This Blood that Bonds Us (This Blood that Binds Us #4)

4. Four

Four

Kimberly

I’d decided to dye my hair. It was too easy to describe a redhead finding her way into bars and luring men into the alley with two blond guys following her around. We might as well have been writing our own crime reports. The incident at the bar had made the local news, and we couldn’t risk it.

As I pulled the black dye through the ends of my hair, staining my neck and fingernails, I wondered why I thought it was a good idea. Pools of dye fell in droplets and stained the hotel’s porcelain tile beneath my feet. Swirls of blue and gray kept flowing. No matter how much I washed, the darkness kept coming.

I got out and wrapped my hair in a towel. I’d already dyed my brows and couldn’t stand to look at the two black bars unnaturally framing my eyes. Staring at myself in the mirror, all I saw were my dark circles. I’d always thought Zach had a monopoly on it. Turned out, I would give him a run for his money.

I wrapped another hotel towel around my body and shivered. It was always cold. My body couldn’t be cold. Not really. But I still felt it. This slinking chill in my bones that never went away. I stared at my reflection long enough for my fingers to stiffen and bend around the porcelain. Being a vampire meant I could stand as long as I wanted and never tire. I could stand there for days if I desired it. I liked that part of the change. It made all the uncomfortable parts of being human easy. There was never any ache or pain. I didn’t have to take bathroom breaks or stop to eat.

I finally got the courage to pull the ruined towel from my head, then gasped at the tangled mess that fell to my shoulders. Raven-black hair laid against my cool pale skin. It would take years to grow my natural hair back out. Years before I’d see myself again. Did we have years?

A deep gnawing feeling in my chest told me I was staring at my fate. As the Calem boys grew closer to their fate, so did I. It was shrouded in uncertainty and sealed in black blood. The farther we drove, the more it haunted me, drawing me into its clutches and seeping into my pores.

You can’t save him.

Akira’s words echoed in the silence of the bathroom. For some reason unknown to me, I imagined him laughing in my face. He’d want me to be wavering, sad, and sniffling about our fate. I would save them. Somehow. I didn’t exactly know how, but I’d keep trying to navigate them in every way I knew how and helping however they needed.

And oh, how the Calem boys needed help.

A soft knock startled me.

“Are you okay?” Aaron’s soft voice was right next to the door. It was a little raspy. He must have been outside.

I didn’t answer.

“Can I come in?”

I unlocked the door without a word, and he examined my face. I expected his eyes to widen when he saw how much I changed with the bundle of black hair knotted at my shoulders and the stains of dye along my neck. It was just hair, but then why did I have tears rolling down my cheeks?

I moved to wipe them, and he beat me to it.

He never stopped gazing at my face. Not once did he look at the hair lying on my shoulder or the towel wrapped around me, not even the gray water dripping on his feet.

“Do you want me to help you brush it?”

I nodded and faced away from the mirror. His touch was gentle. So gentle it took way longer than it needed to, but I didn’t mind. After he finished, he blow-dried it with the little hairdryer strapped to the wall. I didn’t even have to ask. He just knew.

When it was finally time for me to turn around, he rested his hands on my shoulders and let me take it in. I didn’t recognize myself. My old life was truly gone, and I’d chosen every step that led me here. I guess that was part of choosing what you wanted. Sometimes choosing your own path meant staring the possibility of failure and ruin in the face. We were safe but for how long?

“Wanna go lay down? Presley’s in for the night.”

“He’s not in our room?”

“No, he said he’d get his own. Didn’t think it was worth it to fight about the money. I’ll make it up somehow.”

“We both will.” I grabbed his hand.

Aaron led me to our bed. The room wasn’t anything fancy. A queen-sized bed, couch, an old TV, and a mini fridge. I braced myself for the repetition of its buzzing but smiled when I realized Aaron had unplugged it for me. We turned on cartoons, and I nestled into his arms under the comfort of the blankets. The stench of hair dye was clinging to my pores. The curve of his bicep and the strength in his arms as he pulled me onto his chest relaxed me. I got lost in the feel of his heartbeat beneath my fingertips. Aaron Calem was the best foolish decision I’d ever made.

I’d say I felt ten years old again, but I never felt as safe at that age. Despite everything falling apart, Aaron’s warmth knit me back together from the top of my head to the tip of my toes. I closed my eyes imagining what it would have been like to know him when I was younger. We sat on a dock, kicking our feet over the edge into a beautiful sparkling lake. We would’ve met at the water’s edge every day, and he would’ve told me the most amazing stories. Fantastical stories about places and creatures I didn’t know existed.

“What are you thinking about?” He played with my hair.

“Running away with you . . . and what you looked like as a kid.”

“I was a nerd. Very skinny. Shaggy hair. My mom called it a mop.”

“Now that I could see.”

“I bet you were a know-it-all. The cute kind.” His lips grazed my forehead with a kiss.

“Yes, a little. I was quiet and mostly kept to myself.”

“I would have fixed that.”

“You would have.”

He buried his face into my hair. “I would have taken you all over Blackheart. You could have shown me all the cool secret places. We’d have run away together either way. I think it’s written in the stars somewhere.”

His arms tightened around me as he pulled me closer, and I nuzzled into his neck.

“I’m supposed to be making you feel better. Not the other way around,” I said, pleasantly smushed and oddly whole.

He was the one who just lost his brothers, with no way of knowing how we would get them back, yet he was taking care of me.

“You are. Trust me.”

Running away with Aaron Calem was written in the stars. It sounded like the first sentence of a really good book. One that I’d read over and over.