Page 64 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

Before she can stop herself, Delina puts her hand on his arm, and he cuts off, inhaling suddenly.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and means it.

He searches her face for something in the dim, warm light, and she doesn’t know if he finds it.

“I probably shouldn’t have come in here just to rant,” he mumbles, wrapping his own hands around the mug, and his fingers tremble, just a bit. “You should absolutely be getting some sleep.”

“I dunno, I had a pretty good nap in the middle of the day,” Delina says, and gets a hint of the dimple. “You know. Sometimes I just don’t sleep.”

It’s true, though less frequent than it used to be, and he nods. Because of course he knows, he would lay beside her on those long nights, a hair’s breadth away from her, so she can see his chest rise and fall even when sleep evaded her.

“Maybe those other people have a support group?” Delina says, and he huffs out a weak laugh. “I dunno, Gurlien said one of them had been dead for like fifteen hours, that could be something.”

She still has her hand on his arm, she realizes distantly, right on the edge of his sleep shirt, at the creases that came frompacking, and the smart thing to do would be to lean away. To go back to drinking the hot chocolate and then pretend to fall asleep again, and let her ex-boyfriend go back to whatever it is he should be doing.

But in the warm light of the lamp, all those ‘shoulds’ seem awfully far away.

“I don’t know how to navigate this,” he says, voice softer than the quilt. “I don’t know what to do right now, and so much of my life has had a clear purpose and set of rules to follow, and now…” for a long moment, he doesn’t speak, before he sets down the mug of hot chocolate and rubs his face again. “Sorry.”

The apology carries some weight, something unsaid, something bigger than the whole room, and it hangs in the air between them.

“So for once in your life, you’re not beholden to just doing what they want you to do,” Delina says, and he blinks, like it’s not something he’s considered. “You don’t have to behave, you don’t have to toe the line, the worst has happened.”

He’s still, barely breathing.

“You’ve betrayed them, you tried to stop them, nothing you do right now will convince them otherwise, right?” she continues, and he gives her the most minute of nods. “Then you can do what you want. Live your life how you want, do whatever reckless thing that crosses your mind. Move where you want, do whatever magic you want, fall in love with whomever you want.” The moment is crystalline silent, not even a stir of air through the entire house except what is between the two of them. “You can do anything.”

He looks down, away, his lashes casting shadows over his cheekbones.

“You don’t even have to stay here if you don’t want to,” Delina says, and though she knows that would be the good option, that would be the healthy option for both of them, thewords are bitter in her mouth. “You can go anywhere, forget that this chapter of your life ever happened.”

“I don’t want to,” he says, finally, swallowing.

“Okay,” Delina says, and he smiles at her, heartbreaking in its beauty.

Slowly, telegraphing his motions, he shifts, lifting his hand to tuck a wayward strand of her hair behind her ear, like he used to do when she needed some touch but couldn’t ask for it.

“May I ask you some things?” His voice dips down, low, as if to not wake the other two people in the house, even though Delina can tell with merely a thought that they’re still asleep.

She nods, swallowing, and he cradles her chin.

“Why’d you bring me back?”

Once more, the words hang between them, and Delina can’t parse what’s the right thing to say. Can’t sift through her options and find what’s correct, what’s smart, and what’s accurate, all thoughts mishmashing together in her mind.

“Because five years?” she says, her voice lilting up, and she knows, the moment she says them, that they’re too honest. Too honest and too ill advised.

His face is unreadable, like stone.

“I mean, also I panicked,” Delina says, hoping for a joke. “I don’t know how your magic demon bullshit worked but it was pretty intense for me all of the sudden, and—”

He swipes his thumb against her cheek, cutting off her words, and to her horror she realizes that she had let tears fall for the second time that day.

She jerks herself back, yanking a tissue from the box on the nightstand and wiping the tears away. “Sorry,” she says, though if you held a gun to her head she couldn’t tell you what she was apologizing for. “It’s been…it’s been a day.”

He leans back as well, crossing his arms. “I’ve seen you cry already today, you don’t have to apologize.”

“Obviously,” she snips back, then presses the heels of her hands into her eyes, flopping backwards on the bed. “I hate that everything I do now is complicated.”

---