Page 73 of Death is My BFF

Blood rushed to my head. “No . . . ” I took an uneven step back, glancing at the once shattered window to my left. Everything, and I mean everything in that office, was exactly as it was before the angel crashed through it. I considered three possibilities here: Death had reset the room and wiped David’s memories clean, David was lying to me, or I had lost my mind and none of what I remembered ever happened.

I looked David dead in the eye. “The last time I saw you, an angel with a wingspan the size of a bus crashed through that window.” I pointed an unsteady finger to it. “You restrained the creature in seconds, as if it were just another day at the office. As if that wasn’t traumatizing enough, a bunch of horrifying bird demons manifested and tried to kill me in the alleyway outsideyourbuilding!”

He scratched the back of his head. “Um,what?”

“This isn’t funny, David!” My heart thrashed wildly against its cage, and I fought to take a deep breath. “You were there with me!

Ithappened!”

“I don’t understand what your goal is here, but I don’t find this funny, and I don’t have time for games.” He picked up his desk phone.

“Don’t you dare call security on me! Ever since I met you and your father, all of this crazy shit started happening!” I pinched my temples as a migraine began to pound. “Either you’re lying to me and you have something to do with all of this, or your memories have been erased. That last one would really suck right now!”

David’s eyes hardened as a vein pulsed in his forehead. “You need to leave, Faith.”

A part of me thought if I kept talking about what happened, David’s memory would come back to him, but it only pissed him off.

Which I couldn’t blame him for if he was brainwashed into thinking I’d told him off the day before. But what if he was lying? I crossed my arms over my chest to hold myself together. There wasn’t an ounce of uncertainty in his voice, and he was showing no signs of lying that I could glean. How could I get the answers I wanted from him without getting thrown out by security?

I refused to believe I was going off the deep end. “Are you lying to me?”

“What reason do I have to lie to you?”

I took a few tentative steps closer to him. “What happened Friday was real, whether you can remember it or not, and your mind being wiped clean is an easy way of getting out of this conversation.”

“And what exactly is the point of this conversation?”

“To get answers.”Something Death hates more than anything.“To help you remember.”

I looked down at David’s hands, which gripped the ledge of his desk. The last time I’d touched Death, I’d seen things from his past that I shouldn’t have. If I tried to touch David now, his reaction could be very telling.

“I think what you need is closure,” David said, and my heart skipped a beat at his callous tone. “Your personal problems no longer concern me. This was never going anywhere, Faith.”

It was my way out. An end to this charade, so I didn’t get wrapped up in David’s world on top of all the other chaos in my life. I never expected his cruel words to cut so deep.

David’s shadowy eyes flicked up to mine. His jaw set. Seeing that I was on the verge of crying, he shifted from one foot to the other, finally exhibiting an emotion outside of anger through his cold mask.

“I’ll call my driver to take you home.”

“I’m fine to take the train,” I managed to get out evenly.

He stared straight at the door, evading eye contact. “Then I’ll escort you to the lobby.”

Never in a million years would I have predicted myself allowing this man, thisstrangerI hardly knew, to hurt me like this. But he had, and I was a fool.Pull yourself together. My shoulders hunched. I was fighting so hard to hold back the waterworks that I knew if I opened my mouth, I would lose control, so I forced a pathetic nod.

In the elevator, I switched to Autopilot. Detached. Numb. David stood facing away from me, his hands clasped behind his back. His long fingers were fiddling with a rolled-up gum wrapper.

“If you ever need that pepper spray, make sure it’s not locked,”

David said. “Point it away from you before you spray.”

I stared at the back of his suit jacket for seven floors. “How’d you know I’m carrying pepper spray?”

“You keep touching a lump in your sweatshirt pocket. There should be a knob or a switch to make sure the canister isn’t locked.”

“Heard you the first time.”I’m not yours to protect, had almost slipped out childishly too. I yanked up the hood of my sweatshirt, remembering the chaos from all the fangirls in the lobby.

A hard rock riff blasted through the awkward tension. David took his phone out from his back pocket, silencing the noise.

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