It's A Wonderful Midlife Crisis (Good To The Last Death #1) - Robyn Peterman Page 0,89

How was that even possible?

“See if you can follow me,” Gideon said, looking suddenly very tired. “If a person were to live… let’s say… forever. And for argument’s sake, I’m not talking a few hundred years. I’m talking forever. You with me?”

I nodded. I was afraid if I spoke, I might tear up.

I could suddenly feel the pain that Steve had seen in Gideon. Plus, Steve would be appalled if I ruined my smoky eyes in the first half hour of my date or whatever this was.

And even though the other patrons might not be able to hear us, they were watching like hawks. I didn’t need it to make the rounds that I cried while out to dinner with the hottest man alive.

“So, one would think this person would partake in all the alluring things life has to offer—multiple times. Most likely the person did,” he said, staring at me with such intensity I felt naked. The dress didn’t help, but it wasn’t the dress. It was the force of his gaze. “After a while, pleasure—physical, spiritual, all pleasure—ceases to have meaning. What was once gratifying, amusing, diverting and entertaining no longer holds any appeal for this person. The world around this person becomes colorless and void of anything that makes sense.”

“What happens to this person?” I whispered, tamping back my instinct to dive across the table and hug the Grim Reaper.

Gideon smiled, but it didn’t reach his beautiful gray-blue eyes. “Not much. This person no longer has the impulse to interact with the physical or the mental. He has no wish to find purpose or significance. Definitions of words like happiness—even anger or desire—lose meaning. If you had all the time in the world, what would you do with it, Daisy?”

“I don’t know.”

“You would fall,” Gideon replied with no emotion in his voice. “You would fall into a mist, hurtling toward an invisible floor that doesn’t exist. You wait for the inevitable, but it never comes.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered.

“You shouldn’t ask questions you’re not prepared to have answered,” he said.

“It’s not that,” I said, trying to figure out what I felt. “I can handle the answer… it simply makes my heart hurt.”

Gideon looked down at the menu. I could tell he wasn’t really seeing it. He glanced up and pinned me with a stare. I felt like I was a butterfly caught in a web of fire.

“And then one day, this person finds something that makes him feel alive again,” he went on as my heart sped up in panic and something I couldn’t define—maybe excitement, maybe fear. “He finds something—or someone—who wakes him up. It’s disconcerting and extraordinary. Very unexpected. Unheard of would be more accurate. At first, he’s angered and confused by the unwanted emotions. He’s done feeling anything. He’s been done for a very long time.”

“Is he still angry?” I asked.

“No. He’s not.”

“Okay,” I said, feeling somehow safer using hypotheticals instead of names—like his or mine. I was walking through landmine here. “So would sex solve his conundrum?”

Gideon smiled and shook his head. “No. That would only take the edge off.”

Not the answer I was looking for.

“Well, that’s certainly interesting and slightly terrifying,” I said. “Since I’m clearly into asking inappropriate questions, I may as well go for the mac daddy. What exactly is this person looking for with the someone he found?”

“Are you man enough to hear the truth?” he asked as a smile pulled at his lips.

“Since I’m not a man—the side boob is proof—no. However, I’m woman enough to handle pretty much anything. The past few weeks have taught me that. I glue body parts onto dead people for crying out loud.”

Gideon’s smile turned into a laugh and my spirits soared. Making him laugh was as addictive as hearing it.

“He wants all of her—her body, her mind, her soul. He wants to be seen by someone who makes him feel alive again. He wants to feel all of the things that he thought were lost to him.”

Closing my eyes, I willed myself not to scream or pass out.

Of course, I’d asked. He’d simply answered.

Of all the ways I’d imagined this evening playing out, this wasn’t one of them. It would be far easier if he just wanted to get into my pants. I was a forty-year-old woman. He was… shit, I had no clue how old he was.

Mutually consensual sex was no big deal between responsible adults. Although, it was a slightly bigger deal to me since I’d been abstinent for