlife. So what’s it gonna be?”
I stared into his eyes, like I’d never seen him before. And I hadn’t—not like this. But he’d obviously seen me, better than anyone else ever had.
“Well?” Tod watched me, his hand still warm in mine.
In answer, I leaned forward and kissed him again.
17
“Hey, Kaylee,” my dad called, as his door squealed open at the end of the hall.
I jerked away from Tod so fast the whole room seemed to spin around us, and when I looked up, I found my dad watching us from my doorway, surprised into a rare moment of total speechlessness.
“Hey, Mr. Cavanaugh.” Tod swiveled to face him in my desk chair, and I could see my father struggling for a response.
“Tod, could you excuse us for a minute?” he said at last.
Tod gave me an amused look no one else could have interpreted. “I’ll be in the living room.”
Then he disappeared, and the chair spun without him.
My father sighed and stepped into my room, closing the door behind him. “Could you please ask him to walk like a normal person when he’s here?”
I shrugged. “He’s not a normal person.”
“Is this going to be a regular thing now?”
“I don’t know how regular it could be, considering how little time I have left.”
My dad sank onto the end of my bed and picked at one thumbnail before meeting my gaze again. “This is going to sound stupid, considering the circumstances, but don’t you think this is happening kind of fast, Kaylee?”
Another shrug. “I guess that depends on your perspective. From Tod’s, it’s been a long time coming.”
He seemed to think about that for a minute, then stared at his hands again and nodded. “Yeah, I guess it has.”
I frowned at him in surprise. “You knew?”
“How he felt about you? It was pretty obvious, Kaylee.”
To everyone but me, evidently. “Is that why you were always mean to him?”
“I wasn’t mean to him. And I have to admit he’s certainly grown on me this week, with everything he’s tried to do for you. But yes. If things were different now—” meaning, if I were going to live “—I don’t think he’d be a very good choice for you.”
I laughed. “In all fairness, you should know that parental seal of approval is not a requirement for a boyfriend. In fact, it’s usually a deal-breaker.”
“Noted.” He sighed. “Seriously, though, what kind of future can you possibly have with a dead boy?”
“I’m sixteen. Even if I were going to live, college is as far into the future as I’ve really thought so far, and it’s not like the distance would be a problem for him.” One of the advantages of the reaper mode of travel…
“Kay, you may not be thinking about the future—you might not be even if yours were going to be…longer—but he is. Tod is eternal, Kaylee. His future is probably all he ever thinks about.”
“I don’t know, Dad. I think he’d rather live in the moment, because he knows how much future he’ll have. It must be overwhelming, facing forever. Don’t you think?” Not that I’d ever know…
“I guess.” He lapsed into a heavy pause, just watching me. “But my point is that none of that matters now. Tod isn’t my top choice for you, and if this were going to be a long-term thing, I’d insist that he follow all the normal social standards—no popping in anytime he wants, no popping into your room ever, and no visits after eleven. But this isn’t a normal situation, and I want you to be happy.”
“What does all that mean?”
My dad sighed and twisted to fully face me. “It means that Tod’s welcome here. Well, not here specifically,” he amended, glancing at the bed we both sat on for emphasis. “But he’s welcome in our home.”
“Thank you.” And suddenly I wanted to cry again. “You know, for a dad, you’re kinda awesome.”
The sudden mixture of pain and regret twisting through his irises was too much for both of us, so he squeezed my hand, then changed the subject. “So…how’s Nash taking all this, with you and Tod? Have you talked to him?”
“I don’t think he’d answer if I called.” I’d texted Sabine from Emma’s, though, to check up on him. She’d reported that he was kind of drunk, and very pissed off, and that I should stay away and let him get over it.
My father sighed. “Well, I can’t blame him there.” And neither could I. “Kaylee, I have to go meet your uncle, and I don’t want to leave you alone….”
“Dad, nothing’s going to happen today,” I insisted.
“You don’t know that. I was going to see if Alec could come over again, but if Tod’s already here and he’s willing to stay…”
“I suppose I could clear my schedule…” Tod called from the living room, and I laughed out loud.
“Yeah, I had a feeling,” my dad mumbled.
“Oh, hey,” I said, jumping up from my bed when he headed for the door. “Take this to Uncle Brendon…” I plopped into my desk chair and pressed the space bar on my laptop to wake it up, then jabbed the print screen button. My printer whirred to life and spat out a black-and-white copy of the Crestwood faculty page, including the yearbook photo of one Mr. David Allan. “Maybe it’ll turn out to be the same incubus he knew.”
“I doubt that, but I guess it’s worth a shot.” My dad took the page I held out, with Beck’s picture circled in red. “Don’t make me regret leaving you two alone,” he warned, as I followed him into the living room.
When the front door closed behind him, I turned to find Tod watching me, and I knew that if my father had seen the heat churning fiercely in the reaper’s eyes, he never would have left the house at all.
“Well, he’s right about that, I guess,” Tod whispered into my ear as I wrapped my arms around his neck. “There’s no more time for regrets.”
I parked across the lot from Sabine’s car on Wednesday morning and avoided Nash’s locker on the way to class, but there was no way to avoid the rumors, and they were already buzzing by the time I got to school. “She cheated on Nash?” a girl from my French class said, clearly unaware that I was walking behind her in the hall. “I would have thought it’d be the other way around. Who was the other guy?”
The girl next to her shrugged, hauling her backpack strap higher on one bony shoulder. “Never saw him before. But he was thoroughly covetable.”
It was hard not to laugh out loud, thinking of Tod’s potential ego boost. Too bad it came at the expense of my own self-image.
“So…does that mean Nash’s up for grabs again?” the first girl asked, and I couldn’t resist—what did I have to lose?
“Yeah, he’s available, but you don’t have a Popsicle’s chance in hell,” I said, falling into step beside them, enjoying their twin shocked expressions. “And if you even try, Sabine Campbell will kick your face in.” Sabine was still fairly new, but already working on infamy. “She’s got dibs.”
Both girls stopped and gaped at me, and I smiled all the way to class.
“So, what happened last night? Did Tod come over?” Emma demanded in a whisper the moment I slid into my chair. And evidently the flush I could feel crawling over my face wasn’t answer enough for her.
“Yeah. He stayed till his shift started at midnight.”
“And…? Did you do it?”
“Shh!” I glanced around the classroom, cheeks burning even hotter, but no one seemed to have heard. “And no, we didn’t.”
“Is it because he’s dead?” she whispered, leaning closer. “Is that a problem? Does his blood still circulate?”
“Em! No, that’s not the problem.” Was it? I hadn’t actually asked. But he was warm to the touch, which seemed to indicate good circulation… “There’s no problem. We’ve been together less than twenty-four hours.”
Emma frowned, like I’d lapsed into Greek. “If there’s ever been justification for an accelerated physical connection, this is it. He’s been waiting for you for months, Kaylee, and you don’t have much time left.” The pained line across her forehead was the only indication of how upset she really was, in spite of an obvious determination to wear her brave face. “And, if I can indulge in a moment of selfishness, we’re running out of time for the ‘guess what I just lost’ phone call. It’s, like a rite of passage.”
“You can’t be serious.”
She shrugged. “I’m not saying you should sleep with Tod just so we can have one last best friend tell-all. But, should you go down that path, I solemnly swear not to judge you.” She placed one hand over her heart. “And to provide the ice cream.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“That’s all I’m asking. So…is it weird?” she asked, while the other students settled in around us, most staring at Mr. Beck as he wrote last night’s homework problems on the board.
“Is what weird?” The fact that Tod was dead? The fact that I soon would be? The fact that a cou
ple dozen people had seen my very public breakup with Nash, over a stolen kiss from his brother?
“Being with him, after thinking of him as a friend for so long.”
“It’s kinda weird,” I admitted, not quite able to hide my smile. “But not because I already know him.” In fact, that was kind of cool. We hadn’t had any awkward getting-to-know-you moments, beyond his whole Peeping-Tom admission, which I’d decided to forgive, on the condition that it never happened again.
Now, if I could just get Nash to forgive me sometime in the next day or so…
“So, are you and Tod a couple now?”
“I don’t know. It seems kind of pointless to put a label on it, considering that we’ve only really got one day together.”
Emma’s face crumpled, and I wished I could take the words back. Evidently that was one reminder too many.
“How can you be so casual about this?” she demanded in a fierce whisper, brushing tears from her eye with the side of one finger, like she was wiping off a smear of eyeliner. “It’s like you don’t even care.”
“Everyone keeps saying that,” I whispered back, leaning closer to keep from being overheard. “But I don’t know how else I’m supposed to act. This isn’t like dying of cancer, Em. I’m not sick, which is a huge plus, obviously, but I’m not going to linger for another month while I say my goodbyes. There’s no wiggle room, and I can’t tell the world that I won’t be here after tomorrow. So I don’t have any choice except to go on living for the next twenty-four hours, trying to distract myself from how mind-bendingly final the whole thing seems by bringing down our demon teacher.” And by spending time with a living dead boy whose interest in me I’d discovered much too late to properly explore.
And by trying to explain to Nash why I’d kissed his brother, then asking him for forgiveness he had no reason to give either of us.
“I know. I’m sorry.” Emma sniffled and pulled a tissue from the minipack in her purse. “It just feels like you’re leaving me. Senior year’s going to suck with no best friend.”