Page 65 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

The bed dips down, the familiar weight of him laying next to her, not touching her. They’re still on top of the quilt, they’re still both fully dressed, but she feels fully naked. Naked and vulnerable.

“I’ll try not to send you into any more moral quandaries,” he says, and she smiles, briefly, still shutting her eyes against the world. “And I wouldn’t say everything but…yeah bringing someone back from the dead is pretty complicated.”

“Not to mention it’s you.” She exhales, finally blinking her eyes up to the exposed wooden beams of the ceiling. “First person I tried to bring back, first anything I tried to bring back—”

“Please don’t try anything else,” he interrupts, and she leans her head over to give him a glare, but they’re so close, flopped on the bed, that the retort just evaporates from her mind.

It’s no different from when they were first dating, in those first few months, before they really knew what to expect from each other. When everything was tentative and everything was unknown. When sometimes he seemed so skittish around her, she had no idea what to do.

It makes sense, in retrospect, the nerves from him. If he messed up, the looming threat to his mother was always behind him.

But here, with his lashes casting shadows on his cheeks and his hair messy and his lungs still aching against her mind, she finds herself without words.

He’s content to let her blink up at him, watching her intently with his grey eyes so familiar.

“Why are your eyes only red some of the time?” she asks, instead of all the emotions clogging through her. All she wouldhave to do to kiss him is shift forward, ever so slightly, and all he would have to do is drape an arm over her and so many things could happen.

“You shouldn’t see that outside of circles,” he replies, but there’s a half smile lurking in his expression. “Maybe it’s a Necromancer thing.”

“Weird,” she says, but doesn’t move away.

His eyes flicker down to her lips, only a brief second, so short she might’ve imagined it.

“You really should sleep,” he says, also staying exactly where he is. “We’ll deal with all the complications and everything tomorrow.”

“Sure, that sounds responsible,” she says, and he laughs, quiet, before he sits up and clicks the lamp off, stealing the warm glow away, so the only illumination is the filtered moonlight through the floral curtains, before settling down next to her.

Not touching, not holding her, but she can hear the rise and fall of his breath and see the vague silhouette of his jawline in the shadows.

Tentative, she reaches out, tangling her hand in his, and he grips her back.

19

She wakes the next morning with him still fast asleep, his arm thrown over her midsection, tugging her until her back’s pressed against his chest.

Where his lungs are much less painful, just a twinge on the crest of every deep inhale, and the skin no longer stretches annoyingly.

It’s exactly how they would wake up on cold winter mornings in the condo in Prescott, on the rare occasions of snow.

For a few moments, she gives herself the luxury of cuddling, no matter how ill advised. Of closing her eyes to the warm comfort of being against him in a bed, as if nothing in the last few days had happened. As if she still didn’t know, still thought of him as the perfect doting boyfriend, and she still worked the job doing spreadsheets for people who couldn’t.

It’s such a little thing, to be held like this in sleep, and she can’t help but relax into it. To cherish it, as if it might not ever happen again.

She blinks out, the sunlight muffled through the floral curtains.

Because he’s alive, he’s well, but he’s still…someone who dated her just because of a job.

No matter the familiarity, no matter how wonderful this feels, there’s still the gaping maw of what he did. Of the confusion of which part of emotions from him are real and which emotions and habits are just from him sleeping next to her for so long.

“Ugh,” she whispers to herself, too quiet to disturb his sleep. Because she knows that off hand.

She needs to figure this out, she decides. Figure out which parts of her are angry and which parts of his actions are habits.

Though stepping in front of her for a strike that was aimed to kill runs deeper than just habits.

It would be far easier if he resented her, but the twin chipped mugs of hot chocolate on the side table and the ache in his chest says otherwise.

She wiggles out from underneath his arm, and he mumbles something in his sleep at the movement, before squishing his face into the pillow.

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