Page 33 of You'll Be the Death of Me

They continued to kiss, softly whispering to each other in between, and Dell knew this was not new. The way they touched each other, her hands on his chest, his on her waist, in her hair, said they knew each other’s bodies well.

The rage bubble inside Dell popped and gave way to something like... relief?

But still.

“I’ve been dead for two hours, Tommy! What the fuck?!” Sheswiped at him and regretted not feeling the resistance of her hand meeting his flesh. She wanted to hurt him. She wanted to tear the ring off her finger and saw him in half with the stone. “How can youdothis to me?!” she shouted, and shoved him. But her hands sank through him. He shuddered, and Dell remembered what Cole had said about major organs.

She punched at him, aiming for his heart, his liver, his lungs. Anything she could get her dead hands on. It was a shot to the pelvis that finally made him pull back from Nikki.

“Baby, what’s wrong?” Nikki asked when he stumbled and held a hand to his forehead. “Are you okay?”

He shook his head and blinked a few times. “Yeah. I’m just not feeling so great all of a sudden.”

“Maybe because you’ve got your tongue down someone else’s throat while your fiancée’s dead body is still warm, you asshole!” Dell said, and shoved him again. Her usual levelheadedness was nowhere to be found, not with evidence of infidelity glaring at her like the burning sun. There was no benefit of any doubt to be given.

“We aredone!” she screamed. “I want you out of here. The wedding is off!” She shouted as if he could hear her. But her voice only echoed to her and Cole’s ears. The fact made her even more furious. Furious enough to reach for the hand-painted ceramic lamp on the nearby table and hurl it at the floor like a spiked football. She hadn’t even realized what she’d done until it shattered against the wood.

Tommy and Nikki jumped sideways.

“What the hell?” Nikki yelped. “Did that lamp just fall over?”

Tommy eyed the shards on the floor. He was still barefoot in his pajama pants. “How did that happen?”

Dell was heaving breath and trembling. Cole cautiously approached her.

“Howdidthat happen?” he asked with wide eyes. “How did you do that?”

It wasn’t until that moment she fully realized she’d broken the laws of ghost physics. “I don’t know,” she said, still fighting for air she didn’t even need. “Got really fucking mad?”

“Wow,” Cole said in awe. “That shouldn’t be possible. Not for a novice, anyway. The dead can only touch stationary objects like the floor, beds, couches. You shouldn’t be able tomoveanything from the physical world.” He pulled out the rule book while Dell fought to calm herself.

Tommy and Nikki suspiciously eyed the mess on the floor. Tommy ruffled his mussed hair with a sigh. “Look, I need to head to the hospital. My mom is running damage control as best she can, but things are probably going to get messy for a while. I need you to lay low, okay?”

Nikki looked up at him with giant weepy eyes, still nibbling her lip, now swollen from kissing him. “What happened, Tom Tom?”

Tom Tom?

Had Dell had a functional digestive system, she would have thrown up at the nickname.

Tommy placed his hands on Nikki’s slight shoulders and gave her a sad look. “I don’t know, but when I woke up this morning, Dell was dead.”

Nikki gasped and threw her manicured hands to her mouth. Her swimming eyes grew even larger. “Dead?” she whispered. “But I thought that wasn’t supposed to happen until—”

Tommy shushed her and pulled her into another hug. She sobbed into his chest, as if she had any right.

“Wait,” Dell said, and leaned in next to them. She stood close enough to see Tommy’s stubble had grown a fraction darker, and Nikki had a thin trail of acne scars along her cheekbone.

“Supposed to happen?” she demanded. “Supposed to happen?!What the hell does that mean?” She was losing control of her body. If it was possible for the dead to explode from rage, she was about to find out. She looked around for another object to throw and saw only the antique brass umbrella stand in the corner. She charged over to it like the She-Hulk, ready to lift it like a trash can and smash her ex-fiancé over the head with it, when Cole reached for her arm.

“Ms. Rodgers! You can’t. That will be too obvious.”

“I don’t care about obvious,” she seethed, and fought him off. “I will haunt him out of here if I have to.”

“Ms. Rodgers,please!” Cole pled. “This is why I warned you against eavesdropping!”

She stopped and turned to him, still in a fit of rage. “Eavesdropping? That’swhat you’re concerned about right now? Not the fact we just heard my fiancé discussing my death as if it had been penciled into the calendar?!” She growled and made another move for the umbrella stand. She got one hand on it before Cole lunged at her again.

“You can’t!”