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

35. Thirty-Five

Thirty-Five

Kimberly

I cried the entire way home, with my face buried in Presley’s sweater while he rubbed my back. The tears were relentless, and any attempt to stifle them was futile. Nothing in my life had ever broken me like the image of seeing Aaron dead and cold on the ground.

The image was too vivid and specific to be fake. It was real.

Aaron would die.

None of us said anything on the drive back to the cabin, and I was surprised how quickly the time had passed when the car door opened.

“I’ll take her.” Aaron opened up Presley’s car door, and we funneled out into the snow.

I wanted to make sense of it. To find something to say or think that would bring any comfort, but my worst fears had been confirmed. Everything would end in death, and the person I loved most in the world would be taken from me.

I’d had it wrong. We couldn’t defeat Her. The events had been set in motion long before I was born. Fate had the Calem brothers in its clutches, and it wouldn’t stop until they were dead or Hers.

Aaron led me into our cabin, and I sulked my way up the stairs and into our bed.

I wanted to hide. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to run.

It had to be a bad dream. That couldn’t be the future. Why had I believed things could work?

There was a rustling in the kitchen while I cried onto my pillow. I didn’t think my body was capable of creating that many tears.

Everything meant nothing if he would die. I hated that stupid dagger and the stupid Thing that infected my body. Most of all, I hated Her.

“Come here.” Aaron pulled the blankets back, and I squinted from the lamp on the side table.

I complied and sat up while he steadied me, but looking at him hurt. I shielded myself from the warmth of his skin, knowing it would be a distant memory. One day, he wouldn’t touch me again. He wouldn’t be able to smile at me and tell me he loved me. The battle was over before it began. The singular crack in my armor was torn open, and it felt like my heart was bleeding all over the bed and onto the floor.

A warm rag grazed my cheek, wiping the tears that fell. His hands, strong and sure, wiped my tears and the remnants of my makeup away.

“Are you sure you don’t want to shower?” Aaron asked with no hint of sadness in his voice, just patience.

I shook my head, and he kneeled to the floor, pulling the boots from my feet that I’d failed to shed. There was no rush as he unlaced them, placed them on the floor, and replaced my socks with a new, fluffier pair.

Grabbing his forearm, I let his warmth in despite the memory of how cold he felt in the vision.

Aaron made his way into bed and sat up against the headboard. In one motion, he placed me in his lap and cradled me to his chest. I wrapped my arms around his neck and buried myself in his scent. There were more tears at first, but I couldn’t cry in the arms of Aaron Calem for long. I thought I’d known love when I told him for the first time. I was so sure then, but this felt like something else entirely. My insides were shredded, yet every tender kiss he left on my face and the top of my head stitched me back together.

It was utterly appalling to feel that way about someone else. So foreign and fantastical, it didn’t seem real. He didn’t seem real, but Aaron was well-versed in the magic of the world. He was pure radiant magic himself.

“Do you want to tell me what you saw?”

The memory surfaced, and I pushed it away. “No. I can’t.”

He held my face in his hands and kissed my forehead.

“You don’t have to. But . . . I think if you keep it in, it will eat at you. You’ll keep thinking about it, and you’ll make all your theories and your lists till you won’t be able to do anything else.” Another tear fell as I listened, and his warm thumb rubbed it away. “But if you tell me, then I can take it from you. And every time you’re tempted to worry, you’ll just know I’ve got it. I’m holding it for you.”

“Aaron, that’s nonsense.”

“No, it’s not. You’re just sharing the burden. You tell me, and I’ll carry the weight for you.”

I rested my head against him. “Okay . . . I was back in that place. The in-between place, and I willed the power to come to me so I could see. I asked It to show me something specific this time—the future. And then I was in another church. There was fog everywhere, so I couldn’t make out everything, just the floor. It was intricate marble and had this long crack. When I followed it, I found you with the dagger in your chest. And I couldn’t hear your heart beating anymore.”

My voice broke again, and he squeezed me tighter. When I felt the strength to speak again I said, “You’re not scared?”

“No. I don’t believe in that stuff.” His fingers traced along my jaw.

“Just because you don’t believe it doesn’t make it not true. It was so vivid . . . it felt so real.”

We settled into bed, and he pulled my leg over him until we were intertwined. With my head on his chest, I kept my gaze on the skylight above our heads. My body melted into his, and every breath became deeper and deeper.

His hand rested over my heart. “This is the only thing I believe in.”

The thrum of his heartbeat was powerful and roaring in my ears.

“This love is the only thing I care about. It’s the only thing that matters. Prophecies be damned.”

“You were so cold. There was blood everywhere. It felt real. It felt sure. I was screaming for you . . . and you were gone.”

“How do you know it’s showing you the truth? It could be showing you just what It wants you to see just to scare you. We don’t even know what you’re tapping into. We can’t trust everything we see at face value. We don’t know what the visions mean, let alone who is sending them. Even if it was the future, who’s to say that’s the only outcome?”

“But what if it’s true? What if you die? What if it’s . . . written in the stars?”

The stars twinkled above. They usually brought me comfort, but I wanted to hide Aaron away where the stars couldn’t touch him. Away from the stars, the gods, or whatever else wanted to take him from me. Because this love was the kind that would haunt me day and night. The absence of Aaron Calem would leave me empty and nothing could ever fill it again. I'd caught the sun, felt it burn in my hands, and if it went out I'd never get another.

“Then I’ll change it. I’ll make my own constellations. I’m not scared of the stars. They should be afraid of me.”

I was awestruck at the fire in his eyes. Who was this infinitely hopeful man, and how did he muster the courage?

“How are you so brave?”

“I learned it from you.”

I shook my head. I didn’t feel brave anymore, and I could scarcely remember a time when I did.

“No. Not anymore. Every time we get a little closer, the less control I have of the future. I wish I could fast forward to know the end because it feels like I’m about to lose everything.”

Love had sucked the courage from my bones and left me hollow in its wake. I no longer felt the fire. Only a brisk emptiness of sorrow in the face of all I’d come to love being torn from me. To know love was to know true pain. It was a fragile, fickle, flickering thing in danger of being snuffed out despite my strongest efforts. I couldn’t control it. There was no certainty in love.

“You’ve been brave every day of your life. And you did that all on your own. It’s my turn to be brave for you.”

He was braver than I ever was. He’d known love his entire life and was at risk of losing it all, yet he smiled.

“I’m not going to let anything kill me that easily. I’ve got a girl that needs me.”

I squeezed him. “She must be special.”

He made me feel that way. Special. A word with no meaning before I met him. I’d just been Kimberly. A girl. Never a favorite. Or the best. I was never chosen first for anything. I was never anyone’s first phone call or thought in the morning.

No one picked me.

But Aaron did.

“She is. She’s everything. And I’m going to show her things can work out.”

Finally, the fear released me, and when I looked at the sky, I could appreciate the stars again and their glow in the dark sky. They were infinite, like our possibilities for a different future. A better one.