Page 37 of Drop Dead Gorgeous

Because I know exactly where this is leading.

"Have you ever skipped stones at Graymere?" I ask.

Her face brightens.

"Only every Sunday between the ages of seven and twelve."

She grins.

"Let's fix that."

Graymere is swollen with snowmelt, its banks soft beneath our boots. She spends the next half hour teaching me something I've watched countless children do without ever attempting myself. She skips circles around me, laughing every time another stone dances across the water.

I lose spectacularly.

She knows I let her win.

Kindly, she pretends not to mention it.

By the time the afternoon gives way to evening, the air has turned sharp again. She steps closer almost absentmindedly,seeking warmth, and I become painfully aware of how little distance remains between us.

Her eyes search mine.

She doesn't rush.

She doesn't ask.

She simply waits.

It would be so easy to close the distance.

So easy to kiss her.

Instead, I step back.

Only one pace.

"It's getting late," I say quietly.

The disappointment crosses her face so quickly she almost hides it before I can see it.

"Right," she says with a small smile. "Of course."

I want to tell her it isn't her—that it's the centuries I carry, the certainty of how this ends. That I have held too many souls not to know what it costs to love what must one day leave.

But the words refuse to come.

How do you tell a woman who loves life that Death has fallen in love with her?

CHAPTER 8

GRIM

Three days pass. I haunt the alleys of Blackthorn Bay, silent and unmoored, ducking into doorways or slipping down side streets whenever I glimpse her hair through a window. The blue flower loses a little more of its color each day, petal by petal, yet I cannot bring myself to part with it. Each hour that stretches the distance between us seems to grow something else, too—a quiet hunger, a restless need to know whether I have hurt her, or whether she has already shrugged me off and carried on with that relentless human optimism.

I watch her once, just before dark. She is closing Belladonna Blooms, humming softly as she counts the cash drawer. Her hands are stained green from the day's work, and loose strands of hair have escaped to frame her face. Every now and then she talks to herself, voice low and fond, as though the flowers deserve conversation as much as water. She never looks toward the window. She isn't expecting me.

I am the one who cannot give up the ghost.