If I Die. Rachel Vincent

      This is going to happen. I was ready, mostly because there was no more time to not be ready—not unless I wanted to die a virgin. And of all the things I still wanted to do before I died, this was the only one within reach.

      Nash’s mouth trailed down my throat, and I closed my eyes, concentrating on the electric feel of his hands, the scalding heat from his lips. Letting it all overwhelm the sharp edge of fear holding steady like the eye of the storm raging around me. I had a lot of things to be scared of—real things—but this wasn’t one of them. And slowly, I let my hands trail down from his chest to the waist of his jeans.

      I gave the top flap of denim one sharp tug, and the button slid through the hole.

      “Whoa …!” Nash rolled onto his side, staring down at me in confusion. “What are you doing?”

      “I think you’re pretty familiar with the concept….”

      His gaze searched mine. “Is this a test? Should I ask what color your first bike was?”

      I laughed. Six weeks earlier, I’d used that question as a sort of password, to make sure I wasn’t talking to a hellion who’d hijacked my friend Alec’s body. “I’m not possessed.” I looked up at him from the pillow, letting him see the truth on my face. “I’m just ready.”

      “You weren’t ready last week.” Nash sat up, frowning down at me from the edge of my bed now. “And the only thing that’s changed is …”

      “The only thing that’s changed is that now I’m dying. I’m out of time, Nash, and I want to do this. Now.” Before I got nervous, or scared, or started to feel really, really embarrassed by the fact that I was having to convince him.

      “Your dad’s in the other room.”

      “So let’s go to your house.”

      He shook his head slowly. “My mom’s home.”

      I shrugged. “Fine. Let’s go to the lake.”

      “Kaylee …” Nash scrubbed his face with both hands, then looked at me with the most conflicted regret I’d ever seen. “You know I want to, but …”

      I sat up, and I could feel my cheeks flaming. Was he turning me down? After all the times he’d hinted, and asked, and outright pushed? “But what?” I demanded, and I could hear the bite in my own voice.

      “Not like this. You don’t really want this. You’re just trying to avoid thinking about next Thursday. Or maybe you’re trying to cross things off some kind of morbid checklist. Either way, this isn’t really what you want, and—”

      “Don’t tell me what I want!” I snapped, but he only put his hand over mine and leaned closer, so that I had to see the depth of the regret swirling in his eyes.

      “—and I swore to you once that I knew you well enough to know when you want to stop, even if you can’t tell me. Don’t make a liar out of me, Kaylee. Not again.”

      He was right. Damn it.

      “Okay, I get it. But things have changed.” I sucked in a deep breath and looked right into his eyes, begging him silently to understand. “Everything’s changed, Nash. I do want you. And you want me. You’ve wanted this for months, and now we’ve only got six days to make it happen before we both lose our chance.”

      He closed his eyes, and I realized that was to prevent me from seeing whatever he couldn’t stop them from showing. When he finally opened his eyes, they shined with good humor, and only the lines in his forehead told me it was forced. “How did this turn into you begging me for sex?” He grinned, and I laughed out loud.

      “You’re not gonna let me live it down, are you?”

      Nash’s smile faltered. “No more life and death jokes, Kaylee. This is hard enough as it is.”

      “They say humor is the best defense.”

      “No, they say the best defense is a good offense. But you can’t take the offensive with death. Though he’s awfully easy to piss off sometimes …” Meaning Tod, of course. Though, honestly, Nash usually meant to piss him off.

      “Whatever. Where do we stand on the subject of my dying wish?” I leaned back against the pillows again, hoping to tempt him.

      “I’m your dying wish?” He lay down next to me, and I lifted my head so he could put his arm behind it.

      “Well … not quite. My dying wish is not to die. But you’re a close second. So where do we stand?”

      He ran one hand down my arm and my pulse spiked when his fingers splayed across my stomach. “We stand …”

      My desk chair creaked, and I looked up to find Tod sitting in it backward, facing away from us—the most courteous entrance he’d ever given us as a couple. And while most of me was frustrated by the disruption, some tiny part of me was also a little relieved—and confused by the discrepancy in my own emotions.

      “Hope I’m interrupting something.” The reaper swiveled to face us and Nash sat up, cheeks already flaming.

      “Get. Out,” Nash growled.

      Tod rolled his eyes. “I made Kaylee a promise. As usual, I’m just the messenger.”

      “What’s up, Tod?” I laid one hand on Nash’s arm before he could say anything else.

      “Mom’s in the kitchen with your dad, trying to talk him out of doing something stupid. It sounds like she could use your help.”

      5

      “There’s always an exception, Harmony,” my father said, and the raw pain in his voice stole my breath with an almost physical force. I was scared, and pissed off, and riding an unforeseen wave of sexual resolve in the face of certain death. But my father was in serious pain over a loss he refused to accept as inevitable.

      The fact that I was that loss was almost too much for me to wrap my mind around.

      I inched down the hall silently, aching to see my father’s face, but if they knew I was there, they’d stop talking, and I’d lose this glimpse into his true emotional state.

      “Aiden.” Harmony’s whisper was so soft I almost didn’t recognize it. “I am so, so sorry. I wish I could say I know how you feel, but I didn’t have any warning with Tod.”

      “There’s nothing to be sorry about,” my dad answered, his voice hard now, like he could hold off the unavoidable with nothing but sheer will. “There’s a way out of this, and I’m going to find it.”

      I peeked through the living room and into the kitchen just as Harmony scooted her chair closer to my father’s. They sat at the table with their backs to me, and I could only see them from the shoulders up, over the half wall separating the two rooms.

      “Aiden, there’s nothing you can do.” She slid one arm around his waist and leaned her head on his shoulder, and I held my breath to make sure I could hear the rest. “Do you really want to miss your daughter’s last few days of life to chase answers that just aren’t there?”

      “I don’t want to miss anything. And I don’t want her to miss anything, either—that’s the whole point. I’ve been such a fool, Harmony. I wasted thirteen years of her life letting my brother raise her because it hurt to look at her. Every time I saw her, I saw her mother. I only got Kaylee back six months ago, and now she’s being taken away. Six months isn’t long enough!”

      “No one’s taking her away,” Harmony insisted gently. “Her time’s up. It happens to everyone.”

      “What would you do?” my dad demanded, pulling away from her. “If you knew Nash was about to die, would you ever quit looking for a way to stop it? Would you give up on him?”

      “I …”

      “It