LITMIR.BIZ

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Nash whispered, pressing me into a closed door.

      The full body contact was promising, but I couldn’t banish doubt. “Were you talking to her the whole time?” I asked around the hitch in my breath as his cheek brushed mine.

      “I just went outside to cool off, and when I came back in, she cornered me. That’s it.” He fumbled for the handle near my hip, and the door swung open, revealing Scott’s dad’s posh office.

      “Swear?”

      “Do I really need to?” Nash stepped back so I could see his eyes in the dim light of the desk lamp, and I saw the truth swirling in them. He didn’t want Sophie, no matter what she might do that I hadn’t.

      I felt myself flush. “Sorry. I just thought—”

      Nash closed the door and cut my apology off with a kiss. He tasted good. Like mint. We wound up on Mr. Carter’s burgundy leather couch, and I had just enough time to think that psychiatrists made waaaay too much money before Nash’s mouth found mine again, and thinking became impossible.

      “You know I’m not interested in Sophie,” he whispered. “I wouldn’t do that to you or Scott.” He leaned down and kissed me again. “There’s only you, Kaylee.”

      My entire body tingled in wave after wave of warm, exhilarating shivers, and I let my lips trail over the rough stubble on his chin, delighting in the coarse texture.

      “Oh, blah, blah, blah,” a jaded voice said, drenching our privacy with a cold dose of sarcasm. “You love him, he loves you, and we’re all one big, happy, sloppy, dorky family.”

      “Damn it, Tod!” Nash stiffened. I closed my eyes and sighed. The couch creaked beneath us as we sat up to see Nash’s undead brother—fully corporeal for once—sitting backward in Mr. Carter’s desk chair, arms crossed over the top as he watched us in boredom barely softened by the slight upturn of his cherubic lips. “If you don’t quit it with the Peeping Tom routine, I’m going to tell your boss you get off watching other people make out.”

      “He knows,” Tod and I said in unison. I straightened my shirt, scowling at the intruder, though my irritation was already fading.

      Unlike Nash, I had trouble staying mad at Tod lately because I considered his recent reappearance a good sign. We hadn’t seen him for nearly a month after his ex-girlfriend died in October—without her soul. And when I say we’d not seen him, I mean that literally. As a grim reaper, Tod could choose when and where he wanted to be seen, and by whom.

      But now he was back, and up to his old tricks. Which seemed to consist entirely of preventing me and Nash from having any quality alone time. He was almost as bad as my dad.

      “Shouldn’t you be at work?” I ran one hand through my long brown hair to smooth it.

      Tod shrugged. “I’m on my lunch break.”

      I lifted both brows. “You don’t eat.”

      He only shrugged again, and smiled.

      “Get out,” Nash growled, tossing his head toward the door. Like Tod would actually have to use it. One of the other perks of being dead, technically speaking, was the ability to walk through things. Or simply disappear, then reappear somewhere else. That’s right. I got swirling eyes and the capacity to shatter windows with my bare voice. Tod got teleportation and invisibility.

      The supernatural world is so far from fair.

      Tod stood and kicked the chair aside, running one hand through short blond curls that not even the afterlife could tame. “I’m not here to watch you two, anyway.”

      Great. I scowled at the reaper, my eyes narrowed in true irritation now. “I told you to stay away from her.” Emma had met him once, briefly, and we’d made the mistake of telling her what he really was. He’d been watching her covertly before, but after Addison’s death and his obvious heartbreak, I’d assumed that had stopped.

      Tod mirrored his brother with his arms crossed over his chest. “So you won’t let me go near her, but you’ll let her get in the car with some drunk jock? That doesn’t even kinda make sense.”

      “Damn it.” Nash was off the couch in an instant and I followed, whispering a thank-you to Tod as I passed him. But he’d already blinked out of the office.

      I trailed Nash down the hall and through the packed living room, accidentally bumping a beer from a cheerleader’s hand on the way. We ran out the front door and I wished I’d stopped to find my jacket when the frigid air raised goose bumps all over my skin.

      We paused at the end of the walkway, and I spotted Emma near the mouth of the cul-de-sac, a brief glimpse of long blond hair. “There.” I pointed and we took off again. We got there just as Doug pulled his passenger’s side door open. He had Em pressed against the side of the car, his tongue in her mouth, his free hand up her shirt.

      Emma was totally into it, and though I didn’t think she’d have gone so far in public if not for the beer, that was her business. But getting in the car with a drunk crossed the line from stupid into dangerous.

      “Em,” I said as Nash slapped one hand on Doug’s shoulder and pulled him backward.

      “What the hell, man!” Doug slurred as his hand pulled free from Emma’s bra hard enough that the elastic slapped her skin.

      “Kaylee!” Emma smiled and fell against me, and I glared at Doug. She didn’t know what she was doing, and he was being a complete asshole.

      “Em, you know how it goes.” I wrapped one arm around her waist when she stumbled. “Come together, stay together …”

      “… leave together,” she finished with a wide-eyed, pseudo-serious expression. “But we didn’t come together, Kay …”

      “I know, but the last part still applies.”

      “Fuller, she’s drunk.” Nash angled him so that Doug fell into his own passenger’s seat. “And so are you.”

      “Noooo …” Emma giggled, blowing beer breath at me. “He’s not drinking, so he gets to drive.”

      “Em, he’s wasted,” Nash insisted, then glanced at me and tossed his head toward the house. “Take her back in.”

      I started walking Emma up the sidewalk, trying to keep her quiet as she told me how nice Doug was. She wasn’t just drunk, she was gone. I should have watched her more closely.

      A minute later, Nash caught up to us as I was lowering Emma onto the porch. “Did you get his keys?” I asked, and Nash frowned. Then, as he turned to head back toward Doug’s car, an engine growled to life and a sick feeling settled into the pit of my stomach. Nash took off running and I leaned Emma against the top step. “Tod?” I called, glancing around the dark yard, grateful there was no one around to see me talking to myself.

      “What?” the reaper said at my back, and I whirled around, wondering why he always appeared behind me.

      “Can you sit with her for a minute?”

      He scowled and glanced at Emma, who stared up at us, blinking her big blue eyes in intoxicated innocence. “You told me to stay away from her.”

      “Hey, I remember you,” Emma slurred, loud enough to make me wince. “You’re dead.”

      We both ignored Em. “I know. Just watch her for a minute, and don’t let her get into any cars. Please.” Then I raced after Nash past the entrance to the cul-de-sac, confident Tod would watch Emma. That he’d probably been doing it all night, though he’d catch hell for missing work.

      Ahead, streetlights shone on the glossy surface of Doug’s car, gliding past like a slice of the night itself. Then, as I caught up to Nash, Doug leaned suddenly to one side, and his car lurched forward and to the right.

      There was a loud pop, followed by the crunch of metal. Then the crash

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