Rachel Vincent - If I Die

“That’s not what I—”

“That is what you meant.” He was getting louder, and I was afraid someone would hear him, but there were no windows on this side of the building, and the doors stayed closed. “You’re purity personified, and I’m one big moral question mark. So I guess you’re really doing me a favor. Maybe I won’t look so bad when you’re not standing next to me,” Nash snapped, and my face stung, like he’d slapped me. Tears formed in my eyes, but I blinked them away, clinging to anger as I faced the death of any hope I’d had for us parting on good terms.

“What is wrong with you?” He’d never spoken to me like that before. He wouldn’t .

“I caught my girlfriend making out with my brother in front of half the school!” He was shouting now, his hands curled into fists at his sides. “I think that entitles me to a little anger.”

“Yeah, it does.” I wasn’t going to deny that. And I’d been pissed when I’d caught him kissing Sabine, even though he hadn’t initiated that. “But I don’t know what else you want me to say. I’ve never been sorrier about anything in my life. Tod feels so bad he’s prepared to spend the rest of your life trying to make it up to you.”

“But he wasn’t sorry enough to keep his hands to himself last night, was he?” His eyes shined with angry tears, even as his irises churned with pain. “You let him touch you?”

“Oh, hell…” Sabine mumbled. “Don’t answer that.”

I glanced at her in surprise, and she seemed to be trying to tell me something without actually saying it. Some kind of warning. But by then I could hardly see through my own anger.

“That’s none of your business,” I said softly. Yet I could feel myself flush.

Nash blinked, openly wounded for a second before fresh fury rolled over him, straightening his spine, squaring his shoulders.

“Fine,” he said through clenched teeth, and the bright green coil of malice twisting in his eyes seemed to suck the air straight from my lungs. “I guess I should have seen this coming. I mean, you two have so much in common, like death, and lies, and spying on people you claim to care about. He’s the cold corpse to your frigid bitch.”

His words stung so sharp and deep that at first I couldn’t breathe. Even Sabine looked surprised by the venom in his tone, and in the second it took me to recover, I realized something was truly wrong. Nash wouldn’t talk to me like that, no matter how mad I made him, or how badly I hurt him. He wasn’t that kind of guy.

“Give me your hand.” I reached out for it when he refused, and when he tried to step back, I lunged forward and caught his fingers.

They were ice-cold.

No . “Damn it, Nash.” I turned to Sabine without letting go of him. “He’s using again.” And it was all my fault. Again.

“What do you care?” Nash pulled his freezing fingers from my grasp and leaned against the brick wall. “You’d rather be with the living dead than with me, so why don’t you two just go haunt someone and leave me alone.”

I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t decide whether to yell at him or wrap one arm around him and take him somewhere safe until he came down from his bitter high. I didn’t know whether to hate him for giving in again, or hate myself for driving him to it.

Finally I whirled on Sabine with a furious insight. “Did you know about this?”

She shrugged, but looked distinctly unhappy. “Harmony caught us with a bottle of Jack last night and kicked me out. I left to feed, then went back after she left for work, and he was like this, but I couldn’t find his balloon. He finally fell asleep early this morning, so I left him for half an hour to grab a change of clothes, and he was high again when I got back. But he insisted on coming to school to talk to you.”

“Shut up, Sabine,” Nash snapped, but she ignored him.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded.

“Why should I? He’s not your problem anymore.”

I gaped at her in disbelief. “Breaking up with him doesn’t mean I don’t care about him!” Nash and I had been through too much together for that to ever be possible. Our parents were close. His mom was the only mother figure I had. He was the only other bean sidhe my age I’d ever met. And my feelings for his brother would have kept me and Nash in each other’s lives, even if none of the rest of that were true. At least, they would if I were scheduled to live past Thursday. “And it definitely doesn’t mean I want to watch him die!”

Sabine rolled her eyes. “He’s not going to die. I’ll take him home with me until he comes down, then I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again. That’s the difference between you and me—I’m not going to run from his problems.”

That wasn’t fair. But it was true.

“Both of you shut up! ” Nash brushed past us and stomped into the parking lot. “I’m nobody’s problem but my own.”

I rushed after him with Sabine on my heels, and we caught up with him just past the first row of cars. “Nash, go home with Sabine. She’ll make sure you don’t kill yourself.”

“Why bother? I have to be dead to get your attention, right?” He took a left in the first aisle, and I had to jog to catch up. “What are you, some kind of necrophiliac? ’Cause that’s really sick.”

“ Damn it, Nash.” As Sabine caught up with us, I grabbed his arm and spun him around to face me before he could take another step, trying to ignore the cold that seeped through his sleeve and into my fingers. “I don’t expect you to understand about me and Tod, and I’m so sorry that we hurt you. I can’t justify what I did and I can’t explain what I feel for him, and I honestly don’t know where it would go, if I were going to be here past tomorrow. All I know is how good I feel when I’m with him, and how I want to be with him when he’s gone, and how, when he looks at me, I get this feeling in the pit of my stomach, like I’m falling, but I can’t remember jumping, and I don’t think I’ll ever hit the ground.”

Nash jerked his arm from my grip. “I do understand—that’s how I feel about you. But that doesn’t matter, does it? It wouldn’t matter even if tomorrow never comes and you get to live forever.”

“Nash, tomorrow will come, and I will die. And you can’t deal with that like you’re dealing with this. No more frost. Promise me.”

“You can’t make out with my brother, then ask for promises from me. Not that any of that matters now, considering we’re both going to lose you in a matter of hours,” Nash said. “But you’re an idiot if you can’t see what Tod’s really doing. He’s clinging to you for the same reason he hangs around me and Mom—he thinks if he has something to keep him anchored in the human world, he won’t lose his humanity. That’s all you are to him, Kaylee. You’re just another anchor helping him cling to what he can’t let go of.”

“That’s not true.” Unshed tears burned in my eyes and behind my nose, and I refused to let them fall. “Why would he bother? What kind of anchor am I going to be for him when I’m dead?”

Nash huffed in disgust. “Sabine was right—you only see what you want to see. It’s easier for you to cast him as the hero and me as the villain, ’cause then you can justify running away when I needed you. I needed you, Kaylee, and you weren’t there. And now look what’s happened.” He spread his arms to indicate his own frost high, and guilt and anger buzzed inside me like a swarm of wasps in my chest.

“I never cast you as the villain, Nash. You’re doing that to yourself.” My openhanded gesture took in his entire body, currently full of Netherworld poison, and Sabine bristled.