From inside the room, muffled by the wall, he heard Dustin say: “What the fuck?”
CHAPTER 20
Dustin was kissing drywall.
His brain took a full two seconds to catch up with this information. His lips were still parted, his hand still raised where Greg's jaw had been a moment ago, and he was kissing a wall. The kind with the little bumps that looked like cottage cheese and tasted like paint.
“What the fuck?”
Dustin stood there with his hand hovering in empty air, staring at the spot where a person had been standing.
“Greg?”
Nothing.
The room was very quiet.
Dustin lowered his hand. He turned around slowly, scanning the room, but there was nowhere to hide. The motel room was twelve feet by fourteen and contained a bed, a desk, and Dustin's gear. No reaper.
“Greg.”
Still nothing.
Something cold slid through Dustin's chest.
He thought about what Greg had told him about thethin soul stuff that reapers were made of, about how they dissolved when they couldn't hold themselves together.
Could a reaper dissolve from being kissed?
That was a horrible thought. That was an actually horrible thought, and Dustin needed it to not be true immediately.
He crossed the room in two strides and pulled back the curtain.
The parking lot was mostly empty, basked in dim orange light. He spotted his truck, a dumpster, and?—
Greg.
He was sitting on the ground outside, back against the exterior wall, legs stretched out in front of him.
Dustin exhaled—and then he immediately grabbed his jacket and went outside.
He rounded the corner of the motel, and there was Greg.
His back was against the exterior wall, legs stretched out in front of him, hands in his lap. His glasses were crooked and he was staring at his own fingers, turning them over slowly, like he was checking they were real.
He looked wrecked.
Undone.
Like someone had reached inside him and pulled out the pin that held everything together, and now he was just sitting in the wreckage trying to figure out which pieces were his.
Dustin's chest squeezed.
He'd been ready to joke about this. He'd had a line prepared—something about how most people just said “not interested” instead of phasing through architecture. But the joke died in his throat.
He walked over and sat down next to Greg on the asphalt.
Greg didn't look at him.
