20. Dagon
Chapter twenty
Dagon
Iwoke before dawn with Di's weight still warm against my chest. His breathing was slow and even, his hand fisted lightly in the fabric of my shirt. For one stolen second, I let myself stay. I let myself feel him. I let myself pretend.
Then the night caught up with me.
The Soulborn. The knife on the table. The gleam in Joshua's eyes when he looked at Di. The way Di's hands shook in the car afterward.
I'd let it happen.
I'd brought him into that house. I'd sat across from a demon and watched him study Diablos like prey, and I hadn't pulled Di out fast enough.
Carefully, I slid out from under him. Di stirred but didn't wake. I stood at the edge of the bed for a long moment, watching him, and I felt the cracks in my chest widen with every breath he took. By the time he opened his eyes an hour later, the cracks had become walls.
The peace from last night was already gone. Having Di by my side alleviated some of the darkness, but the moment we got up, the tension and unease I'd been suppressing intensified.
The previous night had been perfect, but now… now I felt like a black cloud was looming over my head. All my mistakes. All of my past. It all played before my eyes like a personally designed hell made just for me. Especially heavy were the thoughts connected to Di.
What happened yesterday with the Soulborn and Di's panic attack still made my blood boil. How could I have allowed Diablos to get into that house? To be near that fucking demon? How could I not notice the things Di noticed? How could I put him in danger?
Diablos tried to speak with me, but I could only give one-word answers. With how tightly I gritted my teeth, it was a miracle I could even speak.
"You slept well?" he asked at one point, his voice still soft from rest.
"Yes."
He waited. When I didn't say anything else, I felt the silence shift between us.
"Are you okay?"
"Fine."
He'd looked at me then with that searching gaze I knew too well – the one that meant he was trying to figure out which version of me he was getting today. I felt him decide, slowly, that he wouldn't push. Yet.
It wasn’t long before an uncomfortable silence settled around us. We grabbed some coffee and got back on the road. Tonight, we'd stay in yet another hotel, and tomorrow, we'd be in the town the fucker told us about.
One day.
One freaking day.
That was all I had.
I knew what I had to do. I didn’t care what it would cost me to keep Di safe.
If going to this abandoned town was a trap, I’d do what I promised never to do again.
Breaking that promise would hurt me, no doubt, but if something happened to Di…
that would destroy me. It was something I’d never let happen. Never.
The thought of losing Di made my heart pound harder. No. I’d do whatever it took to keep him safe. No one would touch him. No one. But still, a sharp pain twisted inside me because I knew keeping him safe meant I'd lose him. But then again, had he ever been mine?
Beside me, Di shifted. He took a slow breath. I could feel him gathering himself, the way he did before he had to say something he didn't want to say. I'd learned that breath in the years we used to talk. I hadn't forgotten it.
"Dagon."
My fingers tightened on the wheel.
"Dagon, look at me."
I didn't.
He let the silence stretch. He waited me out. And when I still didn't turn – when I couldn't, because the wall I'd been building since dawn was the only thing holding me upright – his voice came out lower. Harder.
“Pull the car over,” he said.
“What?” Startled, I looked over at him, then around us. I was worried there might be some danger I didn’t sense.
“Pull the car over. Right. Now.”
I did what he told me. Before I could ask what was wrong, he challenged me with fire in his eyes. Fuck. I had never seen him so pissed off.
The Di I knew curled inward when he was hurt. This Di was something else. Sharp. Lit from within. The fire in his eyes wasn't grief or even pain, it was fury and accusation and being done with my walls.
“What’s your deal?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, really? Do I need to spell it out? Or maybe you need a script translation on what’s happening between us?”
“Diablos.”
“Don’t Diablos me. Since we left on this fucking fantasy journey, you've become someone else. The old you,” pain flashed in his eyes. “No, scratch that. You've become a fantasy in its own right. And now we’re back to how it used to be.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Di.”
“What about the truth? Tell me the fucking truth, Dagon. I beg you.”
I shook my head.
I couldn’t.
I can’t.
“Why did everything change between us? Why did you leave my hospital room and never came back the same? Why did we become this?!” he screamed, and I flinched.
He wasn't done. The dam had broken now and the rest of it was coming.
"I waited for you, Dagon. Do you know that?
I waited at your door. I knocked. I sat in the kitchen at midnight every Friday for months because that's what we did.
And you didn't come. Not once. You walked past me in our own home like I was furniture.
And I let you. I let you because I thought you'd come back to me eventually. "
He was breathing hard now, his hands clenched at his sides.
"You held me yesterday. You said don't leave, stay with me. You climbed into my bed last night and held me until I fell asleep on your chest. And now this morning you can't even fucking look at me."
My fingers were white-knuckled on the steering wheel.
"What changed? What did I do? Just tell me. Tell me what I did and I'll spend the rest of my life trying to undo it, because I cannot do this again. I cannot lose you twice."
It would've been better if I'd been stabbed with a knife.
Anything would've been better than this.
Hell, I wished I could tell him everything.
Every fiber of my being was consumed by pain, by the need to answer his questions.
I knew I'd hurt him, and it killed me that I was the reason for that pain.
The past crashed through my walls without warning.
Flashes of memories swarmed me from every side.
The first time we met. Those late-night conversations.
The shy smile on his face when he spoke about his books.
The moment my world collapsed when I got the call from King telling me Di had been hit by a car.
The blur in which I ran to the hospital.
I tried to stop the memories, but they wouldn't let up.
The most frightening and happiest moment in my life blurred my vision.
Di was lying on that bed when I saw the blood on his hand. A wave of sensations hit me all at once.
The scent of him – woods and ocean – but not just smell. Recognition. The way you recognize your own name being called from across a room.
The shivers of rightfulness. Of possession. As if every cell in my body was suddenly oriented toward one fixed point, and that point was an eighteen-year-old boy in a hospital bed with bruised ribs and a broken arm and a streak of dried blood on the back of his hand.
The twist in my gut at seeing him hurt, and at the same time, the unbearable, terrifying joy at finding him.
My eyes burned with rage. A roar of anger rose in my throat at the thought of who had hurt him, a sound I had to swallow back so it wouldn't escape and tear the whole hospital apart.
And then, beneath all of it, beneath the fear and the relief and the rage… one word arrived.
One word.
One feeling so vast it almost brought me to my knees.
Mate.
The word ricocheted through my mind, my body, every cell of my being. It wasn't a thought. It was a recognition that had been waiting since the first time I'd seen him in the kitchen at midnight, and now it had finally found its voice.
Diablos… was my mate.
“Dagon!” Diablos's voice snapped me back to the present.
Tears gathered in my eyes, but I held them back.
Would it matter if I told him the truth now?
He would see the real me tomorrow, and I'd lose him. But I didn’t know if I was strong enough anymore.
He deserved to know why everything changed.
Besides, hadn’t I already hurt him enough?
Tomorrow, the last pieces of the puzzle would fall into place, and I could give him some of the answers now. No matter what it would mean for us.
Either way, I was always on the losing side. Diablos was never mine, and he would never be. If I could lessen his pain by giving him answers, I’d cut myself open and tell him the truth. Fuck everything else. Pulling away from him had been a mistake from the start.
Maybe I'd lose him again, but at least he would have the answers I knew he had wanted for years. It was the least I could give him. I met his eyes for the first time since I pulled over.
It was time.