The Given

by Vicki Pettersson

  “But, Marin,” Kit said coldly. “That’s exactly what’s going to happen next.”

  And she leaped from the barstool, snatching her keys from the counter as she yanked away from Amelia. She only paused at the kitchen’s threshold long enough to spare Marin one hard backward glance, and was gratified to see that it was now her aunt who was white-faced and too-still. “The truth, Marin. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  “And are you willing to die for it?”

  “I’m willing to live for it,” Kit retorted, swinging back around and down the entryway. Her point was already made, but she slammed the door behind her anyway, and hurried down the trio of steps that led to the drive. She was so focused, so furious, that she hadn’t realized Amelia had followed until a hand touched her shoulder.

  “It’s just me,” the woman said, holding up her palms and taking a step back. She didn’t know Kit, and maybe Marin hadn’t yet told her that Kit wouldn’t hurt a fly.

  No, she thought, heart collapsing in on itself. Not a fly . . . just the mob-rat that had killed her father.

  “She loves you so much,” Amelia tried, tucking a soft wisp of blond hair behind one ear. “She’s only trying to protect you.”

  Kit knew that. She huffed and climbed behind the wheel of her car anyway.

  “I’ll try to talk to her for you,” Amelia said.

  That surprised Kit so much that she almost flooded her engine. “You will?”

  Amelia nodded. “I understand why you’re upset . . . and she does, too. No promises, though.”

  No, they both knew Marin was too stubborn for promises. Kit nodded once. “Thanks. And for the medical care, too.”

  “The blood on your face was just . . . spatter.” Amelia blew out a breath. “I didn’t get to the scrapes on your knees, though. You’ll need to take care of them when you get home.”

  Kit drove by rote, looking neither left nor right, and not glancing down until she hit the first stoplight. It was only then that she felt the burn in her skinned knees, as if viewing the injuries was what made them exist. There was one cut that was more than a mere scrape, though she could butterfly it easily enough with only a Band-Aid.

  But maybe she’d leave it. She had escaped near-death, after all. There should be a reminder of it. Fleur had made her get a tattoo to announce her return to the world after heartache, but maybe surviving near-death required more. Maybe blood and scars were what cemented your refusal to leave it at all. Glancing away from her injuries, Kit drove on.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The night had softened at the edges by the time Kit pulled into her drive, smoothing out the age and decay of her mid-century neighborhood, cutting back on the crumbling concrete walls and cracked walks that sat exposed in the raw daylight. Grif had never told Kit, but he’d been to this neighborhood before, back in his day. It was at some party that Evie had dragged him to, either on or near Kit’s block, and he could still hear Slim Whitman blaring from the record player as voices and laughter sailed up into the air and the arid desert night.

  Back then the biggest headliners on the Strip had all wanted to buy these lavish ranch homes . . . for pennies on the dollar, too. Though it was long gone, he remembered the spot where signage had once flanked the wide community entrance, no backdrop, just that giant cursive scrawl that had been so popular back then: THE FUTURE IS NOW, TOMORROW HAS ARRIVED.

  He wanted to share the memory with Kit. He wanted to take her hand and lead her to the community entrance, where she would glance at the crumbling wall posts and smile as he wrapped his arms around her from behind, as taken by the minutiae of the past as she was by him. It wasn’t just her car and hair and clothes that were faithfully retro, it was her mind and her thoughts, too . . . at least the dreamy ones. They ever lingered in the past.

  “If tomorrow has already arrived,” she’d likely point out, “we wouldn’t be worried about tonight.”

  “Or the future,” he’d say.

  “Or even the past.”

  But that’s where it all started, Grif knew now. Back in 1960, with Tommy DiMartino, who’d held a doll with diamonds for eyes in one hand and a butcher’s knife in the other. Despite his best efforts, Grif had gotten in someone’s way back then, whether it was old Sal DiMartino; his nemesis, Nick Salerno; or Barbara—who could have been at that long-ago party, lurking in the shadows, wishing him dead. Whatever he’d done, Evie had suffered an attack because of it fifty years ago, and now Kit was paying for it, too.

  Grif waited in the corner of her home, in a classic womb chair that put his back to the wall and gave him a view of the living area and the expansive front yard. He watched Kit approach the house. Her movement seemed rote, exhaustion weighing down her limbs, though it was too dark to make out the nuances of her features. Closing his eyes, he sighed deeply and felt, for the first time, the weight of the last fifty years as if he’d truly lived them. He was tired, too, but more than that? He was old.

  And with that thought, a trembling voice, one he’d never heard before, sawed through his mind. It’s time for you to go.

  “Where did you go?”

  Kit was a shadow in the foyer, facing him so that she stood like an hourglass, skirt flared in silhouette. She’d somehow known he was there, and exactly where to look. He wished he could just stay in this corner for the next fifty years, coiled in the womb chair, pretending he was safe.

  It’s time for you to go.

  Grif could now see her face, and watched the emotions shift over her features in waves as she looked at him. His second death was a train in a tunnel, oblivion bearing down in relentless approach. He would be dead within twenty-four hours. He could accept that now.

  But he had to fix this first, he thought, and stood. It wasn’t Kit’s time to leave this blasted mudflat, the beloved Surface. This was her lifetime, and she had a right to live it in its entirety, both in safety and in peace.

  And in love.

  “You’re exhausted,” Kit said, shrugging off her coat and throwing it onto the sofa, as he reached her side.

  I’m dying.

  He put a hand to her cheek, a move that caused her to jump.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered. Her face was almost bone-white in the shadowed room. He drew her close and placed a resolute kiss on her forehead. “Grif, please . . .”

  I’m giving you your life back, don’t you see? I’m letting you go properly this time.

  “You can’t touch me like this,” she said, and covered his hands with hers, fingers bent to wrench his away. “If you don’t love me, you have no right—”

  “Don’t love you?” He drew back, palms cupped firmly around her jaw, almost too tight. “I will love you beyond my very last breath.”

  Whatever had happened to her tonight, whatever had put the wooden expression on her face and in her step, dropped away. “Throw yourself at it,” she murmured, as if to herself, and then slipped her hand up to pull at the nape of his neck, drawing him closer, down so that this time his lips met her own.

  “No.” He paused, though her mouth was right there. He could feel its heat on his own. “That’s not what I’m—”

  Like Larry had, earlier that day, she surprised him by moving too fast for him to stop it. In one instant he was trying to say good-bye, and in the next his back was against the wall. He was immediately grateful. It was the only thing that held him upright as her mouth crushed his, and the room began to spin. He wrapped himself around her, all that warmth and woman filling his arms and his mouth and his mind with the one thing he’d been trying to forget for six long months. The only thing, he realized, left to live for at all. Gasping, he reared back for air and then shifted, reversing their positions. Suddenly, he wasn’t feeling so old or tired anymore.

  “Hurry,” she said, her whisper harsh in his ear, as if she knew time was short.

  Grif lifted her from the floor. She grunted softly when they hit the entry wall again, but didn’t complain, locking her mouth on his instead.
Her hands were quick and busy, relieving him of his suspenders, raking the buttons from his shirt with her nails. They hit the floor like rolling dice, and neither of them looked to see how they fell. Grif just dropped her to her feet so she could free his arms of his shirtsleeves and kick off her shoes at the same time. He peeled his undershirt from his body in one smooth move, and her mouth was on him immediately again, delicate palms warm on his chest, cupping his beating heart.

  He was more careful with the stays on her dress. It was vintage, and she might catalog the injury to it. He’d do nothing to distract her from him. Not now. It finally slipped to the floor, the lining hitting the floor with a sigh that Grif echoed as he bit one sweet bare shoulder.

  Kit grabbed his hand then and led him down the long hallway, which they navigated slowly, leaving a trail of clothing behind. As they broached her bedroom doorway, Grif recalled the first time he’d been there. He was hiding behind the dressing screen in the corner, watching Kit towel off after a steaming shower. Watching, too, the two men who were sneaking along this very hallway, ready to pounce as soon as she appeared.

  But Grif had pounced instead, and that’s why Kit still lived. Now he was finally here again, living out his last fated hours as well. He looked around, wanting to remember this room. Wishing he could hold its contents inside of him for another lifetime. “Did you know that I’ve slept better in this room than I ever have in any place in my entire . . .”

  “Lives?” she provided for him, one side of her mouth quirking in a smile.

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” she said, drawing him near again. “You won’t be sleeping tonight.”

  No. Because he’d already wasted too much time. He was going to take a good deal more care of the little of it that he had left.

  Don’t close yourself off.

  Nicole had practically begged it of her, but it was only after spotting Grif in that corner, anguish carving furrows into his features, that Kit really understood what that meant. If she closed herself off to him—to the knowledge that she loved him like she had never loved another—then she’d regret it until her dying day.

  And that was no way to live.

  So Kit kissed him with all the passion that’d dammed up inside her in the long months past, her nerves smoothing out at his very touch, her heart soaring when his mouth immediately moved against hers.

  There was time enough to talk later, and always more mysteries and violence to face off against, bulls against capes. Instead of intruding on the moment, all of that only underscored the importance of it. They could draw swords and fight later, but after six long months of dreaming of just this, it felt like the victory was already hers.

  Grif obviously agreed. His mouth was firm over hers, and his furrowed brow had eased so that his expression was one almost of pleading. So Kit gave in for them both, expanding the kiss and pressing her mouth to his so that their tongues twined tentatively. She pressed harder. She knew what she was doing for the first time tonight. Perhaps for the first time in her life.

  Grif returned her touch, his both forceful and giving, stoking her need so that it shuddered through them both. Kit slid her hand along his firm jaw, skimming stubble, before cupping the back of his neck. She pressed and pulled, and deepened the kiss she’d dreamed of for half a year.

  Shifting, Kit aligned her body with Grif’s, dips meeting contours like a key sliding home in a lock. Click. She knew Grif was afraid that this was going to cause her more pain, she could taste the worry on his breath, and she was worried, too.

  Yet what greater pain was there than regret?

  So she put aside the past and future, and focused on the warmth of his neck beneath her lips, the curve of his wide, strong shoulders under her fingertips as she pushed him to the bed, and the length of his torso as he tilted upward to her. She slid the heel of her palms across the scattering of hair on his chest, causing him to tremble beneath her, though his gaze remained steadfast on hers.

  He was fighting to memorize it all. Kit just gave herself over completely to her senses, inhaling deeply the dark licorice scent of his warm breath, letting the light coconut of his pomade coat her fingertips, even dabbing it behind her ears. The hair at the nape of his neck tickled her cheek, and, sliding upward, she allowed the same of her neck. She loved the softness of the flesh encasing his hard body. She craved the moan that rose from his mouth to hers, and felt it jostle in her breastbone, shaking her soul.

  Placing her palms on the bed, one on each side of his head, Kit rose atop him and stroked his sides with her calves, her thighs, caressing him as she pressed into his groin. Grif thrust his pelvis upward, attempting to flip, but she palmed his hip and eased him back down.

  This was hers, she thought, eyes narrowing. Not Evelyn Shaw’s or anyone else’s. This man in this time and place was hers alone. And this, she thought, throwing back her head, was living.

  Slowly, deliberately, Kit settled, Grif palming her hips as she began to glide. Rhythmically, he pushed with the heel of his palms and pulled again with his fingertips, but ultimately he allowed her to set the pace. He tilted upward beneath her, increasing the pressure of him inside of her, a movement that made her moan and slide more insistently. She had a need for him to brand her there, a tattoo on the inside, a craftsman leaving his mark. She wanted to feel him deep within her even after he was no longer there.

  Grif bent his knees and Kit leaned back against them, curling her legs tightly beneath and around him. Every moment that passed and that they remained joined was a chance to slip further away from the confines of time and space, leaving behind who they were alone. It would all still be waiting for them when they returned. Even now Kit could feel the force of time pressing its oiled fingertips against the windowpanes.

  For now they disappeared together in this bedroom, in these walls, fused together by long-banked desire, and stoked by the greed they felt for each other’s flesh. Tongue and breasts and lips and cock all melded into pure sensation.

  “No matter what,” Grif rasped, devouring her neck, “I’ll never forget this.”

  His words were the first thing, and the only, to give her pause, but then he raised her up and found her breast with his mouth. So, arched forward, Kit swore the same silent vow. She hoped the heavens were listening. She hoped they watched. This was love, and it could not be confined to lifetimes or breaths. The soul was eternal, and the simple eternal truth was that Grif’s place inside of Kit’s body and mind—inside of her life—was, very simply, the truest thing she’d ever known.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Kit wasn’t sure what woke her, and for a moment she couldn’t even care. She was in her favorite spot in the world, head burrowed into the dip of Grif’s left shoulder, his arm draped over her naked back like a protective shield. Their legs were entwined, heavy with heat, and her inner thighs were satisfyingly sore. She wished she could stay here forever.

  Instead she went to the bathroom to fill her now-empty tumbler with water, and leaned over the basin to touch her head to the mirror, letting the cold water run over her wrists. The chill shocked the sleep from her, but that was what she wanted. Grif was back in her bed. She could sleep when she was dead.

  Yet for some reason tears began to well. She should be happy. She and Grif were together, he’d lived again in her body, but something was wrong. There’d been desperation to their lovemaking, a longing to his touch even though she was right there, and it felt too much like he expected her to disappear.

  And, of course, he had sat in the corner of her living room, intending to say good-bye.

  Don’t worry about that now, she told herself again. He’d had his reasons, and even might try to do so again, but if she were to think about that, to anticipate his absence, she’d miss his very presence.

  Living in the future like that, Kit thought, putting the water glass to her lips, was just as bad as living ever in the past.

  She caught her reflection at the exact moment that she took a sip. Stiffe
ning, she gasped, and the glass shattered on the marble countertop, yet she didn’t look away. Her image was an opaque outline at best, the mirror steamed like when she took a too-hot shower, yet obscured and glowing with gray-blue pearlescent fog. It roiled on the other side, trapped there like a silent storm, but then thinned enough to reveal another head exactly where her own reflection was supposed to be.

  Kit did not scream or growl or rant; she recognized that unworldly, churning gaze.

  “Am I dreaming?” she asked Sarge.

  “Technically? You’re sleepwalking,” Sarge answered, his features growing sharper, forming like clay, then hardening like he was standing in a kiln. He waited for her to finish studying him, and Kit took her time.

  He looked nothing like what she expected. Grif had described him as being large and dark and intimidating, and while this being did have the wings of a Pure, the soaring arches were bald in spots, black feathers clinging to sinew as if for dear life. He had long troughs carved from his eyes to nose, and again to his mouth, and they slipped down his jaw and disappeared beneath his chin. His skin was ashy—though it could just be the mist—and the outline of his collarbones protruded in slashes from beneath the white robe. Though clearly otherworldly, he looked beaten down and diminished, at least to her untutored gaze.

  “And what are you doing?” she asked him, because she knew the Pure hated visiting the Surface in any form.

  “Something even God Himself would find shocking,” he admitted. He inclined his head. “I am apologizing.”

  Kit was shocked, too, but she didn’t ask what he was apologizing for. A better question would’ve been where he intended to start. This being had manipulated her with almost cruel indifference. Nicole had said that Sarge knew Kit had suffered, but he couldn’t possibly know the extent of it . . . or the fear that his appearance in her home, coinciding with that of Grif in her bed, struck through her now.

  She wouldn’t say it though, she thought, crossing her arms and leaning against the wall. She wouldn’t give him any more ammunition to use against her.