Rachel Vincent - With All My Soul

“No, you were on the list. And you died, just like you would have died even if your drunk friend had been driving instead of Tod. But lucky for you, Tod was driving. He was there when you died, and he was there when Levi showed up for your soul.”

“No.” Nash stared at his hands, lying limp in his lap. “No, no, no...”

“Do you know what it takes to become a reaper, Nash?” He didn’t look at me. He was still trying to see the truth in his own empty palms. “It takes a sacrifice. To even be considered for a position as a reaper, the recruit has to be willing to exchange his death date with someone else’s, without knowing about the possibility of being granted an afterlife.”

“You’re serious?” His irises were a storm of browns and greens, twisting too fast for me to interpret. “This is real? You’re saying Tod really...?”

“I’m saying that when you died, your brother started shouting for the reaper to show himself. He demanded to be taken in your place. He died way before his time so you could live. So that you could go on and make something of your life.”

“My fault...” Nash closed his eyes, and I could no longer see the tangle of shock and regret swirling in his irises. “All this time I’ve been telling myself that it wasn’t my fault, because he would have died anyway. But it really is my fault. I got him killed.”

“No, you didn’t. It was his choice, and I would bet you the rest of my own afterlife that if he had the chance, he’d do it all over again.”

Nash’s eyes flew open, and now the emotion in them was clear—heartbreak. “Why didn’t he tell me?”

“Because he didn’t want you to feel guilty. The same reason he made your mom and me promise not to tell you, either.” And I’d just broken that promise. Damn it.

“My mom knows?”

I nodded. “She’s known almost from the beginning. I just found out last month.”

Nash looked devastated. Confused. Almost...fragile. “Why are you telling me, if he didn’t want me to know?”

“I probably shouldn’t have. I didn’t mean to. I think that’s the first promise to him that I’ve ever broken, and I swear it’ll be the last.” Tod deserved better than a girlfriend who couldn’t keep her word. “But you needed to know what he’s given up for you. You need to know that he does care about you, more than you can possibly imagine. We both do. And he would never have tried to come between you and me, though goodness knows he had several chances.” Sabine had even tried to convince him to work with her to break us up, and he’d refused. “Because he doesn’t want to hurt you.”

For nearly a minute, Nash sat unmoving on the end of Emma’s bed. Staring at the carpet. His heart must have been pounding, because I could see his pulse jump on the side of his neck, even when everything else was so incredibly still.

Then he met my gaze from across the room. “I’m supposed to be dead. Tod’s supposed to be alive.”

“No. There’s no more ‘supposed to be,’” I insisted. “It is what it is, for both of you. This is what he wanted. For you.”

“But he didn’t graduate. He didn’t go to college. He didn’t even get a senior year of high school. He gave those to me instead, and what did I do with them?”

My heart hurt for him. “Nash, don’t—”

“I wasted them. He paid for my future with his own life, and I threw it all away, like it was worth nothing, when the truth is that it was worth everything.”

“You didn’t waste it. You—”

“I wasted it.” Nash shook his head slowly, and his gaze lost focus. “All this time I wanted him to move on. No, I wanted him to go away. I thought he took the job as a reaper because he wasn’t ready to leave. I thought he was hanging around because he hated me or was jealous of my life. Or wanted to take away the things I care about.”

Like me. He didn’t say it, but we both heard it.

“But the truth is...” Nash stopped and looked at me again, like he didn’t know how to finish his sentence. “I...I don’t really know what to do with this information, Kaylee. I don’t know how to process it. I’m not supposed to be here. I feel like the past two and a half years of my life have been a lie.”

“No, your life isn’t a lie, and it never has been. Your life is an opportunity. A gift. Just like mine is. We have that in common, Nash. We got a second chance.” Okay, technically I was on my third chance, but then, technically, I was dead.

I took a deep breath I didn’t really need, then prepared to say what I’d wanted to say to him for more than a month. I’d imagined this moment a million times, but now that it had come, I was suddenly unsure of the words. And of my right to say them. But someone had to.

“I don’t want to put any additional pressure on you or anything, but if you ask me, second chances come with a responsibility.” That’s what I believed about my own second chance, anyway. “The responsibility to earn the extra time you’ve been given. And to enjoy it. To live with and for everyone you love. To fight harder and longer than anyone else, because you owe it to your brother and I owe it to my mother to make sure that their deaths mean something.”

Nash blinked, and when the motion in his irises slowed, I knew he was thinking. He was truly considering what I was saying and its relevance to him. “That’s what you’re doing? That’s why you always jump in headfirst whenever anyone’s in trouble, whether they want your help or not? Whether they deserve it or not?”

I crossed my arms over my chest and let my rolling chair rotate a little. “I don’t do that.”

“That’s all you ever do. It’s who you are. And I think I’m starting to understand why.” The motion in his irises slowed even more, greens spreading into browns to make that hazel shade I knew so well. “You think you have to earn your place in the world.”

“I think we should all earn our place in the world. Especially people like me and you, who keep getting our friends and family hurt, whether we mean to or not.” I was afraid he would take that the wrong way, but he only nodded, like he might actually eventually agree. “We owe the world something. We owe the world everything. ”

Nash stared at me like he hadn’t in a long time. Studying me, like he might be figuring me out. “You’re something else, Kaylee. I’m not sure exactly what that means, but I’m sure it’s true.”

“Yeah, you, too. You’re something special, Nash.” And he could be something great if he’d stop looking at life as a challenge to be conquered rather than an opportunity to be seized.

“So, now what?” He sat up straight and glanced at the room around us as if he no longer recognized it. As if what he’d learned had changed the way he saw everything, and a little spark of anticipation shot through me. I hadn’t seen him look like that—like he was ready for a challenge—in months.

“Now, you take a few minutes to process all this, then come out and have dinner. No one else knows about any of this, and I need you to keep it quiet until I’ve had a chance to tell Tod that I told you. But we’re going to get your mom back. We’re going to get them all back, and that’s going to be much easier if we’re all fighting on the same side. If we all trust one another. If we can all count on one another. Okay?”

Nash nodded, still kind of dazed, and I stood to give him some time to himself.

“When you’re ready, there’s food in the kitchen.”

When I got there, Em, Luca, and Sophie were nearly finished eating, but Tod and Sabine weren’t back yet. I scooped some noodles onto a plate for myself, but somehow I had even less appetite than usual. I’d just finished picking all the slivers of carrot from my meal and was about to check on Nash again when Tod suddenly appeared in the living room with Sabine in his arms.