Chapter Nineteen #3
Brendan’s breaths quickened. His hands instantly grasped Aiden’s.
He lowered his voice. “And you are just amazing and incredible. You're the strongest person I’ve ever met. And you’re just so beautiful.
I’m so glad to have met you. I haven’t regretted a single second of my time with you—even when it was scary. It was worth it.”
“Excuse me, Prince President of the Photography Club, but we’ve got a club photo to take?” Christina interrupted with an exasperated voice behind them.
“Right!” Brendan pulled away from Aiden but kept holding his hand. Smiling, Aiden made his way to the center where everyone lined up in an orderly fashion.
“Counting down!” Javier called. He pressed on the camera and slid into frame, swooshing his cape and pointing out his sword. “Everyone, look dynamic! We have five seconds!”
Aiden continued staring up at Brendan. He loved Brendan’s eyes, nose, and mouth. He loved Brendan’s incessant kindness and patience, and he realized that he just loved the man in a way he never experienced love before.
Brendan turned toward him with a tip of his head.
The people around them faded from Aiden’s world despite the clattering of movement and voices.
Somewhere in the back of the group, he thought Christina made a comment at the two of them, but he didn’t really hear anything.
In front of a field of blooming flowers that filled the air with sweetness, surrounded by fantastical statues, and in a mystical garden where Aiden heard the fateful phone call of his stepmother’s arrival so long ago, the world melted away.
He could only see Brendan, feel only Brendan, and hear only Brendan.
It was mesmerizing and magical.
He placed a hand against Brendan’s cheek, and Brendan leaned over without hesitation to kiss him.
An arm wrapped around Aiden’s waist, and Aiden slid his hand to the back of Brendan’s neck.
Their sweet kiss continued as he inched himself closer to Brendan’s chest. The camera clicked, and the people around them reacted with embarrassment or awe, but Aiden did not care about what was captured, what their friends had seen, or what people would see in the future.
Brendan was a part of his life now, and he was truly free to live the life he wanted just like he’d said to his brother.
· · ·
Her black-heeled boots crunched over the green grass. Her red curls fell softly against her shoulders, and her black-gloved hand clutched the Zac Posen purse to her black fitted dress. She made her way over to the tombstone and slipped off her sunglasses to hang them from the collar of her dress.
She stared at the name on the gravestone with the fondest of smiles.
Her purse clicked open, and she pulled out three photographs.
She laid the first down. It was a photograph of the chaos outside the courthouse.
The Chen patriarch and Aiden's stepmother were taken away in heavy cuffs.
Journalists crowded around them, intent on grabbing a few words from the accused.
“Don’t they look dead inside,” she grinned, relishing at their flat eyes.
She placed the photograph of a beautiful woman down.
The photograph was old with bent corners from rough handling, but her smile shone through like she was alive despite the stillness of the image.
She held her dress, and she chased after a boy while carrying an infant in her arms. “Hui Ye!” the woman was calling when the photo was shot. “Hui Ye, slow down!”
She gifted the final photograph to him. A beautiful field with magical decorations surrounded a group of young students ready to face the future of their lives.
They dressed up in a variety of costumes—witches, thieves, magicians, and even monsters.
The two men in the middle ignored everyone with their eyes locked on each other.
Their lips remained touched with sheer bliss.
A ray of sun peeked in through the clouds.
The woman had laughed at the coincidental cliché of sun rays when she first saw the photograph, beaming down on the shameless affection.
She pulled out a matchbox, lit the match, and placed it against the photographs. The edges curled, and a small stream of smoke rose to the skies to deliver him the photos she knew he desperately desired to have at hand.
As the photographs slowly transported away to the realm of the dead, she thought back to his last words.
Was it fun?
She allowed a smile. “It was fun. Maybe, even a little bit magical.”
She opened her handheld mirror and reapplied the faded red lipstick.
Her hair fell softly over her face, and she gave a sly inviting look upward with her eyes.
“Yes, that woman will like this look indeed,” she whispered.
She clicked her mirror shut, pushed her sunglasses over her eyes, and hid the necklace holding the ring behind her dress.
She turned away from the grave, and her heeled boots crunched as she made her way over to another group of people mourning from not far away.
The better of humanity called for her assistance once more.