The Devil Gets His Due (The Devils #4)(55)

“Yeah, but right now I still can say, ‘oh, screw you, Graham, I just bought one.’ If you’re footing all the bills, I can’t do that.”

“I’m guessing you’d still manage to do that,” he mutters.

When the cemetery comes into view, he pulls into the spot closest to the gates. “I can just wait in the car,” he says. “Take your time.”

I reach over and unclip his seat belt. “Nah, come on. It takes two people to operate the Ouija board I brought.”

He laughs and climbs out, following me across the rolling hills to my mother’s headstone.

“So, this is it,” I say brightly. “Pretty exciting stuff. And that’s my aunt.” I point to her grave, which is right next to my mom’s.

He reads each headstone, his gaze growing darker by the minute. It’s different, seeing it in person. “They were my age,” he says quietly.

I nod. “My poor grandfather. He outlived his wife and both his daughters. I can’t even imagine.”

He glances over to my mom’s grave. “Is he the one who left the flowers?”

“No, those are from Dillon, the guy my mom was dating at the end.” I shake my head. “He still brings her flowers for every occasion. It’s kind of fucked up.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“He was twenty-eight when she died. He had his whole life ahead of him but never moved on, and if she’d lived, well, she probably would have moved on. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just easier to think she would have.”

He takes my hand and pulls me over to the bench on the other side of the gravel path. “Why is it easier to think that?”

“Because can you imagine going through your whole life only to find your soulmate a few months before you get diagnosed with stage four cancer? Can you imagine leaving that person and your teenage daughter, knowing you’ve hurt them and they won’t ever, ever get over it?”

His brow furrows. “Wouldn’t you just be glad you were missed? That, to me, seems like a sign you did something right.”

I shake my head again. “I never want to do that to anyone else. I don’t want my daughter to spend her whole life missing me. I don’t want a guy coming to my grave every month, unable to move on.”

He grips the edge of the bench. “That’s why you didn’t want kids, isn’t it?”

I force a smile. “I mean, Coachella was a factor, too, I’m not gonna lie. But yeah, that was most of it.” I pat my stomach. “Anyway, what’s done is done, and now you’re screwed. The parent who dies first gets all the worship. No one is going to talk about the times I drank too much or really fucked something up and all my flaws will seem charming. You’ll be the parent who has to be multidimensional.”

A muscle flickers in his cheek and his hands curl into fists.

“You’re so goddamn sure you’re going to die young, Keeley,” he grits out. He sounds angry. “Even if your mom had some genetic thing that made this happen…she only contributed half of your genes. Why aren’t you even considering the possibility that you’ll be fine?”

I stare out at the descending sun. “It just seems easier than getting my hopes up and discovering I was wrong. My mom was so shocked, Graham.” I swallow hard and my voice grows quiet. “When she got that diagnosis, she was so shocked because she thought she’d done everything right. I’m just trying to be realistic.”

He wraps an arm around my shoulders. “Was it that she was shocked, or was it that you were shocked? You realize being prepared wouldn’t have fixed anything, right? She wouldn’t have wanted you to go through your whole childhood panicked you were going to lose her.”

“Yeah, I know.” But I think of my mom’s last days of consciousness when she knew what was going to happen. She was devastated. Anytime Dillon or I walked into the room, she cried. And that made it harder for us. It was just this horrible, inescapable circle of grief.

“I guess it’s just…if it happens, I don’t want it to hurt me the way it hurt her. I don’t want it to be so hard to say goodbye to everything, and have it be so hard on them.”

He pulls me closer, and I rest my head on his shoulder. It’s a nice shoulder, broad enough to hold me up, perfectly firm.

“The only choice is to love everything a little less, Keeley. I’m not sure that’s a better option.”

He might be right. More importantly, I’m not sure it’s even possible. Because I already love our daughter. And I’m starting to like her father an awful lot too.





“I want dessert,” I announce on the way home. “Like I don’t even want dinner. I just want dessert. And because I just cried, you have to give in and coddle me.”

He laughs. “We could make a pie.”

“Do you know how to make a pie? Because I sure as hell don’t.”

“Of course I do,” he says, and his eyes are light. “I think we probably have all the ingredients too. I just bought apples yesterday.”

Making a pie sounds like a pain in the ass, the kind of thing that will lead to a barely edible mess neither of us will want to eat or clean up. But when he’s like this, all twinkling eyes and dimples, I’m incapable of telling him no.