“After today… after what you saw with Marco.” Greg hesitated, but he needed to know. “Are you still planning to interfere with Jessica Torres?”
Dustin didn't answer right away.He looked out the window for a long moment, jaw working like he was chewing on something that wasn't food.
“Yeah,” he said finally. “I am.”
Greg's heart sank. “Even though you saw what collection is like today?”
“I saw you do something beautiful.” Dustin's voice was quiet. “I saw death be kind. But… Marco was sixty-seven. He was already dying. There was nothing I could have done to change that.”
“And Jessica?”
“Jessica is nineteen.” Dustin's expression hardened. “And a highway accident isn't organ failure.” He shook his head. “Nothing about it is sacred. It's just chaos.”
“You don't know that.”
“I know she's a teenager. I know she deserves better than dying on a highway because some asshole wasn't paying attention.” Dustin leaned forward, forearms on the table. “If there's even a chance I can stop it, I have to try. You get that, right?”
Greg did get it. That was the problem.
He understood Dustin's logic. He even felt the pull of it—the desire to protect, to intervene, to rail against the randomness of death. He'd always loved that about humanity. Their stubborn, beautiful insistence that life was worth fighting for.
But Greg didn't make the rules.
And Dustin seemed determined to break them.
“I understand,” Greg said quietly. “I don't agree. But I understand.”
Dustin studied him for a moment. Then he nodded, something in his expression softening. “That's more than I expected.”
“I'm trying.”
“I know.” Dustin reached for a napkin, then paused. “You've got chocolate on your face.”
“I do?”
“Right here.” Dustin pointed to the corner of his own mouth.
Greg grabbed a napkin and scrubbed at his face. “Did I get it?”
“No, it's—here.”
Dustin reached across the table.
His thumb brushed the corner of Greg's mouth. Warm and slightly rough andright there, touching Greg's skin, touching close to hislips.
Greg stopped breathing.
Dustin didn't pull back immediately. His thumb lingered, supposedly wiping away chocolate, but the ice cream must have been gone by now. His eyes dropped to Greg's mouth… and stayed there.
The air between them went thick.
This was it. Greg knew it. This was the moment Dustin was going to?—
An almost inaudible popping noise pulled Greg out of the moment.
Oh no.
Another reaper.
