Page 42 of Drop Dead Gorgeous

Without saying a word, she lays her hand gently over mine.

“I’m not going to break,” she says.

You will, I think. Not today. Not tomorrow. But someday, because everyone does, and I know exactly how cruel time can be.

“I need to tell you something.”

The smile fades from her face, replaced not by fear but by quiet attention.

Later, when the orders are finished and the shop has settled into its familiar afternoon hush, she makes coffee—tar-black and unsweetened, exactly the way she likes it. I sit opposite her withmy hands folded while she turns the mug slowly between her palms, watching the steam curl toward the ceiling.

“Do you ever feel,” she asks after a while, “like you’re waiting for something, but you don’t know what?”

“Always.”

She nods slowly.

“The first time I saw you, I remember thinking... here's a man who's seen too many bad endings, but still keeps showing up for the beginning of the story.”

The words land somewhere deep inside me.

“I've been trying to tell you the truth since Graymere.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“I assumed that's where the kissing interrupted your train of thought.”

Despite everything, I laugh.

“It did.”

“I thought so.”

The warmth between us makes what comes next almost unbearable.

“I’m not who you think I am.”

She gives me the faintest smile.

“Of course you're not. If you were, I'd have you figured out already.”

I stare down at my hands, suddenly aware of how strange they look resting on the countertop. Once they carried a scythe. Once they turned an hourglass. None of that belongs here among flower stems and ribbon and chipped coffee mugs.

“I should have told you before I kissed you.”

“Told me what?”

I draw a breath out of habit more than necessity.

“I’m not really Grim.”

She tilts her head.

“Not really Grim, as in that's not your real name? Or not really Grim, as in you're secretly a tax accountant in witness protection?”

The joke almost saves me.

Almost.