Inbetween (Kissed by Death, #1) (11 page)

Chapter 12

Finn

Emma didn’t say anything right away. I watched her bite her bottom lip, no doubt contemplating whether this was a good idea.

She raised her hand uncertainly. “Don’t move. I’ll scream if you move. My mom has a gun and lives by the ’shoot first ask questions later’ motto, just so you know.”

I smiled. “Wouldn’t hurt me anyway.”

Her fingers brushed my chest. Dove deeper until her palm was stirring the space in between my lungs. Warmth whispered through me. I closed my eyes and suppressed a groan. This feeling.
This
was what I’d been missing.

Emma jerked her hand back. “You—You’re breathing.”

I looked down at my chest, pumping like I’d run a marathon. “Yeah.”

“You weren’t breathing a minute ago. D-d-do you need to breathe if you’re…”

I watched the steady rise and fall of my chest. “No, but sometimes I can’t help it.”

It took about five seconds for the color to drain from Emma’s face and two more for her to register this as a nightmare rather than reality. She made a choking sound in the back of her throat and edged around me, backing away. Her back hit the refrigerator and she froze.

“I would never hurt you. Don’t be scared.”

“Oh my God…you…you’re a ghost. I’m talking to a ghost. I really am crazy.”

“You’re not crazy. I swear.” She looked up at me, eyes flooded with moisture and hope. “I’ve been protecting you for two years. Since your dad’s accident. You just couldn’t see me before.”

“My dad?” Her voice broke. “You know my dad?”

“No,” I said. “Not exactly. I only met him once.”

“But you said—”

“I met him when he crossed.” I lowered my voice as if it might make the words easier to hear. “I met him when he died.” I couldn’t stop the disappointment from washing over me. Even with me talking to her, she didn’t remember me from that day.

“Can I talk to him, too?” She sounded hopeful. “I can get the board. Maybe if you helped—”

“You can’t talk to him,” I cut her off. “He’s not here. He’s somewhere so much better than this.” And she could have been with him if it wasn’t for me.

Emma sank down onto the floor and I followed her. A tear wore a track through the flour on her cheek. I could almost feel her fracturing inside all over again.

“Did he say anything?” she finally whispered. “When he died?”

“He was worried about you,” I said. “He wanted to make sure you were okay. That’s all that mattered to him.”

“Was he afraid?”

“For himself?” I raised a brow. “No. And he shouldn’t have been. Some of us would give anything to get to go where he went.”

Emma wiped the tear from her cheek, quickly, like she didn’t want me to see it. So I pretended I didn’t.

“So, he’s in Heaven?” she asked. “There really is a Heaven?”

“Yeah.” I leaned my head against the refrigerator beside hers. “And a Hell. And an Inbetween. And other places you really don’t want to know about.”

She sat up and looked at me. “Which one do you go to…when you’re not here?”

I looked away. “I go to a lot of places. But I guess if you were going to pin me to one, then the Inbetween.”

“What’s that?”

I tried to figure out a good way to explain it to her. There wasn’t one. “It’s…it’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s kind of like a sorting ground for souls in between Heaven and Hell. It’s where I met you…”

I stopped, floundering for the right words. Who was I kidding? There weren’t any right words. I’d loved her. And I’d pushed her into a life where we could never be together. I’d unleashed an evil soul on her for something she didn’t even choose. Would she have chosen it if I’d have given her the chance? No. She never would have chosen to sacrifice someone else for herself.

“What do you mean where you
met
me?”

“I knew you when you were a girl named Allison,” I said carefully.

“Allison? Like the name on my mirror?” Fear ignited like a flame behind her eyes and her entire body tensed. “Like the girl in my dreams?”

“You haven’t always been Emma. You had another life before this one. That girl might have died, but you share the same soul.”

“What, like reincarnation?” she said. “You’re saying I was reincarnated?”

“Yes.”

Emma stared at her hands, letting her flour-coated palms slip across each other. I wanted to reach out and wrap my fingers around hers to steady them. Instead, I scooted back an inch to give her some space. Space to accept this. To accept me.

“The dreams,” she whispered. “The voices. It’s all real?”

I sighed. “Yes.”

Emma took a deep breath. Another. “I don’t understand why you’re… Why
are
you here?”

Tell her.
The words were right there, but I…I couldn’t. She would hate me. And even if she didn’t, she might do something stupid like try to sacrifice herself for Maeve. Because that’s the kind of person she was. Someone who would die to right a wrong. I couldn’t let that happen. Not when it was my mistake. Not after everything I’d done to keep her alive.

“I made a promise to your dad to keep you safe,” I finally said. It wasn’t a complete lie. “I don’t intend to break that promise.”

Emma squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “Protect me from what? From who?”

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see her reaction. “A soul named Maeve followed me here. She used me to find you two years ago. She knows who you are. And she wants to hurt you.”

When she didn’t say anything, I rested my hand between us on the tile. “Your accidents… They aren’t accidents.”

She seemed very far away in that moment. “So, you’re saying this soul has been trying to hurt me? All of the accidents—it’s been her every time? B-because she thinks I’m this Allison girl?”

“Yes.”

“But…I didn’t do anything to her!”

“It’s not about you,” I said, feeling the guilt flare to life inside of me all over again. “It’s about me. She wants to hurt me. So she’s trying to hurt you.”

“Why would her hurting me hurt you?” Emma looked at me expectantly. “You barely even know me.”

A thousand memories of this girl bombarded me. Each one making my chest swell and ache. I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. “I know you better than you think.”

“You mean you knew
Allison
.”

Knew, loved, pined for
… “Yes. And I cared about her very much. Which is why Maeve targeted
you
.”

“Why?” Emma sounded horrified. “What did you do to her to make her hate you so much?”

I looked at the floor. I couldn’t look at her. Not when I was lying like this. “Some people just don’t know anything other than hate.”

Emma twisted the bottom of her shirt around her fist. “Why are you letting me see you now? Why let me think I was crazy for two years? Why…why leave me in a freaking mental institution for three months doubting my own sanity when you had the ability to tell me what was going on the whole time?”

“I wasn’t allowed to let you see me before.”

She cocked her head to side. “Then why are you allowed to now?”

I thought about the hell Balthazar would put me through if he found out about the minuscule moment we were sharing now and shook my head. “I’m still not allowed to.”

“So that means you could get into trouble for this. You’re breaking some kind of cosmic rule here, right? Because you think I’m Allison?”

I nodded.

“Y-you have the wrong girl.” Emma stood, knees wobbly, eyes full of fear. “There’s been some kind of mistake. I’m not that girl you knew. I-I-I’m just not her. I can’t be.”

I stepped into Emma, feeling her warmth draw me in. She looked up, eyes wide, her peppermint breath fanning across my face.

“What are you doing?” she gasped, unable to catch her breath.

I ran an iridescent finger down her arm to her wrist, watched it scatter like stars across her skin. Her breath hitched in her throat. Her heart beat so hard the sound rippled through me like a shock wave. When her eyes met mine, the amount of want in them nearly brought me to my knees. Even through the fear and anger she had to be feeling, I knew she felt what I felt. The connection. The warmth. The
rightness
of this moment.

“Tell me you feel it,” I whispered.

“I-I—”

“Do you?”

She released the breath she’d been holding. “Yes.”

I let my thumbs brush down her arms and she gasped. Fireworks ignited across the places that I touched. Emma’s eyes opened. Glistening with wonder. Wide with fear.

“Trust me,” I said. “You’re that girl.”

Chapter 13

Emma

I didn’t want to be that girl, but Finn made me feel like I was. I’d never had a guy look at me the way he was looking at me. Like the world would shatter if I didn’t exist. I cradled my hot chocolate in my mug and glanced at the clock. Two in the morning. I needed to go to sleep, but I didn’t want to wake up and realize all of this was just another dream.

Finn sat on my bed. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I ran my fingertip along the warm lip of the mug. “This is just a lot to take in. When I woke up today, I didn’t exactly think I’d meet a dead guy and find out I had a whole life before this one.”

“Can I ask you something?”

I looked up at Finn’s curious expression and nodded. I think I would have told him anything. Anything to get to keep looking at him. He was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. It made me wish he’d actually show up in a picture.

“What did you expect to happen when you pulled out that board?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Not this.”

“Are you disappointed?”

The fear in his voice made my gaze drift up to meet his. Was I disappointed to find out there was someone trying to kill me? Yeah. Was I disappointed in meeting him? Finally having someone make sense of my life and tell me the truth?

“Of course not.” I paused. “You know, I don’t even know your last name.”

“Carter. My name is Finn Carter.” He smiled and watched me settle back into my pillows and take a sip of hot chocolate. “Do you have any idea how torturous it is to watch you drink that?”

I licked some marshmallow cream off of my bottom lip and lowered my cup. I expected him to look at the cup like he’d give anything for a taste, but his gaze never left my mouth. “How long has it been since you’ve tasted…anything?”

He laughed. “Are you trying to ask me how long I’ve been dead?”

“Yes.”

He sat back against my headboard, so close I could feel the warm electricity coming off his skin. “Too long.”

“What do you miss the most about being alive?”

He shifted on the bed and tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling. My gaze slid from the curve of his chin, down the smooth, tan column of his neck. He finally said, “Mom’s Christmas dinner for sure. She made the best cobbler. And the jokes Dad used to tell to make us forget the heat while we were working the crops.” He stopped and swallowed hard. “I miss too much. That’s why it’s easier not to remember.”

My throat felt tight listening to him talk about all the things he didn’t get to have anymore. “I’m sorry.”

“You were always good at that.” He slid me a glance and grinned. “Making me remember.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

He shook his head. “No. Remembering is what keeps you human, I think.”

“You seem pretty human to me.” I set my mug on my nightstand and yawned. As much as I hated it, sleep was pulling me under. My eyelids felt like they had lead weights attached to them. “Do you care if I go to sleep?”

Finn folded his arms behind his head. “As long as you don’t snore.”

I laughed into my pillow and burrowed under the blankets. I reached out to turn off the lamp and darkness blanketed the room.

“Hey, Finn?” I ran my hand over my pillow, glad the light was off so he couldn’t see how red my face was.

“Yeah?”

“When you said you’ve been watching me the last two years…” I paused, listening to him waiting beside me. “Does that mean
all
the time?”

There was only silence for a moment but then he said, “What do you mean? Have I—”

“Have you seen me…you know…without any clothes on?”

“N-no. Of course I haven’t. Why would I—”

He sounded horrified and I couldn’t help but laugh. “Okay, okay. I believe you.”

He laughed a little, sounding relieved. “I really haven’t. I swear.”

“I know,” I whispered. “Hey…don’t leave, okay?”

I couldn’t really see him, just a faint shimmer in the dark, but I heard him shift closer to me. “I’ll stay as long as I can.”

“Promise?”

“Always.”

Chapter 14

Emma

I trudged into my kitchen early the next morning, tempted to crawl back into bed after only getting around three hours of sleep. But I really didn’t feel like hearing my mom yell at me for the mess in the kitchen.

When I’d woken up, Finn was gone. All I had left was the memory of his touch, his fingers creating magic as they danced across my skin. His touch felt like warm electric current, nothing more than a breath, but a breath that left me wanting so much more. The nightmares about random souls trying to kill me I’d had last night weren’t helping matters either. But at least it sort of made some sense now.

I looked around the kitchen. At the mess I still had left to clean. I groaned and started tossing dirty dishes in the sink. I grabbed the bowl of crusted-over muffin batter that I never got around to baking and dumped the goop into the garbage can. Part of me still held out hope that it had just been a dream. A figment of my imagination. The other part needed someone to slap some sense into it, because that part of me was panicked he might never come back. Somewhere inside my skull, a headache started to form.

“It looks like a bakery exploded in here,” Cash said from the hall.

I shrieked and nearly dropped the metal mixing bowl I was holding. “You scared the crap out of me! What are you even doing up this early on a Saturday?”

Cash slid onto a barstool. “Dad made me get up and clean the gutters,” he said. “You look really tired. Need some help with this?”

“Yes, actually. That would be awesome. My mom’s going to freak out on me when she wakes up.”

“Well, I
have
been told that I’m made of awesome.” Cash picked up one of the leftover cupcakes I’d baked the day before for my mom’s open house.

“Who told you that?”

“I tell myself every day in the mirror.” He grinned and shoved half of the cupcake in his mouth, then grabbed a clean spoon off the counter and stared into it. “You are made of awesome. You are the master of your own universe. You have a really huge—”

“Enough!” I laughed.

“What? I was going to say, really huge
cupcake
.” He waggled his eyebrows and licked the frosting off his bottom lip.

I slapped him with my dishrag. “I thought you were going to help clean this up?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?” he asked and worked at getting the rest of another cupcake in his mouth.

“It looks like you’re stuffing your face,” I said, and went back to the dishes.

After he swallowed, he licked his lips and wiped the crumbs off of the counter. “So what’s up? Did you have a bad night or something?”

Warmth stirred my hair, swirling down the neck of my sweater. I looked behind me and yelped. Finn was standing so close the hairs on my arm started to rise. The metal mixing bowl clattered to the floor and I dove to grab it. “Damn it!”

“Don’t worry. He can’t see me unless I want him to,” Finn said. “Just act like I’m not here.”

Right. Like it was that easy.

Cash picked up the bowl before I could and helped me wipe up the floor. “You’re jumpier than normal. Seriously, what’s going on with you today?”

“Nothing.”
Nothing besides the fact that I’m seeing dead people.

“Nothing always means something with girls,” he said.

I focused on the boy who knew more of my secrets than my mother. Then my gaze flitted to the ghost of a boy standing behind him. Finn’s brows were drawn together. The look in his eyes sent warm tremors racing through my insides.

I couldn’t tell Cash this.

“I don’t know,” I said, drying my hands. “I just don’t want to talk about this right now. Is that okay?”

Cash nodded and backed away, wiping the flour on his hands on the
That’s What She Said
T-shirt he was wearing. “I can give you some space if you want.”

“Yeah.” I averted my gaze, unwilling to look at either of them. Instead I stared into the darkness outside the kitchen window. “That would probably be best.”

“All right. Are we still on for movie night?”

I blinked, letting his words sink in. “Movie night?”

“You. Me.
Lethal Weapon
. We’ve been planning this for two weeks.”

I nodded. Good. This was good. Maybe that’s exactly what I needed. Normal. Cash. Popcorn. Stupid movies. “Yeah. I’ll see you tonight.”

“Cool. Later.” Cash grabbed another cupcake and disappeared through the front door. I spun around looking for Finn the instant the door closed.

“Look, you can’t—” I realized no one was there and the words died inside the hollow of my mouth. Somewhere deep in my chest, something started to ache. Finn was gone.