Page 113 of If Books Could Kill
Grant and I answer at the same time.
“We’ll walk.”
• • •
THE WALK BACKto Lesley’s house feels precarious, like at any moment the sidewalk might open and swallow us up. The momentary relief of Lissa’s defeat has largely faded, overtaken by the rising tide of dread. It’s like I can feel the wordsTHE ENDbreathing down my neck.
I fixate on Grant’s footsteps, the careful way he walks when he’s deep in thought. There are so many tiny, perfect details about him—the warmth of his voice, the freckle on his right index finger. I have to wonder if Anna invented them all or if there’s any of him that’s beyond her, just for me. I can’t imagine her knowing him like I do.
The house is unnaturally quiet when we return, and it feels wrong for us to be there alone, so we settle on the front steps.
It would be a nice scene to end on. The hero and heroine side by side, victorious in the afternoon sun, facing the promise of their life together now that they’ve beaten the bad guy.
But the thing is, that’s a promise that can’t be fulfilled. No matter how much time Anna writes for us—a montage of happiness that lasts days or weeks, an epilogue a year later—one way or another, the story ends. There’s a last word on a last page and a cold, hard back cover to seal it all in.
It’s torture, wanting this to last forever. Knowing that it can’t. That a happy ending is still an ending.
“What do you think?” I ask, my voice hoarse. “Could there be a sequel?”
He seems to weigh it. “Maybe,” he says, though the set of his brow doesn’t show much hope. “Lissa’s not dead. She could come back to get revenge on us.” His gaze falls on me, soft and certain. “We’d be together,” he says. “We’re too good a team not to be. At least we could count on that.”
I nod, swallowing painfully.
“Unlike real life,” I say. “Where we could mess it all up, break each other’s hearts and never be the same.”
He nods, looking off somewhere in the distance. I try to commit his profile to memory. The scruff along his jaw, the way the sun turns his eyes almost amber.
“Or,” he says, “we might meet each other’s families and hold hands in the car on the way home. Go to concerts and plan vacations and be each other’s emergency contacts.”
“And read together,” I say. “And go for walks, and sleep in late, and go out for ice cream after work.” It kills me, thinking of all those things I would have balked at once. Shadows of a life we can’t have.
He smiles at me, knowing and bittersweet as the words hang heavy in the air.
“I want all of that,” I admit, my voice stinging my throat.
“I want that for you,” he says quietly. He reaches over and takes my hand in his, twining our fingers together the way we’ve done so many times. “Which is why,” he continues, “you have to go to Bramble Books now and tell Anna to end this.”
My breath bottoms out as I look at him in surprise. Not at the words he spoke, I realize with a sinking feeling. But at the fact that he said them before I could.
There might be more story to be told—more daring deeds and great escapes. I could stay here and find out what happens next. I could find Anna and beg her to never stop writing us, to send us on all kinds of whirlwind adventures forever.
But they would never be trulyours. We would always bebound to a narrative arc, running on borrowed time. It would be a story, not a life.
I’m desperate to argue, to think of a way around this. But while my mind reels, my vision blurs with tears because I already know: Thereisno other way. If our romance was inevitable, so was our goodbye.
“But what about you?” I say, choking on the words. “Where will you go?”
“Wherever characters go,” he says, quoting the Gifter. “Fictional Boston, I guess. I still have a cat to feed.” His mouth tilts in a faint smile, though sadness lines his face. “Maybe you’ll even read about me again someday, in another Anna Matthews book. Someone’s favorite professor, or the old man running the bookstore. Maybe I’ll be winningJeopardy!in the background of someone else’s meet-cute.”
The emotion hits me hard, dropping like an anchor in my chest. It’s unthinkable, the idea of going home to a world that isn’t his. One where all my hope lies in leafing through pages, straining for glimpses of him.
But I can’t keep him from the life he knows. The one hewants. It isn’t murder and car chases; it’s classes and Tuesdays and coffee with friends. Sword fighting for the joy of it, not for survival. That life is his to sink back into. And after all he’s been through, he deserves that peace.
My eyes burn, and I try to blink them clear but feel a drop escape, cutting a path down my cheek. Grant brushes it away, leaving his hand for a moment to hold my face. I close my eyes, as if doing so might stop time. Just for a minute, or forever. I lean into him, my forehead to his.
“Will you come with me?” I ask, my voice an involuntary whisper.
He nods against me. “If you want me to,” he says. “Althoughif I stay here, we can pretend this was all real. That we’re just two people, saying goodbye and going our separate ways.”
