Dying by the Hour (A Jesse Sullivan Novel Book 2) (5 page)

“I sure did,” he says. “Took me awhile to get it just right.”

As he pulls back I see how beautiful he is in this late afternoon light. I can even see sunlight collecting on his lashes as I come in for another kiss.

“Who knew you were so talented?”

He frowns and clamps his hands on my shoulders. “You’re shaking.”

I’m about to say it’s from the kiss, when he pulls off his green canvas jacket and offers it to me. He bounces it impatiently until I slip one gloved hand through the sleeve and then the other. He reaches under and pulls my hair free. Then he makes me a place to sit on the stone wall beside him.

The towel he used to wipe water from our seats becomes my seat cushion, draped over the deteriorating rock face. Then he surprises me.

Lane opens his backpack that I’d been wearing on the drive up, and pulls out our dinner: General Tso chicken for him, fried rice and egg rolls for me.

“I thought I smelled Chinese!” I say. I open one of the boxes. “I thought maybe one of my brain nerves got smushed and I was just going to smell rangoons for the rest of my life—which actually wasn’t a bad prospect.”

“I picked it up just before I picked you up,” he says.

“Sneaky,” I say. “You knew I’d come with you.”

“Or we’d have eaten it in your bed.”

“But then we’d miss your magical landscape,” I say and I snuggle as close as our elbows allow. “How long did it take you to make this again?”

“It took me six days to pull it all together,” he replies, with a wink.

We sit on the wall, watching the day die and eating Chinese food. Me warm in his coat, wrapped in the smell of him. Him sitting close, thigh-to-thigh, smiling at me as much as the sunset.

And this is why I love Lane.

Because loving Lane feels—safe.

His world is safe. Little girls don’t die here. People aren’t trying to hunt and kill me. No one leaves hateful messages in soap marker or eggs my house. No one calls me the Devil’s whore or soulless. I don’t spend my days in hospitals, or funeral homes, or in several pieces for that matter. With Lane, I am just a girl who likes Chinese food, who has the cutest dog ever, who likes to watch bad TV and read sleazy tabloids and eats too much ice cream and doesn’t give a shit about the condition of her nails and yet—

Lane looks at me like I am this sunset. Beautiful. He makes me feel beautiful.

It’s why I chose Lane when I could have chosen Ally.

It isn’t that I don’t love her. It isn’t that I am not attracted to her—I am. But with her, it’s duty and responsibility. With Ally, it is fear, concern, and worry. It’s all about
them
and what we need to do to stop them. Little girls die in Ally’s world. Hell, Ally died. If I hadn’t been there to replace her—

God, I can’t imagine it.

So when I reach out to hold Lane’s hand in the fading sunlight, I tell myself that this is the world I live in. I can have my life any way I want it, and I want this. Chinese food and silly boyfriends.

No fighting.

No death.

If only I could make Ally understand that, then maybe she wouldn’t pull away from me.

Ally

W
hat am I doing here?

Nothing good can come of this. Best case scenario, I’m about to suffer through the most awkward dating encounter I’ve endured in years. Why am I even trying to date? Why now? I mean, I guess I could argue why
not
now? After all, Jesse isn’t going to leave Lane any time soon. They’ve been together for a whole year, much longer than I anticipated that lasting, actually. And I’ve been single for—longer than I care to admit. But she isn’t going to dump him for me.

That has been made clear.

And maybe that is why I’m here, trying to date someone Jesse doesn’t even know about. The word
date
suggests I want to get to know someone better. You don’t go on a date with someone just to tell them this will never work—you don’t drive to the
date
compiling a list of reasons why
not
to be with them. Just because I’d finally agreed to having coffee with Nikki after months of her insistence didn’t mean this was a real date, did it?

I wedge my Smart car between two massive SUVs and spot Nikki immediately standing outside the coffee shop. She’s looking my way and probably saw me park. With every moment I wait in the car, her smile falters a little. And though I’m dreading telling her what I’m here to tell her, I’m not cruel. I take a breath and yank open the door.

She recovers most of her smile before I can cross the parking lot, dodging strollers, unruly dogs and a couple of cars cluttering the busy shopping complex.

“I thought you might change your mind,” she says. She stands taller than me, even in her flat sneakers. It’s a change considering I am used to looking down at Jess. Nikki’s eyes are gray today, but that could simply be the lighting. Nikki has those eyes, the kind that conforms to what she is wearing or the light around her. The slant of her eyes make me think of a cat. It could be the roundness of her cheeks and nose, or the way she does her makeup to exaggerate the kittenish look or the one thick strand of hot pink in her hair despite the platinum blond.

“I didn’t change my mind.” I try to hold her gaze, but I can’t.

“Good,” she says. She slips her hand in the pocket of her jeans and uses the other to brush her bangs back away from her face. “Because I’ve only been trying for a year. If you had said
yes
, only to say
no
again, it would’ve crushed me.”

“You exaggerate.”

She puts a hand against her chest and mimics shock with an open mouth and wide eyes. “I’m devastated just thinking about it.”

She thinks she’s funny. But it’s practiced. She isn’t the kind of natural hilarious that Jesse is just by pure dramatics and a gift for hyperbole.

“I’m certain,” I say, humoring her. “But you’ve only shown your interest a few weeks ago.”

“It feels like years,” she says. And there is her amused smile again. A little quirk in the corner that is more smirk than smile. It isn’t that vulnerable look Jesse gives—the one that says she’s only having fun if you are. Nikki is far too confident to need my reassurance.

“Can we go inside or do you want to hold the dangerous ground between people and their coffee?” she asked.

We go through the motions of ordering coffee. I pretend to look at the noticeboard while the barista makes our drinks. I
pretend
to be interested in all the information tacked to the wall—lost dogs, offers for tutoring, other services, work from home flyers, and meditation classes. The warmth of the café is slowly melting the chill of the afternoon away, but it isn’t enough to make me sit down.

I don’t know why she makes me so nervous—or why I can’t just sit down and talk to her. We’ve been working together for a year. Not as intimately as I work with Jesse, but she is hardly a stranger. We have common interests, similar aspirations—for the time being anyway. From what I can tell, she is intelligent and compassionate. She is certainly attractive and takes good care of her body. I should want this.

From a few feet away, jiggling a bundle of sugar packets between pinched fingers, she watches me silently debate all of this but pretends not to. Is this her attempt to give me space? After adding sugar to the black coffee, she becomes impatient with her long hair and pulls it up in a high, twisted ponytail, securing it with the elastic tie she keeps around her wrist.

The barista calls my name and I go to the counter as if I’m a robot, relying purely on my programming. I choose the table beside the window so I can pretend to look out of it, and we both finally sit down.

“Relax,” she says, settling into the squeaking chair. “I’m not going to throw you down and have my way with you.” She nods in the direction of an empty sofa beneath a large splatter painting at least half as big as the wall itself.

I smile. It’s genuine enough. Perhaps the words
have my way with you
did it. “I haven’t dated since, Jess. I’m sorry if I’m being—weird.”

“Did you date Jesse?” she asks. She arches an eyebrow. “I thought you just spent a lot of time in her bed.”

I still spend time in her bed
, I thought. But it was probably best not to mention that. “You know what I mean. Since we’ve been
together
then, however you want to put it.”

Nikki blows the steam rising from her ceramic cup, then sips. “How is she?”

“In bed?” I blush.

She grins and presses her lips together against a laugh. “Uh, no. I was referring to work.”

“She’s fine,” I say, feeling stupid. “83 replacements and going strong.”

Why did she look away when she asked me about Jess? Does she want me to change the subject? Or is she trying to not sound too interested? Or maybe she only asked to be polite and doesn’t even want to talk about her at all. I’m probably overthinking this.

There
. Her smile does tighten. I’m not imagining this.

“Institutionalization of death replacement agents is becoming more common. We’ve recorded a significant rise in the past few months,” Nikki says as if I’m not haunted by the statistics already. “She needs to be careful.”

The federal policy of being interviewed by a therapist after a few replacements hasn’t changed. If Jesse were to lose her mind, I think that would hurt almost as much as losing her completely—to see her live out the rest of her life broken, lost.

“Jesse’s old mentor Rachel was institutionalized,” I say, I think I do a decent job of sounding casual.

Nikki nods like she already knows about Rachel, and I want to ask what else she knows. I’m sure Jeremiah has checked up on Jesse’s past as thoroughly as he investigates everything else. And Nikki appears, for all intents and purposes, to be Jeremiah’s second in command. It would make sense he would tell her everything. About me. About Jesse and her NRD—or even Caldwell—if he’s even made the connection between Jesse and Caldwell.

Or maybe they’re learning everything from me. Jesse uses the word
expressive
to describe my face. Perhaps I am being too expressive now.

Nikki smirks. “You can ask.”

“What?”

“Whatever it is you want to ask,” she says. “You’ve got this look on your face like you want to ask me something. Just ask. You don’t know much about me. And the way we met was—interesting, but not conducive to building a friendship.”

I grin. “You weren’t wearing pants. And you were drunk.”

“Exactly,” she grins. “You must have questions.”

I look out the window as the first drops of rain begin to fall. It’s a slow, sleepy drizzle. People cover their heads with newspapers, briefcases or bags. Very few manage to have an umbrella on hand.

I ask her the only question that matters. “How did you meet Jeremiah? How long have you known him?”

“Shop talk? I say you can ask anything and you choose shop talk?” She crosses her legs and leans back in her chair. “Has anyone told you you’re a workaholic?”

“You don’t know me well enough to make that judgment.”

She senses my irritation and backs off.

“Fair enough. I met Jeremiah same way I met you.”

“Pantless?” I ask.

“Through our common interests,” she says, twirling the cup between her hands.

“Why do you care?” and for clarity because I worry my words were too sharp, I add, “About all of this.”

She cocks her head to one side as if listening. “Why do
you
care?”

I hesitate. Is it too soon to bring Jesse up again? It has been so long since I’ve dated—high school probably—that it is all I can do just to sit here, pretending to drink coffee and obsess over my ex-girlfriend. Oh my God, am I one of those sad, sad people?

“I know you’re worried about Jesse and you think she’ll be attacked again. So I can only assume you joined up with Jeremiah in hopes of making sure that doesn’t happen. He told me he found you online, all cavalier, spreading the “be safe” anti-victim rhetoric to anyone who would listen. Then when he realized you were in Nashville, asked if you wanted to get a little more physical in your campaign.”

“
We
were attacked.” I want to draw attention away from Jesse.

Nikki isn’t fooled. “Yes, but I’ve seen you working enough to know you’re a bit selfless. You might be doing this for the both of you, but it is
mostly
for her.”

“We haven’t worked together
that
much. You barely know me,” I say. Again I’m irritated. Pissy even. Wow, I am really terrible at dating.

“Okay, so you are doing this for yourself,” Nikki relents. “I suppose being stabbed in the spleen is decent motivation for joining a rebel cause. And I can hardly blame you. I’m rather attached to my spleen.”

“And what was your reason?” I ask.
And Jeremiah’s?
Maybe I could grow to trust them and tell them more about Jesse if I understood why they’re doing this. I’ve known them for almost a year but I’ve only worked a handful of jobs with them. So I guess it is natural that I feel like I don’t know nearly enough. “Or are you just a general do-gooder who would take up arms against any unjust cause?”