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

27. Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Seven

Aaron

“Really, Aaron, in my mom’s shower?” Presley smirked as he handed me dry clothes at the door.

I’d had to beg. It wasn’t pretty.

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t think that’s why you wanted to come home so quickly. Shower sex was that tempting for you? You couldn’t even take a few seconds to not drench your clothes.”

“Let’s never talk about this again.”

“Oh, brother, you owe me now. Kim still owes me too, by the way.” He wiggled his eyebrows as Kimberly appeared beside me in some old flannel pajamas with her hair wrapped in a towel. She avoided eye contact with my brother, but the fight was futile because he was blocking the door. I was just glad I had my sanity back.

“I’ll be conjuring up what your favors will be, and I’m going to make them extra interesting now that I have to put headphones on to drown you guys out.” Presley shielded his eyes and turned away from Kim. “Nope. No manipulative pouting is going to help you now, Kim. You owe me big time.”

“But I’m not doing anything,” she said.

“No, you totally do this thing that makes me feel bad. But you’re a Calem now. You must reap the consequences of being annoying.”

“Can you let us out of the bathroom, please?” I tried to push past, but he had his arm propped up on the doorframe.

“I’m sorry,” Kimberly muttered, “you’re right.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll give Aaron all the worst punishments. He’ll do all the embarrassing stuff, and we can watch and laugh.”

I think that was the fastest I’d ever seen my brother fold. At least he was enjoying himself.

“Please move,” I said, not entirely hating that mischievous smirk on his face.

I kissed Kimberly’s hands as we lay twisted in our fleece sheets. I didn’t know a bed could feel that good. The stars made the sky more light than dark as they blinked and danced in our skylight. With a feather touch, I traced the lines on her hands and kissed each tip of her fingers.

I still wasn’t over it. The smell of her all over me. The way she looked in nothing but my T-shirt. We spent every night soaking it in, just us in our little cabin in the woods.

Sometimes, I liked to pretend that’s all our life was, living in Alaska with no other problems to speak of. There was plenty of hiking and places to explore. Mom loved the company. There was even a community college within driving distance. I imagined the lush green of summer when the mountains in the distance would be the only memory of the cold and snow.

It didn’t last long; once I looked up at the sky, I felt the weight in my chest again.

“Are you sure you’re okay with everything?” I asked.

I was thankful to have a clear head, but it came with a high cost. All the wildness I’d had coursing through my blood a few hours ago was a bad memory that had been replaced by her head on my chest and the reverberation of her heartbeat.

“You worry too much.”

“You’re one to talk.” I chuckled while I played with her hair. “I worry about hurting you. That’s something to be concerned about.”

“I feel great.” She draped her bare leg over mine, and I grabbed it to pull her closer. “I just wish we knew what was happening to you. What does it feel like?”

I’d had so many bad experiences with the Thing in my head I’d lost count, but there was a common theme. It thrived in chaos and destruction. It wanted not just blood and to kill but to find my weaknesses and hurt me.

“This is different than before. Before it felt like this Thing was just messing with me. Taunting me. When I drank that guy’s blood today, It didn’t want it. It wanted something else. And It wanted to use my body to get it. Like the Thing in my head is looking for something . . .”

“It’s looking for Her.”

Her words accompanied the quickening of her pulse, and a shiver ran down my spine.

“Well, I was looking for you.” I squeezed her. “It was weird. I smelled for you and tracked your footprints in the snow.”

I hunted her, and the memory of the elation of finding her in the shower made me question my sanity.

“I just don’t get it. Luke had more blood than me. Directly from Her, and he had no problem with human blood. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Her blood seems to affect you all in different ways. There’s a reason. For you, maybe . . . you’re supposed to drink from Her. Maybe it does something. It’s just a theory, but it seems like The Thing in your head is seeking Her out for a reason. Do you feel like you want Her more? Do you . . . think of the queen a lot?”

“No.”

She looked up at me with her head still on my chest. “You can tell me the truth. It won’t hurt my feelings.”

The only lie was hers.

I couldn’t resist cupping her cheek and rubbing my thumb over her bottom lip until her worry lines vanished.

“Honestly? Never. Only when I’m worried about what She’s doing to my brothers.”

I actually tried not to think about it too much. The fear of the unknown on that subject was enough to make my chest feel like someone was trying to pry open my rib cage.

“I think we should tell Kilian.”

I answered with a groan and buried my head in her hair. It had dried and smelled of vanilla and honey shampoo.

“I know, I’ve just been thinking about your brothers and their secrets . . . Being here gives me so much time to retrace our steps. If your brothers hadn’t kept their secret, or even if you and I hadn’t had any in Blackheart, if we’d all just laid it out, how different could things be? If we never got as close as we did and ended up in the church. If you’d had told your brothers, and you all left, or maybe if Kilian hadn’t seen what he saw in them. These secrets . . . have often made things worse for everyone. Maybe he can help, and he’ll know what the problem is.”

“You spend a lot of time thinking.” I shifted till the weight of her leg dug into my hips.

“It’s helping.”

“It is. It’s great. I just don’t want you to get lost in there. I need you here with me.” I kissed her temple, then her cheek till her anxious grip on me loosened, and she was back to melting into me. There weren’t words for how I needed her. Her blood was low on the list.

“I’m here.” She laughed softly.

“We’ll tell him. I think it’s a good idea. No more secrets. But that does mean we’ll have to tell him I’ve been drinking from you, and I’m not ready to have that conversation with my brother. Doesn’t need to be a secret, just not ready to deal with the questions. Plus, he’s already struggling with the changes.”

“That’s fair. Maybe we’ll go see him before Presley comes this weekend.”

“Yeah, but we have to get him out of the house. How many times can someone watch Lion King 2 and sulk?”

Even Kim couldn’t convince Presley to get off the couch, and she’d tried just about everything.

“I spoke to your mom about it this morning. I think she’s going to make him volunteer at the dog shelter during the week.”

She was already ten steps ahead of me.

“I wonder why he wants to go to Fairbanks so bad,” I said.

“I’m not sure, but it can’t hurt to take a little night off. For all of us.”

I’d denied Presley’s request for so long because I didn’t want any nights off. I wanted to spend every minute working toward getting my brothers back, but I didn’t need to tell Kim that, she knew.

She drew little circles over my bare chest, and I shivered. It brought my attention back to the weight in my heart.

It was weird to get used to it. My own grief physically embodied. All our grief lived in my body as a constant reminder of what was lost. Like I needed the extra reminder. Every night I looked up at that night sky, thinking about the distance and wondering what they were doing and how they were feeling.

“Where does it hurt?” She flattened her palm over my chest.

I grabbed her hand and guided it to the middle of my chest. “Here. It always hurts here. Like someone punched a hole in my chest and it’s just empty. It’s deep, like I can’t get to it.”

I moved her hand to the right. “And here it feels like stabbing sometimes, and then I’ll feel it in my back.”

“Want me to rub your back?”

I smiled and guided her head back to my chest. “This is better.”

Nights kept me together. I couldn’t imagine sitting and staring at the ceiling alone.

In the warmth of the cabin, I could tell Kimberly everything. Every good thought, every bad. We had no secrets anymore, and more importantly, nothing to hold us back from each other. Blackheart felt like a distant memory. I’d held myself back from her, and I was sure it caused all our suffering, because being with her was the easiest thing I’d ever done. Loving her came naturally, like it was something I was meant to do and it was the one thing I was ever any good at.

I gasped as a star streaked across the sky. One single ray of light carving a path through the darkness.

“A shooting star.” I’d only ever seen one, and it was with Kimberly.

That’s where I’d made my first wish, and it had come true.

I’d gotten to stay with her, and she was undoubtedly mine. I pulled at her as if I could get her any closer. There was one way, but it was still early in the night.

Kim placed her hand on mine. “Let’s make a wish together.”

I squeezed my eyes shut.

I want us to win. Please let us all get to come back here together.

The sight of seeing my older brothers step out of the car in the driveway and greet Mom seared into the back of my mind. It was so vivid, and I believed it would come to fruition.

I’d get them there.

I kissed the top of her head and continued to gaze up. The only rule was we couldn’t say our wishes out loud, but believing together had worked before, so maybe it would again.

“You know the same moon we’re looking at is the same one your brothers see. We’re looking at the same stars and the same night sky.”

I smiled at the thought, wondering if they ever got time to go outside and gaze up at the stars. I hoped so.