Page 164 of Inbetweeners
But it was. This was Phoenix, and Emmett was holding him.
The air was so warm, their skin quickly dried and they moved up onto the cushioned seating, still clutching each other.
“Where are we?” Emmett asked. “Some lake in Hell?”
“I have no idea where we are.”
“I thought you were a shark.”
“That was why you tried to punch me on the nose?” Phoenix laughed. “Hell doesn’t have lakes, doesn’t have salty water. We fell into the sea.”
“You fell too?”
“A few minutes before you. I’d just climbed onto the boat when you plummeted down.”
Emmett needed to keep touching Phoenix’s face, reassuring himself that he wasn’t dreaming.
“I tried to see Archangel Gabriel to talk to him about getting you out of Hell. Except so many people want to speak to him, it would have taken years to get to the top of the list. So, I did a bit of graffiti work and painted him a message on the plaza.”
“What did you say?”
“Heaven isn’t Heaven without Phoenix. He doesn’t deserve to be in Hell. If you can’t bring him here, then send me to him. We can make our own Heaven.And I signed it.”
Phoenix sighed. “Did you offer to clean it up?”
Emmett gaped at him. “How the fuck…?”
“Because it’s what you’d do.”
“Oh God. I’m predictable already?”
“That’s not always a bad thing. So what happened?”
Emmett didn’t want to tell him, but maybe it wasn’t fair not to. “I met Harry and Rashid, and Cat, who’s actually Romeo and was mine but I’d forgotten. They made it to heaven, and most of the others have, too. Harry handed me a voucher for a perfect day but he, Romeo and Rashid all disappeared before I could ask who it was from. Mist appeared out of nowhere. I took a leap of faith and walked into it, and fell into the sea. I lost the voucher, except…” Was this all they’d get? One perfect day?
“What were you going to say?”
“That maybe this is all we get. You wanted a boat, I wanted you, and this is their idea of rewarding us.” Emmett groaned. “But one day? That’s not… No, no, no, no, no!”
“Hey, shush.” Phoenix pulled Emmett’s head down against his chest. “Don’t ruin this. At least we’re not parting in a bath full of blood.”
Emmett let out a choked laugh.
“If this is all we get, then we take it,” Phoenix said. “Haven’t we learned that lesson? You never know what life is going to throw at you. Every day that you wake up is a gift. If we’ve been given one day to watch the sun rise and set, then we take it.”
“I want more than that.”
“I do as well. But…” He shrugged. “We’ll behave as if this day will never end because it won’t for us. Not in our heads and not in our hearts.”
Emmett’s throat was too full to speak.
“At least this time you remembered. Was it seeing my name on your cock?”
Emmett choked out a laugh. “What happened when you got back to Hell? What did Vin do?”
“He and I didn’t end up in the same place, which was just as well, or he’d have ripped me apart, but I found out that he was in trouble. Whatever he’d been planning to do on the surface with the gang of inbetweeners he was trying to create hadn’t been approved by senior demons. It all started when Greyson and Sophie managed to summon a lesser demon, Kaelip, who happened to be one of Vin’s subordinates. Their idea was to bring Alice back from the dead and they made a deal. They’d keep people from moving on if Alice was returned to them. Vin saw an opportunity and took it.”
“He gave the pair the knife?”
