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he was training me to become a Reaper during the first few weeks after my death. I’d missed this Jet. He had disappeared the moment I’d been deemed a Reaper Council member and been replaced with a slightly worried and desperate version of himself. The fact that we had seen each other two times in the span of a few days must have him feeling confident in our relationship once more. This was good. This made me smile.
    I leaned my forehead against his chest. “I don’t think so.”
    “No, you’re right. I’d miss you too much,” he whispered against my hair as his arms squeezed me tighter.
    And then, it hit me—the awareness that if I went through with trying to find my mother and it worked the way that I hoped, I would lose Jet. I would lose the way it felt to be held between his arms. I would lose the way his lips felt against mine. We would be right back to where we had started. He would still be a Reaper, but I would be alive again.
    My smile faded and I shifted in his arms as everything sunk in. His lips brushed against the top of my head in a soft kiss, and I closed my eyes, wishing it were that easy to close myself off from the heartache I felt slowly making its way to the surface of my mind the way the tide rises.
    “What’s wrong?” Jet asked, and I wondered how he’d known there was anything wrong at all. He couldn’t see my face. Had we become that in tune?
    When I didn’t answer right away, he pulled back and gazed into my eyes as though they held the answer to his question. Fixing my eyes on the rocky ledge where we had left our notes etched into the sands beneath, I felt torn to pieces, as if I were being pulled in three directions. I wanted to find my mother so that I could have her take her place and set everything right. I also wanted to stay with Jet just like this, because losing him after I’d had him—after I’d felt his touch—would be like losing a piece of myself. I also wanted my life back for my own selfish reasons, because in death, I could finally see the importance of life.
    I wasn’t sure how to word everything that needed to be said or even where to begin, so I just said it. “I think I’ve found a way to go back…” I whispered, bringing my eyes to his.
    Jet looked down at me with his brows merged, trying to make sense of the words I’d just spoken. “A way to go back to what?”
    “A way to go back to being alive,” I answered, breaking his penetrating stare as I shifted my eyes back out to the darkened ocean.
    “How? What do you mean?” He licked his lips. His eyes appeared wild in the slight sliver of moonlight.
    I untangled myself from his arms and walked past him to stand where the salty water could lap against my ankles. Even though I was too flustered to feel it, I could still take comfort in knowing it was there. Nervousness and anxiety tortured my mind as I searched for the best way to begin in explaining.
    “All I have to do is find my mother in Purgatory and ask her to take my place, and then I can have my life back once she agrees,” I said as Jet moved to step to my side.
    From the corner of my eye, I saw him stare at me. I could feel the intensity of his eyes, the intensity of his emotions, as he gazed at me, allowing what I had just said to sink in.
    “What makes you think that? Don’t you think if it were that easy I would have done it a long time ago?” His tone seemed sharp and harsh, as if he were angry at me for even thinking such a thing.
    He was right; I knew he was. Evelyn could be lying. She’d never even said for sure that what I thought was possible…just that I shouldn’t accept things as being final.
    “I know you would have,” I said, still gazing out at the rolling ocean. “And I can’t explain it… It’s just something that I know. I feel that I’m right.”
    It was true and it was also all I needed to act on.
    “You can’t go to Purgatory, Rowan. You could risk your very soul becoming corrupted,” he insisted,