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Jamal winced. “I had to admit, it wasn’t your finest moment.”
I made a face but said nothing.
His lip ticked into a smile, but he held himself back. “Look, dying is hard. It’s a transition, and any sort of transition is hard. Human beings don’t like change. There’s a reason that grief has seven stages. We were all arseholes when we were freshly dead.” Jamal reached up and patted my shoulder. “You just want to find your body, lay down inside it, wake up and go back to your life.”
I felt my entire body droop as I digested his words. He was right. Jamal had managed to quantify precisely how I was feeling. “How do you move past this?” I asked, unable to meet his eyes. “I had a good life. The best life. Now I’m looking back and seeing the cracks. How many times did I ignore the red flags in my relationships—with Cody, with my dad—I feel so stupid,” I buried my head in my hands. “Does Hell feel any better? Does actually going into the afterlife feel better than whatever this limbo is? Being part of the world, but not part of it?”
“I don’t know if it gets better.” Jamal reached up and rubbed his palm against the grain of his short curly hair. He sucked his bottom lip between his teeth as he searched for words. “No one truly knows the people around them. Everyone has secrets.”
“My dad signed my soul away,” I countered.
“Maybe he had his reasons.” Jamal gave me his signature smile.
I scoffed and turned away, the new bartender asked me for my order, and I quickly ordered a mojito. Screw not drinking. “I can’t even begin to process what my life has become,” I picked up a coaster and allowed it to spin. “We literally just witnessed a man shoot seven people.”
“It's not always that bad,” Jamal told me.
I gave him a look.
“Well,” He shrugged, wincing. “It’s bad more often than not.”
“Why did he do it?” I looked up to the ceiling, realizing I had said the words out loud without meaning to.
“Some people focus their anger inwards. They push it down, down, down into a ball of pressure in their body. It’s not healthy, but they suffer in silence.” Jamal explained. “Some people blast outwards. Some people want to explode and drag every person down with them.”
“I know which one I am,” I tried to joke, but it wasn’t funny.
Jamal ignored my comment. “Both are valid. Both have their consequences.”
The bartender slid my drink across the bar, and I smiled my thanks before picking up my glass and taking a sip. I looked up at Jamal over the rim of my glass. At his broad smile and the flat plains of his symmetrical face. He was good-looking, the kind of man that could stop traffic. His intimatingly beautiful face was softened by his smile. Something about Jamal felt like being lowered into a warm bath filled with bubbles. Drinking a hot chocolate on a cold day or receiving a hug from a puppy.
I blinked when I realized I was staring and placed my drink back on the bar. “Do you remember you died?” I asked. “Will the memory of my death come back?”
Jamal reached back, bending his arm at the elbow, to rub the back of his neck as he gave me an surveying look. “So many questions.” He teased.
“Do you remember your death?” I queried.
Jamal eyed me suspiciously. “Of course, I remember my death.”
“How did you become a Reaper?” I picked up my drink again.
“How does anyone?” He gave me a self-deprecating smile that was so British I couldn’t help but return it with one of my own. “I woke up at HQ. I had been selected by Charon. Just like the others.”
I looked around the room. Though Maddox was mingling, I spotted Fletcher and Rome on the other side of the suite. “You’re all so different,” I murmured. “I wonder why you were chosen to be Reapers.”
Jamal chuckled. “Who knows.”
I fought a yawn and placed my hand over my mouth.
“You should go to sleep,” Jamal told me. “It’s a busy day tomorrow.”
Shortly after my conversation with Jamal ended, I did as he suggested and went back to my room.
My head was swimming from the cocktail, and my stomach was warm, but not enough to be drunk.
No matter how tired I was, I couldn’t sleep just yet. My head rested against the pillow as I looked up at the coving on the ceiling and studied the ornate lines as I tried to relax my brain enough to shut down.
The party had died down as the sun had begun to crest the sky, though a few people had lingered and remained in the living area of the suite with the guys. I could hear the low-level chatter through the walls, though the music had stopped an hour before.
