Page 38 of You'll Be the Death of Me

Dell turned to him to see the honest question on his face. Normally, she might have snapped at him for suggesting her concern was misguided, but looking into his eyes, she wondered if maybe he was right.

Was the pressure to achieve self-inflicted?

She frowned at him. “Maybe we should add ‘has masochistic tendencies toward overachieving’ to our wrong-turn list.”

Cole leaned back against the wall with a quiet laugh.

“When you were alive, did you have a girlfriend? Wife?” she asked in an effort to change topic.

“No,” he said with a degree of certainty she hadn’t expected.

“I thought you couldn’t remember anything about your life.”

“I can’t, but I know that part is true.”

“How?”

This time, he sighed. “Because I don’t... feel it. I feel like I’d know, on a visceral level, if I was missing someone who’d once held my heart. I would sense her absence, even across planes of existence.”

Dell blinked at him, thinking that was the most romantic thing she’d ever heard and wondering anew if she’d been right about the poetry professor thing. “Well, clearly, you’ve at least been in love before, whatever your past life was, because anyone who says things like that must know what it feels like—or knew what it felt like at some point.”

He softly smiled at her. “I like to think so, even if it didn’t last.” He stared at her with his soul-searching eyes again, looking like he wanted to say something else but couldn’t figure out how.

Dell stared back at him, feeling conflicted over wondering what his lips felt like and having just gotten out of a relationship that same morning. But if she was honest with herself, her relationship with Tommy was more performative than built on anything real.

“I didn’t love Tommy,” she confessed. “And, clearly, he didn’t have deep enough feelings for me to stay faithful.” She bitterly laughed with a shake of her head. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised about Nikki. But it’s not just that he was cheating on me; he had some plan to—” She couldn’t even finish her sentence. She thought back to her conversation with Jason during their jog the day before, when he’d questioned if Tommy was really the one for her. She huffed another bitter laugh. “Jason is going to have a field day with this. He hates Tommy. He’ll probably do aTold you sodance.”

“I’ve only just met him, but I seriously doubt your best friend is going to sayTold you soin this scenario,” Cole said.

Dell snorted. “Then you don’t know Jason. But it won’t be malicious. It’ll be moreTold you so, now let’s go kill him. In fact,” she said, and turned to him, “we might not want to tell him in case he gets arrested for murder.” She was only half joking.

Cole grimaced. “I like to think I had a best friend like that,” he said in an effort to lighten the topic. “The ride-or-die type, like him.”

A smile lifted Dell’s lips and mood. “Yeah, Jay is the best.”

“What do you think he’s doing? For a diversion?”

A laugh bubbled out of her. “Whatever it takes. He’ll probably have them convinced I’m in a coma, even if they hook me upto a monitor and find zero brain activity. At least it will buy us some time.”

Cole pivoted toward her so their knees touched. He gave her a sincere look. “Ms. Rodgers, I am terribly sorry about all this. I—”

“You can call me Dell,” she said with a soft smile. “Like you did when you were trying to stop me from walking headfirst into a door.”

His cheeks pinked. “I thought it might get your attention better.”

“Too bad for you, when I’m on a mission, nothing can stop me.”

She hadn’t moved her knee from touching his, and neither had he.

He softly cleared his throat. “Do you think that might—don’t take this the wrong way—be important?”

“What?” she asked.

His words came out hesitantly. “That you’re a bit of a... steamroller?”

Dell gasped in offense. “I am not asteamroller.”

“Ms. Rodgers—Dell, forgive me, but you insisted on possessing that boy in the park within an hour of passing, even when I told you not to. And then the teleporting—”