Epilogue
LUKE
“T his is really good turkey,” Brad’s mom, Cheryl, says after she finishes swallowing a bite. “You said you used an air fryer?”
“It’s the only way I’m willing to make it now,” Dan replies. “Keeps all the moisture in. Makes the meat nice and tender.”
“It definitely is that,” Cheryl says as she cuts into another piece.
Initially, Brad was planning to head home for Thanksgiving, but when his mom pushed about meeting his new boyfriend, we came up with a plan for her to fly into town to have Thanksgiving with Dan and us.
She’s everything I would have expected based on what Brad’s shared with me. Fun, playful. To our relief, her symptoms have been kept at bay since their previous visit, so we’re hopeful this time together over the holiday will serve as a booster, tiding her over until he can see her again sometime next semester.
From meeting her, I’d never have known how bad it’d gotten, had Brad not told me. Just like I wouldn’t have known about all the pain she endured at the hands of his asshole father.
And as assuring as her health and vibrant personality are, the way Cheryl’s taken to me since she arrived, it’s clear she wants to know everything about the guy her son’s told her about.
After everything we’ve been through together, I’m proud to be the one—something I’m reminded of every time he sneaks me a glance from beside me at the dinner table.
Or gently strokes my thigh.
Or licks his lips, as though thinking about how he wants to pull me away from his mom and Dan and give me a firm kiss.
It’s been a while since either of us has felt that agonizing pull of the Lust, but not kissing him through dinner is starting to remind me of what that felt like.
And I don’t like it.
Still, I’m appreciative of these little moments because they help distract me from the fact that something’s missing from this occasion. The people I love who I can never get back.
“Turkey’s great,” Alexei says, “but the mashed potatoes are where it’s at.”
Since it was going to cost him a small fortune to travel back and forth for Thanksgiving and Christmas, Alexei stayed at the dorms through Thanksgiving. Dan only lives a few hours from the university, so I suggested Alexei join us.
Despite the awkwardness that followed our interaction with the Slasher, things have gone back to normal. Well, as normal as they can be under the circumstances.
I’ve been training with the guys, and it’s apparent that the power I managed to access the night we fought the Slasher, I can’t access it anytime I want. At least not yet.
But I’ve caught up on schoolwork, made sure I keep my grades up. And there haven’t been any other emergencies of dealing with monsters, which really, what more could I ask for?
Even better, Brad and I have had more time for dates and fun. Enjoying life the way two college kids who’ve fallen for each other should.
After we finish the meal, we all pitch in to help Dan clean.
Alexei and I take on dish duty while Brad, Cheryl, and Dan chat in the living room.
“I’m glad I came,” Alexei says. “This was really nice. I appreciate your inviting me.”
“I’m glad you said yes. Dan loves entertaining, and compliments, so you were a perfect addition.”
As I hand him a plate to place in the dishwasher, I notice him eyeing me, and it catches me off guard. “What is it?”
He shakes his head. “Just thinking about that wild night.”
I tense up, struggle to read his expression. After the incident, we only talked about it a little, and only for him to say he didn’t really remember what happened. I lied and said the same. But I keep wondering if any of it will come back to him. If one night he’ll suddenly sit up and start screaming at the horror of what transpired.
“You remembering anything else about that night?”
He stares at me for a few moments. “No. You?”
A familiar guilt rises in me over the lies I’ve had to tell Dan and Alexei. I tell myself it’s to protect them, but that doesn’t make me feel any better.
“Just going to the party,” I reply. At least it’s partly true.
He nods, studying my expression as if trying to work out if I’m lying. Or that’s how it feels, but I can’t imagine why I’d think that when Alexei doesn’t have any reason to think I’m lying.
“Maybe it’ll come back to us at some point,” I say, returning to our task.
“Maybe.” He’s quiet as we pack a few more dishes into the dishwasher before he says, “Luke…is everything okay?”
Our gazes lock.
No, it’s not, Alexei. Something’s coming. And I have a feeling it’s going to be terrible.
But I can’t tell him that. “Why do you ask?”
“You seem…different…since that night.”
“I could say the same about you.”
He lets out a nervous laugh. “Yeah. I bet.”
“Are you okay, Alexei?”
He hesitates, his gaze wandering before he says, “I’ll be better once we get these dishes done.” He offers a charming smile, then changes the subject, which I embrace. Once we finish up, we join the others in the living room, and Dan encourages us to play a board game. It’s what Dan and I would do with Mom and Dad for holidays, and it picks at a familiar sting, like the one I felt on Halloween when I went to that party at Alpha Alpha Mu.
I can tell Brad’s caught on by the way he keeps eyeing me, how he moves closer like he wishes he could protect me from my past. But just like that night with the Slasher, he can’t protect me. Not from this.
I don’t want to spoil the night, so I do my best to get through it before Cheryl has to head to her hotel for the night.
“I really wish you’d stayed here,” Dan says as we say our goodbyes to her in the foyer.
“I didn’t want to be any trouble,” Cheryl says. “And it worked out, since now Alexei can get your guest room. I really just wanted to meet the guy who won my Brad’s heart.”
“Mom,” Brad mutters. It’s one of the few times I’ve seen him blush.
As Alexei snickers, Dan says, “Well, Luke’s a good kid.”
“I can tell,” Cheryl says. “And I don’t doubt my Brad to know a good man when he meets one.”
As she and Brad exchange a look, I sense the pain behind that statement…since he knew such a bad man when he was growing up.
She offers us all hugs before leaving, though we’ll see her again tomorrow.
Afterward, we all head to bed, where Brad and I finally have some alone time to make up for all the kissing we missed throughout the day.
“Mmm…” he says after pulling away from a kiss. He’s got me backed against the wall of my old room. “Did you see how good I was by not making out with you in front of Mom and Dan?”
“Did you want an award?”
“Think I deserve one,” he says with a cocked brow.
“If you want an award, you’re gonna have to earn it tonight,” I say, excitement pulsing through me at the thought of having a good fuck after our day of being decent.
But Brad’s expression turns serious. “You good?”
I know he’s asking because he knows this was a hard day for me. And while there were difficult moments, having him here with me made it better. “No worse than usual,” I say, but with the mood spoiled, I feel it’s a good time to bring up what’s been on my mind. “Alexei mentioned that night.”
“What about it?” Brad asks, and I can hear the concern in his voice.
“Seems like it’s in there somewhere. He wanted to make sure I was all right. I don’t know. It was a strange conversation. Sometimes I wonder if it’d be easier on him to know the truth. But the truth is so fucked, revealing it seems even more cruel.”
Brad raises his hand to my face, caresses his knuckles along my cheek. “I’m sorry you’re in this position. But if you do think it’s better to tell him, you say the word, and I’ll advocate for it with Seth and Codes.”
I nod. “Let me think on it. In the meantime, I’d rather do things to help me forget about it…at least for tonight.”
“Mmmm.” He leans close and kisses the side of my throat. I roll my head back against the wall, and as I moan, there’s a knock at the door.
I growl softly and feel Brad smile against my flesh. “Guess you’re gonna have to be a good Straight Boy a little longer.”
“Pretty confident you violently murdered Straight Boy, but sure.”
When I answer the door, I find Dan standing outside.
“Mind if I grab you for a minute?” Unlike earlier in the day and throughout dinner and our game, he’s glancing around uncomfortably, as though he’s just received some bad news.
I head out into the hall and close the door. “Everything okay?”
“Just wanted a minute with you, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course.”
He leads me down the hall, into the primary bedroom, closing the door behind us.
“Are you sure everything’s okay?”
“First, I wanted to tell you that I really like Brad.”
“Glad to hear that. He’s been very good to me. In ways that are difficult to explain.” In ways I wish I could explain to you, Dan. “But I’m assuming you didn’t bring me in here just to tell me that?” I press, unable to shake the discomfort in his expression.
“No, there’s something I’m supposed to give you.” He bites his lip and holds up his finger. He opens his dresser and retrieves a narrow, rectangular wooden box. Opening it, he reveals a necklace. It bears a cross, like the ones we wear.
Does he know?
“What is this?”
He seems to hesitate before saying, “It was your father’s, then your mother’s. She once told me I would need to give this to you and that I’d know when the time was right. I didn’t understand what she meant, and honestly, it slipped my mind.”
He passes it to me, and I run my finger along the cross, thinking about how this is one of the only things aside from the Sinners’ bible that links me to Dad’s secret past. And Mom’s too, it appears.
“Thank you, Dan.”
“Can I ask what that means to you?”
“Uh…”
His lips twist into a frown. “Remember when your parents went on that trip when you were younger, for a few weeks?” I struggle before he adds, “Their anniversary trip.”
“Oh yeah.” Mom and Dad always said they didn’t have much of a honeymoon, so they wanted to redo it, and Dan babysat.
“I remember. That’s a weird thing to bring up.”
“It was a weird thing to happen. They didn’t seem like they were ready to go on a big fun trip. They were on edge. Agitated. Like how you were acting before you wound up in the hospital.”
The way he looks at me, he must’ve realized something else was up.
“When they returned,” he goes on, “your dad was wearing that necklace. I thought it was a souvenir. I never saw him wear it again after that. Then when I came to the hospital to see you, I saw your friends’ necklaces and the one you had on—the one you’re wearing now. Even then I didn’t think much of it. But last night, I woke up in the middle of the night, and the day your mom gave it to me was like it happened yesterday, her telling me I needed to wait to give it to you. Even now, I’m wondering why I forgot for all this time or why it came up just now, but all I know is that this belongs to you.”
The way he tells the story, it’s clear he’s somewhat disturbed by his memory lapse, and I can’t help thinking there might’ve been some magic involved. But Mom wasn’t a part of the Sinners stuff. Was she…?
He studies my expression. “Is there anything you want to tell me, Luke?”
Like with Alexei, part of me wants to share the truth with him, but my parents must’ve had their reasons for not sharing this with him. And I fear that if I tell him the truth, it might pull him into this with me.
I’d rather spare him. Not give him a reason to worry about me attending St. Lawrence. Or about what’s to come.
“Nothing right now,” I make myself say, since I don’t like lying to him.
“Well, I’m here if you need anything. Anytime. I hope you know that.”
As always, I can feel his love, his acceptance, his care for me. The love and care of the man who took me in as his own and selflessly gave so much of himself to me.
“Thank you, Dan,” I say, hugging him tight.
I put the necklace on with mine and return to my old bedroom, where I tell Brad about the odd exchange. Still with the necklace on, I sit up in bed, assessing the cross.
“How would your mom have known to put a spell on Dan?” He slides close to me, places his hand on my abs. “She couldn’t have known that all this would happen.”
“But what if she did? It sounds strange, but maybe the answer is as strange as everything else. I just wish I knew what my parents knew about all this. Like, did Dad tell Mom? And what was that trip about? And this on top of all the other questions related to Kysar. Too many questions, too few answers.”
“Now you know what it’s been like for us since we found out about this stuff.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Well, come here and let your boyfriend make it better.”
Just hearing him refer to himself as my boyfriend has this strange power over me.
He leans close and offers a kiss. It’s a gentle reminder of how far we’ve come from the Lust-fueled kisses we shared early on, back when it felt beyond our control. Inescapable. Now that we spend so much time together, it feels more natural. We’re more at ease, like this is the way it’s supposed to be for us.
He rolls onto me, and I reposition comfortably under him as he pushes his weight against me. He nibbles at my ear, then kisses down my throat, stirring that familiar desire, as something moves through me.
I’m no longer looking at the ceiling, images flashing through my mind in quick succession. Like memories, though not mine.
“There’s something I need to do,” Dad tells Mom, and I somehow know I’m in his body . “I must go back to St. Lawrence. It’s life or death.”
“I’m not letting you do whatever it is by yourself.”
“You have to stay here. For Luke.”
And then I see Josh Dobbers and Dad and Mom in the church cellar.
A series of images collide, moving so fast, I can’t keep up. One moment I’m sitting in a room with recliners and IVs, the next I’m walking around an office, and finally, I’m in a car and hear an ominous voice before I snap back to the present with Brad lying over me.
“Luke? Luke?” he asks, panic in his expression.
“What happened?”
“Your eyes went black like you were having a vision.”
Despite only seeing flashes, I have a deep awareness of what took place in the past, as though it downloaded into my brain. As though I’ve known it all my life.
“The cross,” I say. “It stored the memory of what happened to my parents. When I was a kid, Kysar called them to the Rift—my dad and Josh. Something evil had escaped. A monster they knew could tear apart our world. After Dad told Mom the truth about the Sinners, she insisted she go with them. She didn’t want them to fight this on their own. She didn’t know what she was getting into, but while working with them, she discovered her telepathic ability. Once they found the monster, they couldn’t find a way to get it back into the Rift, and knew it would be fatal to fight it, but the Guides told them it was the only way to keep others from dying. Mom used her power to split its consciousness between them, locking it in each of their bodies. They thought they could use their combined powers to keep it at bay, but after Josh got cancer, Mom and Dad knew it was only a matter of time before it broke free and took control of their bodies. When it started to take over Dad, he used his powers to give himself the aneurysm. Stored the memory for Mom to see in the necklace. Then when she felt the same thing happening to her four years later, she drove herself into a wall to keep the creature from driving into oncoming traffic. It was different than the Slasher they killed while in college. This thing could only survive as long as they were alive, so once they were gone, it was too.”
“They sacrificed themselves,” Brad says, wrapping his arms around me. “Just like their son did.”
I nod, tearing up. “They debated what to do. They didn’t want to die because they had me, but they knew if this monster got out, there might not be a world here for me. They died so that I could live.” Tears stream down my cheeks.
“I’m so sorry, Luke.”
But there’s a relief in knowing the truth. More than that—a sense of responsibility. My duty.
“This is what I’m supposed to do,” I say, and Brad pulls away.
“What?”
“I always thought the reason I wanted to go to St. Lawrence was because Dad went there, but now I feel like it’s been calling me. Like it’s my destiny to guard the Rift with the Sinners, like my parents did.”
Brad raises his hand to my face, caresses gently. “Is that what you want, though?”
I consider it briefly, maybe too briefly given the weight of the consequences. “I don’t know that I have a choice.”
“You do have a choice. But knowing who you are, and that you want to do the right thing, I know you feel you only have one choice. It’s one of the reasons I’m so in love with you.”
I gaze at Brad’s beautiful face, and fucked up as it is to discover all that’s on our shoulders, there’s comfort in knowing he’s mine. “This is very dangerous,” I warn him.
“You think I’m scared of a little danger?”
“I know you aren’t, and neither am I.” Not now that I grasp just how important this work is.
He takes my mouth again, and I cherish every moment of it, realizing how fragile it is, how quickly it could be taken from me by the looming threats. When we pull away, he presses his forehead against mine. “We’ll figure this out, Luke. Together.”
“Together.”
We seal the promise with another kiss, his words reminding me how lucky I am that I’m not on my own in any of this.
But also vividly aware that, for the Sinners, this is only the beginning.
THE END