“When you said if you had taken me I’d have gone to Heaven…” His gazed darted to me and back to the road. “Is that the only place you take souls?”
I touched my blade and thought of how many souls it had brought peace to over the years. Too many to count. I wished I could tell him yes, but it wouldn’t have been true. There was far more bad than good out there. It’s one of the reasons Easton stayed so busy.
“No,” I finally said. “There are other places. Each reaper has a territory. I am assigned to the
Heaven-bound.”
Cash smirked. “Let me guess. Finn was assigned to Hell. He had to be.”
The venom in his voice took me by surprise. I couldn’t understand where it was coming from. Finn may have made a lot of mistakes in his afterlife, but to his core he was good. “No, actually he collected for the Inbetween.” When he raised a brow I went on. “You might think of it as a sort of purgatory. A type of limbo for souls who don’t quite belong in Heaven or Hell yet.”
Headlights passed us, splashing light over Cash’s confused expression. “How did he get to be alive again? Did he just quit? Cash in his human card?”
I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth and stared out the windshield. “It’s not that easy. What happened with Finn…it’s unheard of. He had to have struck quite a bargain with Balthazar to get this.”
I was afraid to find out what he’d sacrificed. Knowing Finn, he would have given anything to be with Emma.
“Balthazar?” Cash said. “Is that your boss? Is he the one stringing me along?”
“Yes.”
Cash nodded and pulled off the road onto a scenic overlook. Outside the windshield, daylight was dying. The sun dipped low in the sky, setting the mountains on fire with color. The valley below was a sea of black, seemingly bottomless in the night. Cash leaned his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes. “This is so screwed up.”
I focused on his chest. The rise and fall of his lungs, something so foreign to me it was almost too painful to watch. “I know it is.”
“Do you really?” His head rolled to the side and his eyes looked like caves staring back at me in the dim cab of the Bronco. “This is the kind of shit you deal with every day. It must be normal for you.”
I thought of the eyes of the souls I carried over every day. Full of wonder and light and hope. Even the memory of them dimmed in the darkness that surrounded Cash and his uncertain future. And I thought about the warm, unsteady feeling Cash left blooming in my chest every time I looked at him.
The way, even now, my fingers ached to close the small space between our hands.
“No,” I said. “This isn’t normal for me.”
We stared at each other for an immeasurable moment. It felt like we’d been here before. Looking at each other from inches away. The phone in the cup holder between us vibrated and Cash broke eye contact to grab it. He looked at the message on the display and tossed it back without answering it.
“Emma?”
He stared at the phone in the cup holder. “Yeah.”
“Why are you blaming her for this?”
Cash opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He finally shook his head, staring at the steering wheel. “Because I don’t know what else to do.”
I pulled my legs up underneath me and the golden light from my eyes spilled across the vinyl seat between us. “You know this isn’t her fault. Even if you hadn’t decided to go into that fire, fate would have found another way. I still would have been sent to stop it.”
When he didn’t say anything, I went on. “She would have chosen to burn in that house rather than get you involved if she’d been given the choice. You know that, right?”
Cash looked out his window and drew lazy circles on the glass with his fingertip. “I know that.”
I watched him carve shapes in the foggy window until he rested his forehead against the glass and exhaled.
“You love her.” It wasn’t a question. It was clear. And for reasons I couldn’t place, my chest twisted in discomfort as I admitted it out loud for both of us.
“Of course I love her. But…” He paused and sat back in his seat. “She’s my best friend.”
“It’s more than that.”
He sighed and ran his palms in circles over the steering wheel. “You don’t get it. Nobody does.”
“Then help me understand.”
“She saves me,” he said, quietly.
I cocked my head to the side, trying to figure out what the look on his face meant. “From what?”
He laughed, bitterly. “Myself. Half the time, I feel like I’m drowning. Even before this. Like I’m in a room full of people screaming my lungs out and none of them can hear me. But Emma…she always hears me. She never lets me sink. She never lets me go, even when I know damn good and well it would be easier for her if she did.” His hands dropped into his lap and he finally gave in and met my gaze again. “But she can’t save me from this.”
Outside the window, behind him, a shadow slipped like sludge down the glass. Another slid across the hood before disappearing into the night. The desperation seeping out of him was drawing them in like cattle called to feed. He knew they were there. I could tell. But he didn’t let his fear show.
“No,” I said, softly. “She can’t.”
Cash pressed his lips together and nodded as if he’d hoped for a different answer but hadn’t expected it. After a silent moment he asked, “What’s it like?”
“What?”
His gaze met mine. “Dying.”
I thought back to the day I left my flesh behind. I’d been so foolish thinking death could give me escape. That it would lead me home. I turned toward the window and blinked away the memories. “It’s different for everyone.”
“For you,” he said. “I want to know what it was like for you.”
I bit my lip, fighting the ache swelling in my chest. “It was like being lost. Being lost and thinking
I’d finally made it home, only to realize I’d taken a wrong turn, and was still a world away from where
I wanted to be.”
My voice broke and Cash moved across the seat in one swift motion. “Hey…I didn’t mean to—”
I placed my palm on the seat to scoot away and his fingers accidentally slid over mine. We both froze. If I wouldn’t have known any better, I would’ve said the world stopped spinning in that moment. Everything was so still. So unbearably still and quiet. I stopped breathing, watching Cash’s chest rise with a sharp intake of breath. His eyes focused on his fingers pressing into my flesh, then traveled up until his gaze collided with mine.
Connection sparked, heating the air between us, making every square inch of my body aware of just how close he was. Cash tilted his head and let his fingers trace a slow, maddening line from my knuckles to my wrist, the look in his eyes so intense my insides fluttered with anticipation. Slowly, his fingers turned my hand over and his thumb rubbed a slow circle against my palm that felt so tight and warm I thought I might explode if he stopped.
This…this was wrong. Tarik. Think of Tarik. Just hearing his name echo inside my head was enough for me to feel sick with regret. No man should be touching me this way when Tarik couldn’t. I tried to let go of the corporeality, but…I couldn’t. Under his fingers I was solid. Blue smoke twined around my arm, as if it were securing me to him.
Cash exhaled a shaky breath and I came to my senses, jerking out from under his fingers, snapping the luminescent blue connection binding us together. I rubbed my wrist, where I could still feel his touch like a brand. Power surged uninhibited though my body, allowing me to relinquish my flesh for something less substantial. Something safer. How had he done that? He’d touched me. He’d forced me into corporeality. My eyes widened and the soft glow from them spilled across Cash’s face. What was he?