Page 57 of Death is My Ride or Die

“Ifeelyou would lose at an arm-wrestling match against my pinky.”

I scanned his muscled frame. He wore a faded gray T-shirt, the lightest color I’d seen him in, with a typical pair of black joggers. Lord Almighty, did he look good . . .

“Are you listening to me?” Death growled.

Oh, right, he was talking. While I’d been blatantly checking him out.

“Yes. No. Maybe. Nes.”

“Nes?”

“Yes and no. I—I zoned out, okay? Can’t a girl have a little zone-y sesh every once in a while?” I wanted to bang my skull against the wall for how awkward I sounded. “I’m trying the best that I can here.”

“Then try the worst you can,” Death hissed, “because clearly it must be opposite day.”

Grumbling under my breath, I peeled myself off the mat and stood with an energetic hop, feigning a second wind. “You know, you could at least try to empathize with me and interact with me normally sometimes. Instead, you’re always in this robot drill sergeant mode.” I wiped at the sweat on my forehead, my throat tight suddenly. “I get it, your scythe is gone, and you’rebig mad. A lot has happened to me too, you know. Things that I don’t know how to deal with like you do. I can’t just . . . turn it all off.”

To my utter disbelief, Death had listened intently to my rant. I waited for him to yell at me to run more laps, but he put his gloved hands on his hips.

“All right, come on,” Death said with a jerk of his head to follow him. “Let’s take a break.”

I stood there for a moment, wishing he’d acknowledged my emotions. At least he hadn’t shut me down. I followed him to the side of the room, where a mirror lined the whole length of the wall. I noticed he didn’t look at himself as he bent down to get my water bottle.

“Sit down on the floor and start stretching your right shoulder. You keep favoring it. I’ll massage your legs.”

Our eyes connected, and I swear my heart did a thousand somersaults. “Um. Okay . . . ”

What the hell? Did I just agree to Death himself massaging me?

I watched his titanic frame cross the room to get a small black container. He opened the latch and pulled out a massage gun. I felt like an idiot for thinking he’d use his hands or that this would be even remotely sexual. He lowered to the ground in front of me and plopped my leg into his lap.

“You still have that knot in your quad,” Death said, deep in concentration as he worked on me with the passiveness of a clinician. “Didn’t I tell you to use the roller yesterday?”

“You mean the cylindrical-looking thing with the knobs on it?”

Death glared, and I gave him a sheepish smile. Screwing an attachment that looked like a torture device on the massage gun, he went to town on the knot on my quad.

“Recovery is just as important as the workout,” Death said a minute or so later, dumping my leg out of his lap to work on the other one. “Explains why you’re moving so slow today.”

“Listen, dude, you don’t even have to breathe. It makes keeping up with you—oh, I don’t know, impossible?”

“Just say the word and I can stop you from breathing too, cupcake.” He arched that stupid scarred eyebrow with the stupid hot piercing.

Every day, something seemed to change about him. Today it was his eyes. They weren’t shielded by aviators and were therefore slightly squinted against the gym lights. One eye was darker than normal, a deep, woodsy green. His other, the one with the horrific scar slashed through it, glowed a livid mint-green. The only part of his eyes that always seemed to remain the same were his pupils—thin horizontal slits, trapped in their catlike way.

He flashed his fangs in a foxlike grin, and I realized I was staring.

“You like my hands on you?” Death asked in a coarse voice, drawing my attention to his gloved hand resting on my thigh.

I ripped my leg out of his hold and kicked toward him, but my foot went through shadows as he evaporated. He had the audacity tolaughas he reappeared standing in front of me with his hands casually in his pockets. The rich, deep sound of his laughter was something I hadn’t heard in a while, and it tickled my ears.

He offered me a hand. “Don’t be so uptight.”

You’re one to talk.

I reached for him, but he pulled his hand back and smoothed it across his hair. “Ooooh, too slow. Oldest trick in the book.”

“You would know.” Evading his second offer to help me up, I pushed off the ground by myself with a string of curses. “For a two-thousand-year-old dead guy, you’re an utter child.”

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