Page 110 of Grim Tidings

She crosses her arms over her chest. “And what about you?”

“What about me?”

“You’re exhausted. You cling to this idea that you need to protect everyone around you, but you’re exhausted. I don’t see you fight for anything, Gabriel. Least of all yourself. You value those wings of yours over everything else so desperately that you won’t even stop to consider if they’re what you want.”

I scrub my palm along my jaw. “Not everything,” I tell her.

Her eyebrows knit together. “What?”

“I don’t value my wings over everything. And yeah, I’m tired as fuck. I’ve existed for centuries, Darcy. How could I not be? But you made me think there’s another option for people like us. That’s what you’ve been saying all these weeks, isn’t it? That we get to choose. So, choose something different. Prove that you’re more than what the afterlife made of you.”

Her eyes search mine. I watch all that indignation leave her in a rush, naked desperation shining through. “You don’t believe that.”

I let out a deep breath. “I watched you strip down to your underwear and jump into a river in the middle of October. Of course I believe that.” I reach across the counter and loop my fingers around her wrist, tracing the delicate jut of her wrist bone. “C’mon. Stay right here. Fight with me.”

Everything about Darcy feels like spun glass. One wrong touch and she could shatter. But she’s formidable, too. Stronger than she gives herself credit for.

The door bangs open, a group of sailors from the Naval Academy pouring in. I lose Darcy in the rush, our conversation abandoned for trays of shots and hastily poured beers. I keep an eye on her and watch as whatever progress I made is inched back.

She flinches at other people’s laughter. She shies away from anyone who approaches. She’s reserved and quiet, sitting there and picking at the edge of a napkin, gazing out the window with a frown on her face.

I take her room-temperature glass of tonic water and swap it for a drink that’s 75 percent grenadine, a knot in my stomach.

She pokes her straw around the drink, eyeing it dubiously. “What’s in this?”

“Cherries,” I answer, impatience making me bite around the edge of the word. “A shit ton of sugar. I don’t know.”

Her cheeks hollow as she takes a sip, and her eyes brighten. “It’s good.”

“Imagine that.”

She tucks the straw into her cheek, holding it between her teeth. “You’re mad.”

Mad isn’t the word I’d use. Itchy, maybe. It feels like there’s a storm coming and I’m the dumbass standing in the middle of a field without an umbrella. In fact, I feel like I’m holding a goddamned metal rod, practically asking to be struck by lightning.

“Yeah,” I agree. “I’m mad.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s been a thousand fucking years, Darcy, and I was doing just fine until—” I stop. Shake my head. Try to contain the anger that’s not anger at all, but a bone-deep desperation that I’m about to lose something precious. “I was doing just fine,” I repeat.

I never wanted anything to be mine. Not until Darcy.

Darcy, who is staring at me with fucking pity in her eyes. Like I’ve just admitted the worst possible thing.

She turns her head toward the window. “There’s a lot happening right now, Gabriel. I’m just—” She frowns. “I’m trying to make it easier for both of us.”

“I don’t want you to make it easier.”

She stays silent, still gazing through the frosted glass. I sigh and drag my hand through my hair. “Have you eaten?”

She watches me from the corner of her eye. That pisses me off more than anything else. That she won’t fucking look at me.

“Have you had anything to eat?” I ask again, staring pointedly at her collection of olive pits. “Besides sixty-three olives.”

“You know I don’t actually need to eat, right?”

“I’m aware.” But I know that she enjoys it. That her face lit up when one night Nate brought in a basket of Old Bay fries from the food truck that parks on the corner. “You want some pickle chips? Mozzarella sticks? I think that truck you like is back.”